[plug] alternative business strategy?

[Alex Nordstrom]

Sunday, 12 February 2006 08:42, Quintin Lette wrote:
> > Don't forget it's not just the price of MS-Office you are throwing
> > out the Window it's all the other MS software you can get rid of
> > when you migrate the entire office to Linux.
>
> don't forget that there is a retraining cost as well...

Have you seen the changes in upcoming Microsoft Office 12 (likely to be 
released as Office 2007)? Even Microsoft-friendly PC World finds the 
learning curve steep:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123773,00.asp

Consider the size of the leap in interfaces between the current version 
of Microsoft Office and the new version on the one hand and Open Office 
on the other, and tell us again that Open Office has a high retraining 
cost.


The real cost saving, though, is in administrative overhead. MS Office 
2000 and all versions of Microsoft Office 2003 currently have a 
security hole rated as "highly critical", allowing remote system-level 
exploits but which Microsoft hasn't been bothered to fix in, oh, ten 
months:

http://secunia.com/advisories/14896/

They also have a "moderately critical" security hole which also allows 
remote system-level exploits which has been known and unpatched for 
over one and a half years (yes, years):

http://secunia.com/advisories/12041/

This lax attitude about fixing faults ultimately means costs to users in 
terms of downtime, reinstallation, and the cost of having one's 
information destroyed or unduly divulged to third parties.

That is where the real cost lies.

-- 
Alex Nordstrom
http://lx.n3.net/
Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to plug.
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