arstechnica.com — Becta, the UK's education technology agency, is recommending that schools avoid Microsoft's School Agreement subscription program, citing concerns over the licensing terms and the interoperability of Office 2007.
Oct 26, 2007 View in Crawl 4
localzukOct 27, 2007
Terrible idea, unless it is provided with investment in network infrastructure and support. It may only be $200, but imagine the tech support nightmare that would ensue if the schools didn't have enough tech staff? For example, we have 180 computers in our school, and I am the only tech there. If every child suddenly got computers, this would mean that there were an extra 580 computers!! I would need at least 2 more members of staff to support those numbers.
gigaOct 28, 2007
Sadly, a lot of the powerful software tools in the engineering field are poorly written and do not work on Linux or Vista, only XP. My University does have Linux and XP set up to dual boot on many of the computers, but the Linux installs really only get touched during the software assignments. Linux is getting close to usable for a wide variety of home users, but is not an option for many technical fields.
entropyfanOct 28, 2007
Oh please. Lets go ask everyone who has attempted to switch to Linux in Gov. how much money they have saved, or how on time or happy they are.Ask Munich. Delay after delay, and a 'free' solution that is anything but.And those gov. agencies don't get as deep a discount as educational institutes. On the other side, there are some very good complaints against MS here, and MS needs to address them. The buy out at the end is the biggest
srg13Nov 4, 2007
At school, we had Apple IIe computers... Do you think that I'm at a disadvantage now they're not used? It will be the same story in the future - Microsoft is big now, but by the time kids in primary (elementary) school graduate, things are going to be very different.
ukblacknightNov 6, 2007
When I installed the Beta I hated it. Then I tried it a few months later, and it grew on me quickly. I much prefer the ribbons than the tradition menu layout. It's only hard to use because we're all so used to File, Edit etc. Yeah I have to search around sometimes, but I had to search around horrible menus too the first time i used Office.
ukblacknightNov 6, 2007
You were so spolit as a kid! You used paper and pens! Kids before you had to use chalk and slate, and got their hands whipped if they wrote left handed.Times change, old man.