Since debates about whether or not to use software from the dominant
software maker often come up in discussions about bridging the
digital divide, I'm posting the following from Slashdot (old news for
you Slashdot readers out there, but I'm catching up on a lot of email
and saw this only today):
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"NewsForge (a Slashdot sister site) is carrying a 2-year
OpenOffice case-study on a Detroit high school who switched
from Windows NT and MS Office 97 to Linux and OpenOffice.
The results? Better than expected. In 2003, the school, who
saved over $100,000 in the process, converted 110 Windows
NT machines to Linux with OpenOffice. After several
surprising developments, including OpenOffice's ability to
open old Word documents that even the new Word versions
were having troubles with, the school now uses it almost
exclusively, has classes on it's use, and encourages
students to use it whenever possible. From the article:
'While OpenOffice.org is now used by 100% of the faculty
and students in the school (though some administrative
staff still uses Microsoft Office due to specific software
requirements), students are not required to use
OpenOffice.org when working at home. However, a
presentation is given to students at the start of every
school year to advise them on the use of OpenOffice.org,
the availability of free copies, and potential problems of
converting from Microsoft Office formats.'"
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/05/18/1944227.shtml?tid=130&tid=93
Slashdot discussion:
Discuss this story at:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=05/05/27/1721224
--
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Jayne Cravens
Bonn, Germany
Services for Mission-Based Orgs
www.coyotecommunications.com
TECH4IMPACT Newsletter
www.coyotecommunications.com/tech4impact.html
Open University Development Studies
www.coyotecommunications.com/development
Contact me
www.coyotecommunications.com/contact.html
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