[OpenOffice - 3] Whats the current state of play?

[alan-d]

A lot of businesses we deal with have only moved recently or are in the process of moving to 2007, schools should really be teaching Office 2007 to stay with current trends.

I think you will find that the curriculum states that the principles of word processing etc are to be taught, not that they should be taught how to use MS Office specifically. (And that is a whole topic on it's own )

[AngryTechnician]

If you need MSOffice to open files made with a free program, it does rather beg the question as to why not just use the free program - they must do the same things.

You mean like how I 'need' Photoshop to open .png files made in Tux Paint - which by your reasoning must mean Tux Paint does the same things as Photoshop?

[maniac]

We run office 2003 on a majority of our workstations, but I will be putting open office onto some of the lesser used ones this year to avoid having to buy more Microsoft licenses for office. There are a lot of areas of the school that just do basic wordprocessing and net browsing that really don't need the office suite.

We have a new director of learning of ICT starting who seems very much on the same wavelength as me, so I'm hoping he'll be open to the idea of using open office on all the curriculum machines, time will tell.

Mike.

[tmcd35]

Thanks to everyone whose voted so far. The results are already quiet interesting. Office 2007 is proving more popular than I imagined. I was expecting more Office 2003 as a stopping point. Also I was expecting a few more Office 2003/Open Office mixes. A few more M$ as licenses allow and OO.o on the rest.

Certainly need a few more votes to get a clear picture of what UK schools are doing in the Office stakes. But some trends are already starting to appear.

I'm beginning to wonder if I can make OO.o work or if I'm going to have to back track and make cuts in the HW budget to pay for M$.

What do other schools do? How are you all funding your Office 07 installs? New licenses with each new suite? Splashed out on new licenses for the whole school in one go? or relying on subscriptions or software assurance?

As I have posted before my problem is having licenses for Office 2000/XP and the cost of new 2003/7 licenses is the same as a new computer suite...

[CyberNerd]

in Office 2007 SP2 you can work on OpenOffice documents without the bother of converting them, so there's one benefit for starters.

I just seen this article, linked from slashdot. It's written by the ODF alliance and is a factsheet about ODF, acording to them (the people who designed ODF) Microsofts implementation in Office 2007 is "practically worthless"
http://www.odfalliance.org/resources...DF-support.pdf

Slashdot | ODF Alliance Warns Governments About Office 2007 ODF Support

[gibboap]

current office 2003, with 2007 on our stations

planning on upgrading to 2007 on rest when budget allows, was planned for this year but now moved to fiscal 10-11

[fiendishlyclever]

How do people feel about the future for OO.o now that Oracle has bought Sun. I've read articles that think there will be no change and articles suggest that Oracle might drop OO.o as the purchase goes through?

I know that the community will still exist but development will be slow without Sun's financial/technical input (?)...

[Jamo]

How do people feel about the future for OO.o now that Oracle has bought Sun. I've read articles that think there will be no change and articles suggest that Oracle might drop OO.o as the purchase goes through?

I know that the community will still exist but development will be slow without Sun's financial/technical input (?)...

I hope they don't drop it! I have it on all my PC's! What does this mean for virtual box and suns other projects?

[TronXP]

We are currently on Office 2003 but upgrading to 2007 over the summer. We have schools agreement with SA but have only decided now to move to 2007.

[TheFopp]

We are currently on Office 2003 but upgrading to 2007 over the summer. We have schools agreement with SA but have only decided now to move to 2007.

Same here. Rolled 2007 to a few admin staff to make sure it works with their systems and they seem very happy with it. ICT wants to teach it from next year anyway, and I have to say I think it is a more useable product than OO and is what the kids and staff are used to.

[tmcd35]

How do people feel about the future for OO.o now that Oracle has bought Sun. I've read articles that think there will be no change and articles suggest that Oracle might drop OO.o as the purchase goes through?

I know that the community will still exist but development will be slow without Sun's financial/technical input (?)...

I hope they don't drop it! I have it on all my PC's! What does this mean for virtual box and suns other projects?

Funny, I hope they do drop it! Just recently discovered the spin off Your Office Suite who basically include all the features and bug fixes that Sun don't want included !?!? It appears Sun are holding development back.

Also Go-oo is based on builds and features developed by Novell.

Then of course you have IBM has the other key player who are investing programmers time to develop OO.o.

In short OpenOffice will continue to grow, develop and improve with or without Sun.

[CyberNerd]

Then of course you have IBM has the other key player who are investing programmers time to develop OO.o.

IBM develop Lotus symphony, a free spinoff of OpenOffice

IBM Lotus Symphony