Hey, I have been given the duty at a nearby charter school to come up with a figure on how much it'd cost for a complete network of machines. Im pretty sure it'd be no more then 50. We have no monitors, no mice, no nothing! gotta get it all and I gotta make it cheap (in cost).

I was thinking about running the classroom machines as thin's and running a few full-featured servers in the backroom.

Any type of configurations you can think of that perhaps would cust costs and gain usability. THIS is the only school in the district that will be using linux everywhere, from the server to desktop so Not only do i need to show off it's usability and security but price aswell.

Not only will the school be using linux but i will be running a few seminars/support next school season that will be open to the public

Well, the hardware is the only thing that should cost you money. Everything else can be downloaded (openoffice, the disto, whatever else you need) unless you feel an obligation to pay and support the companies. Shouldnt be that bad, just price the hardware and add your personal fee and you got it.

Would most definetly order directly from distro. They need all the help they can get, not because they are doing poorly, but because there doing such an excellent job. Would be nice to help them in anyway possible.

I completely agree, support the distro, buy the product.

I can tell you that the servers WILL cost you allot of money, though they are still cheaper than winservers.

The setup of the servers is quite advanced, you'll need to hire experts for them.

I had a great article on all this, but I seem to have lost the link .

I'm sure google will turn up something usefull

~Progster

this is K-5. Services required to be in the works is internet access thats all they want, anythign else is low-priority.

Don't think their will be much of a problem setting it up, tho i need to figure out what we are able to use, if they left us any equipment such as the router n such.

So i guess I posted to soon but as soon as i get the info I will post to this thread again.