Resentment to Purchasing Software - Split From Unrelated Topic on IT Professionals
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
The obvious examples would be things like Windows or MS Office vs. Ubuntu or LibreOffice. The amount of support hours that you have to pay to an IT firm (or hours spent by your department) are vastly higher, on average, with Windows or Office than nearly any alternative.
I honestly don't know how you can say that with a straight face. I love open source stuff and use it when I can, but there is no chance that the random office worker is going to have vastly less issues with Ubuntu and LibreOffice.
I've managed Linux workstations for employees. For engineers who could script and some wrote their own software for the type of engineering they were doing (thermo, acoustic, fluid, etc). They still had a ton of issues. Whether it was a bug in not having something displayed when they logged in that wasn't fixed until the next dot release, or just times that GNOME would crash and they'd have to hard reboot. You're looking at this through a person who understands these things, not the normal office worker who has no experience with it.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
SMB doesn't factor in IT labor costs very often unless they are outsourcing
They also fail to evaluate the labor that they do pay for. And emotional reactions like "I paid a fortune to install this, it must have free support or need less support" tend to win the day without any foundation, research, or thought. Ask the average SMB buyer, and they'll actually tell you that they thought that the cost of the software was paying for support. Call Microsoft and see if you got free support with that Windows 10 purchase.
Well that is what you call a fool. Salesmen making fake promises isnt exclusive to IT.
If this is the norm, I guess that is why SMB IT is paid like shit, because they tend to be shit.
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@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
SMB doesn't factor in IT labor costs very often unless they are outsourcing
They also fail to evaluate the labor that they do pay for. And emotional reactions like "I paid a fortune to install this, it must have free support or need less support" tend to win the day without any foundation, research, or thought. Ask the average SMB buyer, and they'll actually tell you that they thought that the cost of the software was paying for support. Call Microsoft and see if you got free support with that Windows 10 purchase.
Well that is what you call a fool. Salesmen making fake promises isnt exclusive to IT.
If this is the norm, I guess that is why SMB IT is paid like shit, because they tend to be shit.
Of course, that leads to that. If SMB IT is just turning to sales people and not doing their own IT and failing to even buy their IT properly from someone else, then they've failed in both aspects. Being an IT buyer still requires doing a good job in buying at a good price, from someone that does a good job.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I honestly don't know how you can say that with a straight face. I love open source stuff and use it when I can, but there is no chance that the random office worker is going to have vastly less issues with Ubuntu and LibreOffice.
In the real world, working with small businesses, it's dramatic how many fewer issues we see. That's why flat rate support for Linux systems is lower, it takes so much less IT time to buy, license, install, and support. And I don't mean a "little" less, it's so much less.
Random office workers are a great example. They rarely do anything complicated and all they tend to need are their business LOB apps (they can't tell if they are on Windows or Ubuntu), web browser, and/or office tools. Often, people are switching on their own these days and don't even realize because they've already adapted to all web work. That's why we are finding Chromebooks in customer sites all the time, because they work and the customers don't even reach out to IT before deploying and people just adapt transparently.
Since end users don't interact with the OS in any meaningful way, most aren't completely clear that the OS has even changed. They use a start menu, desktop icons, or whatever to launch their apps and it's all transparent.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
So you have to go to your NTG or whatever IT labor you use and open your pockets at $150-300 an hour when you have an issue.
The obvious examples would be things like Windows or MS Office vs. Ubuntu or LibreOffice.
I seriously have to question if people who like LibreOffice actually use it for business. It is terrible at so many things. This is coming from someone who has used an Ubuntu workstation with LibreOffice for the last 6 years while working for multiple companies. Microsoft Office is 1000x better, and makes collaboration much easier. I have spent so much time trying to get LibreOffice to work or read MS office documents (that everyone else uses), and there has been nothing but issues. Not to mention LibreOffice is slower than MS Office by a good margin. If you work with big documents, LibreOffice is a dog.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Whether it was a bug in not having something displayed when they logged in that wasn't fixed until the next dot release, or just times that GNOME would crash and they'd have to hard reboot. You're looking at this through a person who understands these things, not the normal office worker who has no experience with it.
No one is saying that Ubuntu is perfect. But you have to keep it relative. Supporting Windows with it's complicated network stack, registry, lack of simple tooling, constantly broken update process, and ecosystem of broken security - all the issues you have with Ubuntu we have too, but all the issues you mention with Ubuntu we see happening easily 10x as often on Windows as on Ubuntu. It's not that Ubuntu doesn't need support, it's that Windows needs vastly more support for the same, and additional, issues.
It's dramatic. The reboots, crashes, bugs... the one thing we consistently find is that remote access to Windows is more stable than remote access to most Linux. Everything else, we find Linux more stable and needing far less IT interaction for any given problem. For the same issues, Linux takes a fraction of the time to access and fix.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I honestly don't know how you can say that with a straight face. I love open source stuff and use it when I can, but there is no chance that the random office worker is going to have vastly less issues with Ubuntu and LibreOffice.
In the real world, working with small businesses, it's dramatic how many fewer issues we see. That's why flat rate support for Linux systems is lower, it takes so much less IT time to buy, license, install, and support. And I don't mean a "little" less, it's so much less.
Random office workers are a great example. They rarely do anything complicated and all they tend to need are their business LOB apps (they can't tell if they are on Windows or Ubuntu), web browser, and/or office tools. Often, people are switching on their own these days and don't even realize because they've already adapted to all web work. That's why we are finding Chromebooks in customer sites all the time, because they work and the customers don't even reach out to IT before deploying and people just adapt transparently.
Since end users don't interact with the OS in any meaningful way, most aren't completely clear that the OS has even changed. They use a start menu, desktop icons, or whatever to launch their apps and it's all transparent.
Linux is great, LibreOffice is garbage.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I honestly don't know how you can say that with a straight face. I love open source stuff and use it when I can, but there is no chance that the random office worker is going to have vastly less issues with Ubuntu and LibreOffice.
In the real world, working with small businesses, it's dramatic how many fewer issues we see. That's why flat rate support for Linux systems is lower, it takes so much less IT time to buy, license, install, and support. And I don't mean a "little" less, it's so much less.
Random office workers are a great example. They rarely do anything complicated and all they tend to need are their business LOB apps (they can't tell if they are on Windows or Ubuntu), web browser, and/or office tools. Often, people are switching on their own these days and don't even realize because they've already adapted to all web work. That's why we are finding Chromebooks in customer sites all the time, because they work and the customers don't even reach out to IT before deploying and people just adapt transparently.
Since end users don't interact with the OS in any meaningful way, most aren't completely clear that the OS has even changed. They use a start menu, desktop icons, or whatever to launch their apps and it's all transparent.
Yeah that first statement is very divisive. I'm giving you a real world example, you can't say "in the real world" like what I mentioned is something from a fairy tale.
Your second point now I really don't believe because you can't just "use a start menu or desktop icons". You need extensions enabled for that (unless you're using some other distro but you mentioned just Ubuntu). The extensions break frequently between releases. And are nowhere near what people would used to seeing anyway.
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@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I have spent so much time trying to get LibreOffice to work or read MS office documents (that everyone else uses), and there has been nothing but issues.
This is a huge part of why you see it as not working. You aren't trying to change your ecosystem, you are trying to use LibreOffice as MS Office, rather than using it apples to apples. Try using MS Office to read LibreOffice files, it's not good either.
Actually switch to LibreOffice, don't go halfway, and you'll be amazed at how totally great it is. As powerful? No, MS Office is the best when it comes to total features. But the average company has literally zero people who use those high end features, and those that do use them it's generally extremely isolated people within an org. No "normal" office worker can even start to touch the power features of either platform. For normal workers, meaning the 95%, not the 80%, both do anything that they need.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
This is a huge part of why you see it as not working. You aren't trying to change your ecosystem, you are trying to use LibreOffice as MS Office, rather than using it apples to apples. Try using MS Office to read LibreOffice files, it's not good either.
Actually switch to LibreOffice, don't go halfway, and you'll be amazed at how totally great it is.Until someone outside of the company sends you a file. You can't say that exclusively using ODF files or even writing xlsx/docx files with libreoffice fixes the issue. Sure maybe for the random spreadsheet or word document you'r eusing internally. But business rely on external information. A lot of that comes in the form of office documents.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Your second point now I really don't believe because you can't just "use a start menu or desktop icons". You need extensions enabled for that (unless you're using some other distro but you mentioned just Ubuntu). The extensions break frequently between releases. And are nowhere near what people would used to seeing anyway.
Just works "out of the box". For real. No extensions, no extra work. We use it every day, both at customers and internally. It's actually that simple. We can give it to people with zero training or knowledge of Linux, they don't need any training, at all. Anyone who can actually be functional on Windows can use it without the slightest issue.
We also use Raspberry Pi OS sometimes. But Ubuntu mostly.
The icons on the side are a bit different, but it takes moments to get used to that. I'd prefer Cinnamon for that sometimes, but as people move away from apps to just using the browser, it becomes less and less of an issue.
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@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I honestly don't know how you can say that with a straight face. I love open source stuff and use it when I can, but there is no chance that the random office worker is going to have vastly less issues with Ubuntu and LibreOffice.
In the real world, working with small businesses, it's dramatic how many fewer issues we see. That's why flat rate support for Linux systems is lower, it takes so much less IT time to buy, license, install, and support. And I don't mean a "little" less, it's so much less.
Random office workers are a great example. They rarely do anything complicated and all they tend to need are their business LOB apps (they can't tell if they are on Windows or Ubuntu), web browser, and/or office tools. Often, people are switching on their own these days and don't even realize because they've already adapted to all web work. That's why we are finding Chromebooks in customer sites all the time, because they work and the customers don't even reach out to IT before deploying and people just adapt transparently.
Since end users don't interact with the OS in any meaningful way, most aren't completely clear that the OS has even changed. They use a start menu, desktop icons, or whatever to launch their apps and it's all transparent.
Linux is great, LibreOffice is garbage.
I've seen LibreOffice Calc handle huge spreadsheets (thousands of lines) fine, and then choke on smaller ones. I'm not sure what the defining factor is lol.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
This is a huge part of why you see it as not working. You aren't trying to change your ecosystem, you are trying to use LibreOffice as MS Office, rather than using it apples to apples. Try using MS Office to read LibreOffice files, it's not good either.
Actually switch to LibreOffice, don't go halfway, and you'll be amazed at how totally great it is.Until someone outside of the company sends you a file. You can't say that exclusively using ODF files or even writing xlsx/docx files with libreoffice fixes the issue. Sure maybe for the random spreadsheet or word document you'r eusing internally. But business rely on external information. A lot of that comes in the form of office documents.
We get this all the time, and it makes no difference. Seeing someone's "should have been a PDF but they dont' understand file formats" Word doc with slightly different formatting doesn't impact anyone. And if people are randomly sending Word files back and forth, we address the misuse of technology rather than spending lots of money to give them the right tools to the wrong job.
Are there times you HAVE to work with editable files with outside firms? Sure. Rare, but they certainly happen (but it's certainly not the standard use case.) Are there times when those companies absolutely refuse to not use MS Office file formats, yes. Of those two filtered situations, you still have two options... one is to have MS Office in isolated cases where needed for that use case; or just accept slightly different formatting.
It's not like LibreOffice doesn't do a job well enough that most users don't even notice until someone is doing an arbitrary side by side formatting comparison.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Your second point now I really don't believe because you can't just "use a start menu or desktop icons". You need extensions enabled for that (unless you're using some other distro but you mentioned just Ubuntu). The extensions break frequently between releases. And are nowhere near what people would used to seeing anyway.
Just works "out of the box". For real. No extensions, no extra work. We use it every day, both at customers and internally. It's actually that simple. We can give it to people with zero training or knowledge of Linux, they don't need any training, at all. Anyone who can actually be functional on Windows can use it without the slightest issue.
We also use Raspberry Pi OS sometimes. But Ubuntu mostly.
The icons on the side are a bit different, but it takes moments to get used to that. I'd prefer Cinnamon for that sometimes, but as people move away from apps to just using the browser, it becomes less and less of an issue.
Ok. How many workstations is NTG managing?
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I have spent so much time trying to get LibreOffice to work or read MS office documents (that everyone else uses), and there has been nothing but issues.
This is a huge part of why you see it as not working. You aren't trying to change your ecosystem, you are trying to use LibreOffice as MS Office, rather than using it apples to apples. Try using MS Office to read LibreOffice files, it's not good either.
Actually switch to LibreOffice, don't go halfway, and you'll be amazed at how totally great it is. As powerful? No, MS Office is the best when it comes to total features. But the average company has literally zero people who use those high end features, and those that do use them it's generally extremely isolated people within an org. No "normal" office worker can even start to touch the power features of either platform. For normal workers, meaning the 95%, not the 80%, both do anything that they need.
The problem is that you cannot force people outside your org to use LibreOffice, and even forcing people inside your org to use something far inferior is extremely difficult.
Another issue that you didnt mention with LibreOffice, is the lack of collaboration when working on shared documents. I can much easier collaborate and work simultaneously on MS document.
Can you save a few bucks a month per user using LibreOffice, sure? It will cost you more support hours and you will get less productivity. So you will lose money to use a far inferior product, not to mention that you cannot easily share documents outside your org. As you mentioned, LibreOffice and MS Office have compatibility issues and the rest of the world uses MS Office. So prepare for issues every time you deal with someone outside your org (which is daily, obviously)
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Your second point now I really don't believe because you can't just "use a start menu or desktop icons". You need extensions enabled for that (unless you're using some other distro but you mentioned just Ubuntu). The extensions break frequently between releases. And are nowhere near what people would used to seeing anyway.
Just works "out of the box". For real. No extensions, no extra work. We use it every day, both at customers and internally. It's actually that simple. We can give it to people with zero training or knowledge of Linux, they don't need any training, at all. Anyone who can actually be functional on Windows can use it without the slightest issue.
We also use Raspberry Pi OS sometimes. But Ubuntu mostly.
The icons on the side are a bit different, but it takes moments to get used to that. I'd prefer Cinnamon for that sometimes, but as people move away from apps to just using the browser, it becomes less and less of an issue.
Ok. How many workstations is NTG managing?
Thousands, in many different environments. So it's many hundreds of different scenarios. So we see a fair number of workstations, with hundreds of different business and environmental scenarios.
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@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
I honestly don't know how you can say that with a straight face. I love open source stuff and use it when I can, but there is no chance that the random office worker is going to have vastly less issues with Ubuntu and LibreOffice.
In the real world, working with small businesses, it's dramatic how many fewer issues we see. That's why flat rate support for Linux systems is lower, it takes so much less IT time to buy, license, install, and support. And I don't mean a "little" less, it's so much less.
Random office workers are a great example. They rarely do anything complicated and all they tend to need are their business LOB apps (they can't tell if they are on Windows or Ubuntu), web browser, and/or office tools. Often, people are switching on their own these days and don't even realize because they've already adapted to all web work. That's why we are finding Chromebooks in customer sites all the time, because they work and the customers don't even reach out to IT before deploying and people just adapt transparently.
Since end users don't interact with the OS in any meaningful way, most aren't completely clear that the OS has even changed. They use a start menu, desktop icons, or whatever to launch their apps and it's all transparent.
Linux is great, LibreOffice is garbage.
I've seen LibreOffice Calc handle huge spreadsheets (thousands of lines) fine, and then choke on smaller ones. I'm not sure what the defining factor is lol.
LibreOffice is :pile_of_poo:
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@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
The problem is that you cannot force people outside your org to use LibreOffice, and even forcing people inside your org to use something far inferior is extremely difficult.
But the assumption is that people outside of your org can force you to use MS Office.
It's a two way street. Except one way is asking someone else to do something for free. The other is asking you to donate IT time managing and money to Microsoft, and a lot of it. And to demand that you run specific operating systems in order to do so.
The difference in "forcing another org" to do things is incredible. So I'm never clear why it is felt that people who use expensive products can force other people to adapt, rather than the other way around?
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@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@scottalanmiller said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
@stacksofplates said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Your second point now I really don't believe because you can't just "use a start menu or desktop icons". You need extensions enabled for that (unless you're using some other distro but you mentioned just Ubuntu). The extensions break frequently between releases. And are nowhere near what people would used to seeing anyway.
Just works "out of the box". For real. No extensions, no extra work. We use it every day, both at customers and internally. It's actually that simple. We can give it to people with zero training or knowledge of Linux, they don't need any training, at all. Anyone who can actually be functional on Windows can use it without the slightest issue.
We also use Raspberry Pi OS sometimes. But Ubuntu mostly.
The icons on the side are a bit different, but it takes moments to get used to that. I'd prefer Cinnamon for that sometimes, but as people move away from apps to just using the browser, it becomes less and less of an issue.
Ok. How many workstations is NTG managing?
Thousands, in many different environments. So it's many hundreds of different scenarios. So we see a fair number of workstations, with hundreds of different business and environmental scenarios.
I'll just be 100% honest. I don't believe this.
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@IRJ said in When Does It Stop Even Being IT: Buyers vs Doers:
Can you save a few bucks a month per user using LibreOffice, sure?
In the order of $20-$40/month/user
It's a big number in most cases. Much bigger than people let on. Especially when you typically end up having to then pay for it for every user, even those that only open a document once a year, not just the power users.
