Looking for new business oportunities

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 23 Feb 2009, Leslie Lewis wrote:

> I volunteer for a non-profit organization that gets by with donated (crappy)
> computers and illegal copies of M$ software. I'd love to convert them to

Hi Leslie.  In my experience reduced hardware costs (by using junk) is 
inversely proportional to sysadmin effort to get it all to work.

> FOSS, but I'm guilty of expecting them to be as willing to learn as I am -
> and they simply don't have the time for that, let alone the interest. They
> might be able to buy some hardware of their own soon, and I know they're
> going with Windows if they do - damn, damn, damn! I hate to see them waste
> their scarce resources, and I just don't know how to help. So keep on
> talking, and maybe I'll get some ideas.

Put a decent business case to them.  Show the possible savings.

Be honest about the needs for retraining.

Be open to the idea of a mixed environment.  If they really feel they need 
MS on the desktop, can they use Linux servers running Samba?  This will 
show them that Linux works too so there is a (limited) chance they may 
want to try Linux on the desktop.

If they don't accept your business case then relax - don't stress :)  You 
know you did your best to help them out and they turned the offer down.

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
I tried to change the world but they had a no-return policy