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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dybdahl who wrote (60751)	8/20/2001 12:03:36 PM
From: Rusty Johnson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Penguin Enrolls in U.S. Schools By Angel Gonzalez Tux the penguin may become the preferred mascot of America's financially strained public education system –- for Linux represents a way to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for software. More than 98 percent of the schools in the U.S. have Internet access, according to a recent Department of Education report. But software costs can be prohibitive, especially now that Microsoft is stepping up efforts to stop license infringement in schools, forcing them to pay for every single copy of Windows they run. IT specialist Kirk Rheinlander and others are volunteering their time to install a computer network in the Fort Collins, Colorado, K-12 charter school where his boys are enrolled. For him, open source was the logical choice. "We chose Linux because acquisition and maintenance costs for Windows were too high," Rheinlander said. Rheinlander's project is part of an increasing migration among schools toward Linux. This exodus is heralded by associations such as the Linux for Schools project, which provides technical help to install and manage the system, and Simple End User Linux, which hosts a discussion forum on the matter. Although no one is keeping track of how many schools have adopted open source, the numerous postings and sheer quantity of development projects attest for its allure. The first reason for Linux's low cost is the lack of an operating license. Everybody can copy the system, modify it and download free software from the Internet. According to Rheinlander, Linux is easier than Windows NT to keep in shape. The school has no dedicated system maintenance, but Linux can be administrated remotely. Volunteers from Hewlett Packard, Colorado State University and the Northern Colorado Linux Users Group will do the work –- saving the school a lot of money. "Windows is good, and Microsoft has a very aggressive pricing policy towards schools," Rheinlander said. "But license management and system administration are very difficult to handle." In addition, Linux runs on 486s and Pentium 75s -- fairly ancient machines by today's standards -- which are incapable of running the latest Windows environments. This is pretty handy, since most schools rely on donations of old computers. "We've just received a truckload of 43 machines from a nearby school in southern Wyoming," Rheinlander said. "They’re too slow to run Windows, so they gave them to us. We’re even taking donations from other schools." wired.com The Linux for Schools Project lfsp.org Microsoft ... yeah, they said the same thing about Wang Computer ... oops!