Enterprise open source Toolkit

Story: Gartner sounds desktop Linux warning

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jf, it isn't a matter of whether you can run it on your machines as a desktop operating system - I do as well, in fact my Windows PC only gets turned on for game playing and when I have to convert documents from MS Access, for example.

The problem for a major organisation is user acceptance and training, as opposed to whether the product is capable of being used as a desktop. It is more likely down to two major concerns on changing:

1) Users who have learnt enough about Windows to be able to open Outlook and Word getting scared when faced with something new.

2) Windows Power Users frightened of loosing their cachet when switching to Linux and having to learn the "power tips" that make them feel superior to their collegues over again.

Application wise, there is little difference in functionality under Linux for the average user. It can just "look" more frightening, because it isn't what they are used to.

I find Linux much quicker and easier to use, but if a user is reticent about changing or scared of the change, they can make it uneconomical for a business to change.

I've seen this before. At the end of the 80's, one client switched from DisplayWrite IV to WordPerfect 5.1, a newer and superior product at the time, but many of the users who had grown up on DW4 were scared of loosing their "power user" status and tried to hold back the switch by causing problems, others couldn't cope with the paradigm shift to proportional fonts. Secretaries, who really should have known better, were still using spaces to align tables and complaining that the columns wouldn't line up! (Having taken typewriting at college, I learnt about tabs on manual typewriters, so I would assume somebody who has actually studied for secreterial skills including typing would know how to use tabs.)

We had hundreds of extra calls in the first couple of months. We also had a couple of Wallyesque users who, after having attended a course and having had personal instruction on converting documents after that, still couldn't get converted documents to print, because the paper size was wrong, we'd get 2-3 calls a day from one user who just couldn't "remember" that she needed to make a small adjustment to her documents the first time she used them. She thought that if she complained enough we would allow her to go back to DW4

At the end of the quarter, the finance director of the client queried the increase in the number of calls (and hence the bill), we pointed out that over 50% of the increase was down to one user, his PA! Funnily enough, after that, we didn't have any more calls from her...

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