Slashdot Mirror
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.
And if you had simply RTF Summary, not even RTFA, you would have noted that the issue is not whether or not to use Windows, but the draconian, monopolistic terms that Microsoft tries to force on schools with their educational subscription licensing models. The idea that they force schools to buy licenses for every single machine regardless of whether or not it is running Microsoft software is just this side of extortion, and BECTA was simply pointing out that it is not in a school's best interest to sign such terms, and should opt instead for the normal perpetual license that people purchase. Not over whether or not to use Windows (and Office in this case too), at least not in the short term.
I already replied above, but on an unrelated note, it just occurred to me that this license would brilliantly require schools to pay Microsoft subscription fees for all their macs with Intel CPUs. As education is one area where Macs are close to dominant, this is a brilliant move. Kudos.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Why haven't schools switched to all Linux? Linux teaches students about computers Windows teaches students how to use Windows If someone learned UNIX 10 years ago, they could pick up a modern Linux distro and have little trouble with it, if you take someone who learned Windows 98 and put them on a Vista system, they would be confused and have no clue how to do the most basic things. Same thing with Office, if a UNIX student learned on vi, they could edit text files with ease on a Linux system, take someone who learned on Word 97 and put them on a Word 2007 machine and they would be confused. Not to mention practically anyone knows how to check e-mail, surf the web and get around an operating system, that doesn't get you ahead, now if someone knows PHP, Perl and Server Administration, they could be an entry-level sysadmin for a small company, while the other student would be more or less a data entry clerk, Windows leads to more dependence on MS products, Linux leads to more solutions and more opportunities.
I must take exception to this. Yes, if someone knows PHP, Perl and Server Administration they could be an entry level sysadmin. Or they could not know anything about them (well PHP and Server stuff) and become a physicist like me. This is a school setting we're talking about, and they have to train more than just computer users. Students shouldn't have to learn vi in order to type out a book report, nor should they need to know about server administration in order to use a web browser to research said report. The computer is a tool, something to make things easier, not an end unto itself. I think we forget that on Slashdot sometimes.
Speaking from experience, a person who can use Word 97 will have little difficulty adapting to Word 2007, nor will they have much difficulty using OpenOffice for all of the basic stuff that 95% of us use it for. You are correct that Windows teaches someone how to use Windows, much as *nix teaches someone how to use another *nix flavour. The person who picked up Windows 95 is not going to have trouble with WinXP, and the person who learned Unix ten years ago will pick up Ubuntu just fine today.
Much like we don't need to understand how a car works to use it, we can be perfectly productive computer users without knowing about the nitty gritty details. Would it help? Sure, sometimes, but we have to weigh the time spent learning those details against the time that could be spent learning other useful things (physics, perhaps?). Switching to *nix just to expose people to the internals of a computer OS isn't necessarily doing them any favours.