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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?"
Can't you just do a demo? Call it "microsoft office" and show them the latest features. Then say "oh, by the way, this isn't microsoft office after all. It's a $300 competitor. Then say, "Oh wait. It's not $300 after all. It's free"
That way you kinda ease them into it.
Just a thought.
1. OpenOffice is free, but support may be obtained from a very popular computer company. (Sun Microsystems)
2. OpenOffice fully supports Microsoft Office file formats.
3. OpenOffice can be distributed to students without cost.
4. OpenOffice (and its sister project NeoOffice/J) run on ALL popular OSes, including Macintoshes.
5. OpenOffice is continually updated to have the latest features, again at no cost.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Be sure it it is indeed a viable alternative, it doesn't need to be better as long as it is good enough for that situation.
I work as an administrator/application manager at high school, the point you have to consider when trying to switch is:
Documentation, some teachers probably need to adapt their lessons, are they motivated for that and do they have the experience to make a change for them self?
Why should teachers be motivated to switch? Because it is a moral obligation for non-profit organizations to use product that are more suitable for the common good and not just profitable for a monopoly.
Education should be accessible to all layers of society, even the ones that don't have the money to buy "big bucks office".
So by using open source they aren't forced to use illegal software just to be able to get educated.
But I'm not impressed with Open Office's load times. One of the reasons we aren't moving more people to this particular open source package is that it typically takes 5 times as long to open the Text Document app if you don't have the tasktray icon loading.
So no, we're not planning on moving anyone to Open Office. We have, however, moved a few workstations to Star Office.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
When a kid leaves the school and tries to get a job and says "Yes, I am proficient in OpenOffice", how many employers are going to say "That's great, but we use M$ Office..."
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
I'm a power user and have been using openoffice, and before that staroffice, since 2000. I can't see why kids in a school would need any more than I do. I have access to MS office 2003, yet openoffice, and especially with the promising beta of version 2, remains my choice for now and perhaps a time to come.
The decision-makers will be finance-oriented, not technologists. Keep the "just like MS Office" points at a high level and keep pushing how much money it will save. Worst case, MS radically discounts their sw to play for the block. With either outcome, ther's more money to spend on the students, and that is what it's really all about.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I work as sys admin at a dept. of my University. One of the teachers was having trouble getting a powerpoint to open. It seems she had used Office XP at home to create it, but for some reason Office 2003 at the school would not open it. I opened it with Open Office just fine though....problem solved.
Just because OO isn't always perfectly compatible with Office doesn't mean anything since MS Office isn't even compatible with itself sometimes...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
I know that we cannot use Open Office in our firm because our documents will not open properly there. We have documents that are hundreds of pages of custom work, including our normal.dot files.
...such as being forever locked into their "standard". Welcome to illegal monopoly practice hell.
The issue you're seeing is not relavent in a school environment. Students will regularly start with a blank page, or a template created specifically for the course. They will NOT have three hundred page manuscripts that describe... actually, what the heck DO people put in those 300 page documents? I have never figured that out. The only document I've ever had trouble porting was a resume I did with Word 97. The formatting got screwed up in OpenOffice, but then again it got screwed up in MSOffice 2000 as well. *shrug*
THere are benefits to using industry standard programs...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
What advice do you have in selling this to tech coordinators and administrators who are not enlightened by
Open Source?
Short of "Don't even bother", I'd say that you have your work cut out for you. Undoubtedly these people will be familiar, even comfortable, with MS Office and you will face huge momentum because your target audience probably sees no problems with MS Office. All the benefits of OSS except price will likely fall on deaf ears, so you'd better do your homework and have a very compelling presentation.
I can't offer specifics because I'm not really familiar with OO. In my mind it is self-evident. Office sucks more ways than you can count. Period.
However, you can't make this sell by bad-mouthing Microsoft or Office. Most non-techie people won't see it that way, and in fact will probably have a high opinion of Office since it's all they know. OO can't be just "good enough" to replace Office. It has to be made clear that it is superior... and not in the ways that we computer folks tend to think, but ways that will be convincing to non-technical people. You got a "gimme" on price, but the rest will be a steep hill.
Good luck, I wish you well.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It is difficult for people to go from Open Office > Microsoft Office, but if they start on Microsoft Office they tend to be much more proficient at Open Office as MS Office tended to set the 'standard' for them on how to critically think where things are and such.
Rate me flame bait, but this is honestly what I have found. Take somebody that never used MS Office and only used other products, and put them infront of Word and get them to do something reasonabily complicated, they are lost.
Take the person raised with MS Office and put them infront of OO and they seem to find their way around.
Strange but true! So I have personal reservations about using one or the other in a public (or private) school or body.
Break the problem down into server groups of users:
The ones that just need to write english reports would be well served by Abiword.
The ones that need just a bit more page layout flexability and a good spreadsheet could use OpenOffice.
The 'Power Users' that use Excell like a psudo-database, and have gotten used to Word's horrably random page layout should stay with MS Office. L
So...
Kindergarden through 8th Grade -> Abiword
8th through 12th -> OpenOffice
Normal Teachers -> OpenOffice
Crazy Teachers, Faculty etc with hard to port custom grading scrips, tables and other crap -> MS Office
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
The best way to determine if it's going to work for you is to set up 5-10 machines running OO and have a handful of students work with the program for a bit. Have each student complete a short survey, and you'll quickly identify who uses it best, and where the difficulties lie. Otherwise, many of our comments are heresay. Be sure to take into account all the normal uses students might want, for example: dropping images from the web into a document, printing small charts and graphs, and spellchecking. I'm sure you can think of others. Best of luck...
Guess what?
If the punk brings a wordstar file, to heck with him.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
What were the pros and cons from your migration?
Easy that one:
Case #1: students and/or personel work exclusively with OOo:
* PROS: OOo costs $0 and it's more than adequate
* CONS: None or nearly so
Case #2: student and personel want to exchange file to/from MS Office, to work at home or communicate with other non-OOo organizations:
* PROS: See above
* CONS: plan on commiting suicide soon after deploying OOo, when everybody comes to you and says "this documents looks like @*#& on Word, it's all your fault, it worked before!!"
Since case #2 is prevalent, as much as I enjoy OOo myself, I say stay the hell away from it if you're in any position to be blamed for problems.
Sad, but that's the way it is...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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Shouldn't that be "A greased up Yoda doll up my ass, I have"?
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- It appeals to the "help the community" group by knowing that they are looking out for their teachers.
- It could be used to pressure the school board. "They are sending money to Microsoft rather than to our starving teachers."
- It helps the local economy by keeping the money, well, local.
Oh, and if it gets media attention then the pressure will really be on them. Just my two cents worth."Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
Really want to seem some files that do not import correctly? What about macros?
I used OO at university without problems for a year until I had to take a class that used a macro-filled Excel file. Had to break down and buy the student version of Office. I think macros, especially for heavy Excel users, are the showstopper. A lot of people with complex spreadsheets (sometimes inherited from former employees) are going to be the biggest group of 'No' votes in the article poster's project.
When I got my new laptop in September, I decided to try it with open office instead of MS office. As a graduate student, I deal with LOTS of powerpoint files (both making them and reading others'). I was sincerely disappointed by the experience. First, the files it produced inevitably had formatting errors (if someone else tells you they are fully compatible, they are lying). Graphics tended to display differently, with different color schemes, 'etc. Second, it was so slow as to make it unsuable. On a top-of-the-line Pentium 4, there was a 30-45 second load time for the program, a 10-15 second lag between slides, and a really annoying 1-3 second lag between mouse clicks. After a semester, I gave up and went back to MS office. I'll be staying put until I see these issues resolved.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
MS Office = better on resume
And that's the problem. Employers will usually trade critical thinking, adaptability and just about any other virtue for a little bit of training in some crappy piece of software.
That's the problem with modern business in America. People just want the seats kept warm. More often than not, they have no interest in anything about a person other than keywords on their resume and how little they can get away with paying them.
I know firsthand. I've been told numerous times that my resume doesn't really reflect my skill and experience because I haven't listed every technology or software package I've so much as brushed up against a book on in Barnes & Noble, which apparently is the standard these days.
I made the mistake of writing a resume meant to be read, not just searched for the latest MS kludge of the month buzzword. Of course, the last time I was hired by such an employer, all I did was make them angry by repeatedly demonstrating how clueless they were.
Keywords. Keywords. Keywords. And "MS Office" is one of the big ones. No one cares if you're a halfwit, slacker or a cheat, as long as your resume has the keywords. You'll just be laid off in a year regardless when the next reorg or merger happens.
To most corporations we're all just meat.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Schools are, in general, far better placed than large companies to switch to OPenOffice. That doesn't mean that it is an easy or painless transition, merely that it is a lot easier than it is for corporations to make the move.
Jedidiah.
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Schools don't (or at least shouldn't)pay that much for MS products.
Educational Resources (I believe there is one for each state -- I know there is one for Missouri and Iowa) takes care of schools.
They buy the media (usually betwwn $50 and $200) one time then buy licenses that can range from a few bucks per machine into the $20-$30 range (depending on the software).
If the schools aren't doing this, then the TC's of those schools aren't doing their job properly. There are many district and state related mailing lists that the TC's can get on that will provide this type of information.
I'm not saying that OpenOffice isn't a good thing to switch to -- I use it in the shop. I'm just saying that schools don't spend anywhere near what individuals (and even businesses, unless the business is very large and constantly threatens to go to other software to get a better deal) pay.
bork bork bork!
For example, some documents that are on one page in office might be 2 pages in openoffice.
I've read reports that Microsoft Word is just as bad about precise layout from version to version or even from printer to printer across the same version. Take a document formatted for US Letter paper and print it on A4 paper, and see what doesn't break. If you want pagination to be maintained, use PDF or any of several page-layout formats that represent the document exactly.
Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:
* Download size. Firefox is under 5meg for Windows, OOo is approaching 100meg. Someone on a modem would download Firefox but most likely not OOo.
* "If it ain't broke". People visible see problems in IE thanks to popups, spyware, etc. MSOffice doesn't have the same problem.
* Piracy. IMHO most (home) users of MSOffice get their copy from friends or work, I've not known of too many people to buy it for themselves, even the educational version. With MSOffice perceived to be "free", why bother with something else?
* File formats. MS Office is considered the defacto standard therefore for interoperability reasons a replacement must offer perfect import/export support for its file formats. Public perception also plays a part in this, while OOo's importers have improved these past few years people may still think of what it was like two years ago and not consider re-investigating it.
* Laziness. People are lazy. If they perceive no improvement with changing then why should they put out the effort?
* "Oh-Oh-what?" How many people even *know* about there being alternatives to MSOffice?
Damien
Aside from the "minor," bugs with OOo that this thread is bringing to light, there is another serious consideration as far as interoperability and cross-office compatibility: Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
Before anyone considers a migration from MSO to OOo, you must consider your existing use of VBA; if none at all, no problem. On the other hand, if you have administration using VBA to manage accounting information, and teachers using VBA to manage grades, and students using VBA as part of their curriculum, then OOo is definitely going to be a more expensive solution, at least in the short term.
On the flip side, VBA is one of the major featu^H^H^H^H^Hsecurity concerns; you could try to take that angle if you are using VBA extensively.
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
You obviously haven't USED Outlook. Eudora is light years behind it. Eudora is closer to Outlook Express, that crappy free thing they give away to you. The only program I have used an liked outside of Outlook is Evolution which is what I tend to use in Linux.
Try really digging into Outlook and compare it to Eudora. The interface is a lot cleaner and more refined (especially in Outlooks 2003). The organization capabilities far outway Eudora. Calendar, Tasks, Notes, they all work great and if you have a Windows based PDA you HAVE to use outlook just for all the stuff you lose otherwise. As a PIM it is excellent. Eudora is far from being a true PIM since it has minimal if any real compatibility with either Palm or Outlook.
If you ask the true die hards though which program is the most powerful they'll tell you it is Lotus Notes. Having used Outlook/Exchange, GroupWise, and Lotus in business settings I will state that Lotus is the most powerful probably but it seems to diverge a bit from the norms setup by Outlook and GroupWise (that evil program from Novell).
I haven't used Eudora in ages, so feel free to enlighten me if they have actually added useable Rules, Spam Filtering, and cleaned up what was one of the worlds ugliest interfaces for a long while.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I am the tech coordinator for a very well known LA Charter School. We recently completed a huge expansion project, and now have over 400 PCs on campus. Rather than paying Microsoft and other vendors thousands of dollars, we decided to transition over to a hybrid "Closed/Open Source" software model. That is, we run Windows XP (which came preinstalled on all of our machines), but primarily use F/OSS software otherwise (OpenOffice, GIMP, Anim8or, WorldWind, Celestia, etc). Doing so resulted in huge savings for the tech portion of our capital campaign, and (as others have mentioned), we're able to freely share all of our application software with our staff and students without worrying about copyright issues. It is with great rarity that anyone "complains" that we're using a non-MS office suite...
There is a very simple process that you can follow to introduce most new technologies to an environment. To introduce OpenOffice to the school I would expect it to take about 2 semesters to achieve success using this method.
1. First thing you have to do is find a teacher who will be supportive of your efforts. It's best of the person has been around for a while and has respect among the other teachers and decision makers. You have to convince this one person to give Open Office a try. Once you've done this you have someone who will help you meet your goals.
2. Your teacher is convinced that they should use open office. Great, now you have to get them to introduce it to their students. It's easier to get approval to do a trial run than make a permanent change. So ask the teacher to run with open office for one of their classes for an entire semester. This will give both the teacher, the students and yourself some really good experience with using open office in this particular environment.
3. If the trial when well, it's time to tell a few people about what you've done. Find a couple more teachers who would be open to the idea of a non-ms office suite. With the help of your champion teacher tell this new group of teachers what you've done. Tell them about all the success you had and the problems you had and how you dealt with the problems. Problems are OK to have, so long as you have a way to deal with them.
4. Now maybe you have a half dozen teachers that are ready to try using open office. Get them all to run trials in one of their classes. You've now run 7 or so trials of open office. You have lots of real word data to build a case with now.
5. Now you have to introduce the idea to the executives and decision makers. Make nice reports with lots of graphs and pictures. Make nice presentations for them to view. Get your teacher friends to help you explain to the decision makers why open office is a good choice. Explain to them that you've already ran trials and they were successful. Detail the problems that you ran into and how you solved them.
6. Don't buy any more copies of MS office.
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You might also discuss the legal and policy importance of procuring software using open file format standards, a subject discussed at length in the article. Microsoft Office's XML Reference Schemas, because of an overly-restrictive patent license, do not satisfy such requirements, which are critical to software interoperability in eCommerce and eGovernment. OpenOffice file formats do not suffer from that vulnerability.
There is also the important issue of vendor lock-in. OpenOffice, being cross-platform, is a giant step in the direction of freeing organizations from the necessity of using a proprietary operating system. Moreover, even should the school ultimately decide to continue using the Windows platform and Microsoft Office, it can likely receive a far lower bid from a MS Office vendor by using a specification that would allow selection of OpenOffice.
Drafting government specifications in such a way that only one vendor can supply the procured product, particularly in a time of shrinking government budgets, is wasteful and anti-competitive. You might consider developing or requesting an estimated cost comparison, using the previous MS Office licensing cost as the base. A substantial savings is likely, freeing funds for other purposes.
Above all else - BE HONEST. Let them know what shortcomings exist with OOo and how to address them. I wouldn't try some stunt like fooling them into believing it was MS Office (PHB's HATE that sort of display because it makes them feel foolish); however I *would* compare them side by side in something like 'Impress' and then conclude the slideshow by saying that it was prepared using OOo.
.DOC is NOT a standard! Prove it to them with examples. Not every student at home has office - some have Works and thanks to Dell, some have NEW versions of Wordperfect (go figure). Standardizing on OOo (or StarOffice for support in-school) is a way of circumventing this without stepping on a lot of toes. In fact, OOo now imports WP/.DOC as well as exports in Flash, .DOC, and .PDF (a real standard). Compare this to MS Office and OOo becomes more compelling.
.DOC as the U.S. OOo revels in it's worldwide usability.
.DOC documents. Use examples from your school and be truthful with them. If something breaks, be honest about it. To this end, do use 2.0 because it now supports tables in tables (required for decent .DOC compatibility). HINT: 2.0 hasn't broken a single .DOC here yet! Yay!
.DOC was in the minority. Use your own school's history if you can. Example: Before we standardized on OOo we had Word: XP/2000/97/95/DOS, Wordperfect Win/DOS, XYwrite, Notepad, Edit (yes, I'm serious), and a few others I can't remember. All this in only the last 10 years!
.DOC is not a standard. It varies between versions and changes at MS's whim. Some administrators may remember a row with Office '95 - a truly horrible version for those who are in the least concerned about compatibility.
.DOC is damn good now.
Here's some more things you can do:
1) Demo it by giving it away to those who are making decisions as well as to the teachers. Before OOo 2.0 I would have said not to because of installation hassles, but even the 2.0 beta makes this a thing of the past. Be prepared to answer questions on usage and comparisons to MS Office. I would recommend using 2.0 beta since it's release is imminent and it is far more polished.
If you can wait, I'd wait until The OpenCD w/2.0 OOo is finished before handing them out, but if you can't, then by all means give them the beta anyway.
2)
3) International concerns? Some private schools wrestle with the fact that Word 2000 in Asia and elsewhere, does not produce the same
4) Prove compatibility with existing MS
5) Use the past to point to the future. Point out that there was a time back in the 'elden days' of computing where
Remember this mantra:
Mayhap some of your administrator's remember a conversion process long ago with Wordperfect or some other format. Remind them that this process would not exist for OOo for two reasons:
a) Import of
b) Export of pure XML data is assured with OOo.
And finally, mention that it's FREE. Better still, preface this with the fact that StarOffice's terms for schools are outragiously good. Tell them that in standardizing to OOo, your teachers, administrators, students, parents, whoever wnats a copy from the library (you DO have some in there, right?), can have it free of charge. Remember: 'Free' should be the LAST thing you mention, not the first.
Let them know how the world is changing. Show them examples of who and where OOo is already being used full time. Convince them that they could grasp the brass ring before most others have. After all, isn't embracing new technology and learning new things what education is about?
Again, be honest about what OOo can do for you, and how it will improve compatibility and document longevity. You can win this battle (I did at Linden Hall School), but you have to 'sell it' for the right reasons and be prepared to help in the transition.
Good luck!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I used to teach computer skills at a college level (Intro to Computer-Aided Engineering), and we didn't bother with a textbook for that reason. What we did was present them with a finished product, some useful tips (e.g., Need to change font color? Look under Format...), and then turned the students loose. It was my job to assist as they worked, and generally make sure that everyone was on track. If they had questions, I would generally say something like, "I don't know, but let's see if we can find it." The fact that I, the authority figure, also had to look for things really drove home that using software is just remembering simple rules, not remembering how to do everything in every program. I even got a nomination for the department's 'Teacher of the Year' award (not that I was elligible, being a TA and all) from someone in that class.
Of course, as we got into more complicated software packages, I had to teach them the basics of programming, Finite Element Analysis, and drafting as well, but by that time, most of the students had picked up on the fact that if they looked, they would find it.
I've heard that idiotic argument used before. The fallacy is that kids should be taught how to use specific applications that they'll find "in the real world." Wrong! They should be taught about how to use and truly understand computer technology. By the time kids in high school now are graduating from college and getting their first real jobs, MS Office may well be a thing of the past. Honestly.. do you think in 5-8 years that OpenOffice.org will not be just a tad more attractive to businesses? (or some other project if not OO.org) Or how about modern web-based document management / production systems that eschew the silly, outdated "word processing" concept that keeps today's businesses tied to inefficient workflows and excessive paper waste.
And before you say, "Yeah, but what will they need to use in college?" consider what you used in college. Was there anything that OO.org in its current imperfect state could not handle perfectly well? Typing essays and reports? Including a simple table or chart of your chem lab results?
The problem with most schools is that they focus all their energy and resources in providing students with the "best" facilities, equipment, etc. and then miss the whole point of properly educating with an eye on the future.