Pete,
Pricing aside (and I think you are incorrect as to the cost of Office XP per seat), the big portion of total costs is in retraining
You are kidding, right? Every person who wants to land a white collar job needs to and does know the Office suite. It's like driving a car or riding bicycle It is assumed. There is no retraining, since it is a job requirement.
and computer upgrades needed to run the newer versions.
You don't need upgrades. You buy a computer, throw in extra $150 for office, and you are set for life (of the computer) - if you are an average user.
One of the hallmarks of open source is that things are grandfathered along (programmers who use the code they write or modify hate to relearn without extreme reasons for it). Old code, templates and the like are usually usable as-is on the new version with any exceptions well noted (unlike MS code)(for their rarity). Once learned, many OS tools and popular apps like 'vim' (OS version of vi) or 'emacs' (from older times) still work the same as they did 5 years, 10 years and more.
Vi - ouch. And it stinks to heaven just the same for 5, 10, 20 years.
Try writing the same paragraph in Word 1.0 and Word XP or over a longer period, use source that compiled on Microsoft BASIC v5.0 and use it on VB 7.0.
Try to write a few pages in vi, have it spell checked, work on the styles, switch to printers seamlessly, create an index, glossary, cross-references, add versioning, add graphics, save as HTML, connect to a database, try doing all of this in VI, (with a some handy references such as PCL and Postscript codes), and have very good imagination of how your creation just might come out when you need to publish (since you have no idea from looking at the document in text mode)
But back to the programing tools, I think you should try VB 7.0 and compare it to what you can do with VI. Or even better, forget VB 7.0, and load a 15 year old version of a PC program - Brief - programmer's editor. It surpassed vi back then.
On one hand you are talking about retraining, and then you mention vi. Well going back several technologincal generations for the young people who grew up on a PC to do a very simple thing on Unix with VI is just about the opposite of what a corporation would want to do - achieve less with higher cost. If a corporation retrains an employee to live a caveman lifestyle of vi user, is it really a benefit that once the employee has learned the paleoletic technology, that he can stay on that level for decades?
And don't forget to budget for increased health care costs due to imminent use of services of mental health professionals. These don's apply to to the original cavemen, only the modern man of 21st century, who has learned to take it for granted the luxuries such as when he wants to go back to what he has just completed, he just presses UP cursor a few times, or something even more radical - move a mouse cursor and click.
How MSFT accomplished all of this, what tools they used, whether they needed to upgrade their tools along the way does not matter to you as a user.
Some corporations use software that's over 15 years old. I know of many applications during the Y2K scare that were looked at for the first time after 15 years being written on a COBOL compiler no longer even in existance with the source missing or not complete. Companies hate to retrain because it costs so much.
This is true, but sometimes you just need to move forward. Once there is no demand (and no money in maintaining the old tools), the vertical (or custom) app vendor needs to move on, and stop supporting older products etc.
Yes, it may cost them a bit to go with Star Office but, the underlying programs work the same as they did a few versions back and are more likely to work for many new versions in the future. 1 savings of a week's retraining and six months of getting back to speed can pay for 10-20 new versions at a few hundred $ each. MS still has not learned this yet.
MSFT has learned about generating revenues. With this revenue they can pay their employees, the products are self supporting, that is they are sold for revenue, this revenue supports continuous maintenance and improvements. This ensures that there will be 10 or even more version of Microsoft products, each newer one improving on the old one. (as opposed to being out of business). Incidentally, isn't Office XP version 10? I don't really know since I am happily using the Office 2000 version.
Joe |
