Reagan was and is still right. This minority ruling party is willfully destroying this beautiful country. It is time for them to go.
17 August 2010
Those Voices Don't Speak for the Rest of Us
Reagan was and is still right. This minority ruling party is willfully destroying this beautiful country. It is time for them to go.
08 August 2010
Time for some Football
Everyone here in Cotterville is celebrating football season starting. You have been missed greatly.
It's the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas, you take a second place. Merry Football Season.
Not yet, but coming soon
31 May 2010
My Unhappiness with Schools
The final week of school for my oldest son is starting to wind down. All of the usual last week activities are now complete, with just a couple of half-days left. The summer time is a time that I would expect all of the IT hardware to be purchased, setup, and tested, so why not attempt to show them the alternatives that are out there, and far more powerful.
The Problem (in my eyes)
When I see this:
I can not help but think of the outrageous cost that mid-sized school districts have paid for this software/hardware, where the total cost of ownership (TCO) is substantially higher than any other software/hardware options. There is no benefit to using Windows over other operating systems like Linux. I have found that one of the main reasons that public and non-profit organizations choose to use very expensive software systems like Windows, is because:
Microsoft has a very loud marketing team, and can easily throw around money (possibly the main reason).
If I am going to point out the problem, I have to have a viable solution. One of my favorite online and print journalist, and K12 school IT administrator Shawn Powers, has taken on, and successfully converted his Michigan K12 school institution into an open source/Apps school, saving hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars per year.
Email
My first idea is for email. In my experience, Microsoft Exchange 2010 is one of the most expensive, and most unreliable email systems I have had the unfortunate opportunity to use. I am a student at the University of Texas at Arlington, and this education institution, and the entire University of Texas system, has chosen to use Microsoft Exchange too. This is a bit of a different situation, being an institution that biannually paid high tuition rates to teach students. This network of schools uses Exchange as part of a software as a service, or SaaS, and even as a hosted service, we, as students, professors, and administrators constantly see service outages.
One alternative to the $4,000* price tag for a single copy of Microsoft Exchange Enterprise Edition (required for more than 10 email users), is Google Apps Education Edition. Google Apps Education Edition gives all of the enterprise features that Exchange offers, plus reliability, and NONE of the cost that a single license of Exchange cost, which many are required for an email server cluster. My former school district that I grew up in recently converted to Google Apps for their email and document system, and it has been a huge success.
New Computers
The next solution that can save thousands of dollars for schools is by re-purposing old computer hardware, so new, usually expensive computers do not have to be purchased every couple of years. By using a thin-client computing model, this old hardware can continue to be reliably used. The easiest method of this is by using a Linux Terminal Service Project (LTSP) model of computing. This saves money on the per-terminal license that Windows requires, it also saves on the new hardware cost that is required by new Windows software in order to run. Old hardware can be revived, and used for years to come, saving more money that the school can invest in other areas of teaching. Existing hardware that had been used to operate resource intensive Windows server software can be re-purposed as a "thin-server" for the thin-client network.
I have personally experimented with a LTSP thin-client network, and have been very surprised at how easy it was to setup and maintain. Once the main server is setup, everything is controlled by that single server, or server cluster. Updates, software installations, modifications, problems can all be resolved by making changes to the LTSP server, committing the change (easy-to-do), and then issuing a reboot command to restart computers on the network. As each computer restarts, it automatically downloads the latest operating system image, including all updates, modifications, etc, and the computer is up-to-date.
Office Suite
For the Microsoft Office alternative, there is OpenOffice.org, or Google Docs. These is a fully featured office productivity suite, that contains all of the components that would be needed. Both of these are both free as in cost, with minimal retraining for the staff. They both include a document editor, presentation editor, and spreadsheet editor. This would be a perfect fill in for the very expensive Microsoft Office program ($150* per license of Student and Home Edition).
Conclusion
Just by making changes like these listed, some school districts have reported cost savings of $400,000 per year in hardware purchasing, and software licenses. This is an incredible amount of money that could be used elsewhere in a school environment. It all comes down to making the most of every dime that a school income has, which as most know, is not very many. I hope these are some good ideas that someone in a school environment could consider.
* price from Microsoft on 30-May-2010
The Problem (in my eyes)
When I see this:
I can not help but think of the outrageous cost that mid-sized school districts have paid for this software/hardware, where the total cost of ownership (TCO) is substantially higher than any other software/hardware options. There is no benefit to using Windows over other operating systems like Linux. I have found that one of the main reasons that public and non-profit organizations choose to use very expensive software systems like Windows, is because:
Microsoft has a very loud marketing team, and can easily throw around money (possibly the main reason).
- The IT administrators have never heard of Linux/Unix systems, and yet they still call themselves IT admins.
- Admin have deliberately chosen not to learn systems like Linux, because it is different than they are used too. I would normally call this laziness, with some exceptions, or
- The control lust has the admin(s) resisting change to anything that is not an in-house system when it comes to email or other collaboration options.
If I am going to point out the problem, I have to have a viable solution. One of my favorite online and print journalist, and K12 school IT administrator Shawn Powers, has taken on, and successfully converted his Michigan K12 school institution into an open source/Apps school, saving hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars per year.
My first idea is for email. In my experience, Microsoft Exchange 2010 is one of the most expensive, and most unreliable email systems I have had the unfortunate opportunity to use. I am a student at the University of Texas at Arlington, and this education institution, and the entire University of Texas system, has chosen to use Microsoft Exchange too. This is a bit of a different situation, being an institution that biannually paid high tuition rates to teach students. This network of schools uses Exchange as part of a software as a service, or SaaS, and even as a hosted service, we, as students, professors, and administrators constantly see service outages.
One alternative to the $4,000* price tag for a single copy of Microsoft Exchange Enterprise Edition (required for more than 10 email users), is Google Apps Education Edition. Google Apps Education Edition gives all of the enterprise features that Exchange offers, plus reliability, and NONE of the cost that a single license of Exchange cost, which many are required for an email server cluster. My former school district that I grew up in recently converted to Google Apps for their email and document system, and it has been a huge success.
New Computers
The next solution that can save thousands of dollars for schools is by re-purposing old computer hardware, so new, usually expensive computers do not have to be purchased every couple of years. By using a thin-client computing model, this old hardware can continue to be reliably used. The easiest method of this is by using a Linux Terminal Service Project (LTSP) model of computing. This saves money on the per-terminal license that Windows requires, it also saves on the new hardware cost that is required by new Windows software in order to run. Old hardware can be revived, and used for years to come, saving more money that the school can invest in other areas of teaching. Existing hardware that had been used to operate resource intensive Windows server software can be re-purposed as a "thin-server" for the thin-client network.
I have personally experimented with a LTSP thin-client network, and have been very surprised at how easy it was to setup and maintain. Once the main server is setup, everything is controlled by that single server, or server cluster. Updates, software installations, modifications, problems can all be resolved by making changes to the LTSP server, committing the change (easy-to-do), and then issuing a reboot command to restart computers on the network. As each computer restarts, it automatically downloads the latest operating system image, including all updates, modifications, etc, and the computer is up-to-date.
Office Suite
For the Microsoft Office alternative, there is OpenOffice.org, or Google Docs. These is a fully featured office productivity suite, that contains all of the components that would be needed. Both of these are both free as in cost, with minimal retraining for the staff. They both include a document editor, presentation editor, and spreadsheet editor. This would be a perfect fill in for the very expensive Microsoft Office program ($150* per license of Student and Home Edition).
Conclusion
Just by making changes like these listed, some school districts have reported cost savings of $400,000 per year in hardware purchasing, and software licenses. This is an incredible amount of money that could be used elsewhere in a school environment. It all comes down to making the most of every dime that a school income has, which as most know, is not very many. I hope these are some good ideas that someone in a school environment could consider.
* price from Microsoft on 30-May-2010
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