Vista and Office 2007 expelled from British schools

28th January 2008

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, which advises local schools on the IT sphere, submitted a report in which it does not recommend switching to Windows Vista and Office 2007. The report also says about the support for file storage format ODF (Open Document Format).
The Agency said that upgrading to Vista is justified only in case of the deployment of a new infrastructure, but the new operating system should not be used in conjunction with other versions of Windows or specially update the old computers. The Agency believes that the money spent on switching to Vista, are incommensurate to the benefits that educational institutions would get out of it.
Switching to Vista would require about $350 million. About a third of this amount is the cost of licenses, and the rest would be spent on testing, purchasing new hardware and the introduction of new operating systems. However, this sum is not enough to buy such graphics cards, which can support the feature of Windows Aero. However, the report states that this feature is not very important for schools.
As for Office 2007, the British agency is very skeptical about it as well. The report says that the package contains no particularly important functions, which would make the upgrade to the new version required. Moreover, BECTA warns those schools that are going to switch to Office 2007, about the problems associated with the incompatibilities that they may encounter. The matter is in a new format of saving files Office Open XML.
The Agency recommends drawing attention to alternative office packages and the format of ODF.