British schools say no thanks to Vista and Office 2007

In case you were rooting for Vista to take over the world, we’ve got bad news. The agency that takes care of all things technology in regards to education in the U.K., Becta, states in a press release that the upgrade to Vista should be “avoided.”

Considering that free and open source operating systems and office suites do things about as well if not better than Microsoft products, especially if price is taken into consideration, this is hardly surprising. Becta stated that a primary reason is incompatibility - Office 2007’s lack of support for the ODF format as well as the new Office format (those blasted DOCX files) - which doesn’t make it a hot contender.

The release recommends that Vista should be considered an option only if there are any institution-wide ICT provisions being planned. Even so, that doesn’t sound too good when you have schools on a budget trying to get the most out of their money. And when it comes to the bottom line, the Microsoft option looks downright grim.

The beginning of a trend? Perhaps. It’s hard to beat free.

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Posted under Software, Tech News

This post was written by Nicki on January 14, 2008

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