Windows Vista, Office 2007 Expelled From British Schools

January 12, 2008 – 13:29

Information Week carries a story about the British Education authorities deciding against upgrading their network of schools to Windows Vista and Office 2007. They cite cost and ‘unclear benefits’ as reasons and are looking at free Open Source alternatives such as OpenOffice.org, which is near equivalent and in many ways surpasses many proprietary offerings on the market.

“Upgrading existing ICT systems to Microsoft Vista or Office 2007 is not recommended,” said the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, also known as Becta, in a report issued this week.

Becta officials said a study the group commissioned found that upgrading school systems from Windows XP to Vista and Office 2007 would increase costs and create software compatibility problems while providing little benefit.

“Our advice is to be sure there is a strong business case for upgrading to these products as the costs are significant and the benefits remain unclear,” said Stephen Lucy, Becta’s executive director of strategic technologies, in a statement.

Becta also singled out for criticism Microsoft’s failure to support the Open Document Format — which is recognized by the International Organization for Standardization — in Office 2007. Instead, the software uses a new Microsoft format called Office Open XML.