Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Kevin - The Alchemist - Sonney <alchemist AT darkcanvas.com>]

On Wed, 2002-04-24 at 12:09, Paul Cory wrote:
> Also, for large school districts, I doubt the local LUG has enough folks 
> to effect a quick changeover. As an example, the Wake County  Schools 
> (27th largest school district in the country, 2nd largest in NC) has 
> something like 16,500 desktop/laptop computers now. How many computers 
> per TriLUG member is that? :-)

A lot, but given a managed changeover during summer vacation, it's
do-able. Plus we have tricks to configure multiple machines
simultaneously with near-identical configurations *grin*. Three TriLUG
members (Mike Johnson, Jon Carnes, Hunter Mathews) have some serious
experience configuring large numbers of machines quickly and efficently.
Given the goal, I bet they'd have something that could be done
school-by-school by a much smaller group than you project. 

The hardest part would be organizing. This would have to go beyond
TriLUG, and I, for one, would solicit volunteers from the entire area if
I could. It would also be time consuming, but it's do-able. more
importantly, if we used one or two schools to train a subset of the
systems IS staff, they could do it themselves for an even bigger
savings. Plus they'd be ready to support the new systems, and could pass
the training on to other staff members.

> The problem is procurement policies and other regulations that state 
> that M$ software is required for compliance. In those cases, no other 
> solution, even Mac, can get it's foot in the door until the policy or 
> regulation is changed. For example, part of our MS site license is 3,000 
> M$ Works licenses. Why? Because the state of NC requires M$ Works for 
> the mandatory 8th grade computer test.

While that makes sense from your prospective, what idiot wrote into law
that a particular software package and not general skills would be in a
test of that nature? 

On the flip side, M$ Works can be run via WINE, which is free. You'll
only be paying the Works license cost - at least, until works caries the
"You may only run this on M$ OS" license clause...

> This means that M$ and its licensing policies and costs never make it 
> into the light of public debate. Which is a shame.

I agree with both points. Not only is there a lot of waste on the System
Administrative level, there's also a lot that could be done to run a
school more efficiently at the School level that's prohibited or just
not-doable at this time. Cutting IT costs are the least of the worries,
when waste in other places would be better addressed. And unless M$
decides to go after one of the local school systems, this issue won't be
addressed with out a lot of effort on the part of interested parties -
like myself. *grin*

-- 
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--      Kevin "The Alchemist" Sonney      --
--  ICQ: 4855069            AIM: ksonney  --
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"I will rule you all with an Iron Fist! You! Obey the fist!" - Zim

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