I once deployed an easy-to-use doc management system for a team. But because they users were absolute fuck-tards, it was a total mess. They wouldn't name things properly, notes were interspersed all over the place instead of being logically organized. It was a mess. We started out with a team of morons, and despite the system given to them, we ended up with the same team of morons... and the docs reflected it.

So you're recommending a custom developed solution by an organization that doesn't have the long term resources to maintain the system once it's in production? That's a recipe for disaster. They need something that's either off-the shelf, or configured from something modular. But NOT custom coded.

Having been in both camps, I can tell you that whether a company is for-profit or non-profit, either way you get what you pay for. If you want dedicated, professional staff, you have to pay them. Using un-paid volunteers is great, but at a larger scale it doesn't work. When your not-profit generates $5 million/year in revenue, for example, do you want a CPA handling the money or the volunteer who ladles mashed potatoes in the soup kitchen?

You must be a member of PETA.

We update our stuff on the fly, daily. But then, our systems are used internally. So as long as we don't cause a total production stoppage, having one form on one of the pages return an error instead of spitting back the expected report isn't going to cause the apocolypse. We do our best to be nimble, with the expecation that sometimes this causes rushed changes to break things.

Been using Zimbra for a small virtual company and it works great. Keeps everyone on the same page and has all the features we need. Do keep in mind it's a big resource intensive. Even just when using it for evaluation, I threw it on a 1 GB VPS and it was SLOW. Production minimum I think is a 2 GB server according to their docs.

+1 to Junction Networks. They're great at hosted PBX. Then buy some Polycom phones and setup softphones for people's desktops and smartphones.

Made this HUGE mistake myself. As a geek, I got too involved in messing around and setting up the systems instead of focusing on the business. Things like sales and marketing are what bring in greenbacks, not my choice of which brand of UPS I buy for my local server.

Here to stay? Like Salesforce.com? But it's in the cloud, man. That's no good. Roll-your-own homebrew is MUCH more dependable!
/sarcasm.
Yeah, go with what's proven; whether that's hosted or local.

I see this in political discussions all the time with people who don't follow the issues much, beyond watching "Dancing with the stars". Basically, these are people who don't know where they stand on important issues because they've never thought about it. So it makes sense that they'd reverse their decisions so easily. Now, take the same thing and do it with people who are passionate about their beliefs. You won't see such a quick reversal.

When does a shortage of goods lead to a price cieling being initiated by the government? The only examples I can think of of price cielings are when prices rise, and people don't like it, so an opportunistic politician comes along and takes advantage of peoples' ignorance by calling for locking down prices from rising.

"The opposing party is pretty much an open mafia"

If you think about it, government in general is a mafia: A monopoly on the use of force. At least with the traditional mafia, they take less from you than the government does.

Artificial price cielings cause shortages. There's no free lunch; you don't get to wave a pen and magically lower prices by fiat.

Econ 101

I could say the same for any vacuum cleaner: Take a Dyson and vacuum the floor with it. You'll be amazed at what the Dyson picks up that your other cleaner was leaving behind. --- Huge Dyson convert

The Roomba isn't meant to replace a real vacuum like a Dyson. It can't compare. What a Roomba DOES do is make it so you don't have to vacuum as much. By getting enough of the dirt, you don't vacuum as often. So the way I've always viewed my Roomba is as a device that allows me to vacuum less frequently and for the carpet to be cleaner in between those times.