🚀 go-pugleaf

"Thing" <nospam@hting.dyndns.org> wrote in message
news:3DEC6AD1.4070709@hting.dyndns.org...
> Oliver Bannatyne wrote:
> > I am investigating technology solutions on behalf of a small-medium
sized
> > inner-city finance firm. The firm is looking at a number of possible
> > technology options. At the moment the firm has about 20x Pentium II PC's
> > running Windows 95, 98, and 2000 and MS Office 95 and 97.  The firm is
> > looking at moving to either stand-alone workstations or thin clients
running
> > linux, and MS Office (by use of Codeweavers CrossOver product -See
> > http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/ and
> > http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxofficeserver/.). The workstations
will
> > be upgraded, but only if they need to be.
> >
> > I am trying to ascertain what is possible, and whether a (thick/thin
client)
> > linux (running CrossOver Office and MS Office) is robust enough in an
> > commercial environment for use by this financial firm. I am unsure of
the
> > hardware requirements and the coverage of technical support available
for
> > such a setup. (Note: the firm does not have dedicated IT staff.) To
further
> > this goal, I am looking for any organisations that have implemented any
> > similar system in New Zealand, Australia and other parts of the world.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Oliver Bannatyne
> > Technology Consultant.
> >
> > Phone Mobile: +64 21 2613151
> > Temporary Phone DDI: +64 9 375 8513
> > Temporary Email: KerrynB@SHlock.co.nz
>
>
> I would ask why keep MS office, download and trial openoffice, I am at
> work and its good.  See if its good enough for you.
>
> You have P11s so are they good enough ? or they lacking grunt? I would
> not run a 20 pc office without a server to centralise and back up your
> data. MS SBE is a reasonable product for that size of business, take a
> look at it, it depends on you want.  Linux could be an acceptable
> solution for thin clients but your talking 2 small servers clustered to
> ensure availability, thats not a real option for your size.
>
> I would tend to suggest keeping the present MS clients, move to
> openoffice with samba as a file server. My reasoning for this is its
> simple, The key to supporting your business is KISS, keep it simple and
> stupid. Once you have proven openoffice is adequate consider moving to a
> linux desktop to improve reliability.
>
> If you had 100 users or 200 I would tend to look to a thin client
> solution using 2 decent servers in a HA cluster situation, but at 20
> users the savings are just not there to justify the complexity.
>
> regards
>
> Thing

E-Smith (aka Mitel SME) would be a useful back office server for an
organisation of this size, keep your client machines as they are (already
paid for, etc) and you already have Office 97 which is OK for most things.