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OpenOffice vs. MS Office for Education?
dbrian asks: "I work in a large high school district where there will be some discussion on whether or not to purchase another term of 'Software Assurance' for MS Office licenses on thousands of computers. This seems to be an ideal opportunity to promote an alternative such as OpenOffice. It will not be an easy sell, even though OpenOffice should more than satisfy all curricular needs and save the district lots of money; like many other districts we have political and cultural 'challenges'. So, I ask you, have you been successful in moving your education or business organization from MS Office to OpenOffice? What were the pros and cons from your migration? What advice do you have in selling this to tech coordinators and administrators who are not enlightened by Open Source?"
$0 vs $140?
I donno.
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I won't read MS Works files (yes, people still use it sadly enough)....but then again, neither will Word ;)
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Shouldn't that be "A greased up Yoda doll up my ass, I have"?
When it comes to processing cover sheets this is bad bad bad!
Yeah, I know... I have a hell of a time doing my TPS reports in OO.o.
It's quite simple really--I had a discussion with the parents recently (who teach in junior colleges), touting Firefox in education, and the response? "Why force people to learn a non-standard browser? The menu options are all different, etc... You have to download extensions to make it act like IE!"
My opinion: If you are too stupid to adapt from IE to Firefox, you don't need a computer, you need a plow harness.
You got to look on the bright side though. OpenOffice's microsoft office file support is quite a bit better than microsoft office's OpenOffice file support.
The Farewell Tour II
What do you recommend for people who can't spell?
... use Excel like a pseudodatabase ... Word's horribly random ...
/. messages in it? Thanks!
custom grading scripts, tables.
Does Abiword have autocorrect, or at least spellcheck as you go? Can you compose your
Hell with MS Office and OpenOffice. Why not use the opportunity to introduce your students to the use of vi and troff?