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2-Year OpenOffice High School Case Study

Posted by Zonk on from the effect-of-penguins-on-young-minds dept.

Michael writes "NewsForge (a Slashdot sister site) is carrying a 2-year OpenOffice case-study on a Detroit high school who switched from Windows NT and MS Office 97 to Linux and OpenOffice. The results? Better than expected. In 2003, the school, who saved over $100,000 in the process, converted 110 Windows NT machines to Linux with OpenOffice. After several surprising developments, including OpenOffice's ability to open old Word documents that even the new Word versions were having troubles with, the school now uses it almost exclusively, has classes on it's use, and encourages students to use it whenever possible. From the article: 'While OpenOffice.org is now used by 100% of the faculty and students in the school (though some administrative staff still uses Microsoft Office due to specific software requirements), students are not required to use OpenOffice.org when working at home. However, a presentation is given to students at the start of every school year to advise them on the use of OpenOffice.org, the availability of free copies, and potential problems of converting from Microsoft Office formats.'"

3 of 472 comments (clear)

  1. Newsforge identified as a sister site ... by xmas2003 · · Score: 1, Troll
    Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen the various /. sister sites explicitely identified before in postings - kudos to the /. editors for the transparency! ;-)

    First Post?

    --
    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
  2. Bullshit. by PsychicX · · Score: 1, Troll

    This is going to be a typical scene of geek masturbation, with a single common theme in mind:

    It worked for me, therefore it must be perfect for everyone in the world

    So it worked for this school. Good for them. Advising the students to use it is questionable, and the inevitable posts in this thread marking any Office user as a hopeless moron are more damaging to OpenOffice's reputation than helpful.

  3. But how much does the training cost? by isa-kuruption · · Score: 0, Troll

    Every year the school has special classes to explain the differences, encourage kids to use it, and explain any problems they may have. How much does this class cost the school? How much time is taken out of fundamental education in order to teach this information? I'm not saying this is bad, but is $100,000 a real figure when you count the continued education needed of the students in order for them to become familiar with OpenOffice?