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A College Without Microsoft?
An anonymous reader asks: "My grandfather is the president of a well-known undergraduate-only college of about 7,000 students. He tells me that an alumnus has agreed to donate $2.4 million initially (and up to $800,000 each succeeding year for 10 years) to the school for computer equipment and staff if the school agrees not to renew any contract and to buy no products or services (either directly or through an intermediary like Gateway) from Microsoft. I'm told that this isn't the enormous amount of money that it sounds like and that a change-over to non-Microsoft products would be costly. I think it'd be great for college students to use computers apart from Microsoft, but I'm told that the board will look at the decision in terms of cost, not for benefit to the students. Does the Slashdot community have any points that I can give my grandfather to present to the Board next month?"
My university, New Mexico State University, has it's entire Computer Science department running Linux. We don't use any Microsoft programs at all for our CS dept. We use it in just about every other dept (Journalism has Macs, if I recall correctly)
I think it's very nice. It gets us out of programming for just the Microsoft world, but a lot of students are upset because we're learning nothing about VisualStudio and stuff, which is what "we'll be using in the real world"
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
It seems to me that a college without Microsoft is just as bad, or worse than one without Linux.
Lets just ignore for a moment that certain software is only available from microsoft - or at least that there are no comparible products from other supplilers.
By having no microsoft you are forcing everyone into the same mindset. Microsoft is the predominant software supplier, but that does not make their products necesarily bad.
University's are there to broaden knowledge, not to stifle it. This seems to me like a great way to stifle knowledge, and restrict achademic freedom.
I have been in the Linux community since the MINIX days, so I am not a Microsoft lover. I just feel that diversity is needed, rather than uniformity
doing fine. The school I went to only taught on unix/solaris/linux. We never once used Visual C++, Visual Basic, etc... I have a job and am doing fine. It doesn't matter what system you learn on, other than GUI programming, or even what language for the most part. I can pick up a new language very quickly, because it's just syntax, the actual design and architecture of your program is what matters.
The extra cost savings over the 10-year period (not renewing/upgrading Windows, Office, no Windows viruses, etc) should also be factored in.
Not only will they have a lower TCO, but they're getting paid $$$ on top if it.
Is an additional $450 per student per year not enough to finance a migration away from not all proprietary software but just from MS?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.