Ward Computer Standard Build

[portseven-p40]

Hi All!!

So what is the standard build of a typical Ward meetinghouse PC nowadays?

Is it true that the church is rolling out Openoffice.org?

Sorry for the possibly obvious questions, I am not a member (but wife is). I am an IT professional, working as a Enterprise Architect in the UK as well as being an active member of the Free software community.

[WelchTC]

I'm not sure of the specs on the machines that are being put into wards. I have seen OpenOffice put on unit computers. I'm not sure if this is Church wide or in selected units. Doesn't sound like I was of much help.

Tom

[epoulin-p40]

All of the unit computers in our stake have OO pre-installed.

[joel]

In the past we've included OpenOffice on the MLS desktop image because it was free and seemed like a decent throw-in, given the price. We haven't done a ton of analysis to see how much it's being used, but I suspect it's not used a whole lot.

[epoulin-p40]

In the past we've included OpenOffice on the MLS desktop image because it was free and seemed like a decent throw-in, given the price. We haven't done a ton of analysis to see how much it's being used, but I suspect it's not used a whole lot.

In our unit anyway, we use the Word Processor to type any letters needed, and I taught the clerk to use the spreadsheet program to track our ward goals on a simple bar graph so we can keep ward members up to date on our progress.

[blackrg]

Our Ward is making use of the word processor and spreadsheet as well. Though it's not used often, I'd still list it as essential. If OO was pulled, then we'd need something else.

[portseven-p40]

The church could get some publicity out of the oo.org deployments, if you switched to oo.org as the default office suite then it would make the tech press as I imagine the size of the desktop estate is quite significant.

[russellhltn]

Desktop 5.5 which re-images the machine contains OO 2.0. Judging from the unofficial clerks' list, it sounds like that's being done to all unit administrative computers - at least in U.S.

OO was available before. Some time back the church would hand out MS Works, but hasn't done so in quite some time. (2-3 years?) I have to say that OO is an improvement over Works as it can read and write files in MS Office format, which is more then you can say for Works.

Yeah, I suppose the church could get some publicity over that, but Open Source isn't part of our religious theology. Still, the price/performance ratio is excellent. There are a lot of Ward and Stake computers out there to license. That adds up to a pretty penny.

[WirthlinPD]

Hi All!!

So what is the standard build of a typical Ward meetinghouse PC nowadays?

Is it true that the church is rolling out Openoffice.org?

Sorry for the possibly obvious questions, I am not a member (but wife is). I am an IT professional, working as a Enterprise Architect in the UK as well as being an active member of the Free software community.

The standard desktop build for local units include:

Windows XP Professional SP2
OpenOffice 2.0
PDF creation software
Photo album software (some image editing capability)
Security Software

We try to keep the image really light. There will certainly be tweaks as we do more analysis on cost/performance.

The moniker "5.5" is a version number.

[russellhltn]

The standard desktop build for local units include:

Photo album software (some image editing capability)

Can you shed any light on why? I was surprised to see that as I've never heard of any ward or stake that use their machines for any photo-related tasks. Is this a preview of something to come?

Also, the instructions that came with the desktop need correction. We were given Flash Player, not Flash Professional.