I hate to tell you, but migrating 1500 clients from a Windows to *nix base will not be cheap. If you go Mac, you need different hardware. If you go some variety of *nix, you need to reinstall EVERYTHING. Either way, you need to retrain your entire support staff. Users might need a little retraining too. Be sure you can sell them on the fact that NO Windows software will work when you're done. If they can do everything on Star Office, then great. Otherwise, you'll have to rewrite applications in-house.

Make that work out to less than $550/client, and I'll be quite amazed. Post your quotes here, and we'll see.

> Last year the Microsoft reps proposed my
> company an upgrade of our NT
> infrastructure, across the board, for
> approx. 1500 clients, for a "mere"
> $800,000 ("bla,bla,bla assurance" they
> called it). Taking into account
> the "successes" continuously recorded by
> Microsoft in making their systems more
> robust, we have decided not to "bite",
> and rather look into a slow migration to
> other OS.

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