[plug] Cost of Windows

[Grahame Bowland]

On Thu, 2001-11-15 at 22:49, Leon Brooks wrote:
> Most people stop at the price of the OS. Why?
> 
> Workstation with a few real apps:
> 
> Function	Windows			Linux
> ---------------	-----------------------	----------------------
> OS		Windows XP $675		Mandrake 8.1 $60
> Office		Office XP $1072		StarOffice $0
> 					AbiWord $0
> 					Gnumeric $0
> 					KOffice $0

Of these only StarOffice (OpenOffice) actually works reliably. IMHO it's nice 
and improving rapidly, so it could quite easily replace Office. In fact, 
I have seen academics using it quite happily on Solaris via Sunray terminals 
down here, without any noticable problem at all.

> Virus Scanner	Norton 2002 $109	none $0

Well, if Linux becomes a platform of choice you'll need one. You can get F-Prot 
or whatever for Linux. AFAIK Virus protection for many clients comes to
<< $20/box/year. I did get virus scanning for my incoming email on a
work Linux box going; it was using the TrendMicro virus scanner that
conveniently exposes itself through a library. The price of this
appeared huge when I talked to them though.

> Minimal Games	MS AA Pack 1 $70	gazillions $0
> 		MS Ent Pack $66		 and
> 		MS Plus Ent $43		 gazillions
> 		MS Board $50		 of games
> Flight Sim	MS FS 2002 $100		FlightGear $0

> Basic Accountg	MS Money 2001 $65	GnuCash $0
> Graphics	PhotoShop $1699		GIMP $0
> CAD		Equivalent...?		QCAD $0
> ...etc... IDEs, fax S/W, emulators, vector drawing...
> 		> $3949 *or*stolen*
> 
> I can buy two complete computers (17" monitor, 800MHz, 256M, 30G) just for 
> the price of either PhotoShop or WindowsXP+OfficeXP. Scary.
> 
> Server 10 users:
> 
> Function	Windows			Linux
> ---------------	-----------------------	----------------------
> OS		Win2000 Server $2719	Mandrake 8.1 $60
> Database	MS-SQL $5262		PostgreSQL $0
> Email		Exchange $1241		PostFix $0
> Mail Licences	CAL 5-pack $795		none $0
> 		$10,017			$60

Heh. And you can get away with having > $15k accounts on a single Linux box 
(many only for email, but a fair few shells) now with only a bit of tweaking.

> What can I say? A year's wages or use Linux? Let me think...
> 
> BTW...		Services/Netware $354	Mars or NCPFS $0
> 		Services/Unix $354	NFS $0
> 		Services/Windows $0	Samba $0
> 		Sys Management $2614	WebMin/LinuxConf/etc $0
> 		CAL-20 for above $1192	not applicable $0
> 		Firewall?		portsentry/etc $0
> 		IDS?			name it $0
> 
> Now, why would Linux be doing well in server space? D'uh?
> 
> Interesting fact from Indulis at the IBM presentation: on 2,000,000 seats 
> worth of email server, the difference between Bynari and Microsoft Exchange 
> licencing costs is approx $250,000 which will buy you a viable zSeries (== 
> System/390) mainframe. So... pay your M$ tax plus an expensive cluster or get 
> a mainframe with 60 years MTBF. Tough choice. (-:

The only thing Linux doesn't do so well is thin-client stuff. I've heard
about this being used around the place. The sunray stuff doesn't use
plain old X, and I've seen it running > 10 terminals on a 10Mb hub with
full responsiveness. X kills 10Mb, you'd want a 100Mb switched network
and even then it would be slower.

Of course, if you want to avoid the MS tax on the desktop just install
ICAclient on a bunch of Linux boxen, and then let them use your Citrix
server :-)

Cheers,
Grahame

-- 
Grahame Bowland                      Email: grahame at ucs.uwa.edu.au
University Communications Services   Phone: +61 8 9380 1175
The University of Western Australia    Fax: +61 8 9380 1109