[FastCoyote]

It's not the next couple years of costs I'm worried about, it's when you go to Longhorn and DRM and Office requires 2003 server or better to run. Plus new licensing plans, backward incompatibility, no access to underlying code. With the browser being written into the OS, and the move to automated updates, the whole thing becomes a security nightmare subject to catastrophic failure. All in all, I see Microsoft becoming a monster within the next five years.

So, I move to Open Office (spreadsheet and wordprocessor for 90% of the office), make my server FreeBSD (solid as a rock), write my aps in Java or PHP with Mysql in the backend, and when the big crash happens, my little world just keeps on going. What a relief. And all the software is free.

So, I take a hit on the learning curve of Unix (which is not negligible), but the application changeover won't be too bad if done over a few years and I've already started that. So, all in all it comes out about the same costwise over say 5 years, but I'm way ahead on the catatrophic failure front and not having to worry about the next killer virus. And over 20 years there's no planned obsolesence to pay for (needed to keep Microsoft in Business)

[Question_Assumptions]

I'd recommend looking at PostgreSQL as an alternative to MySQL. Both have features that the other lacks but PostgreSQL is more "enterprise" level than MySQL, in my opinion.