This comparison will detail the costs for paid professional software that may be used by college graduates for general business purposes, such as operating system costs, security software, office suite, desktop publishing, drawing programs, accounting programs, and hardware. I will then total the costs, assuming the professional purchases what I determine to be the most popular paid programs and hardware.
The choice of operating system is largely affected by the choice of hardware, and vice versa. However, the most popular hardware will fully run and be enabled by both Windows and Linux. Opting for lower hardware specifications as a result of choosing Linux may be a good business decision, but it may be a better strategic decision to have improved performance and scalability, so I will not include estimated hardware savings in my final analysis.
Beginning with the operating system, the cost of a full version of Windows 7 Professional is $299, whereas the full cost of a fully functioning and supported professional grade distribution of Linux (Ubuntu) is $0 (except perhaps the cost of a blank CD). The footprint of Windows 7 also increases the hardware requirements of the system.
The choice of operating system also affects the need for security software. Windows' market share, application sources, and inherent vulnerability dictates the need for anti-virus, anti-malware, and firewall software (hence described as anti-malware). While there are free anti-malware applications for Windows, usually business users are only licensed to use paid versions. While Symantec's Norton offers a full suite of anti-malware for $47.25 per computer license a minimum of 5 are required to be purchased. Their Norton 360 product costs $79.99 for one year of service, and three years of service costs $194.99. A single business user would probably be recommended to purchase the three years service because of both the economies of scale and that three years generally follows the useful life of a Windows system. This suite of utilities also increases the hardware requirements of the system. However, the costs of securing a Linux system can be close to zero. Given an encrypted file system, strong passwords, and a relatively prudent user, Ubuntu is nearly impossible to infect or compromise. However, users of Linux systems still are recommended to have a antivirus utility to scan documents and files for Windows users to minimize the chances of perpetuating such malware (such a free one is ClamAV).
Office Suite software costs are also significant. The Microsoft Office 2010 Professional pre-ordering price is $499.99. This price includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access 2010. Respectively, equivalent replacements that are free and available for Linux are OpenOffice.org (OOo) Writer, OOo Calc, OOo Impress, Tomboy Notes, Evolution Mail, Scribus, and OOo Base.
If one wants to perform graphic manipulation beyond basic requirements, the premiere software is known as Photoshop (so popular that it is now a verb used to describe manipulated photos). There are various packages that Photoshop's creator, Adobe, offers. The full version of Photoshop costs an astonishing $699, while a lower quality version called Photoshop Elements is $100. The merits of either are debated elsewhere, but I'll assume that the general business user can get by with the Elements package. However, a fully functioning drawing program known as the GIMP is completely free, and it is so similar to Photoshop that most Photoshop tutorials can be used to learn to manipulate pictures with the GIMP.
A popular accounting program is Quickbooks. The full version of Quickbooks Pro is 199.95. GnuCash is free, fully featured, and usable.
Caveats and qualifications: many people reading this are probably thinking that they can easily get a copy of these programs for free or at a discount from the full retail prices I have cited (usually straight from the publisher's website.) Many can be obtained from third party dealers at a discount (and if you must obtain one, a third party is my recommendation for the source). Others might "borrow" versions from friends, buy or borrow older versions, or even download illicit programs via bittorent or another peer-to-peer file-sharing system. Older versions may certainly do the job, but they may also be out of service and period of support and also may lack important features. Versions from untrusted third parties (friends, untrusted websites, or file-sharers) can include viruses and other malware that can be undetectable by most antivirus software, and if clients learn that one's business is using such software they may take their business elsewhere. On the other hand, the replacement software that I have suggested on the Linux platform may also lack various features that the end-user may want (or have features the paid programs lack). OOo Calc has been rated better than MS Excel, while MS PowerPoint is by most measures superior to OOo Impress. My own needs have dictated the use of Windows and Microsoft Excel for my MBA capstone course, so installed them in a Virtual Machine on my Linux system (which ran great with both operating systems, since I didn't need the normally requisite anti-malware and other bulky programs.)
Hardware costs can be lowered as well since open-source does not need as many resources for full powered issues. The MS Windows Operating System can take up to four times (or more) memory on the hard drive, and the MS Office Software can take up to six times (or more) the space of OOo. Others have done more comparisons of the performance of these systems, but suffice it to say, Linux is superior in some respects. I expect that after the installation of requisite Windows programs that Linux will beat Windows on most measures. As I mentioned before, one might use this fact to do with less beefy hardware. I believe this tactic to be in error, as a modest investment in greater resources is likely to pay off in better performance and greater lifespan of the system (as the software is upgraded and updated).
Although I desired to offer a simple cost comparison, part of my reasoning for offering this analysis is to point out the economic value of Linux and open-source solutions. Primarily for that reason, I am going to use the full professional price for each piece of software to estimate a value for Linux and open source software (excepting the full version of Photoshop). For professionals who require a full set of fully operational general office software, the full retail value of Linux and open source software, in pre-tax US dollars, is: 299+194.99+499.99+100+199.95 = $1,293.93.
This does not include many expensive specialist programs. Users of SAS may find R to be a suitable replacement. Users of MatLab, Maple, or Mathematica may find Sage to work great for their needs. Users of AutoCAD may be able to live with gCAD3D. Users of DreamWeaver may find other alternatives. These can all cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, and free alternatives can save business owners the same in pre-tax dollars, and every dollar saved is a dollar that goes to earnings.
Certainly, large enterprises can get multiple license discounts, and they are likely to have positions specialized enough not to require every piece of software for every individual desktop or laptop system. Also, each business has unique needs that may require more or less features in their software. Thus, I would not extrapolate this hypothetical figure to unique situations.
Back to the analysis, the last figure does not include the ongoing costs of purchasing additional years of anti-malware service and upgrades to the various pieces of software. Assuming that a user purchases such a system, and then replaces or upgrades it every year with a reasonable budget of $150 per year thereafter for software, at a 10% cost of money, this ongoing expense is worth a present value of another $1,500 (at 8%, it's $1,875, and at 15% it's $1000.) Assuming the higher cost of money, combined with the initial cost for the software, the total present value of the expense of using closed source software is $2293.93, which could represent the total present value of savings of starting with open-source software. (This assumes that the hardware budget does not change, though I would expect to spend less often to upgrade a Linux system.)
At this point, if you're not at least considering open-source software, you either have money to burn, or you're nuts. If you're looking for cachet in expensive software, you can do better: you can find a used Rolex for about the same.
Good luck.
