Becta advises against Windows Vista in Britain schools
Becta (the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency), which governs technology use in schools, has advised schools not to upgrade to Windows Vista or Microsoft Office 2007. The reasons for this suggestion revolves around new licensing restrictions and higher costs, as well as compatibility issues in Microsoft‘s new products. Furthermore, they also advise schools to investigate Linux-based products and OpenOffice.org.
Personally, I find it strange that Microsoft is continuing to alienate the people that should matter to them most- their customers. Every few weeks, it seems that there is an entire new industry that is angry and frustrated with Microsoft. Even Bill Gates seems embarrassed about Windows Vista. I truly feel sorry for him (empathetically), he spent such a large amount of energy and passion building up Microsoft, and then his underlings make such a mess of it. I guess that’s the price you have to pay for being greedy.
I personally believe that Free Software is the only logical choice for mass-deployment in education environments, and also that pretty much everyone is going about it the wrong way currently, but that’s another post…
I find it difficult to fathom how Vista was ever released. If I had wanted something as slow as Vista I’d have kept my old 386 steam driven PC from 15yrs ago as well as the dot matrix printer that went with it! Doubtless Microsoft will release a new version or ditch Vista altogether and bring out something to replace it. The question is will existing Vista users be left tearing out chunks of hair and reaching for the Valium while Vista takes it’s sweet old time to load….anything!
Good decision. Openoffice is enough fordd
I work for an educational technology project which uses Microsoft products extensively. Today I asked whether they will be switching over to Vista and the answer seems at the moment is “NO!”. They are not going to dump XP in the near future though since many of their applications are written for Windows. There are no Linux options. SUSE(?) Linux seems to be their alternative.
I have switched over to Linux Mint since I have built up a dislike for the “closed” nature of Microsoft. Vista is not for me. I have for years being using OOo, Thunderbird, Firefox and other OS programs on a Windows platform and I enjoy them.
I am now in the market for buying a laptop and I cannot get one without Vista installed on it. Any suggestions for buying a reasonable laptop where most things will work with Linux?