[Techtalk] Could someone help me with a technical report

[Kristen Grubb]

Thanks Alvin,

I will probably take you up on that suggetion. 
Actually, I am going to start now :^).  My
hypothetical company is going to have around 100
workers.  I am planning on changing everyone over to
Linux running StarOffice and Oracle.  I will obviously
need to change over the OS on the server and the
computers.  How should I factor in the cost to train
workers in StarOffice?  In my head (without a whole
lot of research into it yet) I figure that the
training fee would be less than upgrading the software
every three years but I may be mistaken in my
thinking.  My thought is that I would only have to
train the staff once but the Windows upgrades are an
expense accrued every three years.  Can I do this or
am I mixing apples and oranges?

Thanks, Kristen 
--- Alvin Goats <agoats at compuserve.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Alvin, 
> >  
> > Thanks so much for the information.  I was looking
> into IBM (they are pretty well represented in the
> > news) but Merrill Lynch and Virginia slipped by me
> as did the cost analysis from IBM.  That was
> actually
> > going to be my next question.  How do I figure out
> the cost benefit?  Thanks for being ahead of me on
> > that!  I am going to look at Info week and
> InfoWorld today.  
> >  
> > Thanks for all of your help.  I really appreciate
> it.  I would be floundering around out there with no
> > direction as there is a ton of information.
> >  
> > Kristen
> 
> 
> Let me know if you need additional help on cost
> analysis. While I'm not
> really an IT person (I'm a physicist and pretend to
> be an engineer in
> Defense, Telecom, Automotive Electronics, Oil
> Exploration, Semiconductor
> Manufacture and some IT), I have done many cost
> analyses and cost
> justifications.
> 
> I've pitched proposals to build new factories with
> such things as
> requesting $3.6 million US and getting $5 million.
> Cost has some tricky
> little accounting gimmicks that can be exploited to
> make major changes
> or purchases. ;)
> 
> Alvin


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