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Ditching Microsoft Could Save Education Millions

Posted by Zonk on Fri May 06, 2005 04:32 PM
from the in-britain-only,-though dept.
Education Microsoft
ElvenMonkey writes "The Times Education Supplement has published the results of a BECTA (British Educational Communications and Technology Association, the Government's ICT agency) study, to be published next week, into the TCO of using Microsoft products compared to using Open Source products. The report shows an average saving of 24% per computer in schools using Open Source over those using Microsoft systems. Now if only the government wasn't insistent on locking schools into using Microsoft in arguably illegal ways."
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  • wow. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PopeAlien (164869) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:34PM (#12457260) Homepage Journal
    Think how much they would save if they just got rid of the computers.

    • Re:wow. (Score:5, Funny)

      by peculiarmethod (301094) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:39PM (#12457328) Journal
      yeah, no joke.. get rid of the computers and learn the hard way! I was raised without computers until late in highschool, and look at me! I mean, I am single, a musician.. alcoholic.. addicted to porn and constantly refreshing slashd..

      nevermind.. keep the computers.

      • This comment made me laugh, then I realized you might not be joking and i was very, very sad.

      • Re:wow. (Score:5, Funny)

        by Excelsior (164338) on Friday May 06 2005, @05:09PM (#12457684)
        yeah, no joke.. get rid of the computers and learn the hard way! I was raised without computers until late in highschool, and look at me! I mean, I am single, a musician.. alcoholic.. addicted to porn and constantly refreshing slashd..

        At least it paid off in your grammar, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation skills.
      • I am single, a musician.. alcoholic.. addicted to porn and constantly refreshing slashd..

        nevermind.. keep the computers.

        Single: Yep, being a computer nerd is a great way not to be single.
        Musician:
        Alcoholic: After seeing the goatse.cx man, they will be.
        Addicted to porn: There is no porn online. Really.
        Slashdot: Nope, don't find that online either.

        So yeah, let them keep the computers. At least that'll keep them from becoming musicians. Probably on EverCrack or something to keep them busy, but hey. They're

    • Re:wow. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hsmith (818216) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:40PM (#12457344)
      Agree 100%. When i was in school we only had a handful of them. We used them when it was necessary.

      Now look at me, I am a software engineer, I think they are the biggest waste of money within a school, they are "super machines" that people think will make teaching go so much better.

      Give the money to the teachers to higher a better staff, THEN you will have more well informed children. God if they paid $60K+ starting to teach, think of the people they could have instructing.

      • Re:wow. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jmorris42 (1458) *
        > Give the money to the teachers to higher a better staff, THEN you will
        > have more well informed children. God if they paid $60K+ starting to
        > teach, think of the people they could have instructing.

        If the same 'teaching establishment' were in charge nothing would change except pissing away a lot of money to the same semi-literate hacks we have now.

        Education won't improve until the unions are broken so the incompetents with tenure can be sacked and people with a Phd in Math can teach without spen
        • Paying teachers would do a GREAT deal to make the teaching establishment better. Smarter people would actually make it a goal to teach and improve our society. The "simi-literate" people would be forced out in favor of more competent people.

          You have never had a "genius" teach your class without the understanding that we are paying to be given insight into the material. If the book they choose is incomprehensible and they can not communicate, what use are they as teachers. That is what they are paid for

        • Re:wow. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Bert64 (520050) <bert@[ ]shdot.fi ... m ['sla' in gap]> on Friday May 06 2005, @05:31PM (#12457904) Homepage
          But school computers are often setup in the most restrictive way the school staff could manage, and the holes in their security are furthur enforced by punishments if your caught breaching it.. The restrictive environments don't encourage learning about the guts of the machine atall, they may teach you the bare minimum of how to operate the exact word processing configuration present on the machines. People learn parrot-fashion how to use (not find) the options theyre told they need.
          Me, i was banned from the school computer lab for breaking through their restrictions and accessing a dos prompt, now i'm paid pretty good money as a security consultant doing penetration-testing where i'm SUPPOSED to break security.

            • Re:wow. (Score:4, Insightful)

              by walt-sjc (145127) on Friday May 06 2005, @08:35PM (#12459238)
              Yep. And one possible answer is LTSP. Cheap, thin clients. No local drives at all (maybe non-booting, automounted noexec,nosuid,nodev USB access for keyfob drives.) I've even seen netboot systems that re-image a small local drive each time they power up. Keyboards and mice are cheap to replace if needed. Kids don't need CD or floppy access. Lock em down hard. Use extended ACL's and capabilities. Monitored proxies for all external access.

              If kids want toys, they can play at home - not school. When you are at school, you are on Mr. Taxpayer's computer and do NOT have the right to go in and screw with the system. Put video cameras in the labs and force the parents to pay for any damage their kids do.

    • No kidding (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gabey (18874) <gabesspam@yahoo.com> on Friday May 06 2005, @04:55PM (#12457536) Homepage
      Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but this would be a tremendous move for schools. Having computers in the classroom is an enormous waste of resources -- teachers rarely know how to use them, students don't use them productively, they're a hassle to maintain (especially if you allow web browsing on them, regardless of the browser you use -- kids will be kids), they're a waste.
      Computers belong in labs and specialized situations in schools (we had a pretty successful mac lab for a media production class at my high school, for instance), and rarely anywhere else. If it makes sense to use a computer for a lesson (typing up a paper, a research day, etc), the teacher can sign up for the lab (that is easily maintained, and can often be staffed by students).
    • Some schools buy computers for the mere sake of having them. They think the mere presence of a computer in front of a student will make him learn faster or better. The reality is computers change the way students work, but not always for the better.

      If you are going to have computers in schools - and I think you should - do the following:
      1) make sure you have the electrical and networking infrastructure in place ahead of time, or at least concurrent with hardware delivery
      2) train the teachers on how to us

  • Libraries too (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XanC (644172) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:35PM (#12457276)
    I hope libraries take note of this as well as schools... If libraries aren't the standard-bearer for interoperable Web sites, document formats, and any other kind of information exchange, who will be?

    This is the insidious thing about Bill's Foundation. Libraries get placed on the MS upgrade cycle, hooked by the initial free-ness. Then try doing anything with your machines without spending a whole lot of money...

    • That's why organizations/resources like Linux in Libraries [linuxinlibraries.com] exist. They are working for putting Linux in public spaces. There are a number of cool projects that this group has pointed me to including Koha [koha.org], an open source library system and implementers of open source library solutions like LibLime [liblime.com]. Check them out.
    • > I hope libraries take note of this as well as schools... If libraries
      > aren't the standard-bearer for interoperable Web sites, document
      > formats, and any other kind of information exchange, who will be?

      Well our library was more than happy to accept Bill & Melinda's generous contributions. For the time the hardware was pretty solid midrange and ran our Linux based patron model quite nicely. And even though the software licenses were a joke (locked to both the hardware AND the library but co
        • > MS considers a VMWare install to be a different machine.

          I know that is in their typical license crapola and if we also had it installed in a partition I might even listen to their arguments. But the donation license specified it had to be used only on the GLF hardware and only by our library's patrons. Both conditions were being met so any complaints would go to /dev/null unless they got really nasty and lawyered up at which point I'd bluntly ask them if they would like to turn the situation into a

  • Not a scientific study (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Locke2005 (849178) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:36PM (#12457286)
    Perhaps the support costs as the schools using free software were lower because their staff was a lot smarter to begin with? ;-)
    • In seriousness, I'm sure that's partly true -- schools that switch to open-source are obviously a non-random sample.

      Nonetheless, I can believe these numbers. Libraries and elementary schools are no-brainers for using Linux and free software apps. Anyway, this is an improvement on the usual hypothetical TCO numbers pulled out of one side's ass or the other's.

  • You can save tons on licenses and expensive hardware. Also you can teach children how computers actually work instead of giving them what MS wants the PC to be ... a glorified VCR.

  • No! (Score:4, Funny)

    by guitaristx (791223) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:38PM (#12457315) Journal
    You mean our schools might actually promote learning, sharing, innovation, and playing nice with others? Say it ain't so!

    It's amazing to me how rarely we see "academic" software like Unix & Linux in our schools. I'm fortunate enough to be assisting in setting up a private school's computer network, all Linux, baby!

    • academic software??? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by big-giant-head (148077) on Friday May 06 2005, @05:11PM (#12457702)
      Every corp I worked for in the last 12 years:

      AVIS Rent a Car,
      Red Sky Interactive (Dot Com failure so maybe they don't count?)
      Mens Wearhouse
      Hertz Rent A Car
      FAA

      All of the big app servers have been Solaris or Linux or AIX..... Granted they had windows desktops, windows servers for Peoplesoft, but all the Oracle/DB2, Java App server, Transaction management, Messanging etc.. Everything I actully wrote code on/for was some kind of *nix box.

      So I keep hearing about the importantance of knowing Office etc.. I could see that it has some value, but I have NEVER hired anyone nor been hired myself based any kind of m$ office skills....

      If somone is smart and can learn Word perfect or open Off or m$ off, then they can easily learn another package.

    • 'Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning' - George W. Bush.

  • Gotta love The Register (Score:4, Funny)

    by TripMaster Monkey (862126) * on Friday May 06 2005, @04:39PM (#12457323)


    The Register is such a timesaver for Slashdotters...it has the anti-M$ slant built in.

  • Not in Kansa (anymore) (Score:3, Funny)

    by bstadil (7110) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:39PM (#12457324) Homepage
    As an average person from Kansas, I object to using something that seems to be created out of nowhere.

    God didn't create Microsoft Office to Futs in us unused [about.com].

  • Do you know who the superintendent(s) of your local public school board are? Those are the people who are responsible for the continued economic vitality of your community, so if you don't know, find out today, and ask them to stop paying the Microsoft tax. Windows and Office are anachronisms, the rulers of the 80s and 90s, which have through base greed lost any claim to a place in today's classroom.

    Do you have it within you to write a clear, three-paragraph letter to the chair of a school board today? Please prove it, by posting its text in reply to this comment.

    The challenge is made; who among you are human enough to meet it?

    • "Windows and Office are anachronisms"

      Dude, pass some of whatever you've been smoking this way. Like I said elsewhere, I'm far from the president of the MS fan club, but anybody who gets any low- to mid-level job anywhere is going to be sitting in front of a Winbox and needs to know how to use it. Sure, Linux would be great to teach to kids who know at age 10 they want to be developers or sysadmins, but the average person working the average job is *gonna* be on Windows. It's unfortunate, but it's the tr

  • School's Motive (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2005, @04:40PM (#12457337)
    I've always wondered why schools don't use Linux. If kids start with it, they would all be able to embrace technology to the fullest extent, where in Windows, all you get is annoying paperclips, error messages, and EVERYTHING spoon-fed to you so it's as bland as possible.

  • What's the difference? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bechthros (714240) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:40PM (#12457339) Homepage Journal
    "Now if only the government wasn't insistent on locking schools into using Microsoft in arguably illegal ways."

    So it was OK for my city's entire public school system and library system to lock me into using Apples all the way up until my senior year, but it's not OK to lock people into using Windows? Apple has long been known for educational discounts in exchange for school systems agreeing to use Apple exclusively and pressure their students into buying them. It happened to many friends of mine and almost happened to me.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not the president of the MS fan club or anything, but I gotta say it was really really annoying having to be programming in nothing but BASIC on IIgs's in 1991. I was overjoyed when our school was the chosen pilot for the PC program - I learned a lot more about computers a lot more quickly.

    That said, locking students into any one system is bad. I say, have a Mac, a Winbox, and linux box all running side by side and let the students decide which one they want to use. Let them, to coin a phrase, compete in the marketplace of ideas. Isn't competition the American way?

    • Re:What's the difference? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 3nuff (824173) <erecshion@gmail.com> on Friday May 06 2005, @05:20PM (#12457786) Homepage Journal

      Speaking as someone who started learning how to program on an Apple II at age 12, then moving to Mac OS, then to WinTel at 16, and arriving at Linux in my 20s, I can say that it doesn't really matter what is in front of the student.

      What matters are the fundamentals that we are teaching. As an example, my sixth grade teacher would spend time after school with me helping me debug BASIC programs on the ol Apple II. What my teacher did was set the stage for me to grasp fundamental logic concepts. This knowledge allowed me to move freely in the computing world. That type of knowledge transcends making the font bold or creating that powerpoint slide. This is what the computer should be used for, not some silly test of which button to push, hell, you can tech mice that kind of crap.

    • Re:What's the difference? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by killjoe (766577) on Friday May 06 2005, @05:22PM (#12457809)
      Locking people to Macs? Bad.
      Locking people to MS? Bad

      Locking people to Linux? Good!.

      Students should learn on linux. They can really get to the guts to learn how computers work. They can even make contributions if they want. Finally you are not whoring your students to some company.
    • A national goverment policy locking schools into buying from a single company if they want funding is quite different from a group of schools deciding independently from the national government which machines to purchase, to be fair.

  • not really clear (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moz25 (262020) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:41PM (#12457348) Homepage
    While I certainly agree with the sentiment of the news article, isn't it a little premature to link to an article that only announces a real report. I am interested in the details and how they obtain the 24% mark. My estimate would be more in the 10% range.

    Considering the earlier article regarding OpenOffice, it might make sense to calculate [expensive license] - free = savings. But where does that leave cheap academic licensing?

  • The Microsoft Mafia (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NatteringNabob (829042) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:42PM (#12457364)
    At my son's school, there is a computer literacy test which students must pass to graduate. So what is the requirement for computer literacy? Writing a shell program? Creating a home page using HTML? Writing a business letter? No, of course not. The student must demonstrate that they know how to use Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Excel. I'm fairly certain that such a requirement would not hold up in court, but where did it come from in the first place?

    • Re:The Microsoft Mafia (Score:5, Interesting)

      by g1zmo (315166) on Friday May 06 2005, @05:30PM (#12457892) Homepage
      The exact same skills are required of all college graduates (at least here in Texas). At my school (from which I'm graduating next week!!), it's up to each department within the university how those requirements are met, but most departments just created a 1-credit-hour class that's required before you can graduate. In the CSE (my) department, it was lumped into a very generic "computer ethics" course that hardly no one goes to except to turn in their "lab assignments", which are things like creating a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation (!), etc.
  • but as people get more and more accepting of OSS the more we'll see it. Who would've guessed 7 or 8 years ago that there would be an exodus of entire governments switching to OSS? Software is becoming a commodity in functionality. As an example Word became all anybody needed with Version 97. M$, as an ongoing business concern needs to keep selling upgraded software even if the new features are things you don't need. This isn't something that OSS suffers from. If it ever gets the bugs out completely Open Office is set to become much more important. After all why keep upgrading M$ stuff when you don't need to? (Munich anyone?)

    If we ever see Google embrace Open Office and champion OSS then it could become a viable threat to M$, the likes of which M$ hasn't seen.

    OSS has been making great inroads these last few years and sadly it is not going away as much as M$ would love to see happen. M$ just needs to learn the lesson that IBM did. As time goes by you have to evolve from a company that creates standards to one that contributes to them. The past is littered with the carnage of companies who did not learn this.

    Not that M$ will ever go away.

  • Skolelinux is the school linux distro... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Compunerd (107084) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:51PM (#12457487) Homepage
    Take a look at http://skolelinux.org/ [skolelinux.org] to see what can be done to create an elemtary school distro. It's installation friendly, somehow userfriendly (KDE 2) and has nice setups for thin-client environments.

    roy

  • What We'd Need (Score:5, Informative)

    by ThisIsFred (705426) on Friday May 06 2005, @05:18PM (#12457760) Journal
    In order for this to happen, I'd need the following to happen first:

    * All other agencies that communicate with my district would have to settle on a common, open document format, and stay with it. We need to read what the state sends us.

    * Our student information systems would have to support something other than Microsoft products. Tell NCS/Pearson to port SASIxp/IGPro/PCXP to something other than Windows. Follet Software did it with their media circulation software. It's far from impossible.

    * All other agencies need to hire something other than web developers who took a half-semester ASP programming course.

    * Our accounting systems need to be ported to something other than Windows. There are no cost-effective systems that run on Linux (it's not just initial purchase, it's the support availability).

    Where I could substitute with Linux, I did. It's not just Internet access and games for kids, either. Many districts are computerized from top to bottom, so the answer to "why do we need computers in schools", is "because it saves labor costs and gets the job done faster." You also might want to consider that many schools don't have full-time IT staff. Most of the available contractors are MS Certified Reset-button Pushers.
    • I don't think they are advocating removing Windows/Office from the Administrators. Allthough saving tax-payers money should always be the goal of any school district. More money = more teachers and better salary for others.

      Advocate using Linux/OpenOffice to teach computer fundamentals to the kids. Word Processing, SpreadSheets, Graphics, etc. These activities don't require expensive Microsoft software.

      Enjoy,

  • Detailed case study with costings (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikeb (6025) on Friday May 06 2005, @05:45PM (#12458055) Homepage
    For a case study with costings (in fact it was used to illustrate the lead story in the Times Educational Supplement print edition), Orwell High School in Felixstowe is hard to beat. Then again I would say that, wouldn't I, since I was involved in implementing it. Their savings amount to very much more than the modest 20% to 40% mentioned in the TES article. The case study is at
    http://cutterproject.co.uk/Casestudies/orwell_cost _benefit.php [cutterproject.co.uk].
    The school has costed its savings at 40,000 pounds (UK) per year - or in the region of US$70,000 I guess.

    There is something really pleasing in seeing five classroms of 30 or so kids each sit down and use a Linux desktop as the most natural thing in the world.
    • Can you use Excel?
      Who can't?
      Can you program Excel macros?
      Sure! (Just lemme download that tutorial at the web)
      Can you use windows?
      AND tweak it.

      Welcome to our company. See you next monday at 9.

      (See? That wasn't so hard, was it?)

    • Re:After graduation (Score:5, Interesting)

      by steveness (872331) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:48PM (#12457448)
      Now our high school graduate applies for a job (with better interview skills)

      Can you use Excel?
      I can use several spreadsheet programs, and can even develop complex math functions.
      Can you use Word?
      I have experience with several word processing tools, and can help the company by ensuring that documents transfer well between programs.
      Can you use Windows?
      I have extensive experience with windows environments and graphical interfaces, and can even use a computer when those interfaces fail.

      Thanks, can you start Monday?

      • Re:After graduation (Score:5, Insightful)

        by man_of_mr_e (217855) on Friday May 06 2005, @04:58PM (#12457570)
        Actually, if I were doing the interviewing, i'd ask them why they were evading the questions, and probably file it in the round filing cabinet for being dishonest.

      • The thing to consider is that the HR departments at most companies act as the first level of filtering of resumes. So, they'll usually scan a resume for certain keywords. It's entirely possible that even though someone is a perfectly qualified candidate, they might not be able to pass this first level of filtering. It's not entirely logical, but that's unfortunately how most of the world works.

        So, you might argue just put the MS products on your resume, even if you don't really "know" them. Well, the

      • And now the interview of a student who didn't have access to computers in schools. Can you use Excel? Sure, I just pop it out of the wrapper and start to chew. Thanks, we will let you know...
    • Good god, would you really want to employ someone who was unable to transfer their knowledge of one application on to another of the same type?

      Then there's the corollary, would you want to work for the kind of muppets who couldn't realise that the concepts are the same for all word processors, hell even the menu layouts are similar.

      Reality check. People who are this dumb are going to get eaten alive in the globalised economy.

    • That argument has cemented Windows into schools in the UK. However it is total bullshit.

      The main reasons for this include:

      1) All word processors/spreadsheets/whatever have almost exactly the same user interface. Once you know OO.org, it's not exactly rocket science to know how to use MS Office.

      2) The version of Windows/MS Office that the school uses will be out of date in around a year or so, and you can bet your ass they won't update for another 5 years. So you'll probably be using something slightly di
    • Seems like.

      You missed out the quality of the admins and the numbers of problems which have to be solved per desktop etc etc.

      I for example am quite expensive. I can on the other hand quite easily set up a system that supports hundreds, thousands of concurrent users and requires bugger all administration, on cheap commodity, even obsolete, hardware. A small amount of time from an expensive admin is cheap. A large amount of time from a cheap admin is expensive.

    • Because the drop-outs do a poor job, and end up with poorly running spyware/virus infested networks..
      Sure, someone clueless *can* run a windows network, but they don't do a very good job of it.. Securing windows to the extent required to prevent the students and internet nasties making mincemeat of the network is actually MUCH HARDER than doing the same on a unix platform. You have to disable a lot of core functionality of the os because it's flawed and insecure, you have to heavily restrict apps like word

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