Hi everybody,

No, this is NOT a troll. Let me explain. I live in a small south French
village (Montpezat, 800 people), and recently the mayor fixed a budget to
get the public library equipped with what they call a "salle multimedia".
There will be like ten PCs, one server and nine clients, so the people in
the village can surf on the internet and check their mail, and so on.

I'm currently trying to persuade the mayor to hire me as a (paid) part-time
sysadmin for that thing, and my arguments go in that direction: take the
money that you save on ten windows licences, ten office xp licences plus
all the program licences (multiplied by ten also), _plus_ all the money you
will save in the future (by not having to buy forced updates and so on),
and with this money, pay a half-time sysadmin like me that will also
migrate the town hall's PCs under Linux, _plus_ you get some courses.

Question. I'd like to evaluate the approximate costs of _maintenance_ for a
ten-PC-network running Windows XP. I know this is an easy joke, here, and I
also hate Microsoft products with a passion. But what would you estimate,
roughly? Try to be serious, even if you find it hard)

Or formulated otherwise: how many hours / week or per month to repair the
system under Windows?

(Down here, we call the MS admins "sneaker admins" because they're always
running from one machine to the next))

Cheers,

Niki

PS: I forgot to mention. In case it works, my whole south french village
(public library, town hall, school) would work under my favorite distro)
--
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one frequently goes ranting on and on at
ball-breaking length. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
first draft)

Kiki Novak wrote:
> I'm currently trying to persuade the mayor to hire me as a (paid) part-time
> sysadmin for that thing, and my arguments go in that direction: take the
> money that you save on ten windows licences, ten office xp licences plus
> all the program licences (multiplied by ten also), _plus_ all the money you
> will save in the future (by not having to buy forced updates and so on),
> and with this money, pay a half-time sysadmin like me that will also
> migrate the town hall's PCs under Linux, _plus_ you get some courses.

i don't get it. your mayor is considering setting up 10 windows PC's
*without* hiring a sysadmin to administer them and keep them running? how
long does he think it will take for a publicly accessible standard Windows
PC linked to the internet to get infected with $VIRUS, $TROJAN or $WORM?

> Question. I'd like to evaluate the approximate costs of _maintenance_ for a
> ten-PC-network running Windows XP. I know this is an easy joke,

an easy joke, but a difficult question. ;-) many research institutes have
risked their reputations on it...

perhaps your mayor needs to realise that there ain't no such thing as a
free lunch. if he wants to set up 10 PC's with windows for public access,
it's not a matter of just buying them and having them installed. they will
need maintenance. and it's not your job to estimate how much that will
cost, it's his, because it's the town budget he's talking about. then when
he has a realistic figure on paper, see if you feel you can undercut it.

--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

On 2004-08-13, Kiki Novak <mickey@mouse.com> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Niki
>
>
Hi Niki!
There are changes within the EU.
One "French Connection" fore you:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/.../business/2490
Not Slackware but somthing.
The city of Munich in Germany, is going to change to GNU/Linux.
And in Norway, Bergen is going to change as well.
Sorry to say, it is not Slackware..

/Jens
--
Slackware | CRUX-1.3.1 PPC
window manager improved

Kiki Novak <mickey@mouse.com> says...

>I'm currently trying to persuade the mayor to hire me as a (paid) part-time
>sysadmin for that thing, and my arguments go in that direction: take the
>money that you save on ten windows licences, ten office xp licences plus
>all the program licences (multiplied by ten also), _plus_ all the money you
>will save in the future (by not having to buy forced updates and so on),
>and with this money, pay a half-time sysadmin like me that will also
>migrate the town hall's PCs under Linux, _plus_ you get some courses.

It sounds as if they are considering a windows system with no
administrator. That's your first point of attack. Give them
statistics about viruses, trojans, and other malware, with a few
horror stories about Windows systems becoming zombies and spewing
out sex/gambling/warez related spam that is traceable to the city.
Stress the fact that they *will* be hiring someone to administer
the windows system when (not if) this happens to them.

Second line of attack: TCO. Here are some web pages on the subject.
(BTW, make sure that you count the fact that Linux requires
less-powerful hardware and less frequent hardware upgrades.)

Total cost of ownership for Linux in the Enterprise
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/RFG-Linux...AL-Jul2002.pdf

Four out of four experts agree: Linux lowers TCO
http://management.itmanagersjournal..../2114222.shtml

Total cost of ownership
http://www.netc.org/openoptions/pros_cons/tco.html

Total Cost of Ownership of free Unix-related operating systems
http://www.mjclement.com/17/

Why Munich Dumped Microsoft for Linux
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1110809,00.asp
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1544472,00.asp

Linux, OpenBSD, Windows Server Comparison: Total Cost of Ownership
http://geodsoft.com/opinion/server_comp/tco.htm

Is the total cost of ownership really lower than Unix or Windows?
http://www.infoworld.com/infoworld/a...FElinux_1.html

Vendor Lock-In Cited as Cost of Windows over Linux
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1628648,00.asp

Governments vote against Microsoft
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5145332.html

Yankee Group Independently Pits Windows TCO vs. Linux TCO
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/artic...1553624,00.asp

Proprietary software--banned in Boston?
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5084442.html

Austin tests desktop Linux waters
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5130142.html

Linux vs. Windows TCO: complex issues, no easy answers
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtar...887062,00.html

--
Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com>

Kiki Novak wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> No, this is NOT a troll. Let me explain. I live in a small south French
> village (Montpezat, 800 people), and recently the mayor fixed a budget to
> get the public library equipped with what they call a "salle multimedia".
> There will be like ten PCs, one server and nine clients, so the people in
> the village can surf on the internet and check their mail, and so on.
>
> I'm currently trying to persuade the mayor to hire me as a (paid)
> part-time sysadmin for that thing, and my arguments go in that direction:
> take the money that you save on ten windows licences, ten office xp
> licences plus all the program licences (multiplied by ten also), _plus_
> all the money you will save in the future (by not having to buy forced
> updates and so on), and with this money, pay a half-time sysadmin like me
> that will also migrate the town hall's PCs under Linux, _plus_ you get
> some courses.
>
> Question. I'd like to evaluate the approximate costs of _maintenance_ for
> a ten-PC-network running Windows XP. I know this is an easy joke, here,
> and I also hate Microsoft products with a passion. But what would you
> estimate, roughly? Try to be serious, even if you find it hard)
>

One figure I have seen quoted is that for 100 Windows users you need one
person full-time just seeing to virus fixes. It was not clear if this was
9X or NT architecture, but I suspect 9X.

A speaker at the recent UKUUG Linux conference told how he was supporting
250 users in an university environment with just 3 hours/week of his time.
He was using Debian, but I see no serious impediment to using Slack.

Keith Matthews <invalid@frequentous.co.uk> says...

>One figure I have seen quoted is that for 100 Windows users you need one
>person full-time just seeing to virus fixes. It was not clear if this was
>9X or NT architecture, but I suspect 9X.
>
>A speaker at the recent UKUUG Linux conference told how he was supporting
>250 users in an university environment with just 3 hours/week of his time.
>He was using Debian, but I see no serious impediment to using Slack.

I would bet that if you looked at those two administrators, you would
also find that the Linux admin solves most problems through a remote
cnnection, while the Windows admin has to travel to where the computers
are.

--
Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com>

Thank you everybody for the detailed answers! That helped a lot!

Niki Kovacs
--
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one frequently goes ranting on and on at
ball-breaking length. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
first draft)

Kiki Novak wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> No, this is NOT a troll. Let me explain. I live in a small south French
> village (Montpezat, 800 people), and recently the mayor fixed a budget to
> get the public library equipped with what they call a "salle multimedia".
> There will be like ten PCs, one server and nine clients, so the people in
> the village can surf on the internet and check their mail, and so on.
>
> I'm currently trying to persuade the mayor to hire me as a (paid) part-time
> sysadmin for that thing, and my arguments go in that direction: take the
> money that you save on ten windows licences, ten office xp licences plus
> all the program licences (multiplied by ten also), _plus_ all the money you
> will save in the future (by not having to buy forced updates and so on),
> and with this money, pay a half-time sysadmin like me that will also
> migrate the town hall's PCs under Linux, _plus_ you get some courses.
>
> Question. I'd like to evaluate the approximate costs of _maintenance_ for a
> ten-PC-network running Windows XP. I know this is an easy joke, here, and I
> also hate Microsoft products with a passion. But what would you estimate,
> roughly? Try to be serious, even if you find it hard)
>
> Or formulated otherwise: how many hours / week or per month to repair the
> system under Windows?
>
> (Down here, we call the MS admins "sneaker admins" because they're always
> running from one machine to the next))
>
> Cheers,
>
> Niki
>
> PS: I forgot to mention. In case it works, my whole south french village
> (public library, town hall, school) would work under my favorite distro)

One vast area that you have not seemed to notice and one that will cost
the village a lot of money, is the time and moneys to train their users.
This is a major area of a.) cost for the village in time (to train users
and time lost being productive until training is completed) and in
money, and b.) a very high cost to abandon what they are using now.

I would suggest that you do a 'pilot program' for them, by taking on
just the server portion, first, and show how much they can save on
server licensing. Once that is done, then look at converting one or two
of the workstations to Linux and do some casual training. Soon, you will
be queried about how much you would charge to finish converting their
entire system over, once they see how much they are *not* spending on
license fees.


My opinion, yours may differ.

--

humjohn AT aerosurf DOT net

HJohnson <HuMJohn@AeroSurf.Net> says...
>
>Kiki Novak wrote:
>>
>> PS: I forgot to mention. In case it works, my whole south french village
>> (public library, town hall, school) would work under my favorite distro)
>
>One vast area that you have not seemed to notice and one that will cost
>the village a lot of money, is the time and moneys to train their users.
>This is a major area of a.) cost for the village in time (to train users
>and time lost being productive until training is completed) and in
>money, and b.) a very high cost to abandon what they are using now.

I am having trouble iterpreting "In case it works, my whole south
french village (public library, town hall, school) would work under
my favorite distro". It could mean one of two different things:

[1] That the rest of the town is already using Linux.

[2] That the OP plans on migrating the rest of the town to Linux
if the library project is a sucess.

I am guessing that [2] is correct. If so, HJohnson makes a very good
point. If it's just the library, the systems are likely to be running
a web browser with no interaction with the OS or other applications
- little or no training involved. The school would have to add other
apps such as word processing, and the town hall would need a system
capable of doing many things that would require training.

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Hash: SHA1

In alt.os.linux.slackware, Kiki Novak dared to utter,
> No, this is NOT a troll. Let me explain. I live in a small south French
> village (Montpezat, 800 people), and recently the mayor fixed a budget to
> get the public library equipped with what they call a "salle multimedia".
> There will be like ten PCs, one server and nine clients, so the people in
> the village can surf on the internet and check their mail, and so on.

This has already been done by a team of people with more resources. It
looks like they've come up with a good overall solution.

http://userful.com/products/library

> I'm currently trying to persuade the mayor to hire me as a (paid) part-time
> sysadmin for that thing, and my arguments go in that direction: take the
> money that you save on ten windows licences, ten office xp licences plus
> all the program licences (multiplied by ten also), _plus_ all the money you
> will save in the future (by not having to buy forced updates and so on),
> and with this money, pay a half-time sysadmin like me that will also
> migrate the town hall's PCs under Linux, _plus_ you get some courses.

Windows XP Pro - $200
MS Office 2003 SB- $300

Multiplied by ten that's only $5,000. That had better be a *very*
part-time job! Of course, you can add in a few other costs like
anti-virus and what not.

> Question. I'd like to evaluate the approximate costs of _maintenance_ for a
> ten-PC-network running Windows XP. I know this is an easy joke, here, and I
> also hate Microsoft products with a passion. But what would you estimate,
> roughly? Try to be serious, even if you find it hard)
>
> Or formulated otherwise: how many hours / week or per month to repair the
> system under Windows?

Alright, this I can help you on. i've got a customer that doesn't
monitor their employees, or really give their employees anything to do
all day except play online games and things like that. Two of their
most troublesome computers are formatted about every other month. They
pay us to clean up virii, worms, and spyware from these machines. On an
average month for 10 PCs I'd spend about 15 hours onsite working on
their machines, or formatting and re-installing one. This is a
conservative estimate. My charge? $95 an hour. You do the math.

- --
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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