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Re: [LUG] Kids failing on coursework because of proprietary file formats

 

On 17/06/10 21:53, Mark Evans wrote:
Rob Beard wrote:

On 17/06/10 12:51, James Andrews wrote:

My daughters school (Uffculme) use MS software pretty much exclusively.
I was encountering consumer resistance from her as we were using Open
Office at home and it is subtly different to the MS programs.

So when I got her a new laptop, it was MS Windows and I bought a
"student edition" of MS Office suite

Even so there has been a couple of occasions when she has wanted to have
MS Publisher or some other Billyware just because that's what the
teacher was using.  And the student edition doesn't include every single
obscure program in the MS line up.


Yep, IIRC they supply the basics in the Home/Student edition of Office,
and don't supply Publisher.  When I *cough* bought a Windows 7 Upgrade

But does include "OneNote", which appears to be a new thing. Other than
that there isn't really muchg to distinguish it from OpenOffice.org.

OneNote has been around since Office 2003 (I think it was introduced with Office 2003). I have a copy myself (Office 2003 Trial edition), although I've never used it, and in fact don't know anyone else who has either :-P

*cough* for the wife on the student offer she was also offered a cheap
Office 2007 Pro package.  I think it was something like £60.  I gather

Maybe they don't use Access or Publisher in schools in the North West US

Maybe. Looking at some sites about LTSP installations in schools, I gather in the US they are less restricted on what software they use.

Can't say about schools here, I guess you're the best person to answer that Mark. :-)


this is open to anyone in education or anyone who has kids in education.
  Still cost's an arm and a leg for the software though if you're on a
limited income, not to mention the cost of making sure your PC is up to

It's not the sort of money even people who can afford it like to
casually throw away either.

Especially if Microsoft still havn't got it to be able to spell "colour"
correctly. (Or "localisation" for that matter.) This is something OSS
often appears to manage rather better than proprietary software.


Yep. I've found a lot of people I've installed Open Office for get on with it fine, maybe they're a bit hesitant at first because it's not Microsoft Office but generally it's been positive.

the job of running it (not everyone has a nice new fast PC to run Office
2007 and it runs like a dog with 512MB Ram on XP).

Sixty quid will buy you quite a bit of RAM.

Hmmm true, not as much as it used to though. RAM prices have gone through the roof. I remember when I used to be able to get memory (DDR2) at about £10 per gig, now it's doubled (which is really annoying when I want to buy some large sticks of Ram).

DDR is even worse unless you go to eBay for it.

Rob


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