For the independent worker or small offices there are many solutions that work great outside of the MS family, unfortunately the realities of big companies/groups is that it's much easier and more profitable to stick with what everyone has/knows even if it is not necessarily the best option out there.
Yes, I understand the problems of working in large companies/groups. However change can occur. I work with large organizations, 500 to 10,000 employees. When a group decides they want to move with something like Google Docs, they have managed to get the cooperation with IT. In fact, we gave IT the idea that 2,000 within their employment only needed Google Docs, thus cancellation of 2,000 licenses. This has taken six months to be argued, put in the IT planning and execution, and another 3 months for change management that is in the works right now to train employees to use Google Docs and establish a set of procedures that are workable.
Yes, it is a huge undertaking to make change away from Microsoft Products. In the end, we need to smell the money; if it is cheaper to operate with something like Ubuntu, it will happen. But unfortunately while Ubuntu may be cheaper to buy (i.e., nothing) the cost of re-tooling is the problem. Change and change management is not cheap.
I agree, it is going to be sometime yet before we see large organizations take the plunge. In the meantime, small organizations can gain the benefit with a few enlightened managers around. In the course of this year, I am seeing more and more businesses under 20 employees making a change to less expensive IT. And Red Hat or Ubuntu are the options they are seeking.
I am interested in Linux and want to give it a fair shake, but after I spend three hours tinkering with it to get it to perform some minor task, I need to get some real work done so I switch back over to XP.
There is a quicker way to solve installation problems. The excellent forum at http://ubuntuforums.org/ is the easy way to solve issues. I had six issues . . . displaying across two flat-screen monitors, wireless connection, an NTFS USB drive, synchronisation of my Motorola phone, and connection to a windows network at MSHOME. I wrote up my issues on this excellent forum and the first issue was solved in about 6 minutes, the second in about 8 minutes, and all my issues were solved within 35 minutes. Boy are they fast in the Ubuntu forums.
In comparison, when I was installing Windows Vista, I could not find a forum to address and when I did, I am still waiting for any of my Vista issues to be discussed by anyone but me.
Installation of ubuntu including settling issues 75 minutes. Installation of Vista . . . 4 hours and still some issues were outstanding when I decided to "can" Vista and install Ubuntu.
AND by the way, all my clients run Windows of some flavor. I create and share documents with them with the greatest of ease . . . it is called Google Documents. My clients can copy Google Documents into Windows Office and vice versa. Most of my clients have stopped copying the documents into Windows. They are happy to work with documents in Google Documents itself. Great collaboration tool.
I bought Vista. Installed with major difficulties. Then, everyday about 3:00pm Vista comes up with a box containing the words "This is not a valid copy of Vista." THEN, anything I chose to do from the start menu would not work. That hurt, when you consider that I parted with $300 for the upgrade from XP.
I called Microsoft support about this problem and after 6 different calls and 6 different approaches to solving the issue, the last guy kind of washed his hands of the problem.
I wiped my hard drive clean and installed Ubuntu. I had several little hassles but nothing too major and I have everything (my peripherals) working. Operating System -- as solid as a rock. Recommend Ubuntu 6.10 to anyone. I have found a number of things I could not do with Vista so am really satisfied.
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Yes, it is a huge undertaking to make change away from Microsoft Products. In the end, we need to smell the money; if it is cheaper to operate with something like Ubuntu, it will happen. But unfortunately while Ubuntu may be cheaper to buy (i.e., nothing) the cost of re-tooling is the problem. Change and change management is not cheap.
I agree, it is going to be sometime yet before we see large organizations take the plunge. In the meantime, small organizations can gain the benefit with a few enlightened managers around. In the course of this year, I am seeing more and more businesses under 20 employees making a change to less expensive IT. And Red Hat or Ubuntu are the options they are seeking.
In comparison, when I was installing Windows Vista, I could not find a forum to address and when I did, I am still waiting for any of my Vista issues to be discussed by anyone but me.
Installation of ubuntu including settling issues 75 minutes. Installation of Vista . . . 4 hours and still some issues were outstanding when I decided to "can" Vista and install Ubuntu.
AND by the way, all my clients run Windows of some flavor. I create and share documents with them with the greatest of ease . . . it is called Google Documents. My clients can copy Google Documents into Windows Office and vice versa. Most of my clients have stopped copying the documents into Windows. They are happy to work with documents in Google Documents itself. Great collaboration tool.
There are serious alternatives to Windows.
I bought Vista. Installed with major difficulties. Then, everyday about 3:00pm Vista comes up with a box containing the words "This is not a valid copy of Vista." THEN, anything I chose to do from the start menu would not work. That hurt, when you consider that I parted with $300 for the upgrade from XP.
I called Microsoft support about this problem and after 6 different calls and 6 different approaches to solving the issue, the last guy kind of washed his hands of the problem.
I wiped my hard drive clean and installed Ubuntu. I had several little hassles but nothing too major and I have everything (my peripherals) working. Operating System -- as solid as a rock. Recommend Ubuntu 6.10 to anyone. I have found a number of things I could not do with Vista so am really satisfied.