A survey found the average age of a PC in UK business was 5 years. The survey rightly finds users are dissatisfied with the speed and reliability of their IT. What the survey was not intended to find and indeed those surveyed may not have been aware of is that many of those machines ran XP, an OS that was obsolete in 2001. Upgrading to “7″ is out of the question for many old PCs because of resources and drivers for hardware. GNU/Linux on the other hand gives old machines respectable performance, particularly if they are used as thin clients.
see Past-it PCs cause data loss and damage productivity.
For example, one of the images in the article is an old PC with a BSOD. See The Conclusion.
I accept that old computers eventually die but, unless it is the CPU or motherboard, a quick swap of parts usually brings a desktop back to life. ATX motherboards can be swapped too. It costs perhaps $100 for labour and $100 for parts to replace a motherboard and you get top-notch performance or you can use a low-end motherboard and use the thing as a thin client of a modern server. That’s cheaper than buying a new box. Putting GNU/Linux on it costs $0 for parts.
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Reconfiguation might be difficult.
“And thousands of dollars for retraining.”
For WHAT exactly?
1. Plopping your butt down at a desk? (same)
2. Hitting the power button on a computer? (same)
3. Logging into KDE/Gnome? (same)
4. Opening Libre/Open Office? (same)
5. Opening and using Firefox? (same)
6. Opening and using Thunderbird? (same)
7. Saving files? (same)
8. Renaming files? (same)
9. Creating folders? (same)
10. Printing? (same)
11. Logging out? (same)
12. Shutting down the system at days end? (same)
What did I miss? Anything uniquely special or different that warrants paying Microsoft for licenses?
The old retraining excuse was old years ago. That is a has been reason for not moving to Linux. We’re way past that one now.
Recently I set up a Linux based system at a customers office for the employees to do general web browsing on the lunch hours etc.
I walked the office manger through adding users and basics. Her comments?
1. Its faster (first thing she said)
2. It looks really nice. (her comments after logging into the KDE 4.6 desktop)
3. Wow! That’s very easy. (what she said after I walked her through setting up users and other basics)
In fact the ONLY reason I can’t move their entire office off of Windows is one software vendor they currently depend on for their in house bookkeeping and inventory management has its head up its ass and refuses to release a Linux version. They are looking for a web based replacement for this prehistoric software monstrosity so there is hope they can dump them one day.
If you’re using the has been debate argument of “retraining” all you are proving is that you’re full of s**t. Computers have been around for decades and users are by now more than sophisticated enough to survive a simple GUI interface change. Microsoft has proven that every 3 years.
A few years ago, I used to tell my students that a typical part of a PC: case, motherboard, PSU, RAM, CPU, hard drive were about $100 each. Now we are closer to $50 but something to clean dust-bunnies and a medium Philips screwdriver can do wonders.
10 dollars on a compressed air can save you 100 dollars on parts
Munich found retraining was much less costly than budgeted. In my own experience I found you could give many users just account information and they could do it. It’s a GUI. For others a 1 hour familiarization tour might be needed. System administrators do need to learn a thing or two but so many use GNU/Linux now that is not much of an issue.
Putting GNU/Linux on it costs $0 for parts.
And thousands of dollars for retraining. That’s the part that FOSS supporters fail to realize in IT unfortunately, which is why most companies and governments won’t do it.