News Schools warned away from Microsoft

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/10/29/virtual_worlds_destorying_values_/1

Becta, the UK computer agency for the government, is advising schools to stay away from Microsoft software due to licensing problems with both Vista and Office 2007.

 

You may want to link the correct thread to the article, it currently points to the one about the shoe mod.

 

The link in the news post links to some random thread not this one

 

That link directs use to "Virtual worlds destroying values?" article.

Anyway, what are they suggesting schools use instead??? Lotus??

 

We used the venerable system 6 back in the day moving to system 7 in 5th year.
"Any machine capable of running the software" so would that mean any Intel macs would need Vista licences even if they only ran OSX?

 

They are just suggesting schools outright buy licenses instead of taking the education site license as it's a bit of a con.

 

MS are just being on the safe side. If a school hsa 300 PCs, and only 10 Office licenses.. what would stop the school installing those 10, 30 times each? The EDU license is actually quite good for schools in the UK.. as are the products you get from them.

Any secondary school doing CompSci or IT GCSEs or ALevels will need Office and VS.Net .. else it will just fail. Plus, home pcs come with office etc... so it would be asking all the home users to download openoffice/gimp/eclipse etc etc.. which may a) not be possible b) is just stupid c) would add to incompatibilities that people won't know how to fix.

All in all, a stupid idea. Up MS!

 

Apple 2

I'd love to see schools go to Linux & Open Office (or even Windows & Open Office) - I bet MS would start giving software to schools just to keep the momentum Office has.

 

I started with dos. It was great it did what i told nothing more nothing less. I didn't have to turn off a lot background garbage or services I didn't use. Things simply turned on when I told them to and off when they were done. Ah for the days when only people that knew what they were doing used computers. Anyways I think this is a good move MS continually rapes schools with their current licensing plan. As far as compatibility simply teach the students how to save in a office friendly format it is built into open office can't speak for the other alternatives.

 

We've got Vista Bussiness and Office '07 running on the school PC's.

P4 + 512Mb + Vista = Hour Glass of death!

 

Tyinsar has the answer:

Obvious, really.

 

This is one of the rare instances where I stray from the capitalist manifesto. Bill needs to go tell his lawyers to remove thier heads from thier backsides and cut the schools a serious, realistic deal. It is way too Monday for me to come up with such a plan, but say X number of licences per 100 students. Period. I don't know how the subscription method mentioned works, but I can almost guarantee it sucks and is poorly managed on both ends of the deal.

If M$ refuses, the schools need to get over their technophobia and move to Linux or OSX. Windows is not the only game in town, and they need to be reminded of that.

Side note, our Apple IIe and IIc at school ran DOS. Green screens, giant black floppy disks, the whole nine yards.

 

Not many Home PC's come with MS Office (usually it's MS Works that gets bundled, which is no substitute really).
I find it strange (read annoying) that the Home/Student pack doesn't include Access.

 

QFT.

Our secondary school (computers did not yet exist when I was in primary school) obtained three Commodore CBM 4032 machines with casette tape loaders, later joined by three Commodore CBM 8032 machines. Built like tanks, they actually had a couple of decent BASIC games for them. Ah, the memories...

 

Now those are some proper PC's!

 

since the link wasn't fixed and since bit uses a naming convention for their articles...here's the actual link
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/10/29/schools_warned_away_from_microsoft/1

 

Us too... it's pretty cool, and Areo is ON! So far I fell into no issues.
They installed it on Dell built computers
- Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz
- 2GB of RAM
- Intel integrated graphics