On Friday 10 December 2004 1:53 pm, Ralph Katz wrote: > OK, now we've got some focus. I'd argue that what probably makes your > firm successful and valued by your customers is not the hardware you > deliver, but the competence, expertise and dependability by which you > provide it. It's important to know what your customer is really > paying > for. Without this, you're just another dealer of commodity products, > and that's a very tough way to make it. Most likely, you do more for > your customers than you may know. Getting a better grip on what kinds > of value and satisfaction you provide will help significantly. Yes, definitely. The business manager helps us keep focus on that and I'm still learning. I'm still under the wing, so to speak. > I've seen your posts to this list over the last year, and it's clear you > know a great deal about what can be done and how to do it effectively > with these free tools. That knowledge has value your customers should > be willing to pay for. I'll take that as a compliment. Thank you! > So by being knowledgeable about alternatives to windows, you're already > providing value and building your reputation w/ customers. If you can't > charge for your software and support expertise, you're missing the boat, > in my view. Right, which is why we're not giving it away. 8;o) > >> How will your "kit" be more effective for your company than a free > >> Ubuntu CD > > > > We'd have to burn CDs, which costs money that we wouldn't make back > > (much less profit). > > Maybe I assumed too much.... Anyone can get ubuntu cd's in quantity, > free including shipping. Maybe this won't last, but for now you could > offer a professionally produced CD at no charge to existing customers > with no obligation for you to support it without charge. I'm not > suggesting this is a good idea, but it is a way you could offer value to > customers without incurring direct costs for your adventurous and itchy- > to-leave windows customers. Interesting, but on the other hand, that would still require us to get up to speed on another distro. Might be something to look into, though. > Back to your original question in the Subject line, I think you just > answered it when you said: > > > Looking to convert customers to Linux. We want our customers to have > > the option of having a quality[1] distribution pre-installed or to > > install themselves rather than the standard, lackluster lineup of > > "Windows or nothing." > > I don't see how a $10 CD "retail kit" is going to achieve that > objective. Well, if we can suggest something, and we have it to sell it, we're giving them another option... > If you sell a system with XP and MS Office, how much do you charge and > what support do you provide? Custom builds. Windows is going for $165 for an OEM copy. Not sure where Office is at these days, I think it's $350 for OEM Small Business Edition. > Could you sell that same system for a similar price with a fully > installed Debian desktop, openoffice, etc replacing the proprietary > sw? It defenetely sounds doable, and we do have such a demo system on display (which has been a conversation starter, "You mean there's something other than Windows?") > All the support and training money would go to your firm whether you > bundled it in or charged a la carte or provided a support contract. I > think you'd be miles ahead this way versus taking $10 for a CD and > book. That's more or less what we're thinking, too, but for the D-I-Y user, we also want something to be able to sell them other than a bare CD. Something can be said for presentation: OEM versions of Windows only come with an installation manual strapped to a CD in an envelope, I consider that to be a minimum expectation when buying a copy of an OS. > Oh Paul, you may even find a windows firefox CD can whet the appetite > of a particular customer. Because we know what happens next once > they've seen what's possible with free sw. I've been tossing around the idea of putting together a free software sampler disk (or two) for Windows users, though this is after I get a couple other more mmediate projects out of the way first. Likely to be included so far is Zinf (the MP3/Ogg player), Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, and I'd like to find a Windows equivilent to Kopete, since all Windows IM clients to date suck[1]. [1] And then there's Trillian, which blows goats for bus money then walks home. You'd think a company whose entire existence is jeopardized by the commercial IM networks changing their protocols unpredictably would not only promote Jabber even in their non-Pro version, but make it the default protocol... -- Paul Johnson baloo@ursine.dyndns.org http://ursine.dyndns.org/
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