[Wolves] Linux in schools

[Mark Ellse]

> Are the staff using OpenOffice or just the students?  

All machines in the school run OpenOffice. This is the great advantage 
of being in charge of the place and understanding the IT issues.

We have had very few complaints from staff about OpenOffice in school. 
The greatest number of complaints have come from the secretary and 
bursar who were both very familiar indeed with MS Office.

So there are significant transition costs, which are greatest for those 
who use computers the most. This is the inevitable and unavoidable 
hurdle which, I guess, that OOo 2 will help deal with.

> the students use OpenOffice (or Koffice or Abiword) but the staff use 
> M$Office on their laptops (of which I have nothing to do with).  They did try 
> some laptops with OpenOffice but the staff complained and mgmt gave in. The 
> teacher who has the remaining laptop with OpenOffice would regularly ask me 
> to install M$Office, cus "I don't get on very well with OpenOffice".  No can 
> do was always my reply; we have no M$ licences.  When I ask what specifically 
> he doesn't get on well will, said staff member can't be tell me.  If he 
> could, I might just me able so show him what he is doing wrong.  Methinks 
> that he feels that as it is free software it can't be any good.  

I agree, a lot of the problems are perception. MSOffice suites have 
their quirks, but staff will tolerate them. I have to say that Excel is 
the best product of the MS stable. I have experienced very few problems 
with it. But MSWord crashes with complicated arrangements (I think that 
it is a deliberate ploy to make you buy Publisher), Publisher does 
strange things losing resolution on images, and Access is totally 
unfathomable.

When staff find that MS products fail them, they think that the fault 
must be their own as users. If there is a problem with OpenOffice, they 
think that it's a consequence of using 'free software'.

It certainly
> isn't a compatibility issue as most of our staff members don't seem to know 
> how to move a file from one machine to another.   

Agreed.

Actually, just a few daft things which are more logical in OOo, but 
different from MSOffice, cause the most problems. Top of the list is 
page setup, which in MSOffice is in the file menu and with OOo is in the 
Format menu.

Mark