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Wow, Microsoft still doesn't know about the "give back" policy...

Nice, people are finally waking up to the power of openSource!!

Um, Microsoft. Figures. What about OpenOffice?

@ Eric

"..What about OpenOffice?.."

... or Neo Office ... whichever you prefer

MW= "move" -- This move by MS will come back to haunt them later on !!

Apple should bundle iWork for free on all new Macs.

> Tens of thousands of school pupils may miss out on important software on their school computers...

I don't think they will "miss out" on very much. When was the last time you heard kids complain that their computers do not have Microsoft Office on it?

This is good news. This is first instance I have heard of, of a govt agency adopting for free open source on this scale.

Should have known it would be the Kiwis - first country with women's vote, nuclear free harbours etc

I am staggered that more schools, in particular, haven't done this, as they are always crying poor (understandably) and M$ products don't come cheap.

Maybe they are also considering a new Apple offering coming out in October....

2.7 million divided by 25,000 is $108 per machine. Is this cost for one year, two years, three years,...?

Was the Ministry of Education leasing the software? Would it have been wiser to purchase the software?

Apple's iWork can be purchased for less than $99 with education discount.

> am staggered that more schools, in particular, haven't done this, as they are always crying poor (understandably) and M$ products don't come cheap.>

It's not their (schools') money being spent. It's yours and a little of mine.

The easiest way to waste money? let the gummint touch it.

Funny -- I have always worked for large corporations, bastions of free enterprise, that require Microsoft -- and not just office, but Windows, Sql Server, the whole baggage.

I also live in Massachusetts, where the state has put up a pretty good resistance to MS.

Hmmmm..........

At my university, Microsoftpoo made a deal to give out MS Office for free, at least for Windows.

Looked like a way to keep them from straying to OpenOffice. This extra fee for Macs looks like a double-edged sword: down with the Macs as well.

$%%^ jerk back tea-baggers. I hope Steve makes Bill look real stupid at that conference.

wake up folks!
Microsoft Office is THE standard.
On PCs AND on MACs.

As an IT consultant, I see many clients (many as in government) switching to OpenOffice or similar free programs because they don't have to pay for it, and that is the only reason.
But all those high-up-in-the-hierarchy people that make these decisions use MS Office themselves, use Outlook (or Entourage) for their mail, and wouldn't recognise OpenOffice even they stepped in it.

It's a strange world we are living in.
Microsoft bashing is considered very cool, and opensource is supposedly THE answer to all our questions.
Wake up and smell the roses: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
I see governments scrambling to get rid of Windows, replacing it with Linux (one of the more than 160 versions...), and discovering that they now have to find highly paid consultants to keep these things running. And it turns out to be more difficult than having an Active Directory dude and some seasoned sysadmins.

And before you start to flame this post, just think for yourself: is it really good that the governments want to go open source? Because they do NOT associate Apple with open source...

aye bro.

i am sure with educational deals apple would have included a free copy of iWork but since apple hasn't released numbers yet they are still shy of a spreadsheet. NeoOffice fills that problem.

I also forgot what software company is going to port OpenOffice so that its completely native to Mac OS X. OpenOffice just looks like MS Office while NeoOffice is little clunky and buggy.

Open source might be free and yet require either trained present admins or new IT staff might not be the answer.. but if open office is similar to ms office, how much more complicated to administer it? besides the only real reason why so many people uses ms office because it became the common denominator in the Windows ruled world. So wake up and smell the coffee! changes require new learning curves, either u try train an old dog new tricks or get a new dog period. Or just get all macs and mac servers and make an informed choice!

this is a comment back to justaguy's posting.

i'm a mac IT consultant and i wouldn't want the government to run any single OS for the sake of security. i think it should be evenly spread among many platforms. starting off with linux, windows and mac os x.

with the government you have to break it down by department followed by division. you really can't mandate the entire government to switch or follow the same set of guidelines. because some divisions require unique specialized software to run on custom systems and you need terminals in the same regard. so there isn't a b- all-end-all solution.

however i do like what is happening and that governments are realizing they don't need one source to function. i want more diversity. its good for everyone.

break up the systems by: 30 percent for mac, 30 percent linux, 30 percent windows and ten percent for the rest. those are the major platforms. so if one platform fails due to a virus you have more than 2/3's operating. you don't have a complete meltdown.

i want choice. isn't that freedom?

neo

@ justaguy

You may work in IT, but sure put the DIO in it.

"I'm an IT consultant! I'm so big and smart, I read my Windows certification bookies, ooooooooo!!!"

Get a life, hosebag. Open Office is fine for the 90% of the population who need a word processor. AND it supports Open Doc Format, ODF, which is way more important than the stinking MS c*m you seem to like to swallow.

@justaguy

I just think you're getting a bit carried away. A school is different from a corporation. As long as the kids learn on something with which they can develop the same skills, who cares. All your arguments, valid or not in themselves (although I find them questionable), are not relevant in this case.

The cheap option is the best option in this case, because there is no value offered by the expensive option.

I understood that Open Office was being ported to run on Mac OS X without the need for X11. I don't know how far away that is, but maybe it'll overcome the buggy allegations leveled at NeoOffice.

When will "IT Consultants" learn that this expression is considered around here to be the equivalent of "incompetent, ignorant idiot who is just a cog in the M$ wheel" and does not impress us?

Microsoft Office is THE standard. On PCs AND on MACs.

First off it's 'Macs' not MAC like "a computers MAC address"

Look it up sometime.

And second....

Over 20 years and no M$ Office yet, been working just fine with everyone

Second if your exchanging M$ Office files, your just a stupid peon anyway and your work/presentation isn't good enough to be submitted via paper, pdf in person etc. in a uneditable fashion.

We artists have been living with our Mac's in corporations for years, we absolutely refuse to use inferior M$ products and rather find a new job instead.

To us, M$ represents compliance and failure. To use OfficeMac would require us to comply with everyone else, when artists are not like everyone else. We need to think outside the box so you can have a life outside the box.

M$ is a box of corporate despair. Apple and Mac is the party.

Joint the party. Quit M$ and be totally free. It's your life.

@ justaguy

So you are a computer consultant. Wow!! Well I have been programming since 1971 and an Independant IT Consultant (stress on Independant) since 1979. I can name Government departments in my clients in 4 countries. So what. That still makes me just one more computer user.

Did you know that MS-Office was first developed on the Mac? Are you aware that until the last release all new features of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and email (Entourage on Mac, Outlook on PC's) were available on the Mac first? Are you aware that M$ has shot themselves in the foot by NOT signing up to the Open Document Forum standard, that their OpenDoc standard is actually just M$ own crippled 'me too' format and that they had to write an optional converter to allow older versions to be interchangeable?

Oh for the rest of you complaining about NeoOffice, the latest version is stable and it is a port of OpenOffice to run natively on OSX without X11. You do not need to wait for some other party to do the same thing.

As for New Zealand schools, good on yer mate! The kids need to learn about Word Processors and Spreadsheets etc, the principle of operation is vastly more important than which tool is used.

It wasn't so many years ago that two other products each in turn dominated the word processing field. First was Wordstar, then came Word Perfect. The reason for Word Perfect dominance is that it was operationally virtually identical to the dedicated WP machines from companies such as Wang, IBM, ICL etc. who held over 95% of the market between them. Now where are their dedicated WP products? Lesson for M$, no matter how big you are, business is subject to trends and nothing lasts forever. Never forget the customers who gave you the break in the first place, cos they wont.

Cheers

hahaha.. the addict tells the dealerto fuck off...

LOL

"Oh for the rest of you complaining about NeoOffice, the latest version is stable and it is a port of OpenOffice to run natively on OSX without X11. You do not need to wait for some other party to do the same thing."

If you Google "open office versus neooffice", it would seem that the latter has a wee way to go in terms of features and stability.

Coming Soon:

A headline which says "Microsoft and the NZ Ministry of Education have agreed on a much lower licensing price"

Training people on a product other than what they'll be using in real life is better than nothing, but it'd be like initially training all airline pilots to fly in blimps rather than fixed wing aircraft. Sure, a lot of the principles are the same, but not quite the same enough that the person doesnt need some retraining. They will almost all need to take time (and for the dumber ones, training courses) to achieve the same levels of familiarity and productivity with Office later.

@fenman

mate if you're going to stress something, at least spell it correctly. Independent matey, independent - please...

But i absolutely agree with you on the trend thing - I worked for Wang Labs for 10 years and watched them disappear from the market in just a few years. Wordperfect first, but then MS Word spelled the end (no pun intended) for dedicated WP machines.

MS claim that they have sold over 1 million zunes. Ballmer must have a lot of relatives...

It's important to remember that these are schoolchildren being trained for the future. Whatever software is state of the art now will have been superseded by the time they get into work. Therefore it doesn't actually matter which particular word processor they use, so long is it employs the same sorts of principles that others do.

I think that an open source solution is particularly fitting for schoolchildren, because they can also install the same software on their home PCs or Macs and have a consistent operating experience.

I seem to remember that recently the Australian Department of Defence stopped using Windows. What OS's does the Department of Homeland Security use? Any answers anybody?

Personally any country that wants to maintain a secure environment would be nuts to use windows. You might as well put up a sign and invite the nasties into your country, arm them, give them maps of all of your critical infrastructure and then commit mass suicide.

Just for the record has anyone ever crashed Redmond's campus or are they using a non-windows' operating system?

I work for a large, international defence organisation and we are standardised on Microsoft Office. Much as this may upset the readers here, I don't know of any other corporate solution that can offer the same enterprise level features - such as the tight integration with a document management/portal system (Sharepoint), live collaboration features, powerful macro abilities to support enterprise level macros, centralised management, etc, etc. Sure, there are plenty of products that you can use type letters and simple reports, but Office goes way beyond that in an enterprise.

Of course, for the NZ schools it doesn't matter at all. May as well just get them using Wordpad for free.

It would be awesome if Apple bundled iWork&iLife;into the OS and raised the Mac OS price a little. 199$ vs. 129$ + 2 • 79$

Family Pack would of course be 275$ or 279$ with that pricing. 299$ seems more likely though...

I find it hilarious when people run around and passionately defend a computer program as a standard. Do you feel threatened, JustAGuy? Do you worry that soon people will not know all the secret commands to make Excel sit, roll over, or play dead? The old order perishes, and with it go all of the small men who defended it.

Well, it seems to me that 'JustAGuy' is the reason that so many schools use M$ Office. He's a "Computer Consultant" who can only see M$ solutions, thus guaranteeing him employment. The School Boards are elected with no regard to educational or technological expertise - they rely completely on the 'consultants' to choose computers and software.

That's also why they think t's important to "teach" their perception of standard software, rather than teach concepts! They recreate the droids that they are. Sigh.

"wake up folks!
Microsoft Office is THE standard.
On PCs AND on MACs."

How come every forum there's always some clown who feels the need to tell everyone to 'wake up' as if everyone else but him is walking around in a daze, clueless and zombie-like.

Don't you just love the comment from "justaguy" about having to hire support people when a switch to non-M$ software is made?

Do he mean that by inference, M$ crap doesn't require support? Or less than open source? Best laugh I've had in a while.

My company has TWO people that do NOTHING all day but try (vainly in some cases) to fix the M$ sh** that has infected us.

For some companies the switch to open source might be a mistake, but if so, it won't be because of higher IT personnel costs.

No one ever got fired for ripping off Microsoft to the tune of 2.5 million dollars.

Apple has a golden opportunity here to give them iWork plus the next upcoming upgrade for free. This will lead to Mac purchases and would get headlines.

@justaguy

...don't you regret posting your comment now heheheheh

”Should have known it would be the Kiwis - first country with women's vote, nuclear free harbours etc”

If the Kiwis were as smart and progressive as you think why didn’t they go open source earlier or develop their own “MS Word killer” or even work out a more favorable deal with MS?

There is no linkage between women’s suffrage with use of open source software. If my history is correct, a woman's right to vote has been established in the West decades before development of the first open source software.

New Zealand’s “nuclear-free zone” legislation hasn’t limited the expansion of global nuclear weapons development (e.g. North Korea and Iran), so, except for the Kiwis themselves, has done little to control nuclear weapons or nuclear power proliferation. Kiwis can pat themselves on the back for their “moral superiority”, but they must confess that their “nuclear-free zone” is basically a political stunt and a symbolic gesture. Even ardent environmentalists are beginning to support worldwide development of nuclear power plants. People’s Republic of China has an aggressive open source campaign as well as increasing nuclear weapons development. It has been suggested that ROC is using Linux in its nuclear weapons program.

I suppose that you would remove all Apple software and sell all Apple computers if you discovered that nuclear weapons sites had integrated Mac into their server systems, right? I mean, by sending money to Apple you would be promoting distribution of technologies of a company engaged in nuclear proliferation and funding nuclear proliferation by proxy.

“etc” WTF does this mean? Nothing or anything. Who knows?

M$ are soooo dumb. When M$ broke Wordperfect they did it by giving office 'free' with new machines and then catching the buyer when he 'upgraded'.

M$ should give it to kids andthen 'catch' them when parents buy the PC for college.

M$ are just stupid. Anyway, their stupidity is another companies' opportunity. Come on Apple show these muppets what to do.

Walter Chillum asks, "I seem to remember that recently the Australian Department of Defence stopped using Windows. What OS's does the Department of Homeland Security use? Any answers anybody?"

I remember the CIO of Homeland Security a few years ago announced that, as part of the plan to "integrate" the 22 or so disparate agencies merging into HS, would "standardize" on Windows. The security community, of course, went nuts over the decision. About the same time, I was asking our agency's new CIO whether anyone had done a serious analysis of the risk associated with expanding Windows beyond the desktop. He had no answer, but my sources told me there had been none. A few months later, we were hit by SASSER.

That Homeland Security CIO is long gone, but from what I hear it's still primarily a Windows shop, with a smattering of Macs and Linux in a few select offices. They've been through several CIOs since then, and Homeland is known to be the most dysfunctional organization in the Federal Government.

Here is our latest review of NeoOffice Writer -
http://www.maccompanion.com/archives/May2007/Software/NeoOffice2.htm

The reason we use MS Office for Mac for our magazine is that it handles tables well. NeoOffice still has to work on that to be viable for us.

For another International word processor, there is also Mellel - which we reviewed here - http://www.maccompanion.com/archives/April2007web/Software/Mellel.htm

Now perhaps schools do not need anything more than iWork, but it helps to use other options - and iWork really needs to beef up the spreadsheet app.

I love it when people always go back to the "X is the standard so why would you go to Y?" argument.

Well, there have been so many people, companies, societies that have bucked the standard and survived that it just boggles the mind.

Here are some "standards" that have either replaced or been adopted above another:

Metric System
Roman Numerals
Mayan Calendar
States with no income tax
Driving on the left side of the road
Airline hub and spoke system
NTSC television signals
VHS tapes
Wii
Laptops versus desktops
Horse and carriage
Telephone landlines

Everytime these standards were replaced or took over there was a bunch of people that whined and screamed that this wasn't possible or doable.

I hear the same whining and screaming now about Windows and Office. The only ones that don't seem to hear it are the folks in Redmond.

@justaguy sounds an aweful lot like a MS "consultant" we had come to our company once a long long time ago.

"Microsoft bashing is considered very cool"

I don't consider it cool. I consider it just and deserved for a company with extraordinarily sleazy business ethics.

What will be the difference between a native port of OpenOffice and Neo Office?

@RP - Thanks for the info.

Our company does not use Micro$oft Office anymore. We use NeoOffice instead. Little problems still occur, but we are 99% problem free.

If we remember that even Micro$oft Office itself is not 100% problem free we win because we do not need to send ridiculous amounts of money for Micro$oft.

Go New Zealand! That was perfectly right decision!! Use that $2.7 million to something else. ie. more teachers and more Macs.

As an IT consultant, I see many clients (many as in government) switching to OpenOffice or similar free programs because they don't have to pay for it, and that is the only reason.

Yeah. It's dumb, selfish, senseless reasoning. Stoopid idjits.