School District To Parents — Buy Office 2007

WS Nick writes "Batavia school district in Illinois is recommending that parents of high school students upgrade their home computers to Microsoft Office 2007. Why not use one of the free alternatives and relieve parents of some of the financial burden they face to buy all the stuff for their children the school requires?" A comment from a reader points out how easy it is to interoperate with Office 2007 from earlier versions.

good idea

[visdog]

As a paid shill for Microsoft and Transcend, I think parents should also buy Vista Home Premium, which can be easily installed on Transcend compact flash drives.

Re:Just a quick question?

[Osty]

Of course when I went to high school, teachers only accepted work in plain old "dead tree" format. And were not talking about the 60s or 70s, but the 90s. Sure at home I might have had Wordpad [god bless...] at my disposal, but the teacher wouldn't except work in that format, so I'd have to print it off at home or school.

Your English teacher didn't do a very good job.

• "Were" is the past plural of "to be". "We're" is the contraction of "we are", which is what you were looking for.
• Parenthetical comments are set off by parentheses (thus "parenthetical"), not brackets.
• "Except", when used as a verb, means "to exclude". "To accept" means "to take or receive". Unless you meant that your teachers wouldn't exclude work in that format, you meant to uses "accept". Using except here actually negates your argument by saying that the teachers would accept work in Wordpad (RTF) format.

Re:good idea

[visdog]

No problem. I enjoy astroturfing.

Re:Just a quick question?

[gaelfx]

You see, if he had been using MSOffice 2007, all of those hopeless little errors would not have occurred. Further proof that it really does bolster education.

Re:Why not?

[jadin]

Frankly, schools should NEVER allow a rich student to get disadvantages over poorer ones.

Freudian Slip? Classic.

Re:Just a quick question?

[cbiltcliffe]

"Were" is the past plural of "to be". "We're" is the contraction of "we are", which is what you were looking for.

His apostrophe key is broken. Give him a break.

"Except", when used as a verb, means "to exclude". "To accept" means "to take or receive". Unless you meant that your teachers wouldn't exclude work in that format, you meant to uses "accept".

His 'a' key is also broken, and he didn't think /.ers would notice.

And one more thing: 'you meant to uses "accept".'
Meant to uses? WTF? Even the fscking /. grammar nazis can't get this shit right. I'm all for correct spelling and grammar, but man, hypocrisy pisses me off more than anything....

Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE

[aichpvee]

They're not particularly straight forward on Slackware. Before you say I should try another distribution keep in mind that I don't actually like Linux, I like Slackware.

Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE

[cblack]

if it is Florida State University, Go Noles!

Screw FSU, Go Gators!
(I have no problem losing karma over that, it was worth it.)

Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Go Go Gadget Copter!

Re:Not good enough

[Quiet_Desperation]

BS on the calculators. I'm an engineer, and a good RPN calculator is my wingman.

the REAL sad thing is that HP pretty much dissolved their brilliant RPN calculator division and no one has taken up the cause.

And, NO, a palmtop computer is not a good substitute. I just have to baby my HP-28S until I retire.

"We made lots of pretty pictures just by connecting dots. Colored pencils were state of the art."

Fine. Meanwhile I have a job I'm being paid to do, and I can't spend my days calculating tables of thousands of numbers by hand, or somehow simulating 10 million gate FPGA designs with colored pencils.

Re:Ugh, it's everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

and they were so incredibly happy when it got installed. Microsoft's influence is just that strong. People want what Microsoft peddles. It doesn't matter if it works better. That's what they're used to, that's what they know, that's what they've learned to use through rote tasks, that's what they'll continue to try and use. Hell, they looked at 'ribbon' and thought it was the best thing that was ever created for an office suite, and one of them started giggling with glee. Help me T_T

I hate that too, when people like something else than I want them to like.

Re:Just a quick question?

[untaken_name]

Another good one is, in a conversation, when someone is being pedantic call them pedantic but pronounce it wrong (eg call them pedontic or peedarntic), then watch them squirm :)

Technically, what you suggested would not be pronouncing "pedantic" incorrectly. It would be using a word that is almost the word pedantic but is not quite that word. If you said "pedanTIC" or "PEEdantic" or "pedAHNtic" you would be pronouncing pedantic wrong. Hope this helps!

Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE

[Anonymous Coward]

screw that, what's wrong with office 97?

The dancing paper clip.

Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE

[cgenman]

If there is something wrong with 2003, what is it?

Apparently, the menus weren't confusing enough.