Schools start to move to OpenOffice

[Abarbarian]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]"The switch to OpenOffice also helps to save costs, that can now be used to purchase new IT equipment, the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency (ITST), adds today in a statement.

The Lyngby-Taarbæk municipality needed to purchase six hundred new school PCs to replace outdated computers, explains Jens Kjellerup, head of the administration's IT department. By moving to open source, the municipality saved an amount equal to 25 percent of the amount needed for the new hardware. "Moving to open source paid for about 150 of these computers."

ITST says the Lyngby-Taarbæk municipality decided to move to open source following recommendations by the Ministry of Science that this type of software should be considered when procuring IT solutions. "The choice was clear, the municipality now switches to open source and will thus be able to afford new computers.""


[/font][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]"Germany :[/font] The city of Münster has started a pilot using OpenOffice in schools. The city's IT department, Citeq, will also switch all of the 150 servers used in its primary and secondary schools over to GNU/Linux. Half of these have already been migrated to open source.

The changes in the school's IT systems are part of the overall IT strategy of the city's IT department."




"The city of Münster started using open source in 1998. The first Linux server was a mail relay, running Sendmail. The decision to use open source was made by the IT department. Sometime later politicians wanted to increase the city's use of open source. "We now use Linux wherever it makes economic sense. We use it wherever possible and whenever the efforts for changing the operating system are not higher than the cost reduction that can be achieved."[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]"[/font]


[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]An here in Britain they want to get rid of staff to save money.
[/font]

 

[floppybootstomp]

When I change to Win 7 I'll be ditching MS Office 2003 and using Open Office exclusively on that machine.

The only thing I may miss is Outlook but I understand Win 7 has Windows Mail, so that should suffice.

The version of MS Office 2003 I have has oodles of stuff but all I ever use is Word, Excel, Publisher and Powerpoint.

I don't know if Open Office has an equivalent to Publisher or even if it can open Publisher Files but I do have MS Office 2003 installed on my XP machine if I need to open Publisher files, of which I have literally thousands.

It will be interesting, if nothing else

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.tutorialsforopenoffice.org/category_index/presentation.html

Presentation is the OF alternative to Powerpoint I think. Never use either meself though.

 

[Rush]

Trying to get my eldest son to get a cheapie copy of 7 through his college email but its like chucking fish with letters attached to hungry seals and waiting for a response mmnn

 

[Quadophile]

Publisher uses proprietary code to generate files and just a week back I had a similar problem when I received a file from someone created in MS Publisher. After some research I found out that In Linux you cannot open MS Publisher files.

Outlook alternative is Evolution and many are happy using it in Linux. It also supports MS Exchange. You can migrate all to evolution without any problem if you need to.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Quad, I already use OO in Linux but I rarely use Linux except to dabble and puzzle

You'll note from my post I inted to use OO in Win 7 and I rather suspected all Publisher files would be unusable.

As for Evolution, does it work in Win 7? I somehow doubt that is the case and Win Mail - which I assume is Outlook Express's successor - will have to suffice.

I'm not paying between £300 and £500 for Microsoft's overrated bloatware anymore

 

[floppybootstomp]

An here in Britain they want to get rid of staff to save money.

I've just noticed that.

That's possibly a throwaway statement without any backup or justification, anybody can say something like and the problem is most people will take it as truth.

There are always people being laid off and there are always people being employed, nothing changes.

Right now we have a recession on and I doubt whether ditching a few Microsoft licenses would enable whoever's laying people off to re-employ them.

We have a recession on because we've had twelve years of the Nouveau Riche Upper Middle Class Tories, oh I'm sorry you probably know them better as the New Labour Party.

Give a Goverment that long and they mess up, just like Thatcher did.

I'm starting to rant so I shall shut up

But throwaway statements like the one above irritate me.

As does people saying 'It was so much better in my day...' Did you know Georgie Palmer from Wisbech in Cambridgeshire uttered that very line in 1762? Now there's a thing.

 

[Abarbarian]

I've just noticed that.

That's possibly a throwaway statement without any backup or justification, anybody can say something like and the problem is most people will take it as truth.

There are always people being laid off and there are always people being employed, nothing changes.

Right now we have a recession on and I doubt whether ditching a few Microsoft licenses would enable whoever's laying people off to re-employ them.

We have a recession on because we've had twelve years of the Nouveau Riche Upper Middle Class Tories, oh I'm sorry you probably know them better as the New Labour Party.

Give a Goverment that long and they mess up, just like Thatcher did.

I'm starting to rant so I shall shut up

But throwaway statements like the one above irritate me.

As does people saying 'It was so much better in my day...' Did you know Georgie Palmer from Wisbech in Cambridgeshire uttered that very line in 1762? Now there's a thing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8265166.stm

"Education spending could be cut by £2bn by axing thousands of senior staff and "discipline" over pay, the schools secretary for England has indicated.

Ed Balls, the first minister to suggest possible cost-cutting moves, told the Sunday Times one option was to merge comprehensives to form "federations"."

Its probably just a load of Ba**s flops

 

[Quadophile]

Quad, I already use OO in Linux but I rarely use Linux except to dabble and puzzle

You'll note from my post I inted to use OO in Win 7 and I rather suspected all Publisher files would be unusable.

As for Evolution, does it work in Win 7? I somehow doubt that is the case and Win Mail - which I assume is Outlook Express's successor - will have to suffice.

I'm not paying between £300 and £500 for Microsoft's overrated bloatware anymore

Flops,

Evolution I am afraid works in Linux only so if one needs to migrate to Linux they should be able to use it. The only great software to work with Windoze is OO which I think is gaining *opularity as you know. With OO available who needs to pay MS for office.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Migrate to Linux?

I have considered it.

One day, when it's easy, I hope to go there, but I like an easy life and I like Call Of Duty online.

Who needs to pay for MS Office?

Possibly this numbnuts who started using using Publisher around 1996.

With hindsight I wish I'd used alternative software but hey, we all make mistakes.

For all that though, gotta say I do like Publisher, actually a good piece of software, albeit expensive.