School District To Parents — Buy Office 2007 632
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.
Just a quick question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just a quick question? (Score:5, Insightful)
And in the end, where are the parents not pushing back?
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.
Why can't kids just render their work in PDF format [and same for the prof], then let the creator worry about what tool they'll use. For science type classes, all you really need is to make sure the student includes all the calculations/observations to prove that they did the work.
Tom
Re:Just a quick question? (Score:4, Funny)
Your English teacher didn't do a very good job.
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oh as for "god" fuck that idea, I'll capitalize that "proper" noun when the dude impresses me properly.
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Re:Just a quick question? (Score:5, Funny)
And one more thing: 'you meant to uses "accept".'
Meant to uses? WTF? Even the fscking
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Yes, I said mid-90s.
-uso.
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Lets tell everyone to switch to an entirely different offi
Students can't share a PC with their parents (Score:4, Interesting)
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"The letter promoted the fact that parents can buy the software at a group discount"
2. Even if it did, who is going to go from house to house for the purpose of auditing software usage?
group discount licensing (Score:3, Insightful)
When my friends first asked me about it (I have no kids) I thought they had come across some sort of spam site selling pirated software- but it's fully legit, they just have an arrangement to channel all the sales to a particular vendor who gives a big discount on top of the educational pricing.
So any schoo
Expected from Establishment (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a bit strange to propound that managing interoperability between the two versions is a tedious process. I think that a sheet of paper with instructions would be sufficient, even for the most computer illiterate students, few though they may be.
Concerning free alternatives, I don't think that we should expect widespread adoption of things such as OpenOffice, at least in public schools, for quite some time. Not all teachers are geeks, and they want to use that which they are accustomed to using. Even the slightest change can throw some people off.
This is quite a contrast to, say, university computer science departments, which are often filled with Linux computers, while the rest of the campus uses a plethora of Microsoft suites. It's just a different culture, with different expectations of what their computers and their computer software should do. When I tried to get my parents, who are not computer illiterate, to use OpenOffice, they became irritated, because they didn't want to have to learn something new. They just want it to work as expected, so that they can do what they need to do, in the way that they know how to do it. That's not unreasonable.
When moving to a new system, one must always weigh the cost, in time (and, consequently, money), of educating the people in the new software. Most of the world uses Microsoft Office. Unless someone releases something so similar to Office that it is nearly indistinguishable, this will likely remain unchanged, no matter how equal or superior the alternatives, free or not, are.
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Re:Expected from Establishment (Score:4, Interesting)
But surely Office 2007 is far more different to previous versions of Office than Open Office is?
Quick, someone start a survey! (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Irresponsible Tax Expenditures (Score:5, Insightful)
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good idea (Score:2, Funny)
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Still Evil, but refreshing.
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"We standardized on crappy software..." (Score:5, Informative)
Basically what they're saying is, "We standardized on crappy software that probably isn't even compatible with its own previous version, so you better buy the newest one too so your kids won't be stupid."
Having worked in a school district IT department was a real eye-opener. There were tight budgets with no money for building critical infrastructure. But we'd all be damned if we didn't have the latest versions of Office and new computers to run them on.
I pushed open source wherever possible, even in the back-end, but it was a real uphill battle. We'd buy the $299 Adobe Acrobat when all they needed to do was make PDF files, and for that, something like PDF Creator http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ [sourceforge.net] is great - and free. And even after I demonstrated how easy it was to use and how good the results were, there was still resistance.
I wonder what kind of break the school district gets for pushing parents to upgrade?
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A few years ago, I had Office XP at home, 2000 at school, and 2003 at work. Taking files between the three was never a problem unless I had done something highly unusual to one of the files (ie. embedding something weird or non-standard into a PowerPoint). Even then, only that one bit would show up as a question mark, and the rest of the file would be fine.
Taking files from 2003 to 2000 and back to 2003 would usually even preserve any 2
not surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
Its ridiculous to the point of sheer ignorance.
Pick your battles, this isn't one (Score:2)
This is just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always found it funny that every time you install a new version of Windows, during the blue install screen it keeps popping up features that are new about this version of the operating system. I specifically recall going from 98SE to ME (which was a nightmare, I might add) and laughing audibly at the "We have made keeping your photos and music organized easier than ever!" and "Now ME makes it simpler to use your computer to do..." Basically, these were all vaporware statements.
With that said, aside from it being "easier than ever to do..." can someone give me a REAL example of how office has changed from 2000 to 2007? I'm serious, I want to know what features have been added (and I don't mean changed to the GUI that make it prettier) that actually ADD FUNCTIONALITY. This is the real reason that this story makes me mad. I don't believe that it has really changed at all, let alone enough to charge me a $100+ to upgrade.
All I know is that 2007 is looking to be the first step for Microsoft to begin its DRM document implementation where it can lock down it's DOC format that will require people to stay with a certain level of Office or higher if they don't want to lose their documents.Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The new speech recognition engine (bundled with Office 2003 and/or Vista Something) is way better.
The Office 2003 change tracking system is superior to Office 2000 as well.
And I have heard that the Office 2007 GUI is easier to use (I've already learned to use the Office 2003 GUI, so even an upgrade there is meaningless to me). People who don't think that G
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Pad example to nib on since Office 2007 is indeed an excellent software suite (now I can't agree with the force-the-parents-to-buy-it however).
It's full of productivity features and brand new features that make your wo
Re:This is just hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
And when/if you can respond to those, please explain the *benefits* resulting - features are for the birds. How does it make my *education* better?
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Those same usability knowledgeable people would also tell you that having information presented to you is always better than having to go looking for it because it is hidden. The Ribbon in Office 2007 is useful and elegant. It's a huge leap over myriad toolbars w
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What it does, what ANY security system does, is makes it harder for people to get in. That's all. And for that, it works quite well.
Example: Bob is working for a company and has a spreadsheet which contains the company's top 1000 customers (or trade secrets, or next big marketing strategy, etc). He's about to leave and go to work for the competitor. He emails his GMail account the sensitive document so he can start using it when h
Computer labs (Score:2, Interesting)
What would be wrong though is if the school recommends a specific product without having it freely available in their computer labs. If the child
Vote them out (Score:5, Interesting)
If they refuse to do anything, vote them out, and run yourself. And refuse to play this game in the first place.
Unless the class is "how to use office 2007" and an elective, they have NO right to dictate this, remember they work for you, not the other way around.. ( even if you can get educational versions for 25 bucks )
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Bullshit. I'm certainly no fan of Microsoft - I won't touch their products whenever I can avoid it - but I think its ridiculous when people talk about their right to choose an operating system (or office suite) like it's protected by the first amendment.
When I was in high school, I was told what text books I needed (most were available to rent fro
Re:Vote them out (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, two of my three kids have had to take State-mandated "computer literacy" classes, where they had to demonstrate proficiency in Excel and Word, and my daughter also took a"graphics" class where they learned to tweak images with Paint and Photoshop. Needless to say, we no longer treat as accurate any pictures she forwards our way...
I have OpenOffice installed on the computer at home, and after getting past some set-up hiccups, no one has ever had homework ("Must be written in Microsoft Word") refused, nor have they lost points. In one case where they were told to turn their work in as a PDF, my son was able to export directly... and without us buying Acrobat as he'd been told he had to do.
That said, my wife just bought Office 2007 because she got it for a steal -- and legally. She is afraid I'll ruin the middle kid's chances for good grades in his senior year because of my intransigience. Go figure.
I'm building up a new system for the 4th grader. It'll have to have a Windoze partition for some of his games, but he's gonna grow up with open source solutions as his norm, not the exception.
Well, crap is the norm in the real world (Score:3, Insightful)
I've instructed digital media the university level, and I try to recommend free or affordable software as often as possible, yet their are some poison pills you need to swallow. Office is a god awful suite of applications and most kids will need to learn how to interact with it.
That said, hopefully they will setup good computer labs for kids who can't afford the software or don't wish to buy the software.
If anyone else needs me, I'll be the guy in the corner being pummeled by the guys with the Open Office t-shirts.
Re:Well, crap is the norm in the real world (Score:4, Insightful)
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I totally disagree. As a matter of fact, I can't think of anything in the past month I've disagreed more with. How can you make this statement, when it is impossible to become familiar with MS iterfaces and idiosyncrasies when they change with every version and on both platforms (Mac and PC)? At least they are consistent with their annoyances, in that you can count on them being in EVERY version they make.
Ugh, it's everywhere (Score:4, Interesting)
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The scourge of .docx -- It's under options silly! (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft Tax Revolt (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be very interesting if someone got caught using cracked copies of Vista and Office 07 to comply with this.
Civil disobedience and subversion don't seem to be part of polite Western society any more, but still, one can dream. That society at large and a judge in particular would be sympathetic to a parent who is forced to pay the MS tax "for the sake of the children" when low-cost and no-cost alternatives exist.
I can just imagine a tired looking soccer mom and middle management dad sitting in front of the camera with fists full of back-to-school bills for clothes, calculators, cell phones, computers, printers, sneakers, band equipment, sports equipment, more clothes, paper, cool pens, text books, binders, and yet more clothes...holding up one more bill for Vista, Office 2007, and the new computer required to RUN THEM, and saying into the camera "Why should we pay for this when there are free legal alternatives that work just as well and when nobody asked our opinion before this decision was made. If there really is no alternative to using MS products then the cost of MS is a tax, and MS should ergo be expropriated in order to hold it accountable to the taxpayers that fund it. We therefore refuse to pay tax to MS until said company becomes answerable to its tax base, or until our school district specifies at least one alternative zero-cost software environment that would impart NO SCHOLASTIC PENALTY."
I know. But one can dream, can't one?What about non-windows machines at home (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe the school district should serve applications over the internet to students using Citrix, or MS terminal server, so everyone is on the same version, wether it is on the latest Windows PC, an iPhone, Mac, Linux, BSD, MSDOS
Not good enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously this is insane. We won World War 2, built the SR-71, flew to the moon and back, built and flew the Concorde without a single loss of life for over thirty years with a slide rule and a typewriter. Now, with all our fancy computational chicanery, we have a broken down space pick-em-up truck that was twice wrecked and can't be used more than twice a year, if even that, a fixer upper space habitat, a decrepit, half blind space telescope, and we can't get back to the moon if our life depended on it. And the schools think that a secretary's office program will save the day? We are in a heap of trouble. The art of learning is going straight down the toilet.
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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 o
Open Office (Score:3, Interesting)
No, no, no... (Score:3, Interesting)
Kids (even in high school) often do not realize that one program will not necessarily open files from another. We see this ALL THE TIME in our high schools here in Pasco County, FL. Kids buy some piece of crap PC that comes with WordPerfect and then bring their files in on floppy disks in WordPerfect format and wonder why Office won't open it. We need two things:
1. Students need to learn that applications use proprietary formats and they're not interchangeable - you CAN save as text or rtf but you'll lose formatting, and
2. We, as a country (and as a planet, for that matter,) are really being hurt because we don't have one universal document file format type that all word processors can read and write. We USED to - it was called "text" or ".txt" as Windows users are wont to call it.
Telling kids they "ought" to fork out $150 for Microsoft software is irresponsible. We are a Mac based school district and as soon as OpenOffice runs native on OS X, I will be recommending it to ALL of our schools K-12, not as a replacement for Office, but as an alternative to Office. Then kids can, if they want, run the same suite at home and at school, for free.
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Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Insightful)
It lacks nothing a junior would need, but it's still a tough call. I feel schools have a duty to give children the skills they will need in order to make it. In this era, I think that means having rudimentary word processing skills. Maybe I'm off-base. MS Office is a de facto standard for business communications, and so forcing students to learn it and develop skills in it is a good thing. We're not talking about merely teaching kids to type documents on a computer. Were that the case, DOS and PFS First Choice would suffice... Man, I hated that program. Still, this decision has an unfortunate effect of steering potentionally new and uninformed computer users straight to Microsoft, and it forces parents to spend a lot of money on a product their kids really don't need.
I would have standardized on an output format, and then provide a list of applications capable of producing output to that standard. If you're capable of writing a term paper to spec using an old edition of Adobe PageMaker, all power to you. But what do I know, I'm only a scientist who things about shit like this all the time. The decision makers at the school district don't think about these things, and probably only considered Word Perfect as an alternative. We're dealing with an audience that likely buys all of their software shrink-wrapped, so it makes sense that OO.o wasn't chosen.
Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Insightful)
And spreadsheets work fine in OOo.
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Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:4, Interesting)
Even troff is usable for most word processing. It is (arguably) superior to Word in several ways.
I will argue that since Word is not capable of SIMPLE formatting in a sane way, it is not a tool that should be used.
If you need a heading (for example) that has parts that are both flush left and flush right, a tab must be set on right margin. The tab cannot be set relative to the margin, and thus, when the right margin is adjusted, the tabs must be manually adjusted. Word fails at this simple task. Neither TeX or TROFF has this problem.
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Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Insightful)
No, your approach is wrong. Why? Because semantically, it's not a table, it's a heading! If you hack up your document using a table instead you might still get the same visual effect, but the structure of it will still be very, very Wrong.
Among other things, this would screw up the outlining function, table of contents, parsing by search engines, parsing by text-to-speech engines, etc.
Of course, then you get into the issue that everything Word-like programs do is Wrong, and that people ought to be marking up their documents in some semantic markup language (e.g. TeX, DocBook) instead. But I digress...
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I don't agree with your first assertion - everything Word-like programs do is Wrong - rather I think it is that people try to use Word like programs for things it really isn't suited. Such programs are great tools for automating what was once done manually with a type writer - i.e. writin
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TeX is incredibly powerfull and can do pretty much everything you want to have a perfect document. The downside is that mastering TeX takes a long time and creating any document which is not long enough so as to justify designing a clean, well defined, structure and set of structural elements takes a lot more time with TeX than with (Open) Office.
The thing is, most of us don't have that much time ava
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If you agree with me, why did you use <b> and <i> instead of <blockquote> to quote me, and asterisks instead of <em> or <strong> to show emphasis? (I won't comment on your apparent use of <br> instead of <p> for paragraphs, because for all I know Slashcode mangled that part itself.)
; )
Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Insightful)
Schools should be teaching how to use computers.
They are not supposed to teach "click here, then this happens, click there, to do that" just Microsoft software.
Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me ask this:
What is "wrong" with Office 2003? Forget about opposition to OO.o. Why upgrade to 2007? If there is something wrong with 2003, what is it?
I'm really stuck for a business case for the upgrade... what might it be?
Upgrading is a viral problem the way I see it. And without using Microsoft as an example, I'll turn to Adobe instead. There's this supposed standard we call "PDF." Once upon a time, I was looking over some job opportunities. The forms needed for the application process were in "PDF" format. The problem was that my PDF viewers kept prompting me for a password to view them. When I contacted the potential employer about the password issue, they told me there was no password.
As it turned out, the "password" or key in this case was to use Adobe Acrobat Reader 8. There is something about 8's new format that stopped me from being able to open it with anything else. So much for it being a "standard" and "portable" format. While I'm sure that this problem will be addressed in subsequent OSS PDF readers, it would seem that Adobe has introduced some changes that keeps the target for "compatibility" and "portability" moving.
In the end, business and other non-entertainment computing is largely about data acquisition, processing, storage and presentation. For acquisition and storage to keep going into the future, "standards" must be maintained. As "standards" keep changing, problems are introduced. If these standards are owned and kept as secret, this limits potential for data acquisition and storage to that which the owners of the secrets are willing to support. They keep the secrets and ultimately our data.
When computing was a young and developing thing, the value of new technologies and progressiveness trumped compatibility. We are either in a plateau or at a level of maturity in technology such that truly new and novel technologies are rare and the value of these new technologies does not trump compatibility or interoperability with our ever-growing pool of archival data. (I'll remind all readers that there is clear example and precedent where new technologies are often suppressed in order to perpetuate an existing business models which may explain the plateau or apparent maturity of information technology as we know it.)
The irony of the maturity of information technology is that there's a great deal less true motivation for "upgrading." It is my view that people have just grown accustomed to "upgrading" without thinking about it. Costs involved are often just written into the budget and on and on... fortunately, people ARE, in fact, asking that crucial question: "WHY?"
Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Informative)
Even if you do the advanced Access Database stuff, it's just fine for 90% of what businesses do and 98% of any school needs.
honestly I cant understand the mental illness of "gotta upgrade". My daughter's school was icthing to upgrade their horribly out of date 3 year old Mac towers in the Media classroom to new intel mac towers and buy Final Cut Studio 2 for each of the machines. I stood up and asked...
"is it wise to replace WORKING computer and software with over $15,000.00 of new when the kids dont even have enough decent cameras to do the projects? how about actually buying cameras, tripods and lighting gear instead of replacing perfectly good editing computers and software that is STILL state of the art?"
The school IT director tried to come up with a reason, the funniest was "updated virus protection" where I could not hold it in and blurted out a laugh, and said, "That is not an issue, ask anyone that is an IT professional."
I called for a vote and the parents sided with me, which utterly pissed off the It director as he had to hand $15,000 of his budget over to the Media director... I'm betting that shenanigans were being pulled and he wanted to spend it on something else.
A couple of other parents then started questioning his other requests, like vista upgrades. It was an entertaining and long night, being a private school all paying parents get a vote in school policies and get to call school officials on the carpet at these meetings.
If high school students learn on final cut 5.1, they will not ball up on the floor crying when they see final cut 6 in two years at college. The exact same thing will happen if they use an older version of office or god forbid and alternative.
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Apparently, the menus weren't confusing enough.
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Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Interesting)
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Excel has one big advantage over Calc: Both will let you create a graph with a trendline, but Calc won't give you the *equation* for said trendline. Kind of important when you're looking for the slope and/or derivative...
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Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Informative)
If you need to fit more than a line, then you should know how to transform the data into a linear problem. If you need something more sophisticated than the ordinary least-squares fit to the transformed problem, then you probably should be using a tool other than a spreadsheet.
Displaying the equation on the graph will only work if you have few sig-figs and all parameters of the fit are of equal orders of magnitude. And even then, you won't be able to DO anything with the numbers other than display them.
latex (Score:3, Interesting)
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I suppose that if you want to have the prettiest report, you may need stuff only found in Office 2007. But if you merely want to report your results so you can get the mark based on your understanding of the topic, and the execution of that knowledge, and then move on to your next class, OOo is more than adequate for the task.
In my experience, having the prettiest report is only important to about 25% of instructors. OTOH, having the exact same opinion as your instructor, is the deciding factor with about 65% of them. My advice to students: pirate all the best software, and kiss a lot of ass. After all, high school and college are supposed to teach you what you need to make it in the real world. In other words: lie, cheat, steal.
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I'd created spreadsheets that were massive, did huge calculations, look up, multi sheets, multi files, huge charting, printing, and macros.
What you a
Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.google.com/search?q=excel+formula+flaw
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It's under Data Series/Statistics. There's a selection of bars and indicators.
Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:4, Funny)
Screw FSU, Go Gators!
(I have no problem losing karma over that, it was worth it.)
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Re:BECAUSE THERE IS NO FREE ALTERNATIVE (Score:4, Funny)
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Compare MS Office Home with OpenOffice.org.
The MS site handsome, polished and professional, with its own tutorials, clip art, templates, etc. Chances are, you are only a click or two away from something that will solve your immediate problem.
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Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
But aside from all that, if schools start using, say, OpenOffice, you might start to see corporations do the same. And since it's taxpayers funding the software acquisition, I'd rather the district stick to the free option so long as it works well enough for the students' purposes.
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This is not the way to go about it. The schools, like it or not, are at the bottom of the political food chain (except when it's convenient to use them as a part of whatever "New Paradigm" your local Pol is pushing today). What is necessary is for the government to make a determination that open formats are a vital national interest - both from the preservation/archival point of view as well a
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is getting ridiculous.
People very rarely use MS Word beyond the functionality that Wordpad offers. And they very rarely use MS Excel as anything but a way to arrange text in columns and rows.
So, not only will these students be able to use different tools; they will also learn very little from it. And when they get jobs in the future, noone will expect them to have learned anything -- because everyone treats MS Word as if it was Wordpad.
It's a mystery why so many organizations are fixated on Microsoft software. But it's a bigger mystery why, when they have that software, they don't use more than a tiny fraction of its capabilities -- less than they ought to in order to use it efficiently!
Great, more anti-school tripe (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, "Blah, blah, blah, American schools suck, they don't teach, and they're only about indoctrinating kids into needing government to take care of them." Congratulations, you're on the bandwagon.
What "dose of propaganda" are you referring to? Are you one of those religious nuts that refuses to believe in evolution? Or just a malcontent who things schools are sanctioned by the government in trying to turn all of our children into Socialists? Either way, it's no wonder kids are turning out b
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Uhhh, no. The schools don't suck. Really. There's a phrase that comes to mind. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
There are an awful lot of students these days who just plain don't care about school. They don't want to be there. When I was in school, I didn't want to be there, but my mom made me and helped me tremendously to not only succeed, but thrive academically. Unfortunately, there are also an awful lot of parents who don't give a rat's ass about their kids getting an
And we all know that kids can only learn one thing (Score:5, Insightful)
And we all know that kids are incapable of learning more than one piece of computer software in any genre.
Which is why video game sales failed. Once the kids learned to play Tetris, they couldn't learn to play Counter-Strike.
Everyone knows that you cannot teach the kids HOW to write. And then leave it to them or their employer to teach them the keystrokes/mouse moves for the word processor that they will be using. You have to teach them on the only software package they'll ever be able to use for the rest of their lives.
Re:And we all know that kids can only learn one th (Score:5, Interesting)
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Unfortunately, the testers didn't. Pagemaker is a desktop publisher, not a word processor. They might as well have told them to write in Eudora, it's close enough.
And yes, I get the point they were trying to make.
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but guess what - that is what the kids will see in the corporate world by the time they graduate from college.
I really don't understand this argument in the least. We should be teaching kids (well, anyone in fact) how to learn new software packages, because they'll spend a lifetime doing it. If these kids are all bone stupid and can't learn something as simple as a word processor or spreadsheet after having used a different word processor or spreadsheet, I'd agree with you.
Honestly, is Office 2007 that mu
Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
The other arguments have be handled so I'll tackle this one. When you say "most" of the families can afford $150, what about the rest? Frankly, schools should NEVER allow a rich student to get disadvantages over poorer ones. There are enough ways to do so already (private turoring, cliff notes, etc.) Why mandate a new one?
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And why is that? Why, it is because all the bosses and 90% of all the (non-IT) people never used anything but Word in High School and College! So yea, as long as you tell everyone in highschool to use Word, that's what they'll see in the workplace. Of course, if you used a variety of things, there would be much more variety in the "real world" and businesses might even be able to make an informed d
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Some people have made this argument more equolent (Score:3, Insightful)
What type of retard would not be able to use MS Office after having used Open Office?
And are they the same retards that will have trouble handling a transition from MS Office 2003 to 2007?
How to Word Process != How to Use Office 2007 (Score:3, Informative)
When I was in school...no, we didn't use clay tablets and styluses, or papyrus, shut up, whippersnapper...we learned how to use a word processor.
It wasn't Microsoft Office. It wasn't even Microsoft Word, the standanone version before there was a monolithic Office. It was Bank Street Writer, on an Apple II. At home, I used something else, on my 386...I actually don't even remember what it was...maybe PFSWrite.
In High School, I was introduced to Word. At the same time, I was using Wordperfect at home.
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