b252.html

From: MLIN Public Account <mlin_at_mlin.lib.ma.us>
Date: Sun Oct 4 18:03:55 1998

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   Sunday October 4
   
   Gates pushes hometown to Linux
   Linux-based document system costs 10% of Windows NT solution
   By Christine Burns - FRAMINGHAM
   It's ironic that in his zeal to equip his new $US53 million home with
   the latest and greatest technology - not to mention every modern
   convenience known to man, woman and child - Microsoft mogul Bill Gates
   drove his hometown into the arms of another operating system.
   The official paperwork filed with the city clerk in Medina,
   Washington, (pop. 3,082) concerning the Gates homestead had the city's
   file cabinets bursting at the seams. Of the 10 file cabinets housed in
   the old ferry terminal-turned-town hall set on the shores of Lake
   Washington, four were completely filled with upward of 40,000 pages of
   building permits, blueprints and change work orders all pertaining to
   the Gates estate.
   Factoring in future growth and recognising that they physically had no
   more room for storing municipal paperwork, the town fathers had to
   decide on whether to spring for a new town hall or a document
   management system. The latter being the more prudent choice, the town
   looked into NT document management systems that might fit in nicely
   with the town's Microsoft LAN. But what the town came up with was a
   product that runs on Caldera's version of Linux. This product rang in
   at less than 10% of the price of its NT counterparts, says Ray Jones,
   president of Archive Retrieval, a Kirkland, Washington, systems
   integrator. Archive Retrieval last month built and installed the
   city's new document management system, called The Archive.
   "When I asked the guys at town hall if they minded that the idle
   screen would display a big Caldera logo, they told me I could point it
   toward the window so everybody walking by could see it," Jones says.
   Sorry, Bill. No hometown advantage here.
   
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Received on Sun Oct 04 1998 - 18:03:55 BST