On Apr 23, 2007, at 1:27 PM, Ray Ballou wrote:
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.
Since you are using OO at home and as you say 'it works VERY well', let's skip the OO vs MS Office debate and cut to the support chase.
Cost aside for a second (does MS Office really have a 5 year life?), your point here seems to be that support costs for dealing with file incompatibility overwhelm use costs. Is the assumption that if all students are using MS Office, there are no incompatibility issues? If that is not true, then shouldn't those costs be added to the $50 fee? If students are using non- MS office at home (OO, MS works, appleworks, text editors), isn't OO slightly better on this front than MS office since OO can read MS but not the other way around? Also, if the 'public institutions need to use open formats' debate that Massachusetts started moves to schools, might this argument swing around and place the incompatibility costs on MS office?
I guess I am saying that this is not an inherent problem with OO (or other Open Source software). If OO were to become the installed base (perhaps for other reasons), then MS Office would have the compatibility problems and cost. In fact, if schools were starting from a blank slate, it could be argued that OO is more accepting of other formats (ODF and PDF) than MS 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.
Once again, it doesn't need to be perfect, just better. And might there be a huge issue with Vista and Office 2007 regarding compatibility? Again, I doubt that a fully MS office school has zero compatibility issues. And this argument will change as more options are added to the mix (google docs, OO home installs, etc).
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.
Open Office can be set to default save to .doc format, if that is the preferred option. Not sure about Abiword. Isn't this is also the perpetual training issue that people (read 95% adults, 5% kids) don't understand file formats. So staying with MS Office to avoid this seem to be attacking a symptom. But I am interested in understanding how much of a problem is this for students vs. faculty and admin people.
OOo is a resource hog.
I find the two systems now have very similar load times on windows, and OO (NeoOffice) loads faster on my mac (and linux machines :-) But both are probably overkill for the type of tools needed in schools. But at least there are some other options with FOSS solutions (like Abiword).
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.
Again, Vista is a bit of an unknown but I guess we will find out as it pushes its camel-nose into the tent.
OOo, last I checked did not have an elegant way of dealing with updates. I
would love to know that it does now.
This is an excellent question and one I should look into. I assume you are talking about a school-wide upgrade ability.
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.
Well, even as a hard core FOSS advocate, I think nothing trumps direct experience so thanks for bringing this up.
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.
This sort of thinking actually does get under my skin. Just because it is a small percentage of a large figure, doesn't mean we shouldn't be efficient with tech dollars. Also, for many schools, tech is a separate line item and is often on the chopping block is school budgets are tight. If FOSS solutions provide equal or better value (to be determined), then not using them is a waste of money. $10,000 here, $5000 there, year after year it adds up across the state after a while. And then there is the issue of equity for all students to at least have the option of home use.
But it is all about choice and this kind of debate is invaluable for informing that choice.