At 09:33 AM 25/08/2006, Greg Sevart wrote:
If the University isn't using Open Office already, then it's time they
start (or look at another, more forward thinking, university.) Most of
the universities around here are standardizing on Open Office (and I'm
in Canada, which is about five years behind the US.)
Are you seriously advocating that a university's document processing
software is valid decision criteria for selection of a school to obtain a
degree? There are about 14,000 other criteria sets that are far more
important than something so minor as that.
Not at all. I'm saying that if a university forces you to use MS Office
Pro, walk away. That sort of thinking shows serious blinders in the
unversity's thinking. You should be able to write papers using copy con
on an XT for all they care.
Okay--"using" isn't even remotely the same thing as "forces", though. With
this clarification, I'll partly buy the argument. An institution should have
no right to force its students to use MS Word. They should, however, be able
to require that submitted documents be compatible with MS Word. That may be
what is installed on university machines, and policy may prevent the
installation of additional software. That is a valid business scenario.
Are there actually schools out there that force students to use MS Word on
personal machines? I bet most, if not all, don't care--so long as it can be
opened by the grader.
Secondly, even if the school did force MS Word, I'm not entirely convinced
that you can necessarily extrapolate that the entire university is as
restrictive. Computing/Networking departments, from what I've seen,
typically have little to do with academic-centric departments.
Greg
