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New Zealand Rejects Office For Macs

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-word,-how-can-our-students-excel? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The New Zealand Ministry of Education has declined to renew a licensing deal for MS Office on 25,000 Macintosh computers in the country's schools. The Education Minister has suggested that schools use the free alternative NeoOffice. The article quotes a school principal who pointed out that the NeoOffice website warns users to expect problems and bugs: 'That's not the sort of software we should be expecting kids in New Zealand to be using.'" Schools are free to buy their own copies of Office. A blog on the New Zealand Herald site argues that the Ministry should have paid Microsoft this time, but not renewed the deal and instead developed a transition plan to open source.

15 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. Expect problems and bugs with OS software? by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about, expect problems and bugs with any software?

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    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
    1. Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? by rucs_hack · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's the trouble Open Source gets from being honest. Microsoft just hides the bugs and creates an illusion of problem free computer usage. Then they insist you keep windows update running all the time....

      In this case I think the fast transition will cause grumbles, but then again, if they waited the MSN (Microsoft Sales Ninjas) would be inbound, and before they knew it everyone would be parrotting the microsoft literature and the switch would be forgotten.

    2. Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? by suv4x4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's the trouble Open Source gets from being honest. Microsoft just hides the bugs and creates an illusion of problem free computer usage. Then they insist you keep windows update running all the time....


      You know, I'm surprised at the Orwellian speak coming from both the likes of Microsoft and the anti-Microsoft crowd.

      We don't have Microsoft just "fixing bugs", oh no. We have Microsoft "HIDING bugs and creating the ILLUSION of problem free computer usage".

      How on Earth do you create the *illusion* of problem free computer usage? You let Word crash and popup a box "Calm down user, this was just a part of your problem free computer usage"?

      Office works fine enough, the sad part in all of this, is they don't have good enough competitors, because they have stagnated for years and years.

      Then Office 2007 which offered lots of innovation in the interface, features, wizard etc. But why? Is it because Open Source was picking up and MS Office were terrible at "hiding bugs"? No, it's because people just got stuck with Office 97: Microsoft's competing with their own software.

      It's sad.

    3. Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? by Khuffie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you're basing your judgement on Office and Windows circa 10 years ago?

    4. Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Maybe that's true, but they also feel that NeoOffice is stable enough for everyday use. From the front page:

      Released as free, open source software under the GNU General Public License (GPL), NeoOffice is fully functional and stable enough for everyday use. The software is actively developed, so improvements and small updates are made available on a regular basis.

      also the same FAQ says:

      NeoOffice is a reasonably stable version of the OpenOffice.org office suite that has been engineered to run natively on Mac OS

      I've not used NeoOffice, but to me, this sounds like the software is in the stage Firefox was in just before hitting 1.0 -- stable enough for everyday use; maybe there are a few bugs, but they get fixed quickly so downloading the latest release is usually a good idea before filing a bug report.

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      My blog
    5. Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? by El+Lobo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Great example.Both of them are produced by hardhare problems. The same problem in Linuzz would cause a Kernel panic. Not, not blue, but BLACK..

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      It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
  2. MS Office has plenty of bugs too... by baptiste · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article quotes a school principal who pointed out that the NeoOffice website warns users to expect problems and bugs: 'That's not the sort of software we should be expecting kids in New Zealand to be using.'
    Just because Microsoft doesn't include this disclaimer on their website doesn't make MS Office any less buggy. This guy's students have been using buggy software their whole lives, from MS and others. Welcome to the information age. At least NeoOffice is being upfront about it.
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    Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
  3. Death Knell by ehaggis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unfortunately the Ministry of Education has probably signed a death warrant for the adoption of an open source office package. Without planning, forethought, notice and buy-in, most projects will die on the branch. This is a poor introduction for many to open source software and will leave a sour taste.

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    One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
    1. Re:Death Knell by Chuq · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But in a school environment you'll run across hundreds of teachers who simply don't want to re-learn how to use a word-processor.

      That's funny, when I was at school I was taught on ClarisWorks on Apples and Win3.1 at school, and used MS Word 5 on DOS at home. Now I used MS Office 2k/2003 on XP at work and OpenOffice.org on XP/Ubuntu at home. I thought learning how to use a computer meant just that - learning how to use a computer, not learning how to use Microsoft software.

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      - Chuq
  4. It'll do the job. by LaminatorX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wouldn't trust NeoOffice to seamlessly handle a giant shared/published spreadsheet with lots of custom macros for dozens of users across a multi-office corporate WAN. OTOH, I'd trust it without hesitation to do anything a k-12 teacher or student would need to do with it.

  5. Teach Concepts, Not Apps by EzInKy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't understand why schools let themselves get enslaved by proprietary software when kids could learn a whole lot more by experimenting with different solutions to problems.

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    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  6. The sad thing is: The motive is all wrong! by SplatMan_DK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think it is a good thing that they will attempt to make a switch to NeoOffice. But sadly it is for the wrong reasons!

    In reality, it seems like the Education Minister is just being plain old-fashioned cheap.

    If they were serious about using NeoOffice/OpenOffice, but have concerns about the stability of the software, they should consider contributing to the project. There are tons of ways an Education minister can make that happen. He could encourage the IT related universities in his country to make projects that contribute to the products. He could donate cash to the NeoOffice and/or OpenOffice teams - say a mere 5% of the money they would otherwise have spent on commercial licenses? Or he could have contracted a local software company to improve (contribute) to the software for a specified amount.

    Open and free software is good. But choosing it simply because the initial price tag is low (read: nil) is a bad motivation - especially for an Education Minister. And it doesen't really help the product or the community either.

    An Open Source product is only as strong as its ACTIVE contributors.

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    My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
    1. Re:The sad thing is: The motive is all wrong! by Domstersch · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Here's a hint as to why this won't happen: it's not the Minister of Education's job to spend my (yep, I'm a kiwi) tax money on helping "the product or the community". But do you know what is his job? To ensure that children in my country get the best education they can. And that means that when he has the choice of donating money to a software development group or spending it on one of the underfunded schools throughout the country, he must spend it on the kids.

      You hear the "somebody, think of the children" argument a lot these days. But this is one case where it applies well. It is Maharey's job to think of the children. And they are best served by using the money elsewhere.

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      =w=
  7. Re:Wait until the teachers start complaining. by jalefkowit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can't win with Teachers.

    I think you mean "you can't win with people". In any sufficiently large population, there's going to be a few people who are dramatically more predisposed to griping and/or are dramatically less adaptive to change than the average person. So if it's any consolation, you'd have had to deal with the same idiots no matter what industry you worked in ;-)

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    Read my blog.

  8. Re:Wait until the teachers start complaining. by _LORAX_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can't win with Teachers.

    I think you mean "you can't win with people".

    Obviously you have never worked in a school with teachers. The easiest way to describe it is a dysfunctional company run democratically by it's employees.