No Vista And Office 2007 For UK Schools
Published by: Codrut Nistor, in News
January11th2008
As a personal opinion, I can say that Windows Vista and Office 2007 took a wrong turn, and - unfortunately for Microsoft - it seems that people much more important than me think this. I am talking about the guys from the British Education Communications and Technology Agency, shortly known as "Becta", because their report on Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 doesn't look nice at all for Bill Gates...
The report I mentioned has 40 pages, and is available for download as a 300KB large PDF file for anyone who may be interested, here, but since I am sure you won't take your time to read those 40 pages, let me give you some hints about what's inside this document...
A year ago, when Vista was just released, Becta released an interim report, which concluded that the features added didn't justify deployment of this new OS in the education sector, and since Office 2007 was showing a lot of interoperability issues, Becta said "educational ICT suppliers should ship computers for the educational marketplace with a choice of office productivity suites on the desktop. Ideally, this choice should include an open-source offering".
In the meantime, they took things seriously and tested Vista and Office 2007 properly, and they got to the conclusions most of us expected to hear (for those that won't agree with the statements below, please remember we're talking about schools, where money should be spent properly, and the existing infrastructure should also be taken into account)...
The two important statements in this last report, in my opinion, are that regarding the need to upgrade to Vista - "we advise that upgrading existing ICT systems to Vista is not recommended and that mixed Windows-based operating-system environments should be avoided", and the one related to the fact that "schools and colleges should make students, teachers and parents aware of the range of ‘free-to-use’ products (such as office productivity suites) that are available, and how to access and use them".
This is it, and I bow to those at Becta. I am sure their studies will be taken seriously, and I only hope that administration and educational structures everywhere would think twice before deciding to make a step they may regret later. As for home-users... I am waiting for your opinions - did you upgrade to Vista? If you did, do you regret it?
The report I mentioned has 40 pages, and is available for download as a 300KB large PDF file for anyone who may be interested, here, but since I am sure you won't take your time to read those 40 pages, let me give you some hints about what's inside this document...
A year ago, when Vista was just released, Becta released an interim report, which concluded that the features added didn't justify deployment of this new OS in the education sector, and since Office 2007 was showing a lot of interoperability issues, Becta said "educational ICT suppliers should ship computers for the educational marketplace with a choice of office productivity suites on the desktop. Ideally, this choice should include an open-source offering".
In the meantime, they took things seriously and tested Vista and Office 2007 properly, and they got to the conclusions most of us expected to hear (for those that won't agree with the statements below, please remember we're talking about schools, where money should be spent properly, and the existing infrastructure should also be taken into account)...
The two important statements in this last report, in my opinion, are that regarding the need to upgrade to Vista - "we advise that upgrading existing ICT systems to Vista is not recommended and that mixed Windows-based operating-system environments should be avoided", and the one related to the fact that "schools and colleges should make students, teachers and parents aware of the range of ‘free-to-use’ products (such as office productivity suites) that are available, and how to access and use them".
This is it, and I bow to those at Becta. I am sure their studies will be taken seriously, and I only hope that administration and educational structures everywhere would think twice before deciding to make a step they may regret later. As for home-users... I am waiting for your opinions - did you upgrade to Vista? If you did, do you regret it?
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4 Comments on No Vista And Office 2007 For UK Schools
On 01/12/2008 at 6:15 pm Sierra said:
I've installed Vista one month ago and i regret i didn't do it earlier. Although it's more demanding than XP it's much better in many aspects. And in my opinion is the perfect operating system for the education center, not only because it has the most friendly interface and lots of cool features.
I don't think there is other operating system with less issues.
The only problem with Microsoft products is their prices, and i hope that Bill Gates will lower them soon, because at this moment the company is out of the global IT market competition. It's not fair.
On 01/12/2008 at 7:20 pm Codrut Nistor said:
Look at the new Control Panel and then say "friendly interface" again!
...and we shouldn't forget that, when it comes to education, they can't simply change some thousands computers with new ones able to run Vista!
On 01/12/2008 at 7:31 pm Dana said:
I use Vista and I'm glad that I'm using it! It's working very good, with no problems!
On 01/13/2008 at 9:50 pm betazon said:
I Use Vista but personally I like XP more than this new Microsoft OS. I don't for it is equally good for students & teachers.
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