CW: Business Looks To Linux Desktops; Some Critical Apps Lacking

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 10:36:04AM -0500, Matt.Carpenter at alticor.com wrote:
>
>   Look!  I'm published!  :)

Good stuff.

One thing you might point out is that while competent *ix admins are more
expensive than the average MCSE (I don't know if there are any compentent
ones :-), far fewer *ix admins are required.

Many of our commercial *ix installations have _NO_ full-time IT staff.  We
do most support via the network or dialup, with the occassional on-site
trip when somebody needs to put their hands on equipment.

We have several commercial customers who have no Windows systems, and the
majority of our support calls deal with getting strange e-mail attachments
into a usable form.  StarOffice/OpenOffice, the NeXS spread sheet, Applix,
and WordPerfect 8 for Linux do just fine for them.  Occassionally we will
have to copy a difficult file to our system here, deal with it somehow,
then copy it back to their system for them in a usable format.  This is a
lot less expensive for them than having to have a full-time MCSE around
who's well trained in the ``Three R's of Windows'':

	Reboot, Reboot, Reinstall.

We have regional ISPs with thousands of customers who don't have a full-
time *ix person on staff either.  Most of their staff spend their time
dealing with their Windows using customers.

Bill
--
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