On 2/20/2016 6:52 PM, philo wrote:
On 02/20/2016 06:25 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/20/2016 4:23 PM, philo wrote:
On 02/20/2016 03:08 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/20/2016 1:16 PM, philo wrote:
Getting right to the point, the people I worked with were mentally
disabled, so
if they could figured things out without a problem
I bet the kids you deal with could too.

How do I create a table heading that spans two columns?
How do I set the shading for every other row to be light/dark?
How do I import this photo that I downloaded from Wikipedia
into my report?
How do I print JUST page 3 of my report?
How do I connect to the printer that my host/foster family has
installed at their house?

None of the above can be accomplished by Windows or Linux on their
own, all
that kind of stuff is dependent on which application you are using.

Exactly. The OS is just a scaffolding.

Now, how do I run Office 2K13 on Linux?

Never figured kids would need much more than a word processor.
I had no idea you were talking about running spread sheets which I thought was
college level.

Schools now do *lots* of stuff on machines that was previously
done with scraps of paper, index cards, etc. Many school districts
even provide "courseware" (what we grew up calling BOOKS) in
electronic form. So, you have to be able to support whatever DRM the
courseware provider has adopted.

Microsoft Office will need to run on Windows machines and will cost quite bit
of money. I thought you just had a small budget, but if you have a lot of
money then sure, get Win10 machines and all necessary software.

Microsoft makes available certain pieces of software to 501(c)3's
for peanuts. No doubt, they write off the difference between the few
dollars they charge (us) for a volume license against the list
price for that same software license.

(you get no media -- just a *single* master disk and a number written
on a form telling you that you are legally entitled to install the
software using *that* license key on N machines)

That said, even if you have a large budget, why waste money?

You should easily be able to purchase a new machine with Win10 installed, for
less money than you could build yourself and purchase the OS separately.

We get machines for free. Businesses go through periodic "upgrade
cycles". So, you may end up with 50 of a particular machine. Or,
20 of one type and 40 of another. The next donation may be of
an entirely different machine, etc.

(Many of businesses have *thousands* of seats so there is no shortage of
HARDWARE. Some businesses are obligated to dispose of their surplus
equipment *to* non-profits -- that's the case with some of the hospitals,
here... a few thousand seats going up for grabs every few years!)

But, you ("I") have to do all your own record keeping. I.e., I have
to keep track of which machines have which software, which drivers, etc.
I have a large collection of "install disks" as each was intended for
a particular make/model machine.

Once I have built a system, I image the disk and store that image on
a server, here. So, if I encounter ANOTHER batch of those same machines
next week/month, I don't have to do any of this legwork, again!

It's for that very reason that I rarely build machines any more, I just refer
my friends to Dell. Thus far, zero complaints/