moving to linux: money benefits
there has been a lot of reasons to use linux but the most obvious one is its price — it costs next to nothing or around the price of an ice cold bottle of beer (php 25.00?). i will not go into head to head comparisons regarding features of each operating system or office suite. there are a lot of those already on the internet. although i will make a list (in another post) of what i think are the advantages/disadvantages of each configuration in a work environment.
now let’s assume that a new computer would cost around php 25,000.00. so getting 10 computers would set a small company back php 250,000.00. but that’s just the hardware. its as good as a door stop if you don’t run anything on it.
so if this smallish company has 10 new computers and you want to run windows xp on them. windows xp professional (oem) costs php 8,200.00 (rising sun). you would have to spend around php 82,000.00 for 10 computers just for the operating system alone. and no, you cannot just buy one original copy of xp and install it in all the 10 computers. that’s bad (read as illegal). of course, you can try to get a site license where the price per copy of xp is reduced but there is a minimum number of licenses that you have to buy — i think its 25 licenses. and you’ll be hardpressed to find a vendor who give site licenses.
linux, on the other hand, would set you back the cost of a download and a cdr. you can use one copy of your favored linux distribution for all 10 computers (or even for 100).
now, we have 10 computers and the operating system running on them but since this is a company we have to have a word processor and a spreadsheet program, at the least, to help in the day to day operations. microsoft sells a basic version of their office 2003 suite which includes word, excel and outlook for php 10,988.00 (villman). for simplicity let’s round this figure out to php 11k. so for 10 computers you’ll dish out php 110,000.00 for the office applications. of course you can forgo microsoft office and go with openoffice.
openoffice is a suite of applications similar to full version of microsoft office but it runs on windows xp and linux and its for free.
let’s do a little wallet recap:
| linux | windows xp | windows xp with ms office |
|
| computer | 25,000.00 | 25,000.00 | 25,000.00 |
| operating system | 0.00 | 8,200.00 | 8,200.00 |
| office suite | 0.00 | - | 11,000.00 |
| totals | 25,000.00 | 33,200.00 | 44,200.00 |
the figures above are for a single computer only that’s ready to be run in a work environment. you essentially save php 8,200.00 for every computer if you don’t use windows xp and php 19,200.00 if you don’t use windows xp and ms office 2003 basic. for 10 computers the savings would amount to php 82,000.00 and php 192,000.00 for their respective configurations. your mileage may vary depending on the vendor.
for a small company, that’s a lot of money saved (or spent).
