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

[tmcd35]

I'm meeting a little resistance from, what I thought would be, an unlikely source. The concern is about teaching 'the industry standard' and 'falling behind what is used in business'. Our current 'standard' is Office 2000

 

One of the concerns is what other schools are doing in terms of M$ licensing costs and the attraction of a free office suite. So I thought I'd start a poll to see how land lays, so to speek.

[FN-GM]

We use office 2007 on all computers. There is no option for this

[tmcd35]

Damn! I thought I had all bases covered! I'd stick that under 'Upgrading to Office 2007 on all machines'. Amounts to the same thing.

[DMcCoy]

All PCs MS Office 2007 / OpenOffice 3

All Macs MS Office 2008 / OpenOffice 3 / iwork 08

[Psymon]

We use office 2007 on all computers. There is no option for this

 

Same

 

Voted upgrading to office on all.

 

Psy

[CyberNerd]

I'm meeting a little resistance from, what I thought would be, an unlikely source. The concern is about teaching 'the industry standard' and 'falling behind what is used in business'.

 

Which industry ?

If your talking about the education industry then the standard is in the file format, not the application.

Theres some info about openoffice and MSOffice from becta here:

http://publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=28199

[CyberNerd]

sorry, full report is here:

http://publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=35275

[tmcd35]

This is a teachers view of 'big companies' using only M$ Office. Personally I think he'd be surprised if he visited the likes of BT, et al. I recon more of the companies use OO.o or one of its derivatives than he realises.

 

I know that DSGi use OpenOffice in all of their stores.

[Jamo]

We are doing the 2007 upgrade this hols! Would rather use OpenOffice tbh though.

[AngryTechnician]

We went Office 2007 almost as soon as it was released under our Schools Agreement. We used to have OpenOffice 2 deployed as well for those who were bringing in documents from home, but it was never used by very many people.

 

OpenOffice 3 was a pain to deploy due to problems suppressing the registration wizard, so we never upgraded from 2.2. Now that Office 2007 SP2 can read and write ODF, we have pulled OO entirely.

[alan-d]

Currently we have MS Office 2003 throughout and I can't see any real benefits to moving to MS Office 2007.

 

During the Summer we will be installing Open Office as well. This is to allow students who cannot afford MS Office at home to still be able to produce work and bring it into school without the bother of converting it. Also it is hoped we can wean users away from MS Office but I may be stretching it there

[Gerry]

2007 upgrades all around. I always recommend OO as a free alternative for the home PC, especially in cases where I have to convert some stupid incompatible Works document!

[AngryTechnician]

I can't see any real benefits to moving to MS Office 2007.

 

During the Summer we will be installing Open Office as well. This is to allow students who cannot afford MS Office at home to still be able to produce work and bring it into school without the bother of converting it.

 

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

[CyberNerd]

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

 

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.

 

FWIW this is the current govt recommendation:

 

The ICT industry should be pro-active in confguring the products they ship

to schools and colleges to allow easy access to a ‘free-to-use’ offce

productivity application – ideally one that is open source.

 

When specifying new systems, schools and colleges should normally insist

on the desktop having access to offce productivity software that is capable of opening, editing and saving documents in the international standard ODF, and setting it as the default fle format. Such products should be procured on the basis that they can be made available to students, teachers and parents for home use without attracting additional licensing costs.

 

Schools and colleges should exercise caution in their use of trial versions of commercial software – particularly where students, parents or teachers may feel that the only way to access the files generated is to buy a copy of the software.

Edited May 15, 2009 by CyberNerd
formatting

[FABEnterprises]

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.

 

Having said that if this recession is prolonged you may see more businesses moving to OpenOffice to reduce costs.

[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/fact-sheet-Microsoft-ODF-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.