[CLUE-Talk] [Fwd: The Challenge...]

[Lynn Danielson]

Kevin Cullis wrote:
> the ... setup will have to be "professional".
<snip>
> ... his comment was that he gave me more than
> what he got from most of his customers in the IT world.

If you're trying to give him an estimate and that's the
response you get from him when asking for information, then 
I'd give him the same in return.  Make best case assumptions
and tell him that labor costs may vary under different 
circumstances.

> He's [cheap] about money so I told him to get the most recent
> version, about $80, is all that it would cost.  He then said
> he could spring the money, but "not much" for a pilot project.

Eighty dollars really isn't that much to spend on a pilot project
for a commercial venture.  A year subscription to KRUD costs less.
A pilot project with NT would cost a whole lot more.  At least if 
he's being legal about it.  

You might want to tell him about Microsoft's affiliation with the
BSA and the menacing letters they've mailed out this year.  The 
NCLUG has good documentation about this on their Operation White 
Flag page <http://nclug.org/owf/>.  If he just wants Linux up and 
running and doesn't want to pay for a recent commercial 
distribution, offer to install a more current copy for him, I'm 
sure we can come up with something from the LUG if you don't have 
one, we may even let him keep it.  In either case, the software on
his machine will be free and legal.

Contact Techangle and tummy.com to see what their hourly rates and
minimum daily charges are.  I think he'll be hard pressed to find 
someone better who charges less.  If he balks at that, then encourage
him to do it on his own and work through any difficulties on line
with the rest of us.  

If he wants someone else to do the work for him, it's going to cost
him some money.  But it will likely cost less then a 10 user version 
of NT Server (which, last I was aware, costs in excess of a thousand
bucks).  Add to that the cost of a database, say SQL Server, and the
cost of an intranet server, say IIS, and your probably looking at
close to $4K.

He could run freeware alternatives to IIS and SQL Server on NT.  But
if he's challenging you to use Linux and open source software to
replace Microsoft's products, I think it's only fair that he consider
the full cost of using their software.  And if wants them to be
professionally installed and configured, he's still going end up 
paying the labor costs on top of that.

> The intranet sounds like the most critical since they want indexing
> of the files for future reference and backups.

What files are you talking about here?  I thought he wanted indexing
of his database table.  If he wants a bunch of documents indexed and
searchable as part of his intranet, there are a number of freeware
packages, htdig comes to mind.  But without more info I don't know 
how you could estimate a professional solution.  If he's not willing 
to give you more information about what he wants, I'd say a sample 
html page running on Apache constitutes an intranet.  

Back ups could probably be done with tar, but I'm not sure that's
the best solution, nor am I familiar with much else.


Lynn