British schools advised not to upgrade to Vista or use Office 2007
By Jonathan Schlaffer
The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) advised British schools not to make the upgrade to Windows Vista or use Microsoft Office 2007. The agency stated in its report that it would be too expensive to make the upgrades with few exceptions.
BECTA said that the only reason for schools to consider moving over to Vista is if, at the same time, new infrastructure was being deployed but since that is not the case for many there were few benefits in rolling out Vista. It also advised not deploying new machines with Vista alongside older ones, it’s an “all or nothing” deal.
As for the cost, the schools would be looking at a $350 million price tag of which $115 million would go to Microsoft. Whatever was left over would go towards deploying the software, testing and hardware upgrades but there would not be enough left to purchase upgraded graphics for the computers which is almost a requirement for running Vista.
The agency also advised against the use of Microsoft Office 2007 saying, “there remains no compelling case for deployment.” The full report can be read here.
It also proceeded to warn the schools that do use Office 2007 to avoid using OOXML (Office Open XML) because of application compatibility issues though that’s one of the benefits Microsoft claims for OOXML.
BECTA advised schools to inform parents, teachers and students of the various alternative and, in some cases, free software that can be used to replace Microsoft Office. The use of ODF (Open Document Format) has been recommended as have programs that can read, open and edit those types of files. Some schools have even set it as the default for saving files.
PCWorld reports that Microsoft has been slow to support ODF in Office 2007 and it’s likely the company will continue to do so. Also, ODF converters provided by Microsoft aren’t terribly useful.
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