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UK Schools Warned Off Microsoft Deal
rs232 sends in a BBC piece on the UK computer agency Becta advising schools against signing up for a Microsoft educational license because of alleged anti-competitive practices. "The problem was that Microsoft required schools to have licenses for every PC in a school that might use its software, whether they were actually doing so or running something else." We have discussed Becta's role in British education here several times as they have acted as a watchdog warning of perceived Microsoft excesses.
Insert self-referential sig here.
THE OTHER ONE IS: You pay for all your machines OR users (you can choose the license type). Say , you have 30 users. You pay some ammount of money. Then you have the right to install every MS product for those users in every machine in the university/college/scool, etc AND at home as well. Of course, if you dont use MS at home you are still paying, but this is the agreement. And the prices are MUCH lower than on Select. But nobody is forcing you to agree with this license. Use the old goos Select (pay by installed produts) and thatä's all and well. Of course, this being slashdot, we need our daily article odf env^z^z^z... hate.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Kids' software needs are significantly different from that of adults, with the possible except of a good Office suite, which everybody needs. Where's the equivalent of your doodling software, trivia games, and all that stuff you would find in a primary school computer lab?
Actually the vast majority of that type of software runs pretty flawlessly under wine.
Its not generally complex software. I'm sure you could find exceptions, but for every exception that didn't work, you could probably easily find software that did. Its not like there are a shortage of 'doodling' and 'trivia' games to try.
That said, my daughter's kindergarten class has a classic iMac with OS9 on it. And I have no issues with that. Its a suitable machine for what they are doing with it.
It would be absurd for them to have to license XP Professional for it, even if it is a discounted copy.
It would cost nothing in terms of hardware and software.
What would it cost to migrate, in terms of staff / student training? What would it cost to get my two technicians up to spend on OSS? What would it cost to migrate?
The truth of the matter is there are three ICT staff at the college - myself and two technicians. Running a 2000+ user network is one thing; running that network and migrating to a completely new way of doing things is something you don't undertake lightly.
I'm getting there - slowly. I'm pushing for thin clients to start with - reducing our dependancy on 'the latest and greatest' hardware. The next thing will be to replace the 2003 Terminal Services with linux-based ones. One step at a time - thats the plan.
For languages:
For Physics:
For Math:
For geography:
For music:
For Mind-Mapping:
- Semantik
Anyhow, you get the gist. As someone who has taught in both High School and College and whose wife tutors middle schoolers, I can't say that I've seen anything they are running that can't be replaced by linux based code (or in rare cases, by Windows code running on Wine).That's a poor argument. As much as I dislike Windows, it is possible to lock it down so it is barely customisable / tweakable / usable too.