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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pete Sanborn [mailto:psanborn2 -at- earthlink -dot- net]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2001 11:01 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: interesting Microsoft anti-trust settlement articles
>
>
> Paula says:
> "One thing that is missing from any of these proposals is the
> people to support the software and hardware once they get it in."
>
> Actually, that is not true. According to one of the
> articles, Microsoft is setting aside something in the neighborhood of
$25 - 35
> million for support (I don't recall what the actual figure is).
<sarcasm>
What's the real-world equivalent of that? Each school gets about 25
minutes on hold followed by "reboot the machine" or "re-install the
operating system."
</sarcasm>
> The deal is a little like Prego spaghetti sauce - "It's in there!"
... But the deal isn't Prego and has mostly water.
Teachers aren't paid to be system administrators, nor do they have the
time. The MS deal would carry more clout in my mind if they hired each
of those schools a full-time system administrator to go with the ancient
hardware and ancient software (e.g., Win95). I get frustrated enough
with my one Win95 box; I can't imagine trying to keep a classroom of
them running, much less a school.
I really liked the Red Hat counter-proposal for a variety of reasons. I
think that the schools will have more flexibility in keeping the old
systems running over time; their software expense will be less; it
doesn't extend the MS monolopy.
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