Windows Vista, Office 2007 Expelled From British Schools

[bemildred]

The agency that governs educational technology in the United Kingdom has advised schools in the country to keep Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system and its Office 2007 software out of the classroom and administrative offices.

"Upgrading existing ICT systems to Microsoft Vista or Office 2007 is not recommended," said the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, also known as Becta, in a report issued this week.

Becta officials said a study the group commissioned found that upgrading school systems from Windows XP to Vista and Office 2007 would increase costs and create software compatibility problems while providing little benefit.

"Our advice is to be sure there is a strong business case for upgrading to these products as the costs are significant and the benefits remain unclear," said Stephen Lucy, Becta's executive director of strategic technologies, in a statement.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205602879

[babylonsister]

1. Whoa! And go to a Best Buy, all you can get is Vista even if you

don't want it.

[mth44sc]

2. It should be banned

from computers everywhere. (Are you sure you want to do this?)

[madeline_con]

3. I heard Vista's full of holes.

I don't know about Office 2007. I'm happy with my old, feeble 2003 version. I use it for Word. It serves the purpose.

[Cooley Hurd]

4. Seek Ubuntu, and Ye shall be free!

:D

[L0oniX]

7. or if you have l33t skills ...FreeBSD

[Cooley Hurd]

13. I want to learn LEET...someday.

:thumbsup:

[KillCapitalism]

5. No one still has enough "horsepower" to run Vista.

Vista is not going to be a very viable option (64-bit at least) until 16GB of RAM and Quad-core or better processors running at 4GHz become mainstream.

[CRF450]

8. I havent had but ONE single very minor problem with mine

Which was a driver update for the onboard sound. And it runs so much faster on my new gaming system than on my other 4 year old gaming computer with XP. My dad's HP computer has it too, and he hasent had a single problem with it, although it runs really slow on his. But, he has no complaints.

My system specs:
Core 2 Duo Q6600 overclocked to 3.0ghz
MSI P6N SLI 650i motherboard
4gigs pc800 memory
two 150gig Western Digital Raptor 10,000rpm hard drives in Raid0
EVGA Geforce 8800gt vid card
Tuniq T-120 cpu cooler
Thermaltake Soprano case
Thermaltake 700w psu
22" Acer LCD widescreen monitor
Logitech MX518 gaming mouse
Logitech Ergonomics Wave Keyboard
Vista Ultimate 64bit

Personally I think most of the problems it gives others is hardware related, not the OS. XP was no different when it was first released, people bitched about, now they like it. Vista will be no different. The next ME? Hardly, and I know how bad that OS was.

[cynatnite]

9. I haven't had a hardware problem with mine...

software...yes. I was more careful when I picked this one out. Got the duel processor and all which I've never had before.

[cynatnite]

6. IMO, they released it way too early...

My other 'puter died and we had to get a new one. We opted on one with Vista and I can't count the software compatability problems we had. It's taken a while, but now it's finally working as it should. That's not to mention some software companies refusing to upgrade their stuff so it would be compatable. Vista was a real pain in the ass. Not so much now, but it still has moments I want to toss the damn machine out the window..

[Adsos Letter]

10. ...agreed...

I was really pleased when my old XP system finally died in the middle of a 40 page literature review...and I replaced it with an HP system running Vista...and my copy of Office was no longer compatible... :mad:

[FormerDittoHead]

11. The Office '07 doc formats are, of course, not compatible with older versions of Office...

The solution will of course be for everyone to upgrade!

Isn't it great how that works!?

That Bill Gates, what an "innovator"!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Yes, that is severely annoying

What's the point of making the default format for Word documents incompatible with previous editions of Word for Windows and every edition of Word for Mac?

As a translator, I receive almost all my documents in Word, and thanks to Microsoft's practice of making the Windows and Mac versions compatible for the past few years, I don't even know which OS my clients use. At least that was true until some of them upgraded. Now some of them send documents that I can't open, and then I have to e-mail the clients and tell them to save the document in an earlier version and resend it. :grr:

[onehandle]

12. Go Mac! nt