More of my sites

WinInfo Daily News
SuperSite for Windows
Windows IT Pro Magazine
Connected Home
Thurrott Dot Com
Windows Weekly at TWIT

About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Schools should use Openoffice.org

Nate Grondin:

School districts should switch to OpenOffice.org instead of paying all that money for MS Office. I use OpenOffice.org Writer as my main word processor, and it does everything I need it to do. School districts must pay somewhere between $50 and $100 for MS Office for each and every computer in the school. Every time the school replaces those computers (usually every 2-4 years), there will probably be a “new” version of MS Office that has tons of “new” features that no one will use, but the school district will still pay for. This adds up to a lot of money.

Tradition and continuity are really the only reasons that schools are still buying MS Office, but not for long.

Eh. I'm not sure that's entirely true: Microsoft Office is demonstrably better than OpenOffice, in reality, but it's also the corporate standard, so it makes sense that schools would want to use the products it students will face in the real world. Should OpenOffice gain some traction in education--and frankly, it's (lack of) cost does make that a possibility--I'd expect Microsoft to respond with even-cheaper deals. But really, in the context of an education, the $125 one spends on the retail version of Office 2007 Home and Student (which must cost actual students far less) is a minor expense. If cost were the only issue, all schools would be moving toward Linux and OpenOffice.

Thanks Matt.

Labels: Linux

[ Posted at 10:02 AM | Permalink ]