2-Year OpenOffice High School Case Study 472
Michael writes "NewsForge (a Slashdot sister site) is carrying a 2-year OpenOffice case-study on a Detroit high school who switched from Windows NT and MS Office 97 to Linux and OpenOffice. The results? Better than expected. In 2003, the school, who saved over $100,000 in the process, converted 110 Windows NT machines to Linux with OpenOffice. After several surprising developments, including OpenOffice's ability to open old Word documents that even the new Word versions were having troubles with, the school now uses it almost exclusively, has classes on it's use, and encourages students to use it whenever possible. From the article: 'While OpenOffice.org is now used by 100% of the faculty and students in the school (though some administrative staff still uses Microsoft Office due to specific software requirements), students are not required to use OpenOffice.org when working at home. However, a presentation is given to students at the start of every school year to advise them on the use of OpenOffice.org, the availability of free copies, and potential problems of converting from Microsoft Office formats.'"
Open Office Study (Score:5, Funny)
And yes, I do think I'm funny.
Re:Open Office Study (Score:2, Interesting)
I use OpenOffice myself, and I find it satisfactorially meets all of my needs as a college student, with less annoying graphic overhead and for the perfect price. (ie, free.)
Also, I am aware that this was sarcastic, however,
Re:Open Office Study (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Open Office Study (Score:3, Insightful)
hahaha
Re:Open Office Study (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Office Study (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Office Study (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you meant this is the sense that a major group of users supported it, but it also works in the sense that they were actually able to give instruction for its use.
One of the reasons F/OSS has such an uphill battle is because existing software has such huge support in terms of classes on it's use, informal help on its use, and the
Re:Open Office Study (Score:5, Funny)
That's true. For real documents people use LaTeX. Fortunately that comes preloaded on most Linux distributions too.
Re:Open Office Study (Score:4, Informative)
Don Knuth is the man.
Re:Open Office Study (Score:3, Informative)
The truth is most of these professors and primary investigators (PIs, with MD's and Ph.D's) use MS Word in winxp or on MacOSX, then they sometimes wrap the documents using adobe distiller with adobe acrobat pro.
The only people I know who use LaTEX in academia are physicists an
It was the *staff* that converted. (Score:5, Insightful)
It was the staff who converted -- and (to their surprise) found that it was way better than they expected. Learning curve for the staff is quite relevant, since they all probably knew MS Office before hand.
On the other hand, you still have a learning curve for every new version of MS Office too... Probably about as much as the difference between MS and Open..
and kept MS Office for some of the administration stuff, probably because they couldn't afford not openning certain documents.
MS Office couldn't open some MS office documents, and OO couldn't open some MS Office documents -- so overall, I'd say we're about equal here.
Re:Open Office Study (Score:2)
Hope that it gave you a well-earned, late afternoon chuckle.
Re:Open Office Study (Score:2)
Amazingly, this time you were.
Re:Open Office Study (Score:3, Funny)
Statistics are great, aren't they?
They missed the hidden costs (Score:4, Funny)
Open source does win out in the end (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Open source does win out in the end (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, this and all other TCO "studies" are BS. They "saved" $100,000 over a completely different solution, not a better one. By this, they kept around their old PCs and threw Li
This one is priceless... (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFS:
This sums it up so well...
Actually, has anyone out there run into any issues with OpenOffice as a substitute for M$ Office? I'm considering switching everything over, especially after reading this article.
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:2)
As of a year ago, their spreadsheet was far inferior if you're a "power user" of Excel, although for much day-to-day use it was fine.
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:2)
I've heard the same thing, but I have no idea of what constitutes a "power user".
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:2)
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:3, Funny)
Then for you, OpenOffice should be fine.
Font Issues (Score:2)
Re:Font Issues (Score:2)
Yikes...I do a lot of work with PP presentations...so that one might be a deal-breaker. Thanks for the info.
Re:Font Issues (Score:2)
I run OOo beta (1.9m104) at work and home without trouble, but I rarely use PowerPoint. As a heavy user of Access, I am looking forward to a stable version of Base.
Re:Font Issues (Score:2)
Re:Font Issues (Score:5, Interesting)
On this occasion, however, when the PowerPoint presentation was given to me (about 30 minutes beforehand), I was quite disconcerted to see that the act of merely opening the file quite rudely caused PowerPoint to crash compeletely on every single computer I tried it on (nonsensical as it sounds, it seems as if the problem was an issue with there being some speech recognition program on the computer it was originally created on that it wasn't able to find on our computers, or something; the error message wasn't very helpful).
Anyways, 5 minutes before the General arrives, I dash across the building to my workspace and, in a final, fleeting effort, stuff the thumbdrive into my Linux box. I mount it, fire up openoffice.org, open the file, and behold! Nary a glitch--and certainly not a crash! Click "Save", run back, and ta-da! General waltzes in and gives his briefing, oblivious to any trouble, and I sit back and smugly read my book.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:2)
Sometimes.
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:2)
OOo is extremely slow to start up -- say, 30 seconds on a machine that's not the latest and greatest CPU. I was surprised to see the story saying they saw OOo as a way to get more use out of old hardware, because OOo seems to me like software that was only written to be usable on computers that will exist in the future.
But then, I'm not looking at it as a replacement for MS Office, which I don't use. The opt
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:2)
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:5, Informative)
The thing I love best is the built in PDF exporter, makes it so much easier to send out documents I don't want altered other then at the mester-copy.(Eg, they can't just fire up Word and type away) That's just me being picky though.
I haven't had a problem with it at all in practical use, but I'm hardly a power-user when it comes to office suites.
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. PDF export is THE major feature that OOo has over MS Office. The only extra feature that's comprehensible to a casual user, anway.
Other languages. (Score:2)
If you find yourself typing anything in another language for any reason, be prepared for a world of hurt. OO.o will intermittently switch to English at random intervals and start marking all of your words as misspelled until you select the whole text and manually switch it to the other language (through the ungainly interface
Re:Other languages. (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Put the setting somewhere else. There is no logical connection to the font dialog it's controlled in right now. Put it in the context menu, at the very least - although the context menu already is fairly crowded because pretty much everything is controllable from it.
2) Have a means to reduce the number of possible languages. As it is, you have to wade through every imaginable language when typically you only use a few languages in your
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This one is priceless... (Score:2)
Linux is Great (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux is Great (Score:2, Informative)
There are AV programs for Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There are AV programs for Linux (Score:2)
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's great (Score:2)
Re:That's great (Score:2, Informative)
March 2005: OOo 2.0 Beta
May 2005 : OOo 2.0 changes will be done on separated branch, the trunk (HEAD) will then be used for the next OOo major (3.0 ?) release.
May 2005: OOo 2.0 rc
June 2005 : OOo 2.0
Q3 2005: OOo 2.0.1
taken from:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/OpenOf
Re:That's great (Score:2)
Needs a better spellchecker. (Score:2)
OO.o's spellchecker just isn't as good as Word's. It works the same way, but the suggestions just aren't as good.
I'd also love a simple, notepad-like text editor that gave me online spellchecking and word line number. Anything like that out there?
Re:Needs a better spellchecker. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Needs a better spellchecker. (Score:2)
TextEdit works on GNUStep too (I think), but I don't know about the spelling service.
Re:Needs a better spellchecker. (Score:2)
Re:Needs a better spellchecker. (Score:3, Informative)
Some OSes have builtin systemwide spell checkers. This is something I've dreamed of for years. For my webbrowser under OSX all I had to do is right click on this text dialog box, and enable spell checking as I type. Its cool, I put words anywhere (like the Google search bar) I feel like and right click on them to get the correct spe
Re:Needs a better spellchecker. (Score:4, Funny)
[mac user]
What's this "right-click" you speak of?
[/mac user]
*sniff* *sniff* (Score:2)
Grammar School (Score:3, Informative)
I hope the school teaches students that "who" is a pronoun that references people. "School" is a noun properly referenced by the pronoun "that" or "which" (in this case, "which" [getitwriteonline.com]). Choosing "that" or "which" properly can require some fast thinking, but using "who" for a school is a real failure.
Google Toolbar v3 has form spell-check (Score:2)
I've ben ussing it fer moonths and it's werks graet! (just kidding)
only a matter of time (Score:2, Interesting)
Good to see some positve propaganda for once (Score:2)
100,000 can be spent to hire special teachers and improve the quality of education for all.
OO.org is perfectly useable and i have infact switched all my machines(home naturaly as they are all linux or os x and i dont own MS office for mac , but mainly work ) to using OO.org
I counducted a 2 hour training sesion in the basics for the employes, though it was uneeded mostly and we have never
Re:Good to see some positve propaganda for once (Score:2)
I hate to be a wet blanket, but $100,000 may hire 1 "special" teacher--if you mean special ed. teacher. Their salary, combined with the teacher's benefits will take up a large portion of that. $100,000 is a drop in the bucket for a school. Now if an entire school district could save $100,000 per school per year, you might make some headway.
Re:No, that money can't ... (Score:2)
classes on it's use (Score:5, Funny)
Presumably they also have classes on the use of the apostrophe. (Sigh.)
Re:classes on it's use (Score:2)
Re:classes on it's use (Score:2)
A threat against piracy! (Score:3, Interesting)
Knowing that as a high school / college student I could not afford the software, it's use was generously "loaned" to me. (I also had to borrow computers -- could not afford one of my own until a college loan specific for building one came along).
But with educational institutions very worried these days about piracy, having truley free software of good quality is the way to lessen piracy in the schools.
OpenOffice.org is a great suite, and has many things going for it that just makes sense, such as it being open source, free to distribute, and cross-platform, just about any student should be able to use it.
Re:A threat against piracy! (Score:2, Informative)
The GNU collection is designed to provide a large number of free small programs, which I use on the desktop and on numerous servers in the work place.
Its quite appareny when I use a Windows PC as I have thousands of stupid shareware programs complaining about this that and the other, when I load up an open source desktop life is much quieter.
And yes, this is propaganda, but you should try it out, and piracy is bad.
OO is all very well... (Score:3, Insightful)
wimps (Score:4, Funny)
Did the school donate any money to OO? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Did the school donate any money to OO? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Did the school donate any money to OO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Detroit did this? (Score:3, Funny)
classes on open office? (Score:2, Funny)
thereby readying their students to compete for those coveted administrative assistant positions.
I resent that comment (Score:3, Insightful)
This is great because (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux is good... for now (Score:2)
With linux, I can imagine this will be completely different... until the kiddo's start watching bugtraq for local root exploits
Research Lab migration (Score:2)
Making the switch (Score:2, Interesting)
Younger computer users are naturally more adaptive while adults are more set in their ways. I do acknowledge that there were some adults (teachers, administrators) who succeeded in this study. Still, could I teach all the "old dogs" at my workplace the "new tricks" of Linux and OpenOffice?
My question, and no, I'm not just trolling... (Score:2)
But here's my question; if this is educational is OO a better choice than Office 97?
I'm just thinking that I'd want my students in an environment that they're going to find useful in the future. I'm guessing that 95% of all office environments are running MS Office. So, would an older version of MS Office measure up better to "the real thi
This bears repeating... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the best quotes I've ever seen on the whole OpenOffice.org vs. Microsoft Office debate:
Tried downloading Open Office just now ... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a GUI/Usability guy, so this is my professional ability to play "dumb user" speaking:
The ZIP I downloaded had a cryptic name "OO_...something..." with lots of letters and numbers. The zip took a long time to download, so when I later saw this file on my desktop I didn't know what it was. This was confusing, it should say something "OpenOffice.zip" or better yet "OpenOffice.EXE".
I opened the zip (would "dumb user" even have WinZip on their system, or know how to use it?) -- the zip contained dozens of weirdly named files, and at the very bottom of the list I found a setup.exe. I ran the setup exe, and from this point on the installation process was clean and simple.
The file I download should have been as small an EXE as possible -- perhaps a small simple app that downloads the big file for you in a friendly way.
Luring new users over from the dark (MS) side is like trying to get a tiny squirrel to take a peanut from your hand. Any weird gestures and they'll bolt. I'm afraid the big download, weirdly named zip, and the hunt for the setup.exe would likley have caused the timid squirrel to run away.
Then I went to launch the app, and the icons in the OpenOffice folder on the Start menu confused me. I could not find an icon with a blue W representing the word processor, so after a moment of confusion I tried clicking on "Open Document" which let me browse to my *.doc -- whew it worked, but "dumb user" wasn't sure he was doing the right thing, and almost didn't bother to try.
The doc file opened easily, the Word Processor is pretty and obviously very mature and full-functioned. I could read and print (!) my doc easily with no trouble at all. Very nice.
The BIG POINT HERE is Sun needs to do their best to improve the initial download/install experience to ensure switchers don't get confused. Also, emulate everything MS does so MS Office users do not have to stray from their pre-conditioned clicking behavious; you will loose new users at the first moment of confusion. A "Blue W " icon needs to represent the Word Processor, a "Green X" icon for the Spreadsheet.
Hope this helps, looks like a good product, really.
Sam
Re:Tried downloading Open Office just now ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now consider OpenOffice adopting your strategy using a blue-W icon. Or Mozilla using a blue-E icon. How will will that wash with Microsoft's lawyers?
Just switch already (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the time I'm sending them PDF's by posting them on the web server, which is as easy as saving them to a network folder, which I do right from OO. And I really like being able to use the same application on Windows or Linux.
I've also known some small offices that have switched over, very few problems. All those FUD talking points MSFT uses are absolute crap. There is no massive learning curve or training costs and anyone who can open a PDF can read what you create.
A $100,000 to a school district is a lot of money. That could pay for an after school program for a whole year, equipment for a sports program, an extra teacher. Even if OO was a vastly inferior product, which it's not IMHO, it would seem like the things you could do with the money in a school far outweigh having the latest and greatest software.
Re:now where will the money go? (Score:2)
$20k a year? (Score:2)
Re:$20k a year? (Score:2)
Re:now where will the money go? (Score:2)
For $20k, you're not exactly getting Stephen Hawking to teach your physics class. You might be more accurate to say it would be 3 teachers. Also, a total cost of $20k per teacher would mean that the teachers actual pay would be more like $15k/year once you factor in pension and benefits.
Also, take into account that the $100,000 is a one time upgrade cost, and the teachers are a yearly cost.
Your point was taken, but there isn't any kind of comparison. It is best
Re:now where will the money go? (Score:2)
That's a one time savings of $100,000. In four years, maybe they'll save another $100,000 when it's time to upgrade, or maybe they'd only save $50,000 since they purchased Software Assurance. So over 8 years, they've saved $150,000, or just over $18K a year.
That's nice, they can buy a handful more computers every year. But it's not going to pay for any more teachers.
Re:now where will the money go? (Score:2)
Re:Newsforge identified as a sister site ... (Score:4, Informative)
It usually looks something like "(Disclaimer: Slashdot and Newsforge are both owned by OSTG)"
*AFAIK
Re:Newsforge identified as a sister site ... (Score:3, Informative)
So while this statistically invalid survey suggests they don't do it "all the time", I have missed 'em, so thanx for the pointer mrchaotica which motivated me to do some quick research.
Re:Newsforge identified as a sister site ... (Score:2)
But this isn't much of a revellation. I mean, "OSTG" and all the included sites are listed along that little grey banner-line at the top of slashdot. I also noticed that alot of the April 01 [slashdot.org] articles referred to ThinkGeek and said "(TG is owned by OSTG, the parent company of Slashdot, so activate all conspira
Re:Bullshit. (Score:2)
It's an advice. And a good one, for the record. If you can prove me that nobody nowhere made an advice for studsnts on MS Office usage, I'd say nothing. But, this is absolutely not the case. In the majority of schools nothing else [than MS Office] is even mentioned, let alone recommended for use. Now you say it's "questionable" to even recommend OO.org. Hell, you say "bullshit", maybe you should sit and think a bit next time.
marking any Office user as a ho
Re:Bullshit. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is going to be a typical scene of geek masturbation, with a single common theme in mind: It worked for me, therefore it must be perfect for everyone in the world
Wow how is that precognition going? This thread is already several hundred posts long and I haven't seen anyone (aside from you) voice that assertion. This is a typical straw man argument, ...weak.
Re:Well duh (Score:2)
Re:Lets all pretend we went to high school ourselv (Score:2)
It should be:
"In 2003 the school saved over $100,000 in the process,
Re:Excellent to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's true. However, if someone in charge decides they can save 100,000$ in software, and put that money into books or teacher salaries (or an additional hire) instead, then this is a net benefit to the school without their funding being reduced.
They need to start using XP and Office, and run up their support bills.
It bothers me that you're advocating a publicly-funding institute wasting money. And we wonder why our governments mis-manage funds? It's in large part due to that kind of thinking. No, I would rather that the school not waste money, and that the savings go into other school programs, or even into other schools, or even into other sectors of the government that need funding (of which there are many).
If I was the schools administrator I'd avoid anything with the word "free" in it like the plague.
I truly hope most school administrators are not like you. Avoiding things that are "free" because that might reduce your budget for next year? What's the point of having a big budget if you're forced to waste it? I would much prefer that those in charge of spending my tax dollars do the right thing and spend my money intelligently.
Re:But how much does the training cost? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:These students will suffer from the M$ tax (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know a single person I'd call technically competent who is only able to use one word processor, spreadsheet, IDE, CAD tool, whatever to the exclusion of all others. The tech curve is not static, and knowing one thing (even if it is the most popular) is to handicap yourself when that curve moves beyond what you know.
MS Tax or no, I consider this to be doing the students a favor.
Checked your facts... (Score:3, Informative)
Well according to the above quote from the Microsoft page - the software that actually did the proof came from a publically funded research institute not Microsoft - who merely applied it to the 4-colour problem. Both researchers appear to work at INRIA (French national institute of research in computer science) and one of them is associated with