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Henry Bremridge wrote: >http://tinyurl.com/v76go > >The report found that whilst the new features of Vista add value, there >are no “must have” features in the product that would justify early >deployment in schools and colleges. The technical, financial and >organisational challenges associated with early deployment currently >make this a high risk strategy. Early deployment is therefore strongly >recommended against. > >.. > >The report compared Office 2007 with a range of competitor products and >found that many of them delivered about 50% of the Office 2007 >functionality, enough it is believed to meet or exceed basic office >productivity requirements of many schools. > >The ability for schools to exercise choice is further restricted by >interoperability difficulties and Becta is calling on Microsoft to >improve its support for the ODF interoperability standard. > >There is also concern that the current lack of support for Microsoft’s >new file formats in competitor products (particularly “free to >education” products) may exacerbate “digital divide” issues. Becta >therefore advises that schools and colleges should only deploy Office >2007 when its interoperability with alternative products is >satisfactory. > >Dr Stephen Lucey, Executive Director – Strategic Technologies says: “Our >objective is to make sure schools and colleges get the best value for >money when investing in technology. In terms of Vista and Office 2007, >our advice to schools and colleges is that they need to be sure that >there is a real business case for upgrading to these new products, as >the costs are significant and the benefits currently unclear.” > > >-- >Henry >Tue Jan 16 20:19:24 GMT 2007 > > All well and good, its when the "visa only" education products start to hit the shelves next year that ITC technicians in schools will start to feel the squeeze. "Reader Rabbit (for Vista)" et al. These products feed onto the high street too with guilty looking parents forking out for new hardware / software because they think this will be of value to their kids (if thats what they have is school), and don't want to be seen as the parents from hell depriving their kids of a "good" education. Im not saying these products are good or bad for a childs education, but effectively they are the same as the previous version, and therefore "money for old rope". Come back in a year and Becta will be chanting Vista, Vista, Vista. If not....... I will be delighted to be wrong :-) Tom. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html