“Tens of thousands of school pupils may miss out on important software on their school computers after a Microsoft product was ordered removed from Apple Macintosh machines,” NZPA reports.
“The Ministry of Education declined to renew a deal for Microsoft Office meaning the software would have to be wiped from 25,000 Macintosh computers in schools, the New Zealand Herald reported today,” NZPA reports.
“Education Minister Steve Maharey told the newspaper Microsoft had demanded a licence fee for all Macintosh computers using the software,” NZPA reports.
“‘The ministry could not justify the extra $2.7 million being given to Microsoft for software that would not be used.’ Mr Maharey said the free program NeoOffice was available for schools, as was a similar Macintosh program,” NZPA reports.
Full article here.
Wow, Microsoft still doesn’t know about the “give back” policy…
Nice, people are finally waking up to the power of openSource!!
Um, Microsoft. Figures. What about OpenOffice?
@ Eric
“..What about OpenOffice?..”
… or Neo Office … whichever you prefer
MW= “move” — This move by MS will come back to haunt them later on !!
Apple should bundle iWork for free on all new Macs.
> Tens of thousands of school pupils may miss out on important software on their school computers…
I don’t think they will “miss out” on very much. When was the last time you heard kids complain that their computers do not have Microsoft Office on it?
This is good news. This is first instance I have heard of, of a govt agency adopting for free open source on this scale.
Should have known it would be the Kiwis – first country with women’s vote, nuclear free harbours etc
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I am staggered that more schools, in particular, haven’t done this, as they are always crying poor (understandably) and M$ products don’t come cheap.
Maybe they are also considering a new Apple offering coming out in October….
2.7 million divided by 25,000 is $108 per machine. Is this cost for one year, two years, three years,…?
Was the Ministry of Education leasing the software? Would it have been wiser to purchase the software?
Apple’s iWork can be purchased for less than $99 with education discount.
> am staggered that more schools, in particular, haven’t done this, as they are always crying poor (understandably) and M$ products don’t come cheap.>
It’s not their (schools’) money being spent. It’s yours and a little of mine.
The easiest way to waste money? let the gummint touch it.
Funny — I have always worked for large corporations, bastions of free enterprise, that require Microsoft — and not just office, but Windows, Sql Server, the whole baggage.
I also live in Massachusetts, where the state has put up a pretty good resistance to MS.
Hmmmm……….
At my university, Microsoftpoo made a deal to give out MS Office for free, at least for Windows.
Looked like a way to keep them from straying to OpenOffice. This extra fee for Macs looks like a double-edged sword: down with the Macs as well.
$%%^ jerk back tea-baggers. I hope Steve makes Bill look real stupid at that conference.
wake up folks!
Microsoft Office is THE standard.
On PCs AND on MACs.
As an IT consultant, I see many clients (many as in government) switching to OpenOffice or similar free programs because they don’t have to pay for it, and that is the only reason.
But all those high-up-in-the-hierarchy people that make these decisions use MS Office themselves, use Outlook (or Entourage) for their mail, and wouldn’t recognise OpenOffice even they stepped in it.
It’s a strange world we are living in.
Microsoft bashing is considered very cool, and opensource is supposedly THE answer to all our questions.
Wake up and smell the roses: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
I see governments scrambling to get rid of Windows, replacing it with Linux (one of the more than 160 versions…), and discovering that they now have to find highly paid consultants to keep these things running. And it turns out to be more difficult than having an Active Directory dude and some seasoned sysadmins.
And before you start to flame this post, just think for yourself: is it really good that the governments want to go open source? Because they do NOT associate Apple with open source…
aye bro.
i am sure with educational deals apple would have included a free copy of iWork but since apple hasn’t released numbers yet they are still shy of a spreadsheet. NeoOffice fills that problem.
I also forgot what software company is going to port OpenOffice so that its completely native to Mac OS X. OpenOffice just looks like MS Office while NeoOffice is little clunky and buggy.
Open source might be free and yet require either trained present admins or new IT staff might not be the answer.. but if open office is similar to ms office, how much more complicated to administer it? besides the only real reason why so many people uses ms office because it became the common denominator in the Windows ruled world. So wake up and smell the coffee! changes require new learning curves, either u try train an old dog new tricks or get a new dog period. Or just get all macs and mac servers and make an informed choice!
this is a comment back to justaguy’s posting.
i’m a mac IT consultant and i wouldn’t want the government to run any single OS for the sake of security. i think it should be evenly spread among many platforms. starting off with linux, windows and mac os x.
with the government you have to break it down by department followed by division. you really can’t mandate the entire government to switch or follow the same set of guidelines. because some divisions require unique specialized software to run on custom systems and you need terminals in the same regard. so there isn’t a b- all-end-all solution.
however i do like what is happening and that governments are realizing they don’t need one source to function. i want more diversity. its good for everyone.
break up the systems by: 30 percent for mac, 30 percent linux, 30 percent windows and ten percent for the rest. those are the major platforms. so if one platform fails due to a virus you have more than 2/3’s operating. you don’t have a complete meltdown.
i want choice. isn’t that freedom?
neo
@ justaguy
You may work in IT, but sure put the DIO in it.
“I’m an IT consultant! I’m so big and smart, I read my Windows certification bookies, ooooooooo!!!”
Get a life, hosebag. Open Office is fine for the 90% of the population who need a word processor. AND it supports Open Doc Format, ODF, which is way more important than the stinking MS c*m you seem to like to swallow.
@justaguy
I just think you’re getting a bit carried away. A school is different from a corporation. As long as the kids learn on something with which they can develop the same skills, who cares. All your arguments, valid or not in themselves (although I find them questionable), are not relevant in this case.
The cheap option is the best option in this case, because there is no value offered by the expensive option.
I understood that Open Office was being ported to run on Mac OS X without the need for X11. I don’t know how far away that is, but maybe it’ll overcome the buggy allegations leveled at NeoOffice.
When will “IT Consultants” learn that this expression is considered around here to be the equivalent of “incompetent, ignorant idiot who is just a cog in the M$ wheel” and does not impress us?
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Microsoft Office is THE standard. On PCs AND on MACs.
First off it’s ‘Macs’ not MAC like “a computers MAC address”
Look it up sometime.
And second….
Over 20 years and no M$ Office yet, been working just fine with everyone
Second if your exchanging M$ Office files, your just a stupid peon anyway and your work/presentation isn’t good enough to be submitted via paper, pdf in person etc. in a uneditable fashion.
We artists have been living with our Mac’s in corporations for years, we absolutely refuse to use inferior M$ products and rather find a new job instead.
To us, M$ represents compliance and failure. To use OfficeMac would require us to comply with everyone else, when artists are not like everyone else. We need to think outside the box so you can have a life outside the box.
M$ is a box of corporate despair. Apple and Mac is the party.
Joint the party. Quit M$ and be totally free. It’s your life.
@ justaguy
So you are a computer consultant. Wow!! Well I have been programming since 1971 and an Independant IT Consultant (stress on Independant) since 1979. I can name Government departments in my clients in 4 countries. So what. That still makes me just one more computer user.
Did you know that MS-Office was first developed on the Mac? Are you aware that until the last release all new features of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and email (Entourage on Mac, Outlook on PC’s) were available on the Mac first? Are you aware that M$ has shot themselves in the foot by NOT signing up to the Open Document Forum standard, that their OpenDoc standard is actually just M$ own crippled ‘me too’ format and that they had to write an optional converter to allow older versions to be interchangeable?
Oh for the rest of you complaining about NeoOffice, the latest version is stable and it is a port of OpenOffice to run natively on OSX without X11. You do not need to wait for some other party to do the same thing.
As for New Zealand schools, good on yer mate! The kids need to learn about Word Processors and Spreadsheets etc, the principle of operation is vastly more important than which tool is used.
It wasn’t so many years ago that two other products each in turn dominated the word processing field. First was Wordstar, then came Word Perfect. The reason for Word Perfect dominance is that it was operationally virtually identical to the dedicated WP machines from companies such as Wang, IBM, ICL etc. who held over 95% of the market between them. Now where are their dedicated WP products? Lesson for M$, no matter how big you are, business is subject to trends and nothing lasts forever. Never forget the customers who gave you the break in the first place, cos they wont.
Cheers
hahaha.. the addict tells the dealerto fuck off…
LOL
“Oh for the rest of you complaining about NeoOffice, the latest version is stable and it is a port of OpenOffice to run natively on OSX without X11. You do not need to wait for some other party to do the same thing.”
If you Google “open office versus neooffice”, it would seem that the latter has a wee way to go in terms of features and stability.