Britain Advises Against Vista, Office 2007 for Schools

An anonymous reader writes "The British government's educational IT authority has issued a report advising schools in the country not to upgrade their classroom or office systems to Windows Vista or Office 2007. According to this InformationWeek story, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency says costs for Vista and Office 2007 'are significant and the benefits remain unclear.' Instead, Becta is advising British schools to take a long look at Linux and open source suites like OpenOffice.org."

Comments

Negotiation ploy

[Boap]

Sounds like they are negotiation with Microsoft for cheaper licenses

Re:Is OpenOffice.org really any better?

[nbert]

OpenOffice is similar enough in look, feel and use to MSOffice (Except for 2007, of course.)

And the fact that 2007 looks different isn't even a problem at all. I'm sure that Office 2003 will be available for a long time before MS pulls the plug, because those who have used Word from 1.0 for example will rather switch to open alternatives than being forced to upgrade. Office is MS' real cash cow and they won't destroy this part of their monopoly with a regular product life cycle like they use for Windows. Would be utterly ironic if the innovation of a new UI marked the end of MS' success.

Re:Not that surprising

[lukas84]

I fear people like you. Hope you don't ever get near important infrastructure.

Re:Is OpenOffice.org really any better?

[mysticgoat]

Is OpenOffice.org really any better?

Who cares? The above is the wrong question.

Is OOo good enough to do the work that needs doing? Often it is. And for all general classroom work, and all the administrivia associated with keeping a school running, it most assuredly is. I speak as someone who daily handles curricula and "back office support" for classes, who also has a degree in programmer/analyst studies.

Student assignments and administrative tasks are prosaic work; bling actually gets in the way. MS Office 2007 has a lot more bling than MS Office 2003, and oodles more than OOo. That bling is important to all kinds of pimps and advertising firms, but it doesn't add any value to the classroom or school office.

Considering that its long term costs are lower (mostly due to its freedom from enforced upgrade cycles and the lower overheads of maintaining ODF archives), OOo is the natural choice for schools. And also for a lot of businesses that don't need to have the latest in bling in their documents.

Of course the kicker is that for less than 15USD, we can provide each student with a USB flash drive loaded with their own customizable copy of Portable Apps OOo, and they can learn to manage their home work with 21st century workflow concepts.

That is priceless.