Let's look at the cost factor of using Windows in a quick dirty fashion and why you have to love their scheme. On top of ripping you off, they'd like to sell you security atop of the garbage they've already flooded the world with. <crapaganda> 1 Corporate office 2000 users * 75.00 per WinXP professional 5 Exchange servers * 500.00 per software 2 Win2003 servers * per seat low factor of 25.00 per seat Some Terminal licenses for RDesktop (l)users * low factor 100 per seat per person 2000 * $75.00 $150,000.00 5 * 500 = 2500.00 25.00 per seat * 2000 50,000.00 100.00 terminal licenses * 100 employees (management) 10,000.00 $212,500.00 sounds reasonable. Last I did anything MS, I recall Exchange being something closer to $60.00 per seat (1st Q 2004) Windows updates once a month ... total time 5 minutes 5min * 2007 machines downtime... 10035 minutes lost productivity Possible virus/security risk ... Estimated downtime to upgrade say once per month at 5 minutes, another 10035 minutes. Let's say this is once per quarter 2508 minutes downtime... Total so far 12,543 minutes - 10035 and a possible 2508 in security risks/breaches - a month in lost computing time. Let's say the company made 15,000,000.00 a year this breaks down into about: 41095.00 per day (* 365 days per year) 1712.00 an hour 28.53 a minute Let's say 10% of this lost time affects profits: 1254 minutes * 28.53 per minute = $35,787.00 Ok, let me be realistic, let's say only 5% of the time it affects profit: 627 minutes * 28.53 = $17,888.00 * 12 mos Not good or realistic enough, fine, 1% of the time it affects profits, 125.43 * 28.53 = 3578.51 per month in lost revenue from downtime. $42,942.21 per year in lost revenue </crapaganda> Why should MS get off their rears when corporations are stupid enough to continue doing business with a shoddy company. MS isn't doing anything I can't do on BSD, Linux or Solaris using OpenOffice or other program. Why do I use Windows still here and there... Utter laziness to swap out my drive. Utter laziness to replace Visio with Kivio. Just sheer laziness that's all. Would I run a production farm on Windows, as fast as I would pierce my ear with a harpoon. I blame the end user at the end of it all: <sarcasm> Mom "Tommy don't touch the stove you will get burned" Tommy "Ouch I burned myself" Mom "Next time be more careful" Tommy "Ouch I touched it again" Mom "Tommy you have to look at what you're doing" Tommy "Ouch, yet again" Tommy is the idiot here not his stove, not his mom, not the gas fueling the fire, Tommy. </sarcasm> -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ J. Oquendo echo @infiltrated|sed 's/^/sil/g;s/$/.net/g' http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x1383A743 "How a man plays the game shows something of his character - how he loses shows all" - Mr. Luckey