OSNews

as a purported pro in the field, your specs are way off. are you a manager or are you a technician?

in the usa you can regularly buy a pc with windows xp home for as little as $349 with speakers, 17" crt, and inkjet printer if price is your main concern. pc will have have specs like celeron 2.8ghz, 256mb ram, cd-rom, 40gb hard drive, etc.

how many PCs come pre-configured with linux and the above equipment for that?

can you buy a complete PC with no os for that price?

avg home user is then going to dl and install a free distro of linux with no support?

linux with support can and does cost as much as windows.

as for ms office:

avg home user-- one, doesnt need it.
two, most cheap pcs come with MS Works or Corel Word Perfect Office already and is more than adequate for average user. (just as appleworks does the trick for most mac consumers and openoffice for linux folks)
three if you must have office to get along with work environment lets say, lets use Dell as an example:

add to dell 2400 desktop-- basic edition office 2003 for $149
small biz edition is $279
pro edition is $399 (lots of average home users need that access database)

more: almost all cheap pcs come pre loaded with 90 days of some major brand name anti virus software. updating every year at most costs $30. you can also buy the newest full version year after year with upgraders rebates for anywhere from $0-$20.

zonelabs zone alarm firewall is generally regarded as one of the finest software firewalls made. it is FREE for home use.

spyware/adware defense: again two of the most positively regarded apps for this chore are FREE. ad aware 6 by lavasoftusa.com and Spybot Search and Destroy.

now onto your points about a fairly small business.

you accurately point out that windows small business server 2003 is a logical choice

the software is $431 for standard (outlook, windows server 2003, SharePoint Services, shared fax, and exchange email server)

and $955 for the premium that includes sql server, frontpage 2003, and isa firewall server

(the above include 5 cals)

5 pack cal addons are $375 on pricewatch.com (as are the above). so add $750 for 10 additional users to get to your 15. $75 each.

so yes you can easily spend $2500 on the server with the os, or you could place it on an old workstation, or you can buy it preconfigured on a machine for as little as $1000 with standard small biz server 2003. then add the cal cost of $750.

most businesses already have xp pro. if ordering new on a pc from someone like Dell, the upgrade to Pro from Home is about $70.

to buy a new full license to xp pro is about $130 (again pricewatch.com)

you say "Let's say we're going to use Suse 9.1 pro as the desktop" well its $90--

http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?V1=632188&PN=1&SP...

finally if you are going to use "OpenOffice, Antivirus, client apps...you name it, so there aren't many additional costs per workstation" on the linux box, the Windows user can choose to do the exact same thing.

all of the above are available for free to Windows users as well.

the most telling thing is: a small biz of 15 users with no on site tech staff is going to be able to set up a full network (client and server) using linux? paying who to do it for them? and how much will that cost versus having a windows network dropped in?

and how much will the biz lose in productivity as the users start using programs that are all new to them?

good read and good idea to do this, but you pricing is way off. as a technician helping home users, why wouldnt you recommend some of these free alternatives like zone alarm?