LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: ilox <ilox@telstra.com>
  To  : Tim Fairchild <tim_fairchild@bigpond.com>
  Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:37:46 +0900

IT Help for Salisbury Project

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the response. I have relabelled the topic so that people are 
not confused about our project and the PCs for Kids Project.

<<You're talking about OS licenses, but what about Office licenses. Are 
you talking about using Office or SO on the win boxes.>>
We are seeking the alternative OS/Office software as we will soon run 
out of OS Licenses and even sooner run out of Office licenses.
At present we have 19 machines of various specifications.
5 of 128 M RAM on Celaron 700 running ME and Office 2000 Pro
5 of 64 M RAM on (1 is P200) Pent 166 running Win 95 and Works Suite 
2000
5 spare copies of Win 95 ready to be fitted on machines
9 machines of P100 -> P166, 16 M -> 64 M RAM and 1.2 G drives.

<<Not sure the average person needs to be standard? I don't.>>
We need to match with MS as we are not just pushing computers out into 
the community but training people so they can gain employment by saying 
they can use MS Products. If we then give/sell them computers that have 
the capability of read/write to MS Files then they can work from home 
even if their access to computers elsewhere is on an MS machine.

<<If you want a machine for developement or server>>
No, just a simple user-only home-based machine.

<<I've had quite usable systems running on 700-800 meg  Add 200 meg for 
SO. I've skimmed a lot smaller than that as well, but these days with 
20 gig drives I don't bother. >>
We only have 1.2 G drives available. Any help you can offer on a really 
thin system including SO would be much appreciated. At present my next 
step is to try to set up RH 5.2 or 6.0 or 6.1 on a spare 10G drive and 
with SO installed. Then look at what we can take out and still remain 
stable. Hopefully we can pare this down so that we can get a thin 
system running properly that can then be cut over to the 1.2 G drives 
as a standard system.

<<They can get on the net, do email, write stuff, and the important 
things.>>
With an unemployment rate around 40% we are trying to help people in 
the community become employable. Teaching them computer skills means 
teaching them skills an employer wants = Microsoft. We are working on 
strongly supporting alternative software but so far MS is what the 
companies want so to help people become employable we will teach MS and 
work to MS compatibility.

<<So providing linux rather than MS is doing people a favour.>>
Please read above.

<<By the same token, you ain't going to get Office on these systems 
either if it's that tight..>>
On our Win 95 machines running a P166 and 64 meg we have Office 2000 
Pro running OK. Not blinding fast but running and stable.

<<If you're talking MS Office then your talking big bucks, and if your 
talking SO on win then you have the same compatibility probs  - and 
there are other free, non-compatible office-apps for win. >>
The Office 2000 Pro copies (5) were given to us by MS. We bought the 
Works Suite 2000 as OEM versions with the 5 new machine we bought. We 
don't have any other Office Licenses hence the switch to Star Office to 
retain compatibility.

Cheers,

Ian

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