The Online Open Source Savings Calculator

[ZarathustraDK]

My first semi-serious foray into website-making, you know, the kind where you actually commit a small amount a cash for hosting :) .

It puts a little spin on the whole Total-Cost-of-Ownership/proprietary vs. open source with a little calculator that lets the visitor examine how much money he/she spends on software alone.

Check it out : www.Zarathustra.dk (http://www.zarathustra.dk)

Constructive criticism is welcome. Software-categories I can add to the calculator which is not already covered would be nice.

Opera-users will probably see a vertical scrollbar if they go to the page and hit refresh, I have no idea what's going on with that. That's nothing compared to IE 6.0 though (see attached screenie)

[sloggerkhan]

This is a really cool idea, I'd love to see it improved.
Several ways:

Take into account more software packages and their equivalents.
(Categories you might look at adding: groupware, page layout, 3-D, etc)

Consider discounts from bulk/volume licensing.

[ZarathustraDK]

Take into account more software packages and their equivalents.
(Categories you might look at adding: groupware, page layout, 3-D, etc)

Consider discounts from bulk/volume licensing.

Duly noted.

Groupware would be stuff like EGroupware and PHProject, but what is their proprietary equivalent?

Same with 3D, we got Blender, but what is the most common business-grade proprietary 3d-program?

Page layout? You lost me... :)

Bulk/volume-licensing is in the future, this is my first serious bout with php, so my skills are rather green in that department.

[kjb34]

That's a neat little calculator. It was good enough for me.

[doorknob60]

Lol in my whole house I saved $5002 :-P 4 OS, 4 Antivirus, 3 Office Suite, 2 Graphic editors (why not?).

[ZarathustraDK]

Lol in my whole house I saved $5002 :-P 4 OS, 4 Antivirus, 3 Office Suite, 2 Graphic editors (why not?).

Yeh still have to figure out the antivirus. Norton sells their business-package with a license that allows it to be installed on 5 clients, so if you have 4 antivirus installed you only pay for one, for now it's in the small print. Have to figure out some php'y way to make that happen properly.

[cookieofdoom]

Between my server, desktop, and laptop I've saved $6945.

[epidemiks]

yeah, fantastic idea.
I've saved about $6K
looking forward to the refined version.. also it would be cool to get the savings result in that calculator screen.

[cookieofdoom]

It would be really sweet if it could work like the Dell shopping cart, where you go through and select what software components you want and it updates your price as you go. That sounds terrifically complicated, though.

[ZarathustraDK]

also it would be cool to get the savings result in that calculator screen.

Done :)


It would be really sweet if it could work like the Dell shopping cart, where you go through and select what software components you want and it updates your price as you go. That sounds terrifically complicated, though.

Waaaay too complicated at my current level hehe. I can probably spruce the fields up with some number-increase/decrease buttons though.

[snova]

It's problematic with tabs. I open "The Calculator" in a new tab out of habit and wondered why the page was so plain (and why the result was in a non-obvious place at the top of the page).

I could also do with less orange, but to each his own way.

Oh, and the whole thing needs to be a little taller to hold all of the text without scrolling.

PS. Small typo on the results page: should be "Open Source" instead of "Opens Source" (up at the top).

[sloggerkhan]

Let's see... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_software

3-D: different options: 3ds studio max, softimage, maya...

Obvious proprietary contact management and calendaring systems:
Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, (both are client and server systems).

Page layout... probably should have put desktop publishing.
Adobe InDesign or Quark are the 2 commercial ones I can think of off my head.
Scribus is the closest open equivalent.

Really there are a lot software categories where commercial and proprietary solutions can be compared price wise.

[TBOL3]

Holly crap, I'm a pallendrom, I save $22,022. For 1 server, 5 computers, 6 antivirus, 4ish (I can't remember) 3d cgi, and 3ish drawing programs. That's amazing.

[ZarathustraDK]

PS. Small typo on the results page: should be "Open Source" instead of "Opens Source" (up at the top).

Fixed.


Oh, and the whole thing needs to be a little taller to hold all of the text without scrolling.

Added 100 pixels to the height.


It's problematic with tabs. I open "The Calculator" in a new tab out of habit and wondered why the page was so plain (and why the result was in a non-obvious place at the top of the page).

There's no easy way around that, I use an iframe as the main-viewport (yes yes, I know, iframes suck for so many reasons :) )


I could also do with less orange, but to each his own way.

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out a more spiffy look, but until then we'll have to settle for the orange. For some reason it reminds me about some car-rental service who use the same colors (Hertz?).


3-D: different options: 3ds studio max, softimage, maya...

Obvious proprietary contact management and calendaring systems:
Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, (both are client and server systems).

Page layout... probably should have put desktop publishing.
Adobe InDesign or Quark are the 2 commercial ones I can think of off my head.
Scribus is the closest open equivalent.

Added 3d (3ds Studio Max), contact-management/calendaring (MS Exchange) and desktop-publishing (InDesign CS4) to the calc.


Holly crap, I'm a pallendrom, I save $22,022. For 1 server, 5 computers, 6 antivirus, 4ish (I can't remember) 3d cgi, and 3ish drawing programs. That's amazing.

Remember, for now you have to pick 1 antivirus for every 5 computers. I think you "bought" 30 CAL's there instead of the 5 you intended :)

[Sam]

Great idea, maybe you can print the price of each product chosen, because the price may vary between countries.

[snova]

It provides "interesting" results when I type in ridiculously large numbers. :)

It looks a bit better now.

Somehow I've managed to save 1K. About as much as this laptop cost.

[cardinals_fan]

There is no such thing as "Windows Vista Professional". It was replaced by Vista Business before the release.

[ZarathustraDK]

There is no such thing as "Windows Vista Professional". It was replaced by Vista Business before the release.

Fixed.


Great idea, maybe you can print the price of each product chosen, because the price may vary between countries.

Yeah been thinking about that too, but wont putting those prices in the calculator make it more like "calculate your costs when buying proprietary" than "calculate your savings when going Open Source"?

Prices definitely need to go somewhere, I just don't want them to influence the audience when they're typing in the fields. Also, there's a little bit more "surprise" when you don't know the exact prices of the elements beforehand.


It provides "interesting" results when I type in ridiculously large numbers. :)

It looks a bit better now.

Somehow I've managed to save 1K. About as much as this laptop cost.

Heh, yeah it goes scientific when humongous numbers are entered.