Dear List:

We lost 1/2 our power, so I had a minute to run some numbers. Figuring 150 
productive school days over a 5 year cycle, and cost of office at $50 that 
figures out to less than .07 cents per machine per day.
I use OOo at home, and it works VERY well, but even 1 file compatibility issue 
can eat up more than the full cost of office.

So in essence when using OOo you are better on having ZERO compatibility 
issues with each machine over the 5 years, seems like long odds to me.

In terms of the license lifecycle,  break even would be about 30 file issues per 
year school wide. When I tested out Abiword a few years back we had issues 
(people would save in one format and then need another) and I think that 30 
number would be easily be met. 

OOo is a resource hog.

However because MSFT office is THE category leader it is a target for viruses, 
and that update time has to be taken into account. Office XP and '03 seem to 
be MUCH better at taking updates than 2k was.

OOo, last I checked did not have an elegant way of dealing with updates. I 
would love to know that it does now.

I present this email based upon my experience, it is really off-topic b/c I can't 
help with the original request, but I thought others might find it useful.

In our SU when open source has been discussed with those in charge of the 
money, they have said that packaged software capitol costs PALE in 
comparison to the amount we spend per pupil.

R.