Dear [person who controls money]

I am writing to to express my concern about irresponsible spending at CCNY, particularly with regard to computers. Every day, I try to save CCNY money while providing the best computing environment for my users, the EE Department. However, in my two years working for CCNY, I have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly millions, wasted on computer hardware and software that was not needed.

"Upgrades" are a frequent occasion for a senseless waste of money. Most upgrades are not carefully considered and tend to be falsely justified by the nebulous idea of "keeping up to date." When computers have their software "upgraded", they usually will run slower, due to the lower software efficiency of the bloated new version of the software. To maintain the same level of responsiveness, the hardware, the PC itself, needs to be upgraded also. The all new computer that replaces the old one really has no additional value to CCNY. Decreasing software efficiency exactly offsets CPU speed increases. Upgrades are wasteful of CCNY's money and of our environmental resources.

High end computers are often purchased when a regular computer will do. This week's high end computer costs X. In six months the same computer can be bought for 0.6X. How much value does CCNY get for the extra money it pays for the high end computer? Almost no computer at CCNY is used for anything that requires a high end computer. Indeed, 90% of our high end computers are just status symbols, demonstrating how much money we could afford to waste. America has a reputation for being wasteful, and our foreign students will go home with plenty of outrageous stories to tell their friends.

I have noticed a tendency for people in EE to buy computing equipment that grossly exceeds what I recommend for their needs. I explicitly advise them that their purchase will not benefit them or their students and is therefore pure waste. However, it seems that there is some incentive for them to waste money on computers since my conservation efforts are cynically disregarded and money, often CCNY's money, not grant money, is spent on equipment that will never be used.

System administrators at CCNY waste a lot of money on what I believe are basically executive toys. I see a lot of commercial "administrative tools" around CCNY that cost us a lot of money. But these tools do nothing that can't be done as well or better using free software. So, why then, wasn't the good free solution chosen? The reason is that the free system administration software doesn't have sales reps traveling to college campuses brainwashing the people with purchasing power. Commercial software creates powerless dependent users. Free software tends to create knowledgeable users who understand much better the underlying principles of computing. This is why places like MIT use a lot of free software. For example, instead of using the unreliable Pelican mail system running on Microsoft Windows that we have, MIT uses a free webmail program that runs on Linux to serve the @mit.edu mail domain. Computer literacy and free software go hand in hand.

With all of the money we could save through responsible spending on computers, we could do wonderful things to help our students achieve their full potential. We should focus our resources on our community instead of giving so much money to Dell, Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, IBM, etc...