OpenOffice & Linux Saved High School $100k

NewsForge | Detroit high school opens its desktops: A Detroit high school had a total of 158 newer PCs running Windows XP and Office XP, and 110 older PCs running Windows NT and Office 97. Realistically, upgrading the older PCs to Windows XP would require a complete hardware replacement. and some kind of upgrade was clearly required. It would have been an easy decision to simply upgrade to Office 2000, but that would have required replacing all the older computers with more powerful systems -- instead they migrated to Linux and OpenOffice.

The cost analysis was compelling -- the Linux option could be implemented for around $21,000, more than $100,000 less than the Microsoft Windows & Office alternative.