[plug] [contains rant] Linux in schools (was: public company?)

[Paul Baumgarten]

Nah... even private K-12 schools get reasonably good (as in better than
real world) pricing.

WinNT4 Server costs ~ $150 to $300 and client access licensing costs ~
$10 to $20 per seat (it varies a little bit from school to school
depending on which programme your volume qualifies you for).  With
education Microsoft are basically doing the same thing with schools that
Apple did in it's early days.  "Giving it away" so that it is what
people are trained on and then purchase when in business.  Even still,
it is money I would rather save and I know that many other schools are
in the same boat.

While the Server OS is comparibly cheap for schools, MS does make good
money on the Apps side of things.  So using your figure, where I might
pay 10% of retail for the Server, for MS Office I pay around 30% - 40%
and since there are a lot more workstations than servers, there is still
a considerable MS tax being paid. 

"Shackleton, Kevin" wrote:
> 
> I should have said - 'free' MS software is only to government schools.  I
> would have thought you would have spent more than $7000 the last two years,
> NT4 being $3000 on its own, and we've covered the rorts in SQL-Server
> licensing . .
> 
> > From:         Paul Baumgarten[SMTP:paul at bauma.com.au]
> >
> > From the cost perspective we have saved an
> > estimated $7000 in licensing.
> >

-- 
Paul Baumgarten
Information Systems Manager, Kingsway Christian College
Email: paul at bauma.com.au or paul at kcc.wa.edu.au
Mobile: 041 994 2779