By Richard Thurston, 16 January 2007 16:35
NEWS
There are now six credible alternatives to Microsoft Office in schools, according to the government's advisor on IT in education.
Corel WordPerfect Office, EasyOfficek, Lotus SmartSuite, Open Office, Star Office and Sun's One SE all offer the functionality that schoolchildren and teachers need, said Becta, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, in a report issued this month.
All six packages were found to offer at least half the functionality of Microsoft Office 2007, providing all the essential features for the education sector.
Tom McMullan, a Becta consultant, said: "We looked at nine alternatives to Office. Six had at least 50 per cent of the functionality, offering the basic functions that you need."
But Becta also found three popular Office application suites it said were too poor to be used in schools. The blacklist was led by Microsoft's own Works package, a simplified version of Office. Also discouraged is the use of Ability Office, sold by supermarket chain Tesco, as well as Google's online applications.
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Becta called for a selection of the six commended alternatives to be offered to schools as well as Microsoft's software. Becta executive director Stephen Lucey said: "We want to see easier access to competitor products so that schools and colleges can exercise real choice."
According to Becta, there are 176 more features in Office 2007 than in Office 2003 but it said most of the advancements are appropriate only for the private sector. There were no "must-haves" for schools. Writing in a report which evaluated both Office 2007 and Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system, it said: "Becta has not yet been able to identify any realistic justification for the early adoption of Office 2007 across the educational ICT estate."
Microsoft, though, dismissed Becta's findings. Steve Beswick, Redmond's director of education for the UK, said: "Teachers are pushing Office 2003 hard. We haven't seen many schools switch to open source and there are lots of new features in Office 2007."
Mark Taylor, the founder of the Open Source Consortium, a UK-based group of open source suppliers, said schools should consider whether the extra features in Office 2007 were worth the cost. "Open Office hasn't got as many features as Office 2007. The question is whether it is worth those extra features for the price tag. Do people use all the features in Office 2007?" he said.
Taylor added that migration from a Microsoft package to Open Office was no more complicated than migrating between Microsoft packages.
As reported last week, Becta also suggested schools should not yet deploy Vista. It said costs were high and that, as with Office, there are no must-have features for schools in the new operating system.
Microsoft is offering a free 60-day trial to encourage schools and businesses to try out Office 2007.
Richard Thurston writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard Barrington
As a user of Staroffice ( work ) and open Office ( home ) I have not run screaming in the night because there was something I couldn't do.
Indeed, features such as one click export to PDF and native ODF save mean I own my data and I know it will be available forever, though looking at the gibberish I write most of the time Im not sure humanity would miss my comments on the world in general and the anal retentivness of so much of our industry in particular!
2. anonymous
The main barrier are that most IT courses are written exclusively for MS Office and not generically.
Personally I like to mix. I use 123 for spreadsheets, Wordperfect for Wordprocessing and Powerpoint for presentations. Nobody is best at everything!
3. misceng
I have used MS Office because I had to send documents to people who would not use anything else. At home I have used Lotus Wordpro and before that Amipro not because I think they are superior to MS Word but because they are packages which do what you want them to do. MS Word insists on helping you to do it the way Microsoft thinks you should do it so I find it a constant fight to get it to do what I want. I may change to Open Office in future.
4. Richard Davies
Its not just about functionality...its also about the general feel of the software as well as thinking about what students will be expected to be savvy with when they enter the private sector etc.
MS Office is like the Ferrari of office suites and whilst openoffice is usable its more like the skoda of office suites.
If you could...you would probably go for the ferrari every time.
I have used openoffice and found it useable if required, but it had a cheap and nasty look and feel to it...if they could make the software more intuitive and up-to-date then I think they would stand more of a chance of penetrating the market.
5. anonymous
Richard Davies comment makes a good analogy, but fails to follow it through properly...
Yes, OpenOffice is the Skoda of office suites, but Richard's clearly not driven a Skoda recently! Both are reliable, well performing, and have all the features that most users need to achieve their goals - they both use well proven technologies under the hood, but don't charge a ridiculous premium for the privilege.
More importantly, where is the business justification for everyone driving a Ferrari on our congested roads, when most of what we do is travelling from A-B along well established routes? The same goes for OpenOffice - a huge number of people simply do not need the features that it lacks, and paying for MS Office is a waste of resources.
6. anonymous
Perhaps someone should point QCA in the direction of this report, they publish teaching materials that are used by virtually every school that require MS Office. A wider push by the opensource community into secondary schools would help too.