Completely OT - bedtime for children

Honestly? I've got windows 7 professional running on a netbook. Ok it's got two gigs of RAM, ands takes maybe 90-120 seconds from entering the drive encryption password to finishing booting, but once it's done it runs everything quite well.

No idea, I only use 7 professional and logmein for remote access. I know there are other options out there, but logmein is free, I can use it from pretty much anywhere (including on my iPhone or iPad) and I can easily add friends and families computers to the account,, t make solving their problems easier.

I don't use old software, everything on my machine is designed for Windows. iTunes is an abomination of course, but every in else works perfectly. Up times are measured in weeks, and on a server machine running windows 7 are in months. The issue with XP is that it is so old, it needs lots of updates. Try getting a 10 year old Linux installation up and running, then updated, then it's a fair comparison. Otherwise you're comparing problems in ver old software, wit solutions found in up to date Linux distros.

Yeah yeah, I believe you :-). I'm a bugger for playing devils advocate myself, incase you hadn't spotted :-)

As I say above though, that's using old software on an old OS, so it's not giving you a chance to see the modern versions clearly.

I dread to think. I covered the ideas behind it at GCSE, as in rate of change, buoy the actual mathematics side of it was done during A-level. But this was about 15 years ago now.

My first degree was starting about 14 years ago so I can see how things change. Apparently for the better where you're concerned :-)

Not answering the question though. The staff in most schools can use most of the technology they have to a reasonable standard. Linux may be free, but only if your time is worthless. If time has a financial value, then you have to compare the total cost of ownership when considering change. Say windows costs £50 per desktop, compared to £0 for Linux. Say your staff members time is worth £10 per hour, plus another £5 per hour per person to pay for the trainer. So if it takes more than three hours to train people to use the new software, it starts costing more than Windows.

Using Windows also allows people to gain experience and knowledge more easily - since almost everyone uses it, they can ask friends, family, the Internet and so on for help and get it easily.

Which knob - .doc? But then you'd have people complaining it isn't a "real standard" and want it sending in another format.

That depends on your definition of standard. I'd say that something used by the vast majority of people is the standard.

Why should other people pay because you make a decision not to be compatible with the standard office software? I use Windows at home, because it is the only software that does what I need my machines to do. If I used something else that wasn't compatible with Windows, then I would expect difficulty exchanging files with other people. That's the nature of life - if you want to use unusual technology then you will hit snags that people using the more common options won't do.

If the vast majority of people use it, it is a standard.

But who pays the extra costs involved in training the staff how to do this?

Yes. Essentially anything you could put in any document can be rendered to a PDF file, for free.

That assumes the format *is* fixable... :-> I've already "fixed" all the ones that can be fixed anyway.

Indeed

IIRC, having gone to a school up that way, that's one of the few school dinner offerings that made me projectile vomit.

I heard rumours that he was a Nuttal.

On that basis docx is definitely NOT a standard, although doc may well be.

Beware of falling in to the upgrade trap. MSFT Office 2007 does no more than Office 97 but it does hide things and take up more vertical screen estate - just when short screen monitors are becoming fashionable.

No it won't. MS Office isn't even compatible with itself.

Oh, really? And where can I download MS Office for Linux? For Sun Solaris? for OS/400?

That's *exactly* what PDFs are designed for.

Well, this "debate" is at an end, since you're an idiot.

There are no such costs. MS Office products can create PDFs.

If you want to suck Bill Gates' c*ck, you go right ahead, but don't expect me to join you.

A standard generally assumes that its details are published (note earlier point about MS not conforming to their own standard).

Are you seriously telling me that an email to all staff saying "all files to parents must be saved as Office 95 compatible" or whatever costs more than 5 minutes of time? Because that's all I'm expecting.It's not a standard, but it's well enough hacked to be pretty reliable for anyone.

See other post. Noone has to pay anything for the minimum acception solution

- one email instructing them to do a "save as" is hardly expecting the earth.

I ask the question: why are they spending my taxes on MS Office when OpenOffice would alsost certainly be good enough for everything they do.

I accept expecting *them* to use linux is not realistic, what with all the software that they already in use (like SIMS and other govt stuff).

But expecting them to give out either open standard or at least openly useable formats is not unreasonable.

Expecting me to buy Windows and MS Office (matching or better than their version) is not accpetible. Linux does eveything I want and Windows does not run a lot of the software I use.

I think he meant updating the file for later submission.

Not sure that would be a great combination with only a GB RAM???

Well, I do have access to Windows 7 to try at work (at no personal cost) so you're on. I'll shove it in vitualbox and see what it looks like. I might even try the server stuff out one day[1] and see how easy or not it is to get DFS and AD up vs linux.

I won't like it though :)

As I alrady have LDAP and am planning kerberos for work, in *theory* it should be possible to fake an AD environment for windows too - I'll have to look into that...

It's true - noone defied a dinner lady in my day - though the ones with kids in the school themselves were usually a bit softer.

We should note that this point that part of the argument stemmed from the people starting to send out .docx files.

Ultimately I don't care what I get as long as it works. I will care when it doesn't.

Plain ascii for a great many things. PDF for document dissemination if presentation matters and it's read only. RTF is still rich enough for plenty of basic use cases.

If you really have to lob an editable document around people who are in different organisations, it is polite at least to use a lower-denominator MS format that eveyone else (ie OpenOffice) has had a long time to get right. Not eveyone in an MS shop has the latest Office either.