Microsoft Office ordered off 25,000 Apple Macs in New Zealand schools
Faced with the problem of a $100 million funding shortfall over 10 years, the New Zealand Ministry of Education declined to renew a deal for Microsoft Office and has ordered the removal of the software from about 25,000 Apple Macintosh computers in schools.
“The dead hand of monopoly has fallen on our schools”, PC World – New Zealand wrote. “It seems that supposedly vast Vista profits aren’t enough for Microsoft. Now they’re taxing Apple computers too.”
Tens of thousands of school pupils may miss out on important software on their school computers because of a row over Government funding.
Education Minister Steve Maharey told The New Zealand Herald newspaper that Microsoft insisted the Government pay a license fee for all Apple Macintoshes in schools to use Microsoft Office.
But the software was used on only half the machines.
“The ministry could not justify the extra $2.7 million being given to Microsoft for software that would not be used.”
Julian Le Sueur, principal of Pinehill School in Browns Bay, said the ministry took over licensing negotiations for the Microsoft software six years ago in order to be able to do bulk deals and remove the costs from schools.
He blamed a budget blowout for the Apple move.
“The ministry didn’t accurately predict the number of PCs that were out there and consequently the cost of licensing has gone through the roof.”
“They were caught in the situation where the budget they were given to license software was not adequate to do the job.”
A Microsoft spokesman said schools with Apple computers could buy the software themselves. The company offered a less-than-retail deal for schools, and a significant number had taken it up.
Maharey said Apple supplied a program similar to Microsoft Office, and the free program NeoOffice was available for schools.
But Le Sueur said NeoOffice was littered with problems, and its website warned that users could expect lots of bugs.
“That’s not the sort of software we should be expecting kids in New Zealand to be using.”
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May 29th, 2007
The fair thing; the thing that would actually make sense would be to order Office off ALL computers, Mac and PC. It’s not very good, after all, and very expensive compared to NeoOffice. Then, NZ should sue MSFT for anticompetitive behavior.
May 29th, 2007
l see this happening more and more. And lets see what happens when Sun helps the open office folks finish the real OO for OSX. The open Document fomat will win more of these battles in the long run.
May 29th, 2007
Microsoft Office ordered off 25,000 Apple Macs in New Zealand schools
Face with the problem of $100 million funding over 10 years, the Ministry of Education declined to renew a deal for Microsoft Office and ordered to remove the software from about 25,000 Apple Macintosh computers in schools.“The dead hand of monopoly …
May 29th, 2007
This is what happens with a monopoly. The chickens ultimately come home to roost. Think twice before promoting MS in future and support competition – I thought that was supposed to be the essence of capitalism … right?
May 29th, 2007
Any school principal who thinks that a spreadsheet, wordprocessor, a crappy pesentation tool and some mail- and adress- stuff are important or even worth their price from Microsoft should indeed NOT be allowed to take this sort of decision independantly. Face it; Microsoft is heading nowhere, hence the extortion tactics, even towards the Open Source community. I think that if schools really want to learn kids about the possibilities and workings of personal computing they should buy Dell boxes and install a Linux distro with open office instead. It would save gazillions of tax money. Or buy Macs and maybe fiddle with Iwork; it opens and saves Word and Excel files. There is always a way aroud Microsoft, there’s plenty tax-money to save and,lastly there is a whole genration of MS-zombies to save….
May 29th, 2007
The point is that most Apple Mac computers in the classroom don’t use Office, it just sits there on the hard drive, never opened! The Macs are used for iPhoto, iMovie, mail and internet, but MS insisted that the MOE pay for a license for EVERY Mac, not just the ones that needed or wanted Office.
The Macs all have TextEdit, a very good introduction word processor that reads and writes .docs. The MOE deal on Macs also includes Pages and Keynote both of which are far better than the Office counterparts.
Our Children need the best technology, now! not old junk.
May 29th, 2007
Bravo! New Zealand is joining France, Germany, Norway, China and Singapore to name a few that are rejecting Microsoft proprietary software for open source equivalents that provide the same features and functionality at a fraction of the initial price. OpenOffice.org reads / writes to Microsoft formats (even power point files) and better records in the interchangeable open standards .odf format (Neo Office for the Mac). Even the State of Mass in the US is now supporting the open document format which portends the end of the proprietary .doc format! This is a great decision by New Zealand and should be copied by every other country.