In the EU we have learned that when the USA throws it weight around our EU laws count for very little.
The laws that were meant to protect the data of EU citizens has been ignored when it came to demands from the USA that personal data of EU air travellers be passed to the USA without the previous safeguards.
The Register has more details on how weak the EUs stand has been.
If by "careers working with computers" you mean doing more than just using them, i.e. writing software etc then I'm not surprised. Every major business that I can think of relies more on telephones and plumbing but relatively few people need to make a career out of them.
For most of us computers are just a tool that help us get on with our job, and like most tools they are rarely a career in themselves.
In terms of training costs MS Office did not cost anything as we would only recruit staff into those posts who were already trained or experienced with MS Office. This is a factor that probably influences many potential converts to OpenOffice as until OpenOffice becomes common place we will have to put some resources into retraining new staff.
With regards the fees paid for MS Office we didn't pay the correct fees and in common with many SMEs found ourselves running multiple copies of illegal software. It was thanks to the publicity of the anti-piracy campaigns that we chose the safe route and ditched MS Office.
When we moved our administration/secretarial staff onto OpenOffice it took about half an hour per worker to get them familiar with the basic differences. It also degraded productivity significantly for a couple of days as each worker got used to the different ways of doing things.
Many of these more experienced users also used some Macros and links to Access databases which entailed some time and effort to work around.
The process was quicker for workers with less experience with MS Office, but then those users were much less productive when it comes to word-processing etc. so it was difficult to tell if they were having any additional problems with OpenOffice.
Our move entailed a half an hours workplace training, which meant half an hours of the trainers time and half an hour of the admin worker's time, plus an unquantified loss of efficiency for a couple of days.
On our salary scales it would come to a minimum cost of 10 pounds per worker, although with loss of productivity it could easily be 50 pounds depending on how slow the worker was to adapt. If you scale these kinds of costs up for thousands of users then you have a significant issue.
We made the move in order to stop using unauthorised copies, so it was cheaper than going legit by buying the correct MS Licenses, but if the Isreali Government already has the correct Licenses then there may be minimal short term savings, indeed there is probably a significant short term cost to be justified.
I wouldn't expect 'support' issues to make much difference to most organisation considering a modern office suite, as any suite that needs much support isn't worth having.
Most users will only accept a package that works out of the box, which both MS Office & Openoffice do. Those basic office applications that don't work without significant support have long since died.
Does anyone else think it strange that the Isreali defence department signed their Microsoft deal in New York? I can't think of any other deal where you buy $20 Million in software but have to travel half way around the world to sign the contract, unless of course the deal was a small part of a deal very benificial to the buyer.
The real deal probably went along the lines of "I'll accept $1 billion of aid to buy attack helicopters from you, and as a thank you I'll spend $20 million on software from Microsoft."
This isn't the type of deal that Microsoft can rely on to sustain itself because where the finance ministry had to make a choice without the benefit of a large subsidy/bribe they dropped Microsoft.
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In the EU we have learned that when the USA throws it weight around our EU laws count for very little.
The laws that were meant to protect the data of EU citizens has been ignored when it came to demands from the USA that personal data of EU air travellers be passed to the USA without the previous safeguards.
The Register has more details on how weak the EUs stand has been.
If by "careers working with computers" you mean doing more than just using them, i.e. writing software etc then I'm not surprised. Every major business that I can think of relies more on telephones and plumbing but relatively few people need to make a career out of them.
For most of us computers are just a tool that help us get on with our job, and like most tools they are rarely a career in themselves.
In terms of training costs MS Office did not cost anything as we would only recruit staff into those posts who were already trained or experienced with MS Office. This is a factor that probably influences many potential converts to OpenOffice as until OpenOffice becomes common place we will have to put some resources into retraining new staff.
With regards the fees paid for MS Office we didn't pay the correct fees and in common with many SMEs found ourselves running multiple copies of illegal software. It was thanks to the publicity of the anti-piracy campaigns that we chose the safe route and ditched MS Office.
When we moved our administration/secretarial staff onto OpenOffice it took about half an hour per worker to get them familiar with the basic differences. It also degraded productivity significantly for a couple of days as each worker got used to the different ways of doing things.
Many of these more experienced users also used some Macros and links to Access databases which entailed some time and effort to work around.The process was quicker for workers with less experience with MS Office, but then those users were much less productive when it comes to word-processing etc. so it was difficult to tell if they were having any additional problems with OpenOffice.
Our move entailed a half an hours workplace training, which meant half an hours of the trainers time and half an hour of the admin worker's time, plus an unquantified loss of efficiency for a couple of days.
On our salary scales it would come to a minimum cost of 10 pounds per worker, although with loss of productivity it could easily be 50 pounds depending on how slow the worker was to adapt. If you scale these kinds of costs up for thousands of users then you have a significant issue.
We made the move in order to stop using unauthorised copies, so it was cheaper than going legit by buying the correct MS Licenses, but if the Isreali Government already has the correct Licenses then there may be minimal short term savings, indeed there is probably a significant short term cost to be justified.
I wouldn't expect 'support' issues to make much difference to most organisation considering a modern office suite, as any suite that needs much support isn't worth having.
Most users will only accept a package that works out of the box, which both MS Office & Openoffice do. Those basic office applications that don't work without significant support have long since died.
Does anyone else think it strange that the Isreali defence department signed their Microsoft deal in New York? I can't think of any other deal where you buy $20 Million in software but have to travel half way around the world to sign the contract, unless of course the deal was a small part of a deal very benificial to the buyer.
The real deal probably went along the lines of "I'll accept $1 billion of aid to buy attack helicopters from you, and as a thank you I'll spend $20 million on software from Microsoft."
This isn't the type of deal that Microsoft can rely on to sustain itself because where the finance ministry had to make a choice without the benefit of a large subsidy/bribe they dropped Microsoft.