Were the world a perfect place, this would be just dandy - however, it's not, and Windows is, to put it mildly, a deeply non-secure operating system (i.e., far too many folks know how to break into it and do bad things) with some serious resource allocation issues (i.e., it's a pig for memory/hard drive space/processor cycles - using resources that the stuff you actually do your work with could be using and generally slowing everything down). And then, let's talk about price....
| | Dell Windows | PC Club Windows | Dell Ubuntu Linux Box | Home Built Linux Box |
| Hardware | Dell Precision Workstation 390:
Hard Drive: CD-ROM, DVD, and Read-Write Devices:
| INTEL ® CORE 2 DUO E4300 1.80 S775 1 OS A9688008 NO OPERATING SYSTEM Memory 1024MB DDR2 RAM - DIMM 667MHz Hard Drive 250GB 7200RPM 16MB SATA2 HARD DISK INTEGRATED GRAPHICS INTEGRATED AUDIO LITEON 52X INTEGRATED 10/100 ETHERNET 1 | Dimension E520 N Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E4300 (1.8GHz, 800 FSB) Ubuntu Desktop Edition version 7.04 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache | INTEL ® CORE 2 DUO E4300 1.80 S775 1 OS A9688008 NO OPERATING SYSTEM Memory 1024MB DDR2 RAM - DIMM 667MHz Hard Drive 250GB 7200RPM 16MB SATA2 HARD DISK INTEGRATED GRAPHICS INTEGRATED AUDIO LITEON 52X INTEGRATED 10/100 ETHERNET 1 |
| Hardware Cost | 1,101.00 | 544.00 | $599.00 | 544.00 |
| Operating System | $169.99 | 399.99 | | |
| Office Suite | $345.00 (MS Office Professional) | $332.00(MS Office Professional) | | |
| Graphic Artist Suite | | | ||
| Photoshop or equivalent | | | ||
| Accounting | 69.00 (Quicken Premier 2007) | 69.00 (Quicken Premier 2007) | 69.00 (Quicken Premier 2007)5 | 69.00 (Quicken Premier 2007)5 |
| Codeweavers | | | $69.95 | $69.95 |
1 Includes Adobe InDesign (Pagemaker replacement), Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, InCopy, & Dreamweaver.
2 OpenOffice is a replacement office suite for MS:Office, and is largely (90%+) cross-compatible. Reads Word & Excel files with only minor formatting issues. Included at NO COST in most Linux distributions.
3 Workable replacements with Scribus & GIMP – issue: GIMP does not have strong CMYK support. Doesn’t matter if you aren’t doing press-work. Included at NO COST in most Linux distributions.
4 GIMP is the Photoshop replacement, which as above, is strong, but doesn’t have integral or strong CMYK support yet.
NOTE: Codeweavers is a lovely company that makes “Cross-over” allowing you to run with some technical expertise (minimal) Quicken and Photoshop (among other windows applications) on a Linux machine.
Dad is doing fairly well with all this. He installed Ubuntu Linux (Windows is like if Ford made all the worlds cars; Linux is where a bunch of different builders all make cars - they all go forward, have four wheels, but different cars suit different folks for different reasons. Same thing with Linux distributions.) on a retread PC he had laying around similar to the ones in the chart above...a 1.8ghz box with only 512k RAM and an 80gb HDD.
Then my presence was requested. Thunderbird (email) and Firefox (Browser) look the same on both Win and Linux from a user viewpoint - so I stuck with those, moved Dad's address book over, and am putting off the moving his old email from the WinBox until I get a new toy I want to try, the Versora Progression tool that allegedly migrates all of your Win software settings, email, and address books from your Winbox to your LinBox in automated fashion.
Got his flatbed scanner set up for him on the Ubuntu box, then a HP Photosmart 8700 Printer configured. Next was sound - this is still a challenge as Ubuntu is seeing both the sound card integrated on the motherboard and the Soundblaster Live 5.1 sound card in the PCI slot...and randomly choosing one or the other every time it reboots - short term work-around is to simply move the speaker plug to the currently functioning sound jack; but it's enough of a bother to crawl behind and move the plug around that I'll try and resolve that issue in the next couple of days just for convenience. Youtube.com is a great tester for web-sound (and will remind you to install the Flash plug-in so it'll work), and then Rhapsody does for Linux what WinAmp does for Windows.
Soooo...surplus box with surplus hard drive now scans, prints, burns PDF's, does sound and video, can lay out a newsletter or do office kind of chores...using legal free software...and made from spare parts.
Next on the list is installing the Crossover Suite to support Quicken, the accounting software that Dad swears he can't live without (Moneydance is a good free linux alternative) , but that's a bit of joy for another night.
Dad is a little bit pleased to be escaping the WinEmpire before he's coerced into purchasing a new PC with much pricier parts and all new software to stay current.
Ubuntu is a great Linux distro for folks new to it. By default, it keeps folks out of the guts of the system where serious damage can occur, it provides an easy user experience for folks making the "big leap", and offers a legal path to accomplish things that otherwise would require great scads of money be hurled at them.
Most pleased thus far with a system that only cost me .75 (for a DVD to burn it to) after I downloaded it. Don't begrudge the cost of Quicken+Crossover one little bit compared to what we'd have had to come up with to be similarly functional in the Windows world.
No comments:
Post a Comment