Whenceforth the Ubuntu fanboyz now?

[Tim Writer]

ted leslie <tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org> writes:

> And whats really bad is that SUSE claims to have sat generic computer
> users down and done evaluations to build a easy to use system.  They
> improved in some areas (i think) and actually got worse in others.
> With all the $$$ spent in Linux, you'd figure they could just sit 
> down a nice population (statistical representation of)  5000 users,
> capture the issues they have and solve the issues, its not like its rock
> science, its just a bit of coin needed. What would it cost to have 5000
> people submit to 160 hours of "monitoring"? at 16$/hr thats 12M$,
> someone just spend it (in the linux camp) and be done with it for pete's
> sake. 

That's a simplistic analysis. Many office workers are paid $40,000 to
$60,000 (or more) so $21/hr is a more realistic minimum. Then, there's
overhead (office space, benefits, etc.) which is usually between .5 and 2
times the hourly rate. Call it 1, so you're looking at $42/hr. Already your
project is costing over $33 million and that doesn't include the cost of
developing the survey, deployment of the desktops to be monitored, or
analysis of the results.

Who are you going to monitor? Imagine the disruption caused by having your
desktop and familiar tools replaced for a month. Would you allow your
employees to be subjected to that? How much would you charge for a month of
lost productivity? Or, did you think people would do this instead of taking
vacation?

> One thing that is interesting at my work, is that they just got a
> crackberry outlook express server thingy. And the installing company
> says to interface with it from Win desktop you need to go to the full
> 2003+ office suite, that has a outlook client to support corp.
> calendaring (or so they say). So i google and hopefully Evolution
> (windows client) for free will come to the rescue. If it does, i can
> hopefully steer another 10-15K$ away from Bills pocket.

I just finished a contract at AMD in Markham (formerly ATI) where they have
an Exchange server. I tried the Evolution root, as did a lot of the Linux
people there. I spent about a month struggling with it until I finally gave
up. IMO, Evolution is good for one thing: showing Windows users how bad
Open Source software can be.

-- 
tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>                                  starnix inc.
647.722.5301                                      toronto, ontario, canada
http://www.starnix.com              professional linux services & products
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