Well, the title of this post is not to offend anybody or any person at Microsoft. But This report on tes.co.uk with the headline Ditching microsoft Can Save millions caught my attention. The report's verbatim lists :
Primary schools could cut their computer costs by nearly half if they stopped buying, operating and supporting products from the world's largest software company, government research has found.
Secondaries could also slash their information technology overheads by a quarter if they moved away from Microsoft and other commercial programs, according to an analysis carried out by the British Educational Communications and Technology Association, the Government's ICT agency.
The findings could undermine Microsoft's hold on the education market, but they raise the prospect of millions of pounds of savings for British schools and colleges which spend around £1 billion a year on ICT.
The association analysed costs at 33 schools which use paid-for software, and compared them with 15 which have pioneered the use of free programs, known as open source, and the pared-down hardware to run them.
Average costs, including software, hardware and support costs, were 24 per cent less per computer in secondaries using open source.
Well, It's high time the eduction sector turned towards OpenSolaris and other open source products and operating systems. And while at it, It would be a good idea for these sectors and the others too to not only evavluate the cost factor, but also the security factor associated with it. From my perspective, I dont see any other operating system other than OpenSolaris being a choice here, bearing in mind that "security" is also as critical a component as the cost factor.
But is cost savings just in using Open Source Software. Dont these analysts also look at the hardware and tangible components. Why use a PC ?? aint a PC a cost factor too (or is it a expense center) ?. They surely should consider using a SunRay; and not to forget, OpenOffice & OpenSolaris & NetBeans.
The Danish university, Westminister University, Carrolton University, University Of Mainz, Michigan Tech University, Mountain View Elementary, Celebration School, newark unified School District are already amongst the few from the Education Sectory who have already adopted and embraced SunRay's with Solaris/OpenSolaris and Openoffice/StarOffice.
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