THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 17, 1995 TAG: 9507150256
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Doubleclick
SOURCE: Richard Grimes and Roger Grimes
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
Doubleclick authors Richard and Roger Grimes of Virginia Beach happen to be twin brothers and computer authorities. Their discourse on life in the computer lane appears every other week in Hampton Roads Business Weekly.
Richard: For years now, our family has struggled to hide a secret so appalling, so horrifying, that no movie of the week could ever do it justice.
Roger: This secret has cruelly imprisoned one of our family members, forcing her to spend every waking hour in pursuit of a high so intense that she often forgets who or where she is.
Richard: I'm here for you, Roger. Just let it out.
Roger: Our mother is addicted to a Windows solitaire game.
Richard: It's tragic. For her last birthday, she actually suggested that Roger and I should buy her a laptop computer so that she could play solitaire without actually getting out of bed. We could see how that would end, though.
Months later, my dad would find the withered body of my mother in her room, one hand on her laptop trackball and one hand reaching for a bag of Chee-tos lying just out of her reach.
Roger: Since we're afraid to get her a portable, our ultimate plan is to put a network of computers in every room of Mom's house so that she can play solitaire anywhere.
Richard: That way mom can actually leave her room to play solitaire. She can grab her own bag of Chee-tos and maybe even nod to family members between hands. Only one thing stands in the way of this network intervention: Microsoft and its version of concurrent licensing.
Roger: We'll explain. In order to install a network in my mom's house, we'd have to buy a copy of Windows for every room in the house. That's four copies. If we include the bathrooms, and we will, we'll need a total of six copies. Naturally, this could get expensive.
Luckily for most networks, most software companies allow something called concurrent licensing. It works like this:
Richard: Roger maintains a computer network with 200 computer workstations. At one time or another, each of these workstations will use a copy of WordPerfect. Without concurrent licensing, Roger would have to buy a copy of WordPerfect for each of these machines. At over $200 a pop, we're talking about a lot of scratch.
Roger: I know, however, that no more than 50 of these workstations are using WordPerfect at any one time. That means that I would have wasted money by buying 150 more copies of WordPerfect than I'll actually use.
Concurrent licensing allows me to buy just 50 copies since only that number will be used simultaneously, or to use the proper term, concurrently.
Richard: In the case of my mom's network, concurrent licensing should allow us to buy one copy of solitaire since the maximum users of the network at any time would be one. It doesn't solve Mom's solitaire problem, but at least the family knows she's not wasting away.
Roger: The savings from concurrent licensing is a major reason why companies install networks. Using networks, they can dole out a copy of WordPerfect to just the workstations that need one.
And now Microsoft wants to charge for that kind of licensing. According to new Microsoft rules, concurrent licensing is going to cost almost twice as much as a single user license.
Richard: It will almost be cheaper to buy a copy of the software for every workstation on your system. Microsoft has thrown in a few cheap thrills with this new package - free upgrades for two years, for instance - but basically, they're doing one thing.
Roger: Charging you for concurrent licensing. The Microsoft guy I talked to said that eventually most of the bigger software companies would follow their lead. Maybe they will.
In the meantime, though, if you're buying a software package for your network, check out the company's concurrent licensing. You could save big bucks by not going with Microsoft.
Richard: Now, we realize that most of you readers don't buy software for networks. No big deal. We wrote this column as a sort of butt-kissing tool. Just clip the column and hand it to someone higher up in your company who can use it. Voila! Even if you're a slacker, you suddenly look useful.
Roger: It seems to have worked for Richard.
Richard: I call it the ``Be a slacker, but look like a hacker'' tool. Roger uses a variation of this rule called ``Be a hacker, but look like an overworked old guy with a family.'' MEMO: The overworked old guy with a family can be reached at groger@infi.net
The Personal Growth Management Expert (butt-kisser) can be reached at
rgrimes@infi.net
by CNB