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UK Schools At Risk of Microsoft Lock-In
Robert writes "UK schools and colleges that have signed up to Microsoft Corp's academic licensing programs face the significant potential of being locked in to the company's software, according to an interim review by Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in education. The report also states that most establishments surveyed do not believe that Microsoft's licensing agreements provide value for money." In a separate report, Becta offered the opinion that schools should avoid Vista for at least another year, since neither Vista nor Office 2007 offers any compelling reasons for schools to upgrade.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
These features aren't compelling?!
Another problem is that the "dynamic network tuning" will not work with all routers and switches, causing a massive increase in cost to replace the network hardware.
ALL schools, or in fact anyone who signs an über-licensing agreement with MS are at risk for "lock in", especially if you define "lock in" as being "we spent all our money on products from company X, so we have none left to buy products from company Y".
How is this even news? What's next, if you spend a dollar today, you don't have a dollar tomorrow?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A lot of schools cant afford to 'upgrade' anyway. Thats why they still have apple ]['s.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...is that large government agencies that analyze and drive policies are recognizing this as a risk with substantial potential costs.
Remember what Apple did with giving away free macs to schools so that kids used that at an early age and were familiar with them instead and thus wanted them at home? I bet Microsoft will do the same for Vista in schools everywhere but this time, instead kids won't say "aww that's cool!" they'd probably say things more like "why the hell is this taking 10 minutes to boot" (we say that at my college already) and "oh look, the IT people let us be able to do this!" since nobody's extremely familiar with all the things you have to do to Vista to make them middle school kids with technicial skills proof lol. So yeah, there's compelling reasons for Microsoft to get schools to upgrade to Vista and lock em in with a license but there's definitely tons of reasons for schools to not upgrade. And of course it's a massive waste of money that could be better spent anywhere else in the school
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Another reason all these legal settlements have which are supposed to punish Microsoft by making them provide schools with free software actually only help the company's profits in the end. It's essentially saying, "In response to your anti-competitive practices, please be to sole provider of software to our nation's schools."
-b.
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I doubt that Windows will be as popular in 10 years as it is now. That's just the way of things - new technologies come around and old empires decline. Windows is an overcomplicated, bloated, resource-hogging OS any way you look at it. Also, Windows isn't the best OS to teach programming on because of its complexity.
-b.
All the school systems in my area use Macs. Even though there's less flexability in software, they are safer. I would say as a rule not to make deals with MS, as Apple is not ruthless to my knowledge. It's good that they're not switching to all the new products, but they should open their horizons. Microsoft is money-hungry in general, so shame to the people who didn't know that. Do the math and Microsoft just sucks out money. DON'T MAKE ANOTHER DEAL! Macs come with helpful software, so that's a plus that they should've considered. Free>corrupt contracts with tricky math.
HAHAHA
Thanks, I needed a noon laugh attack.
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Now you are talking about locking in your HARDWARE, which costs more than your software...
Hooray!
Common sense arrives at last. It's only taken more than a decade! Now, could we possibly do something about the actual REAL problem, being the Research Machines monopoly over just about every government contract to do with schools and the majority of the school market in the UK despite their poor support, substandard hardware, astronomical pricing and hard-sales tactics and MS-only policies that thus reinforce the MS monopoly?
(If you didn't already guess, I work in schools within the UK).
Thank you for posting the most amazingly stupid completely irrevelant thing i've read today.
Granted it's only noon. But i think you won.
It's an issue because instead of teaching a set of tools for general ICT use, you'd be teaching how to use specific instances of Microsoft software. In general, we attempt to teach a range of skills which are applicable to all systems - the general computing ideas that enable slashdot-types to sit down with Mac, Linux or Windows and have at least a general idea of how to do something. Often, the best teaching platform isn't Windows. Sadly, it's what we usually have.
ICT teaching is more than learning how to use Microsoft Office. It's about modelling, problem solving, that kind of stuff. Done correctly, using Office isn't a problem, and neither is using Open Office, Textease, Tizzy's First Tools or any of the other myriad software programs UK schools make use of on a daily basis.
That's exactly what I think. The time for the Windows era to come to an end is nigh.
The only remaining question is will Windows' successor be Mac OS X or Linux, or will we (finally) evolve to the point that the choice of platform no longer matters.
I'm betting on the latter, myself.
My blog
It's okay dude. Telling the truth will often get you modded as a troll here.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I vote for "none of the above - it hasn't been developed yet." All three popular systems are based on underlying structures that are getting to be very long in the tooth.
-b.
...And I fail to see how this hasn't already happened.
:p)
Props to Becta for doing such a study. They're a good thing and I like what they do for educational IT. However, we're already locked into Microsoft on the client side.
All applications that our kids use will only work on Windows. Office is the "standard" that they all get taught (yes, I've put OpenOffice on - without teachers wanting to use it, Office is the only thing used). The educational applications that they use every day will only run on Windows (and some maybe on OSX, but we're not rich enough to afford Macs, I'm afraid.)
The licensing agreements are alright - we're looking at about £28/workstation/year for ~450 machines, which is just over £12k/year for licensing. While that is a nasty chunk of money, it means we're entitled to the latest and greatest on release - as such, I've got Office 2007 and Vista on my work laptop giving them a whirl.
Wine! I hear you say Wine! Sorry, no go. We cannot risk apps not working because Wine doesn't support them fully. The teachers would eat my testicles for dinner - it's bad enough dealing with the poorly written educational software as it is, nevermind dealing with Wine on top of that.
There isn't enough scope in the Curriculum to let kids even learn about alternative operating systems. I use Linux at home exclusively for desktop use, yet at work we're using 450ish XP clients, 5 Windows-based servers and 1 Linux server (for internet caching/filtering). It annoys me that there isn't much I can do personally to let them know there are alternatives out there without running my own after school class or something, which I can't see many people wanting to attend (and I'm not the teaching type).
As for the upgrade thing - don't we know it. Office 2007 rollout isn't going to happen before September, if not 2008 (getting the teachers to put time in learning the new interface so they can teach the kids is the hard part!). Vista probably 2009 at the earliest - depending on what incompatibilites we'll come across during testing.
All in all, unless you get the application developers to start making things cross platform, we can't move to Linux/[other alternative], and until people start moving to Linux application developers won't develop applications for it! Chicken and egg problem.*
(* - I know this was solved!
It sure is nice how you guys stand by the US economy. I may not use Microsoft products myself; but having mutual funds that invested in Microsoft and Cisco (as the parent pointed out) it sure is nice to see someone paying them enormous prices for products where better alternatives are free.
If only the rest of the EU and China and Latin America would be as generous as you our economy would be in great shape forever.
In actual fact, you would end up with better windows users if they were exposed to *nix first. At least they'd be able to think for themselves.
As the parent of 3 children in the Scottish school system (which is substantially different from the system in England and Wales) I can confirm that M$ has a strangle hold on education in my country. A couple of years ago I sent a detailed letter expressing my concerns to the local director of education. After some time I received a considered response saying that M$ is the only game in town and that alternatives are irrelevant at best. Some of the phrasing in this letter I recognised from previous /. stories concerning M$ FUD, I suspect that the director of education contacted her IT dept. who in turn contacted their software vendor (M$) seeking reasons to justify the status quo.
Personally I blame the IT staff who tend to be very M$ centric and in the business for the perceived financial rewards rather than the love of IT itself. They will never recommend the use of something they don't understand as they will have to retrain and/or find themselves looking for another job. Windows as we know it is on the way out, in a decade or so it will no longer have a monopoly on the desktop or anywhere else.
It is my belief that teaching 'The Windows way' is harmful to my children's education, they would be much better served by learning software that conforms to true standards and that fosters a real understanding of the principles involved in IT rather than simple button clicking. I run Linux exclusively at home (I've been Windows free since ME), my daughters both understand IT well and rarely have to come to me for help with their web pages or anything else. They have both avoided studying IT subjects at school as they view the IT syllabus as 'A joke', their words, not mine.
Give me a break. If the shoe were on the other foot it would be "UK Schools embrace Linux as desktop standard."
In my last years of my old school they'd just finished throwing out around 300 perfectly functional 512K Macs and 2 rooms of Acorn computers, for a few hundred Pentium 2s running Win2k.
On a good day the Windows machines "only" took 10 minutes to thrash their way to a login screen, 5 to get past the login screen and another 5 to go quiet. Until you tried to move the mouse. And the right mouse button was permanently disabled in explorer.exe, apparently for "security".
When I'd left they were already halfway through replacing all the hardware because of constant complaints that apps like MS Office took 10 minutes (not kidding) to open. And close. Most people didn't bother logging out because of that, and you can imagine the fun that resulted.
Then I got dumped with more of the same in college... *sigh*
Personally, I think we're going to soon see the decline of traditional operating systems as we see the rise of ubiquitous broadband connectivity in the consumer space. Once broadband becomes more commonplace (and I mean available most places including the rural areas) we're going to see the true promise of software as a service come true. When everything lives on the Internet, how you access it becomes unimportant.
Is this because we finally paid off the lend/lease debt?
Create a mainstream branch of Linux for the home, small business and educational user. Drop names like Ubuntu and BSD in favor of something that sounds more common. Make the install process a no-brainer (downloading missing Linux drivers automatically off the internet for example). Give it a UI that is clean, easy to use and reasonably modern in its aesthetics. Bundle the install DVD with a printed how-to manual or "getting started" tutorial videos. Give the install packs reasonable version numbers (1.0, 1.5 and so forth).
Windows 3.1 was released in 1993 (1.0 was 1987); it's been 13 years (20 if you count from 1.0) and Windows is still around, Microsoft Corp has gotten bigger, and more versions are being released. Granted, we don't know what toll Vista and content protection are going to take on all the players (Microsoft, Apple, Linux, businesses, home users, media corporations, etc.); we'll just have to wait and see what plays out.
People complain of how horrid Windows is, but it is still around, and Microsoft is still growing and even branching into new areas (Xbox, Xbox Live, Zune, Windows Live). It doesn't really matter what you think of the corporation or of the product; the fact is that Windows is a major software OS and programming for it can be big business; people know that Microsoft is a major player, has a lot of stock in business applications, and are going to want to go that route in programming. Sure, there are easier (and better) platforms to program for, and you can get paid a lot for them as well, but Windows is a big product and programming for it is big money, if only for support reasons.
People could be right: Vista could be the thing that kills MS, but other OS's have been bad (95, Me) and MS is still going. Up and coming programmers are going to gravitate to what is familliar, what is widely used, and where they think they can get a job (including location, company benefits, proximity to relatives, paycheck). Some will choose to program for some non-MS OS, but many will continue to be drawn to it.
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
The specious argument is that windows is what is used in the real world, conveniently ignoring the fact that if employees were trained on another system that would swiftly change for the better. Why is there no supported linux distro targeting the classroom?
Dead on. I was just going to say the same thing, but you beat me to it.
:)). When she was at my place and needed to check something on the internet, she just sat down and did it. She didn't even think about the fact that this wasn't familiar until she had already fired up Firefox. She knew nothing about Linux prior to this, but when you sit down at the screen and you see "Applications" menu, and under that menu, there's an "Internet" menu, and in that menu, there's a web browser that you know and love from Windows (Firefox), there is nothing really to think about. The transition to OpenOffice was seemless as well. She uses it full time, yet I have never given her any kind of training in it. It's all there, it's just a matter of finding out where, and that only takes about 2 seconds of your time.
I'd like to add, though, that far too often, those who were given specific training in something like MS Office, are completely lost when they are introduced to anything else. For example, Lotus Notes vs. MS Outlook. On job postings for a lot of administrative type jobs, you see "Must be proficient in " An applicant who was tought specifically how to do Outlook, will not even apply to a job that asks for Lotus. The idea that they are both just basically the same thing doesn't really stick. The same goes for any other piece of software. Operating systems are a good example, because I have observed the use of all 3 by n00bs. It's mostly a fear factor than anything really. I use Linux, the girlfriend used Windows (not anymore
The bean counters only reinforce the fear factor. They reason that we must teach our kids on the same thing they will be using in the "real world." Unfortunately, you are only creating a robot, who is programmed to do one thing and cannot think and learn for itself.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
That won't fly in the corporate marketplace. Companies want their data "on-site". "On-site" == control and privacy, unlike uploading it to some server who-knows-where. Sometimes laws even mandate on-site data retention. I think that we'll see *some* software-as-a-service, but no one wants a return to the bad old days of all software running on a mainframe connected to lots of dumb terminals (only this time around, the mainframes will be even more centralized).
-b.
I am inclined to say: it serves them right. They wanted to save a couple of $ and
nobody ever gets fired for buying microsoft. Well, suck it up and take it like
a man then. If problems come from it, well though luck, just had to thought of that
a bit earlier.
Personally i hope that they run in a shitload of problems and vendor lockin trouble.
Not to bash Microsoft, i always try to avoid doing that. But to make them aware that
there are other choices that can be made.
Being an opensource guy myself and the only way for some people to learn is to hit rock
bottem first, and then crawl back up again.
just 2 cts.
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
Exactly.
The real difference here is between a vocational/technical school for office workers or secretaries and a real liberal arts education. There's nothing inherently wrong with courses on how to use Office (or any other particular software application), but that's not what most education is supposed to be about, especially not before there's separate tracks kids can choose between vo/tec and "regular".
The same problem can be seen in higher education, at least in the US, particularly in realms like Computer Science. Rather than teaching people how to be real scientists who're focused on computers, they're producing programmers. Programming is clearly an important skill for many of these people, but it's not the same thing. Universities teach intro programming courses now in Java or C++ because those are the marketable things; never mind the fact that they're abysmal teaching languages. Folks who recommend teaching intro courses in C or Smalltalk or whatever are laughed at because those languages aren't "practical".
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
My daughter started [primary] school just last week and this is something I have been concerned about for a while. I think that IT skills are just as important as English and Maths skills in todays world. What worries me is that children are not getting real IT skills at school. They are getting Microsoft Office skills. Simple things such as files and folders and the difference between a floppy disc and a hard disc are unknown to a lot of children I know. This is akin to a child not learning about paints and brushes in an art class but simply painting by number and calling themselves and artist.
Ever since my daughter was born I have always involved her with the computer. Mainly simple things such as using the mouse to draw random lines on the screen however as she has learned this at such a young age she now has excellent co-ordination when using a mouse. As a side benefit this has made learning to write much easier for her.
Sometimes she uses Linux (gentoo), sometimes Windows (xp) and othertimes OS X. I know I am fortunate to have all of these systems available to me and that I have knowledge of them so that I can teach her however I have done this so that she understands the principles rather than a specific system. This is what I think it great about the OLPC having a different interface to the norm. A child is like a sponge, if they learn about something they can adapt that knowledge in ways that very few adults can. Change to a child is nothing, change to an adult is very difficult. This is partly why so many "normal people" find switching to another system, such as Linux, so difficult.
It would be a terrible thing if schools where nieve enough to think that all a child needs to know is how to use Microsoft Office.
Hrm, no. I think the original poster has a point. It makes sense for the OS to be streamed/deployed/whatever over the Internet to the end user.
Companies can still do this if they run their own infrastructure to power desktops over their private network intranet, rather than a public network such as the internet. If its feasible or possible to do this in the future - well that remains to be seen.
But you can't disprove an entire concept because of where data retention is now. Thats one of things which could possibly evolve. Most companies wouldn't use e-mail either if the only choices were hotmail and google mail for example. But they run their own internal systems to meet the requirements they need.
Including managing their own data.
But this is mainly about Schools, and my only antidote is that I have friends who are IT techs for a school in the UK. They are mainly career driven, interested in achieving MCSE/ccna certification so they can move on up the career food chain. It's an academic world where it's more important to be able to justify your abilities on paper rather trying to actually demonstrate them over time by making good technical decisions and keeping things up and running.
The only people who may care about using an OS such as Linux would be the Head Master, who would be most interested in how much could be saved from a financial point of view. However when he looks at the discounts from Microsoft to anyone involved in education, the difference between FOSS and Microsoft is lessened. It feels like a victory because he got a discount, the IT techs are shouting for the latest MS products so they can get certified, and changing OS would involve a complete re-write of the curriculum - since all the courses are written to be "In Microsoft Word, click the File and Save to HTML menu" rather than "using your generic office product, open the application which lets you write letters and look for an option to export your (non)RTF standard document to (non)standard HTML. ".
It's just not going to happen, and I don't see how it could without a massive backlash from everyone involved in education who doesn't like change - they just want to go in and teach kids, or do their 8 hours work and go home. (And mark homework).
And then the kids grow up - Being Computer Literate == Using Microsoft Products.
95 might have been bad by today's standards, but it wasn't when it came out. It was a huge leap ahead from Windows 3.1 and DOS with things like a taskbar, integrated network stack, and other improvements to usability. The Mac might have been better at the time, but Apple knew this and charged an arm and a leg for them. I guess one could have used a UNIX variant or Windows NT, all of which were technically superior, but NT was in its teething stages in 1995 and so was Linux and the BSDs. Only the old-line UNIXes were really around in full force then.
Now Me...Me was a dog when it came out and everybody knew it. Fortunately for MS, it was introduced alongside what is arguable Microsoft's best OS to date, Windows 2000.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Is this the same Becta who was criticised for excluding providers of Open Source software in November last year?
c urement_criticised/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/29/becta_pro
I think we should be told.
Give them a choice between using OSS software and getting a raise. You need a lot of cooperation from teachers to make any OS selection work an educational system and there's no better way of getting staff on your side than financial incentive.
Unfortunately MSFT will rig the game at every level. If the school opts for the change they'll pressure the school board. If the board balks they'll get state lawmakers to somehow tie school funding to their choice of OS or a particular piece of software that only runs on Windows. If that failed they'd go to Congress.
It's really amazing to me how much money MSFT spends protecting their market share. It's buying votes with their own money but it works.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I see you've never actually sat an ICT course in the UK then.
I sat one because my school didn't go computing. I was taught how to use Word, Excel, Access, VB and Publisher. Use of more flexible, powerful or simply different applications (For example trying to use a MySQL server to do the database work) was frowned upon.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
All applications that our kids use will only work on Windows
It's an odd school that allows the pupils decide what applications to use.
"The licensing agreements are alright - we're looking at about £28/workstation/year for ~450 machines, "
I thought you said earlier that that it was about 350 machines total the last time.
"There isn't enough scope in the Curriculum to let kids even learn about alternative operating systems. I use Linux at home exclusively for desktop use, yet at work we're using 450ish XP clients, 5 Windows-based servers and 1 Linux server (for internet caching/filtering)"
I thought you said earlier that you used Linux on three of your backend servers.
"It annoys me that there isn't much I can do personally to let them know there are alternatives out there without running my own after school class or something, which I can't see many people wanting to attend (and I'm not the teaching type)"
Why don't you get a teacher to set up an Open Source club, you know, the one who showed the pupils the Knoppix bootable CD once. I don't know of any kid of school age who is not interested in novelty, in my experience you can't keep them out of the computer room. How difficult can Open Source be after all you mother can use it. She even does her own updates.
"getting the teachers to put time in learning the new interface so they can teach the kids is the hard part!"
But you just said that there wasn't 'scope' in the curriculum teachers for learning new things and you didn't have the time or the inclination and weren't the teaching type.
"unless you get the application developers to start making things cross platform, we can't move to Linux/[other alternative]"
As the main article pointed out, it is a bad getting locked in to the one platform. How about teaching them computing instead of Windows.
was: I'm a sysadmin at a school in the UK... (Score:5, dis-Informative)
davecb5620@gmail.com
Just because the design of Unix is "very long in the tooth" doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it; that's just argumentum ad novitatem.
The fundamental design of the automobile hasn't changed much in over a hundred years. It still has an internal combustion engine (albeit sometimes augmented with electric), four wheels with pneumatic tires, a steering control based on a wheel that operates the front two wheels, a geared transmission from the engine to the wheels, a cabin in the middle with engine space and cargo space on front and back (albeit sometimes reversed). Sure, we've seen improvements--seatbelts, increasing automation, crumple zones--but the fundamental design hasn't changed. I don't seriously expect it to either. We're not suddenly going to be zooming around in South Park style "IT" wheels.
Similarly, the fundamental design of the camera didn't change much for a long time. Lens at the front, rectangular body containing film on a spool which moves past the rear of the lens, rotary controls on the lens, shutter top right of the body, eyepiece or viewing screen on the back. Digital has been the biggest shakeup, but you'll notice digital SLRs are still the same basic shape as film SLRs, even though there's no reason at all why they need to be.
Analog wristwatches are another example. They haven't changed design in several hundred years. Same 12 hours arranged in a circle, long hand and short hand, adjustment control on the right edge of the case, strap attached at top and bottom of case. When they went digital, there was a brief change, but now we've mostly swung back to using hands that move in a circle again, just with a different mechanism inside. And again, a quick look at Tokyoflash's web site will prove that there's absolutely no reason why this basic design needs to be kept. But it is. And we still have mechanical watches made and sold that use the same hundred-plus year old mechanisms.
I'm not saying that Unix is perfect; I'm just saying that its organic community-led growth and continued robustness and adaptability make it seem likely to me that the basic design is sound, and not something that needs to be thrown away.
There are certainly interesting possibilities in alternative OS design. The Apple Newton was a good example. But most of the radical attempts to reinvent the OS have failed. It might be that the design we've arrived at with Unix is going to last for hundreds of years, much to some people's disgust.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
You reap what you sow.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Lock-in is the inevitable result of a monopoly. And I am not talking about Microsoft's monopoly either, although that is part of it.
When you have a vast, overwelming quasi-nationalized top-down educational beurocracy, with and almost total monopoly of education - the inevitable result is exploitive locked-in contracts with huge companies like Microsoft. Instead of Microsoft having to win over tens of thousands of individual schools, Microsoft only has to win over a few people at the top of the beurocracy. Bribing and misleading tens of thousands of IT people, all across the country would be prohibitivly difficult and expensive, where as bribing and misleading a few high officials costs virtually nothing when you are talking the huge potential profits.
Big government contracts, and big government policies, are naturally prone to extreme amounts of corruption and exploitation, because the stakes are so high and because authority are so centralized. You have to fight Microsoft on the level of the federal government, which is going to be impossible for your average parent. An average parent can walk over and talk to the head IT guy at the local school, or make an appoitment with the local municipal superintendant or mayor - But the average person can't fly off to meet with the head of the Ministry of Education, or the Prime Minister.
Don't blame Microsoft for this problem - they are simply exploiting the natural flaws in the educational leviatian. If they were gone, another company would simply find another way to exploit the system.
"Locked in" is a little bit strong. Yes, I understand that once you invest in Windows machines and OS licenses, an organization has a strong financial incentive to continue using Microsoft products, but I think this notion that customers are in some sort of Microsoft Jail a little too much to swallow. There are lots of products that have proprietary components and we don't make the jump to saying their customers have guns to their heads.
You always have the choice to scrap the heap and buy Apple. Yes, it's important to really carefully evaluate the pros and cons of the operating system you're going to choose when selecting computers for a school system. The decision you make today will have ramifications in the future.
But "Locked in" is just a bit much in this context. After all, they can wipe the hard disks and install Linux if they wanted to.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Didn't NT4 come out in 1996, not 1995?
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Obviously it has to be either Linux or OSX, because between them they command what, 2% of the market? With that kind of momentum, they are unstoppable.
I'm betting something new and not big PC based.
How about, it's being developed now?
Haiku, http://haiku-os.org/
Anyone noticed that the schools also use Serif software for everything else?
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Lots of people were saying that Microsoft's popularity wouldn't last 10 years, oh, about 10 years ago. There's no reason at all to think that Microsoft's going to suddenly go away, especially since no other serious challengers are on the horizon to Windows. I love Mac OSX, but as long as using the Mac OS means that Apple has to be your hardware vendor too, lots of people won't make the jump.
I will say this much: This is the first time I won't be making an immediate switch to the latest Microsoft Windows version. I took a few months to move over to XP when it came out, but at that time I was reasonably sure that the new OS would pay dividends in productivity enhancements. And, it so happened I was about ready for a hardware upgrade at that time, as well. Win98 was getting a little tired for the programs I was using (DAW and video) and the software vendors I use were rolling out XP versions concurrent to XP's release.
Today, I'm pretty happy with the way my DAW and video editing systems are running on XP Pro SP2. Sonar has 64-bit processing, which is dandy and I've got a nice, productive setup. My processor and video card, motherboard and audio subsystem work nicely with XP and all the drivers are pretty stable.
For the first time, I'm not going to mess with a new version of Windows for at least a year, if then. When I do a system upgrade, I'm going to see if I can get all of my stuff in Mac version or to run in Parallels and go back to Mac. Maybe there are others like me out there, but something about this Vista rollout is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. They had me and then they lost me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem with BECTA is that while they have in the past said "open source is a good thing" and today "MS lock-in is bad" etc., they are responsible for setting school's purchasing policies. And these purchasing policies are not F/OSS-friendly, since purchasing can only be made from "approved" suppliers. These suppliers need to apply for the (costly, I believe) approval process. This indirectly excludes many suppliers who would provide F/OSS options.
At least one UK MP (Member of Parliament) has raised an Early Day Motion drawing attention to the fact that this is a bad thing - this motion has been signed by more than 100 MPs following a reasonably active campaign by technical individuals in the UK. If you're in the UK, write to your MP asking them to sign it!
For some more background and also the letters I've written to my MP, see my blog: my opening letter and my followup.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
1) You should offer the class and open it up to pretty much anyone. Teachers, Students, Parents, you will find an audience.
2) Children shouldn't be learning how to use Office anyway... They aren't office workers, and learning the interface for one set of programs is the most useless thing you can learn about computers. If they're calling it a computer class, but they're teaching Office, they should be dragged out back and shot, and you along with them if you don't push for them to teach some ACTUAL computer knowledge. Like, I dunno, how the fucking magic box actually works.
Their required/supplied apps all run on windows-only. And for the most part, poorly.
I've got to say that the problem isn't Windows itself, it's the lack of curriculum software that causes us headaches.
On the plus side, OpenOffice is fine for use in schools and it's feature complete for the UK national curriculum. Even ooBase is up to the task or MySQL could fill in for database use. Linux is stable and secure enough and I can easily find scanners and printers that are compatible and have had no hardware incompatibility problems so far.
I have 4 servers running Mandriva 2007 Powerpack+, one as a PDC, LDAP DNS and DHCP server, a BDC with slave LDAP and DNS both of which share files. A third runs Postfix with egroupware and a fourth runs a seperate NT domain to segregate the kids from school admin staff. In fact as far as servers are concerned we haven't had any downtime in the last year apart from a fragged power supply that took out a motherboard. Clients on the other hand are a problem. We dual boot Ubuntu on some machines and I'm considering a terminal server for Windows to allow us to run the many and varied programs we have that are only available for Windows.
I must say though that I sometimes wonder why BECTA exists. Years back they were making statements regarding Open Source and cost savings but nothing seems to have happened. On the one hand Becta sing its praises and on the other the government are trying to farm out school ICT to Windows-centric third party companies. If BECTA really want to make a difference they'd have to force 3rd party software vendors to be platform neutral with their software and I can't see that actually happening with BSF on the horizon.
Personally, I'd love to have a 100% Linux network as the Linux boxes we run don't cause any problems and are solidly stable. We'd save a fortune in licencing and I'd be able to divert all the savings into hardware and infrastructure.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Shared libraries and the insanity of minute library changes that bork applications. This isn't the 80s anymore, we aren't stuck on single digit mgz speed computers with 256k RAM and 5 MB harddrives on 300 baud connections. Good idea then, time to move on now. Stand alone, complete apps. No more wondering which "style" of package or packaging technique. No more wars! Download, put them wherever you feel like it, run, no dependency hell from any direction. Run ten versions, who cares. I vote for INDEPENDENCE! And then-no more stuck on some **&%$%&&ing "distro"! Pick a kernel, pick your drivers, pick your apps, *virtualize them*, run anything you want, where you want, when you want, and how many as you want, the OS that is YOURS and not some committee's creation who knows better than you want you want! FREEDOM FROM THE PAST! Stand UP! *SMACK* Heal! Throw down those crutches,arise! The future is here and you can be FREE from forced computer crippling because "it has always done that way, it will always be done that way, so spaketh guruzustra!" Well, screw him! Multicore chips, speciality chips, speeds unheard of, gigs and gigs of RAM, connectivity speeds for real time live wireless streaming of video in two directions for anyone with a few hundred dollars, more storage in a desktop than whole nations had 20 years ago-the past is over! We won! Throw down those chains!
;)
and etc, rant, prophetizing, and so on. Not Unix, not Gnunix, but YOUnix! It can happen, right now, if we smash the cruft and clear the cobwebs!
Windows "NT" succeeded 16-bit Windows, which succeeded DOS.
Much as a I (a long-time Microsoft despiser, and 5-year Linux desktop user) hate to admit it, the successor to Windows as dominant OS will be whatever Microsoft creates to replace it.
-a.d.-
I'm Erwin Schrodinger and I approve of this message, and I do not approve of this message!
I would be suprised to see ther majority of PCs use Vista especialy in a school setting anytime soon. Hell, when I graduated from highschool in 1995, a lot of Apple IIs were still in use there, and this was a well financed suburban school district!
I wrote a letter to my local MP before exactly about this problem. It went as follows: ----------------- Dear Laura Moffatt, I am writing to you with the concern of the use of Microsoft products for education. There are several reasons to be opposed to the purchase of such software. - Financial Microsoft is the biggest multi-national IT corporation in the world, and is sponsoring the IT side of our education system with greatly discounted operating systems, office and education software. It has recently come to light that millions of pounds can be saved if there is a switch from Microsoft-based products to open-source alternatives, particularly since Microsoft products require expensive upgrades to keep up. - Education Microsoft intentionally invest in education so that students are only used to their style of products and are incapable of utilising other operating systems or software packages. When I started secondary school we didn't have any PCs. Instead we had BBC Micros with various office suites and graphical software. We were taught how to take advantage of the programming language that was native to the machine which was extremely helpful in inspiring us to creating applications to solve our geometric and maths problems. There were also Acorn Archimedes machines too that had designing software on a different operating system. In my third year the school bought PCs with Microsoft operating systems, office suites and education software. The other computers were abandoned and we all had to use Microsoft's software, which was later upgraded to their newer operating system and newer office suite. I have found it difficult to adapt to other systems required for work and have lost my ability to get to know the workings of the system due to Microsoft's simple and intuitive graphical user interfaces that do all the work for you. This basically means the student can turn their brain off and get trapped into one single way of working. I find this discourages all students around the UK from learning anything else, and Microsoft's sponsorship of Britain's education technology is an underhanded and immoral method of locking everyone into their software. - Work Many students that leave school will go on to be directors and managers. Without the knowledge of alternative software they will only be able to request investment in Microsoft-based software to further business purposes. Not only does this help reinforce Microsoft's monolopy on the IT industry, it also means that it will be too difficult to migrate away from Microsoft's systems at a later date, and UK companies will need to continually invest in Microsoft upgrades. I have now finally pryed myself away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, Office suites and other software, and I find myself immersed in a much more diverse and stimulating world of IT where I understand how things work far better. Nearly everything is free, more secure than Microsoft's products, and I have much more choice in what I put on my PC. Viruses aren't a problem anymore since the hundreds of thousands of viruses for computers all target Microsoft products. Opearting systems such as the popular Linux is immune to such security risks. I believe it is in the interest of society that we do not allow a huge corporation to dictate the way we learn about information technology, and to hold us in a monolopy of thought. Using free alternatives saves the education system millions of pounds that can be invested elsewhere, stimulates students ideas of what they can do with technology and doesn't pander to the interests of any corporation. I'm sure when Prime Minister Tony Blair said "Education, Education, Education", Microsoft would have been very pleased at the additional tax-payers money that would add to their shares. Please consider fighting to equip our schools with the freely available alternatives that are at everyone's disposal. Thank you for your attention. Yours sincerely [name] [address was included]
Under the current Labour government they don't care whether schools get locked-in, only whether Microsoft is willing to give them a large amount of money to fund their expected shortfalls in investment into IT for education.
Microsoft have always made it clear what there agenda is: complete market domination. However, governments are quite easily bought.
See if you've taught kids computers or just an application:
install on a dozen computers different OS's and different spreadsheets. Put a csv file there with some data in it. There is an icon to the spreadsheet and for the csv file on the desktop and nothing else (or as little else as possible).
The task:
Using the spreadsheet, import the csv file and produce a graph and some statistics on the variation of the data file included.
When complete on one system, go to another with a different OS and/or spreadhseet app on it. Redo the task.
Repeat at least one more time.
If the kids were quicker the second or third time on an unfamiliar OS then you've taught them use of a desktop paradigm. If they can't complete it without the normal OS, you've taught them Windows.
Same goes with the spreadsheets. Have you taught them excel or spreadsheets? Whether they were quicker on the second/third run of an unknow spreadsheet will tell you.