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Story: Government: Open source could halve school IT bills
Posted by: george (Tuesday 10 May 2005, 8:08 PM)
we run only linux (xandros) at home. my wife who is just this side of a luddite, and for whom windows was a program to use just because, LOVES IT!!!!!!! She has had no freezing, no sudden drops, no reboots, and is using staroffice everyday, along with evolution. She has become one of the most rabid supporters of linux.
she has also convinced many of her friends to switch (for whom I have created dual boots - to maintain the warm fuzzies). Curiously, once they have gotten used to linux, they have not really used windows, and 2 have sked me to remove it, as they want the extra disk space.
so, really IMHO, learning linux and other non-standard software, is a matter of getting over the 'better the devil you know' mentality.
As to MS-Office being the standard, this is true, however - as a famous man once said (i really wish i could remember who) - what is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right! (paraphrase that any way you like.
my point being - things will change, but not from the big boys, they will change because small firms that want to be more than competitive will begin to use this software and put the saved money into other projects. thus giving them an edge. Martin, I appreciate your fear, since we can all make time for what we see as important or necessary - however, try open office 2.0 for windows, i think you might just like it - open and create ms-office docs, one button export to pdf, what more do you want?
george
Full Talkback thread
Story: Government: Open source could halve school IT bills
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This is an excellent opportunity for open source,... Anonymous -
How very amazing this result is ...
Look at the so... steffen
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Great. We'll have a generation of people taught to... Martin Scholes
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This would be a money saver but also a great... Mike -
To Martin Scholes: Please, stop spewing rubbi... Abe
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Abe, your inability to enter into a deba... Martin Scholes -
Martin,
Rather short-sighted. Have you even... Anonymous
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martin's comments:
this is a very narrow pers... george
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Fear of change? Or a lack of time to emb... Martin Scholes
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ajority of offices use MS Office pr... Andrew M.A. Cater -
Should our head of IT decides... Martin Scholes
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@ martin:
"We'll have a genera... Anonymous
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Thank you, annonymous.
Perhaps... Martin Scholes
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Martiin, I would agree that time co... Anonymous
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we run only linux (xandros) at... george -
@ George
George, you make some... Martin Scholes
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Learning a non-standard software? Sounds like... Steve Conners
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@ Steve Connors
Unless, of course, it is... Martin Scholes
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In Canada, the PEEL District shool board is or has... george
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I think everyone here is missing the point.
I hav... Marc
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*Please* can we have some balanced views and... Chris Nixon
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"Great. We'll have a generation of people taught t... Seb
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It has been suggested that schools could only use... Martin JD Green
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So little time and so much to do.
I often hear tha... Arthur B.
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Arthur, the environment in which I work is a... Martin Scholes
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