Hiya, > Why do a 3-year study? Why not 5, since Enterprise Linux has a 5- year > life cycle? During that 5-year cycle, there are free version upgrades. > Windows does not give you that. An upgrade from Win2K to XP to 2003 is > extra cost. Oh, you want an Office upgrade to go along with that? We'll > charge you for that too. Look at *all* the pieces, not just the OS. I have to agree with this statement big time. We have one of those licensing agreements with MS for the latest version and can upgrade anytime, either OS or Office, to whatever the latest flavor of the month is. The cost for 500 PC's is $100K/year for that level of agreement. At least with RH you will get the security fixes when needed, not when deemed necessary by MS. With the MS agreement? They are releasing every 3 years or so now. So, for 500 workstations the cost of getting an upgrade with a MS Licensing/Upgrade agreement is $300K. These are hard numbers. It appears to me that RH is cheaper as for the 3 year period the cost, with updates, at the same number of workstations is $150K. The RH price includes phone tech support, the MS one does not. If you are calling them, it is approximately $250 per phone call for MS. So, there is the TCO right there. Regards, Eric Burke
