What is Digg?124 Comments
- dregin, on 11/04/2007, -8/+33You could just use open office to write your word document. It's free. As in beer. Can't get much better than that, discount-wise.
http://www.openoffice.org/ - lemur, on 11/04/2007, -2/+27Student licenses for Office are dirt cheap; it's already being sold to you at a "discount." Lots of evil software companies do this--they practically give their software away to education so that later on professionals will pay anything to get that same software.
- jer2eydevil88, on 11/04/2007, -1/+13They sell Microsoft products for next to nothing on my campus.
$5 for a copy of Windows XP Pro or Vista Enterprise
$6 for a copy of Office 2003 or 2007 Professional
And its totally legit but you can only purchase one a year and they watch ebay at all times for these types of media. - dark1587, on 11/04/2007, -3/+14The way that Microsoft does licensing in this case does not give me that warm fuzzy feeling.
According to another article I've read, Microsoft requires that the school pays a yearly subscription fee, in which the schools can use Microsoft software without purchasing actual licenses. If the school leaves the contract for any reason, the must pay a buy-out fee to purchase the actual licenses. That buy-out fee is determined when the school leaves the contract.
So Microsoft starts a dependence on its software, and then makes it very tough (i.e. expensive) to leave. This is where the anti-competitive complaint is coming from, and I think it's pretty justified. - anyonomous, on 10/29/2007, -17/+28Finally, this should of happended years ago. This gets my digg
- localzuk, on 11/04/2007, -2/+12Yes, lets pay tax money to hand it to private corporations... Or should that money go on books, teachers and equipment that is actually worth spending the money on?
- hmunkey, on 11/04/2007, -4/+11In all fairness, to the British government, it is anti-competitive to bundle anything in with any OS. This includes Windows Media Player, Word, or any other piece of software that could have competitors.
Please don't Digg me down if you're a fanboy, I don't really like MS anyways, but I'm just putting the facts out there. - dregin, on 11/04/2007, -3/+10ubutnu isn't a company.... neither is ubuntu.
- aiten, on 11/04/2007, -6/+13I'm not part of any Strategic Alliance, and I get [sic]metric *****[/sic] of open-source software for free.
-10 points for Microsoft. - keyboardashtray, on 11/05/2007, -1/+7Tell me about it! Leave it to those open-source free-software fat-cats with their legions of lawyers and bottomless bank accounts to bribe some unscrupulous school agency official into abandoning their trustworthy and loyal Windows for the heartless one-size-fits all OS approach of the Redhat and Ubutnu juggernauts. Meanwhile the real mom-and-pops like Microsoft are left to compete in a cold corporate environment where competition is stifled and government contracts go not to those with the best product but the most politicians in their pocket. It makes me sick.
- InternetCeleb, on 11/04/2007, -12/+18My Uni is part of the MSDN Academic Alliance, and because of my course I get metric ***** of free MS software.
+5 points for Microsoft on this one. - nazadus, on 11/04/2007, -0/+6I'm curious...
What if the school were to not pay that fee?
What would Microsoft do? Sue them? But if the courts already decided they are anti-competitive -- how can Microsoft win on that one? - jdowland, on 10/29/2007, -1/+7I hope this happens in the USA soon.
Now if the government would warn BBC about the "Windows-only" status of some of their content... - Jio666, on 11/04/2007, -3/+9It is news to people living in the UK.
- LingNoi, on 11/04/2007, -0/+6PDF or print it
- aiten, on 11/04/2007, -3/+8Yeah. Stick with windows, who have never paid anyone off for anything... ahem.
No but you're right. Stick with windows because you're an ignorant *****. - briLo, on 11/04/2007, -2/+7What about the $7 dollar price tag for many pieces of software??!?!? Sure OpenOffice is free, usable and deploys across different platforms, but is it where Office is?? Can I replace Outlook, SharePoint, and Visio within OpenOffice?
OpenOffice is at a level where it's usable and friendly, but it's not at a stage where it can be deployed with the usability in the corporate enviornment where 95% of college students are headed. - Onyxblaze, on 11/04/2007, -5/+9Still doesn't have anywhere near 100% compatibility... It does work for writing a simple paper, but don't even think about it if you want special layouts etc...
- hmunkey, on 11/04/2007, -1/+5Instead of $200 for a 15 computer license, you pay $50. That IS a deal.
- rnreekez, on 11/04/2007, -0/+4Don't be such a drama queen. For students, they offer office for five bucks and most other software they'll give you for 5 bucks a cd. So a suite like visual studio woulrd run about 15.
- growler1, on 11/04/2007, -1/+5"Screw that. When my professor expects a report written in Word, I better get a discount for it."
--As a professor myself, I don't really care what students type their work on/in. It only becomes an issue when they send me work as attachments in email, and that's only an issue because of a certain company's closed document format--recently re-envisioned and re-enforced with .docx
A lot of my colleagues are ignorant insofar as the tech aspects of it, but as for me, I'm for open document format. In the meantime, I tell students to save and send as .rtf - dlsspy, on 11/04/2007, -1/+5When I was in school, companies used wordperfect. What companies use today should have no bearing on what we use to teach our kids.
If the kids are idiots, it's *because* we focus on following the corporate world instead of teaching fundamentals. - localzuk, on 11/04/2007, -0/+4Indeed! The dependence and buy out issue is what is the problem here. It would cost us an absolute fortune to get out of our MS School Agreement at school - because we are hooked into Office.
- rald84, on 10/29/2007, -1/+5this sounds suspiciously like what cell phone companies do with their multi-year plans. one of who's partner is ... apple! but no, people who complain about apple have signed a contract and should honor it.
- localzuk, on 11/04/2007, -0/+3Hahahaha!!!! Sorry but Becta signed a huge deal with Microsoft a while back (into the hundreds of millions of pounds)... And the other 2 are free...
- mrurc, on 10/29/2007, -1/+4I don't understand why the article says "alleged anti-competitive practices" when the European Union has a legal judgment against MS for anti-competitive practices and the UK is a member of the European Union. I mean, unless the guy who made the recommendation is alleging new anti-competitive practices.
- BlueSkyfish, on 11/04/2007, -4/+7Instead of paying $500 for word on each computer, they only have to pay $200. What a deal!
- localzuk, on 11/04/2007, -1/+4How about we try some real numbers? 180 computers, Windows, Office, Server CALS, Encarta, 6 server 2k3 licenses and ISA 2006 - £5000 a year. Thats $10,000 to Americans. That is a *huge* amount of money to a school.
- houndeyex, on 11/04/2007, -1/+4And it works.
- aiten, on 10/29/2007, -8/+11OpenOffice contains 95% of the functionality of Microsoft Office, as verified by Microsoft themselves. Why should schools pay for Microsoft Office when they can get OpenOffice for free. The money saved can be put towards something else.
- dark1587, on 10/29/2007, -1/+4More from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/70637 ... - hmunkey, on 11/04/2007, -5/+8First of all, no it shouldn't have. Second of all, read this: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/couldof.htm ...
- solidsnake1298, on 10/28/2007, -0/+3Even if the school wasn't watching, Microsoft is. The EULA specifically says that you can't sell it.
- dude187, on 10/29/2007, -0/+3Very typical. It's not evil if apple does it...
- LingNoi, on 11/04/2007, -1/+4lucky for you. At my English uni it costs £100 or $205
- KloroFormd, on 10/29/2007, -1/+4Run Mac programs on Windows. Is it buggy? No, it just flat out doesn't work. Run programs actually compiled for the OS, and everything works great. This argument is terrible...
Also: I don't agree with solarwind either. Can you imagine trying to teach all the teachers in a school how to do anything in Linux? Calling the tech guy to ask why they can't get Windows apps running... - localzuk, on 11/04/2007, -0/+3There have been several schools in the UK who have been fined for not having the correct licensing in place. This also leads to headteachers being given the sack too...
- jdowland, on 11/04/2007, -2/+5Linux is not a toy. Linux powers the fastest supercomputers in the world. It powers most Web sites, including Google. On the desktop it works great. I use it for work full time and could never go back to clunky Windows XP (2001) or buggy Windows Vi$ta.
- Nossie, on 10/28/2007, -0/+2which is still a hell of a lot better than retail no?
- UltimateFerg, on 10/28/2007, -4/+6It's talking about schools...
- hmunkey, on 11/04/2007, -6/+8...what? Gates is the single largest philanthropist of all time...
- localzuk, on 11/04/2007, -1/+3$7? No school in the UK would get that price for office!
- LingNoi, on 10/29/2007, -2/+4Waste of tax payers money. If the government switched to open source solutions or some kind of roll out plan they'd save BILLIONS of pounds.
[quote]The parliamentary report said Beaumont hospital in Dublin had projected savings of €8m (£5.3m) from the use of open source by eliminating software licensing costs for an x-ray system and giving it the ability to re-use hardware.[/quote]
Five mil saved from just one hospital..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/jun/28/ [digg broke the link] egovernment.politics - mithrasinvictus, on 10/29/2007, -0/+2Office is not for DTP.
If you need to send a pixel perfect document and you don't know whether the recipient has the EXACT same office version as you, print it to a pdf printer instead and send that. - strangewill, on 11/04/2007, -0/+2So Linux is anti-competitive and OSX? They both bundle software that could otherwise be sold by companies...
- jdowland, on 10/28/2007, -0/+2Don't the schools pay for it though? It's not free.
- localzuk, on 10/28/2007, -0/+2Why am I getting dugg down? I work in a school, and know what the prices are in schools... $7 is £3.50. We pay around £11 for an office license. Which on 180 machines is nearly £2000...
- Nossie, on 10/28/2007, -0/+2he is retiring this year/early next year. still 'works' there tho
- mrurc, on 10/28/2007, -0/+2Yeah, that's why the European Union, of which the UK is a member, has a legal judgment against MS for being anti-competitive for bundling stuff with Windows. There is also a legal judgment against them for that in the US. Oh, and the legal judgments are not for bundling things that could have competitors but things which used to and those are no longer viable because MS's version is bundled.
I think you have a different definition of "facts" than the courts do. - mjPayne, on 10/29/2007, -0/+2First injection is always free.
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