[K12OSN] Given this situation, why bother continue with LTSP?

[The Prof]

Hello,

Thank you for the prompt replies.  I'd like to continue the
conversation by addressing some concerns which have been raised, as
well as providing some more information.

In regards to the person doing the donating - the hardware must be
given to a non-profit organization, and we are not allowed to re-sell
the licenses. The hardware is coming from one place and it doesn't
have any OS on them.  The number of software licenses available is
very high so we'll never run out, and it includes ALL microsoft
products.  I do not think there is a time-limit, so to speak, for
these licenses, but I do not know.  The person doing the donating
wants to help us out very much, and doesn't have an agenda of any
sort. He has been trained extensively as a MSCE and other
microsoft-related things, so he does know it all very well, but he's
not going to gain anything one way or another.

In regards to the future upgrade of these donated machines - I would
argue that the turn-over rate of computers in a church or elementary
school is much slower than in a company - we were, until 1.5 years
ago, running pentium 1 windows 98 machines on a WinNT server a little
slowly, but no problem. Only reason we had to ditch that system was
because our NT server died a horrible, smokey death and we wouldn't
have been able to afford to upgrade all the clients to XP.  I think
that if we had a lab of pentium 4 machines and a dual Xenon SCSI
machine as the server (that's the type of hardware he can get us) that
it would last us for a long, long time.

In regards to the spyware situation - doesn't microsoft now have
anti-spyware software? If so, that would be included as part of the
donation.  For the viruses, I'd assume that we'd have to install a
server-based antivirus program to take care of that, along with
locking down the clients a bit. That does require more work and admin,
which brings me to the next point...

Administration:  Currently with a linux lab I am the only one who can
administer it because no one knows how or is interested in this
'new-fangled stuff'. If it was a Windows lab, that responsiblity could
be spread out among at least a few people who have this ability,
lightening my load. In addition, most of the admin/setup/etc. is done
for free as we volunteer our time.  So it isn't like we'd cost more
because of the increased work to them :)

Learning a word-processor vs. learning MS WORD: This is an interesting
argument. Since many people are educators here, you are approaching it
differently than the parents/admin staff. They are looking at it from
a certain perspective.  IE: I use MS at work. I use MS at home. My
child in university uses MS and her prof uses MS in his lectures. My
resume says that I know MS Office. Where does Linux fix in?  Bank
website X and company website Y say that I need to get IE to make it
work.  When I walk into BestBuy or open the paper I see the computers
are being sold with Windows XP. So why are you forcing this
non-Windows stuff on me? So what if it is less administration? Why do
I care?  That's the dilemma.

As sad as it is to say, MANY people do not view education and school
as a way to increase their child's capability of thought, but as a way
to get a professional high-paying job. And I'm not about to take on
the ideology of an entire culture. :)

Joseph