11 January 2008

BECTA Late than Never

BECTA, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, starts to get it:

UK schools should not upgrade to Microsoft's Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has said in a report on the software. It is also supporting use of the international standard ODF (Open Document Format) for storing files.

...

"We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit," it said.

The cost of upgrading Britain's schools to Vista would be £175m, around a third of which would go to Microsoft, the agency said. The rest would go on deployment costs, testing and hardware upgrades, it said.

Even that sum would not be enough to purchase graphics cards capable of displaying Windows Aero Graphics, although that's no great loss because "there was no significant benefit to schools and colleges in running Aero," it said.

As for Office 2007, "there remains no compelling case for deployment," the agency said in its full report, published this week.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft reacts to this ever-so gentle kneeing in the digital groin.

12 comments:

webmink said...

th the contempt you expect them to show - http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39292043,00.htm

Interesting couterpoint to the love-in there used to be.

Glyn Moody said...

Thanks for the link.

Fascinating change from BECTA, too....

The Open Sourcerer said...

We have had a great week at BETT in London, and talked to Becta and others, like OFSTED, about why we (UK PLC) waste so much of our valuable education budget on a US company when there are free and better products which also are absolutely geared to let people learn.

I get the feeling that the times maybe changing... :-)

Glyn Moody said...

Any indication why they changed their minds?

The Open Sourcerer said...

I don't think it was just one thing. I believe that there are few reasons:

1, Microshaft screwed them over once to many times and has been caught.

2, Open Source software, especially for the Desktop, has really come-of-age in the last couple of years. (Think Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10, now KDE4, OOo, Inkscape etc etc etc) so there is really viable alternative,

3, We (The OSS Community) have been making more noise and our public servants are starting to hear it.

We really have been inundated this week (just about to go back for the last day today). Of course the shiny new OLPC is what caught their attention, but it has been a brilliant tool to explain to teachers, heads, LEAs, up to ministers what OSS is all about and just how perfectly it fits in education.

Not busy? Come to BETT today, Stand SW 105 Olympia.

Glyn Moody said...

What is this "not busy" concept whereof thou speakest...?

Anonymous said...

It seems like they have an independent study comparing ODF and OOXML, perfectly timed for everyone to forget this recent news :)

http://notes2self.net/archive/2008/01/12/burton-group-report-on-odf-ooxml-will-quot-ruffle-some-feathers-quot.aspx

No doubt IDG will have pushed that story by the time I’m having coffee tomorrow morning...

Glyn Moody said...

Ah, thanks for that link. Interesting that it should appear on the site of someone who now works for Microsoft: I wonder how he heard about it before the rest of us.

I'm afraid I don't understand your comment about IDG: could you clarify, please?

webmink said...

That is indeed interesting. We were asked to comment on an earlier draft, but none of our comments correcting the errors in the report (which the referenced blog delights in quoting) resulted in changes for some reason. Erwin Tenhumberg has written a detailed blog using the corrective material we sent but which was ignored - see http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/dispelling_myths_around_odf

Glyn Moody said...

Hm, looks like things are hotting up....

Anonymous said...

Maybe it’s just the paranoid in me, but their syndicated news tends to favour companies wanting articles “hyped”.

Glyn Moody said...

Well, I can't answer for the entire IDG empire, but I think that the Computerworld UK site, for which I write is pretty good on presenting things in a balanced way.