[plug] Schools [taken] out today?

[Mark Nold]

Wow thats terrible that they provided it for free, what bastards...

I'm surprised though as from my (little) knowledge of WA Public Schools and
IT they went through a process recently where they each had $x to go out and
buy PC's _and_ software. They seemed to be individually responsible (as a
school) for their own IT destiny. This sounded like a terrible waste as no
shared support, no group purchasing, no commonality.

Are you sure that WA Ed Dept was given free licenses for all M$ Products? Is
this free for everything forever?



mn




-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Woodley [mailto:Adrian at Diskworld.com.au]
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 10:56 AM
To: plug at plug.linux.org.au
Subject: Re: [plug] Schools [taken] out today?


All this is errelovant as Microsoft has done something even more
dispicable. Its provided a copy of all its office products, from Word to
Frontpage to Win XP, to Department of Education Schools at no charge to
the school. The result of this is that there is now a generation of
students growing up using main MS products. Teachers are also given
access to this, so they don't take the time to learn anything else. As a
result, any new computer bought by a student will have MS crap installed
because thats what they've been taught to use.

I think the opening for Open Office is to provide an office package for
students who can't afford MS Office. MS is too dug in in the Ed Dept for
it to be moved without an enormous effort. The entire system is based on
WinNT4 - even EdNet.

*sigh*

Adrian

On Fri, 2002-04-19 at 09:26, Mark Saxon Sachsenfeld wrote:
> Leon Brooks wrote:
> >
> > Perhaps this needs printing and distribution to your local schools:
> >
> It may be just in time Leon.
> The IT at my partners school has declined to
> install OpenOffice even on stand alone machines saying
>
> "It has unsigned drivers for w2k"
>
> I wonder who told him that?
>
>
> Mark
>
>