New Zealand Rejects Office For Macs 317
An anonymous reader writes "The New Zealand Ministry of Education has declined to renew a licensing deal for MS Office on 25,000 Macintosh computers in the country's schools. The Education Minister has suggested that schools use the free alternative NeoOffice. The article quotes a school principal who pointed out that the NeoOffice website warns users to expect problems and bugs: 'That's not the sort of software we should be expecting kids in New Zealand to be using.'" Schools are free to buy their own copies of Office. A blog on the New Zealand Herald site argues that the Ministry should have paid Microsoft this time, but not renewed the deal and instead developed a transition plan to open source.
Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case I think the fast transition will cause grumbles, but then again, if they waited the MSN (Microsoft Sales Ninjas) would be inbound, and before they knew it everyone would be parrotting the microsoft literature and the switch would be forgotten.
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Insightful)
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PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Informative)
I've personally seen the IRQL error several times on machines that run Linux flawlessly (and more often!) If it's something that rears its head only when there's bad hardware, then Linux must be a magical operating system that can turn bad hardware into good.
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Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, hardware that utterly fails under one operating system can work flawlessly under another. They have different drivers. In almost all cases, windows drivers are binary blobs that are developed by the device manufacturer or someone they have retained under contract to do so for them. Most Linux drivers are reverse engineered or developed from specs and are open source drivers which come with the kernel.
In practice, either one might be more reliable; if the Linux driver isn't very good, which is often the case (it can be hard to write a good, stable driver without specs) then it might not work under Linux properly, but be fine under Windows. If the Windows driver is a pile of crap, it might work better under Linux.
For example, my last desktop system was an Athlon XP 2500+ with a Radeon 9600XT. The system would bluescreen on boot if I had the catalyst control center installed. But once I booted up in safe mode and removed CCC, the driver worked "fine" (it still sucked - we're talking about ATI here. but no bluescreens.) Some people just can't write a fucking driver.
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen Linux run flawlessly on machines Windows isn't even borderline stable one.
The fact of the matter is, there's a lot that stability depends upon, and even slightly different circumstances can lead to vastly different results.
In my personal experience, outside of really cheap computers, I've not had any stability issues with Windows. The exception being a computer with a SiL 2114 SATA controler, and using an IDE hard drive fixed that problem (Linux wouldn't even boot on that machine). I narrowed it down to the controller because all other machines tested work fine with the same SATA drives tested, and that machine runs fine with just IDE drives.
But I'm getting off track here. The point is that there is no "single" answer to achieving high stability, except putting in the effort to determine which (A) works with what (B), and some trial & error.
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-- Dijkstra
The fact that it hasn't failed yet doesn't mean it won't, even if operating conditions remain pretty much the same. Computers are magical like that.
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MS blames driver dev's of using undocumented API functionality and the driver dev's blame MS for delivering crappy API's..
hmm.. why cant both be right?
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Informative)
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL
Those are due to driver bugs. Page fault in non paged area means a bad pointer - you touched a page that was marked as not present, but since the area is unpaged the OS can't do anything to fix it.
IRQL not less than or equal is more interesting. NT has a concept of IRQL. It's an abstraction, and it means which interrupts are enabled. The lowest level in kernel mode is PASSIVE_LEVEL which means the scheduler is enabled. The next highest level is DISPATCH_LEVEL where it is not. Above that are the hardware interrupt levels. Now consider a spinlock, an OS synchronisation primitive. These are to protect shared resources. Drivers call KeAcquireSpinLock() to get them, do some stuff and then KeReleaseSpinLock() to release them. On a SMP system, KeAcquireSpinLock needs to raise IRQL and then acquire the lock. On a single processor system it just raises the IRQL.
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/documents/irql.htm [sourceforge.net]
So IRQL in Windows NT is very important thing. If the system is running at a raised IRQL, someone is holding a spinlock, or an interrupt is in progress.
Lots of kernel routines are documented in the DDK as being only callable at a certain maximum IRQL. Typically, IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL is caused by touching paged data at a raised IRQL which can't work as the pager risks a deadlock when it tries to acquire spinlocks to page it in, or less likely by calling a function which is documented as not being callable at that IRQL.
If you look at the stackframe, you can see which driver is to blame and either disable or update it. If the system has always been unstable, check the RAM.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft are experimenting with static code analysis and automated test cases to catch driver errors like this
http://www.inf.uni-konstanz.de/soft/teaching/ws05
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Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Informative)
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I run Debian testing/unstable, and it's very stable in the sense of seldom crashing, but it's also very unstable in that you never know exactly what's going to happen when you type "apt-ge
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:4, Funny)
What distro are you running again?
(Yes, mods, I realize he was being sarcastic, so am I.)
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Insightful)
also the same FAQ says:
I've not used NeoOffice, but to me, this sounds like the software is in the stage Firefox was in just before hitting 1.0 -- stable enough for everyday use; maybe there are a few bugs, but they get fixed quickly so downloading the latest release is usually a good idea before filing a bug report.
Or new zealand, could... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I'm surprised at the Orwellian speak coming from both the likes of Microsoft and the anti-Microsoft crowd.
We don't have Microsoft just "fixing bugs", oh no. We have Microsoft "HIDING bugs and creating the ILLUSION of problem free computer usage".
How on Earth do you create the *illusion* of problem free computer usage? You let Word crash and popup a box "Calm down user, this was just a part of your problem free computer usage"?
Office works fine enough, the sad part in all of this, is they don't have good enough competitors, because they have stagnated for years and years.
Then Office 2007 which offered lots of innovation in the interface, features, wizard etc. But why? Is it because Open Source was picking up and MS Office were terrible at "hiding bugs"? No, it's because people just got stuck with Office 97: Microsoft's competing with their own software.
It's sad.
How to create an illusion (Score:2)
Advertising. This is totally unrelated to how the software works in practice.
Advertising for various commercial diets create a similar illusion. The illusion breaks down when you actually try it, just like the "problem free computer usage" illusion breaks down when you actually try to use their (or anyone elses) software.
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Probably no more or less then open source, but my point is that most of the time they don't talk about them till they are found out. That makes them seem worse then they likely are.
Microsoft products are released on beta these days, but most open source projects are released early bugs and all, specifically so t
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Simple. "It's not a bug, it's a feature. Every time you click save, Office is supposed to quit."
Hardware support guys blame the software. The software support guys blame the hardware. The users are left to fend for themselves.
In reality, 99% of the time it's a software bug, but you'll absolutely NEVER get Microsoft to admit fault, let alone fix it. Open Source products are at least honest about their own bugs and limitations, unli
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Except, it doesn't quit. Anything else you want pull out of your rear?
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Well, that reminds me of the BMW woman, who hit the brakes in the middle of a high speed freeway, causing chain catastrophe, because her computerized car suddenly shouter "stop the car immediately!".
Would it say "please pull the car aside, there is a problem with X", she'd still have the necessary information to carry out the action without additionally stressing and confus
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Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/es/index.php [neooffice.org]
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Why didn't you post that on slashdot? It'd be the OBVIOUS thing to do...
NeoOffice [neooffice.org]
I'm not a mac user and even I know that...
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see http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php [neooffice.org]
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Yea, why didn't they? And since they run on Macs, maybe they could look around for OpenOffice port for Mac, and maybe it'll be called NeoOffice.
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Re:Expect problems and bugs with OS software? (Score:5, Informative)
- OpenOffice in X11, which is ugly, and doesn't integrate with the rest of the system.
- OpenOffice for Mac, which is unstable and is only available in source form.
- NeoOffice, which is fairly stable, doesn't need X11, and works now.
Unfortunately, the work done by the NeoOffice team is licensed under the GPL, and so can't be pushed back upstream to the OpenOffice, which is LGPL. NeoOffice is a fork, and will remain so unless they decide to change their license, and so will need to pull changes down from upstream periodically. The OpenOffice native port stays in sync with changes in the main tree automatically.MS Office has plenty of bugs too... (Score:5, Insightful)
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We, in "information age" don't like fact bending and random discarding of information.
Have you actually used the latest versions of Office and NeoOffice extensively to be able to tell how bad the bugs in each of those are.
There's no c
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Saying that though, there's no reason students couldn't use it. I never lost any data or too much time using it, and it's fine for basic word-processing or spreadsheeting.
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So, I suspect NeoOffice is actually the more buggy of the two if they are recommending MS Office.
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No, he just has no incentive to bullshit. MS is in the business of selling MS Office. They hide their disclaimers in the small print you don't see until after you've bought it. If you want their support, have your credit card ready.
How complex a wordprocessor does a school student need?
For that matter, every office suite has far more features than needed by 95% of users. Thay probably spend more time dicki
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9 out of 10 hard drives say they prefer the taste of NeoOffice to MS Office!
How much? (Score:5, Interesting)
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If they had the money to give away, they'd just save themselves a heap of trouble with migrating to Neo and keep using MS Office.
Re:How much? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, we know they're saving more than $2.7m and less than $100m, but we're not told exactly how much.
By the way, macs aren't extensively used outside of primary (roughly, elementary schools) and intermediate (school years 7-8) in New Zealand. Every high school I can think of (many) have one or two macs at most, and classes full of PCs. So, to my mind, Le Sueur is wrong, and NeoOffice _is_ the sort of software we can expect kids to use. It's unreasonable to claim five to twelve year olds have a need for (supposedly) superior, high-class spreadsheets, databases and business presentations.
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this reminds me of a situation that has been going on at my college for a number of years.
the instructors are heavy into open source (one guy uses it exclusively in all his courses) and they're wanting to kick some money towards the projects, but the guys in finances are absolutely baffled when they say that they want to pay for something that is free.
i wouldn't be entirely surprised if something similar happens in this c
Death Knell (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Death Knell (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Death Knell (Score:5, Insightful)
That's funny, when I was at school I was taught on ClarisWorks on Apples and Win3.1 at school, and used MS Word 5 on DOS at home. Now I used MS Office 2k/2003 on XP at work and OpenOffice.org on XP/Ubuntu at home. I thought learning how to use a computer meant just that - learning how to use a computer, not learning how to use Microsoft software.
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Unfortunately the Ministry of Education has probably signed a death warrant for the adoption of an open source office package.
Mod parent up!
However, there is a chance that it will not backfire at all. Indeed people can purchase their own office suite, but I have many friends who are using NeoOffice currently for Mac, and for all intents and purposes they have not encountered any problems that have led to complaint. I mean, nobody has lost work or time over the software. Although NeoOffice claims to be immature, it is stable enough for serious work in my experience.
mod troll up .. (Score:2)
Like how, he just dropped msOffice. This isn't rocket science, it's the adoption of a software package in schools. They already use Macs, the package runs on the Mac. Why not move the schools totally over to OpenOffice.
was: Death Knell (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll do the job. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It'll do the job. (Score:5, Funny)
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It doesn't.
Oh... and god help you if there is a language that is not English on any computer that opens this spreadsheet of yours.
They exaggerate (Score:3, Interesting)
OK so the NeoOffice developers have issues with their social skills, does this have much to do with the feature set and bugs of NeoOffice as compared with Open Office, Microsoft Office, or iWork?
Personally I think all three are way overkill for students writing papers. Hell, I don't think I've ever used more than 10 or 20% of MS Office's features and I use it work nearly every day and have for over 10 years. Is there an Open Source project like Apple's 'Pages'? This, I think, would be closer to useful and a lot more fun.
what exaggeration exactly .. (Score:2)
What did they say exactly that got you so upset. Personally I find Emacs more than adequate, as long as you don't want rich text, and frames and bullets and a spell checker that obscures the word it asks if you want to change
"NeoOffice is a
was Re:They ex
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I don't remember it exactly but it was blunt, over the top, and probably unnecessary.
Emacs!? When I comment that OOO.org, MS Office, and NeoOffice are so feature rich that they are too complicated for kids to bother with, you come up with Emacs? Let me tell you no child of mine is using Emacs! They'll being using VI!
Wow... I wonder when the last time there has been an Emacs VI flame around here...
Seriously though my
Maybe NZ government are just playing it smart! (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft are terrified of the thought of educational and public authorities ditching MS products as they know that successful operation of non-MS products in these sort of institutions will lead others - and ultimately corporations (their biggest market) - to consider alternatives.
Several U.K. local councils and schools pay virtually nothing for MS products to prevent them trialling Linux.
NeoOffice is a good alternative for education (Score:3, Insightful)
It starts up almost immediately on a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo iMac.
Previous versions take ages to start up.
They've also improved the GUI appearance no end from the primitive OpenOffice look and feel which is stuck in the mid 90s.
This is a perfect solution for education as it will handle all educational needs without a problem, and save the education authority and schools a lot of money. This is a sound business decision for education.
What about Apple's own software? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, this IS education we're talking about here. Their needs should be fairly basic - if not I would be suspicious of their teaching methods. If it were up to me I would build plans on AppleWorks but also introduce students to NeoOffice. Using both would force them to develop flexibility and the ability to learn new software. It is something they will need to do for the rest of their lives.
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But your blanket statements about iWork are incorrect. I have bought iWork twice and it's a heck of a good software suite. Since we're talking about text docs instead of presentation I'll inform you it's the word processor that gets the use of styles RIGHT. OO.o was close, Word has
Teach Concepts, Not Apps (Score:4, Insightful)
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Give students tools that they can use freely and change to build new tools with if they want to. Education money should be spent educating students and training teachers, not on something as costly and hopeless as software licensing.
The Real World is a jumble of versions and standards of everything, differing remarkably from job to job. The only way to prepare for the Real World is to understand the concepts.
And start with the important concept that a salesman does
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wait until the teachers start complaining. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you mean "you can't win with people". In any sufficiently large population, there's going to be a few people who are dramatically more predisposed to griping and/or are dramatically less adaptive to change than the average person. So if it's any consolation, you'd have had to deal with the same idiots no matter what industry you worked in ;-)
Re:Wait until the teachers start complaining. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you mean "you can't win with people".
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I use NeoOffice to work around MS Office bugs (Score:4, Interesting)
dave
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--Richard
Surely it doesn't mean delete MS Office (Score:4, Insightful)
Bugs in the real world (Score:2)
The sad thing is: The motive is all wrong! (Score:4, Insightful)
In reality, it seems like the Education Minister is just being plain old-fashioned cheap.
If they were serious about using NeoOffice/OpenOffice, but have concerns about the stability of the software, they should consider contributing to the project. There are tons of ways an Education minister can make that happen. He could encourage the IT related universities in his country to make projects that contribute to the products. He could donate cash to the NeoOffice and/or OpenOffice teams - say a mere 5% of the money they would otherwise have spent on commercial licenses? Or he could have contracted a local software company to improve (contribute) to the software for a specified amount.
Open and free software is good. But choosing it simply because the initial price tag is low (read: nil) is a bad motivation - especially for an Education Minister. And it doesen't really help the product or the community either.
An Open Source product is only as strong as its ACTIVE contributors.
Re:The sad thing is: The motive is all wrong! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a hint as to why this won't happen: it's not the Minister of Education's job to spend my (yep, I'm a kiwi) tax money on helping "the product or the community". But do you know what is his job? To ensure that children in my country get the best education they can. And that means that when he has the choice of donating money to a software development group or spending it on one of the underfunded schools throughout the country, he must spend it on the kids.
You hear the "somebody, think of the children" argument a lot these days. But this is one case where it applies well. It is Maharey's job to think of the children. And they are best served by using the money elsewhere.
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By using free OpenSource software the minister is saving a shitload of money. Money he would otherwise have to use on commercial software licenses. The only reason he even has the option to save this huge pile of money, is because a lot of other people already donated work, money and resources.
By taking/using the product without contributing anything at all, he and all the
Maybe there will be some improvement now (Score:2)
OpenOffice for Mac is either X11 or the 'real soon now, honest!' Aqua version. The X11 version beign that it has to go through X11 is slow and feels klunky (and feels less stable then NeoOffice).
The good points about OpenOffice/NeoOffice is it has a lot more graphics abilities (the draw layer) and as a Mac user who r
My recent experience with Powerpoint and NeoOffice (Score:2)
I was making a big presentation with a lot of figures on my Macbook pro. After several days of working, the Powerpoint became extreme slow. I tried to close the file and reopen it, rename the file and all kinds of things I can imagine, but it doesn't speed up. Then I downloaded a copy of NeoOffice, it worked, way faster than the PowerPoint. However when I finished editing in NeoOffice and reopen the file in Powerpoint, all my vector drawings in windows meta format were corrupted, and the font in the side
Office is expensive and PowerPC only (Score:2)
The students will gain, not suffer (Score:2)
Sure It Is! (Score:2)
Back in the day they taught us how to write our own applications and we understood how they worked and why they broke. Perhaps you should consider what it is exactly that you want to teach your children about computers.
what's wrong with the version they have now? (Score:2)
They've been using it for 3 years now and it's doing great. Maybe I missed something? Are there NEW Macs without Office that need licenses, or are they simply stating that they will not be upgrading to the latest/greatest word processor and spreadsheet suite?
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Well this is what you get when you lease. Lease is out and you're locked in, so the company doing the leasing has you over a barrel.
OTOH 25,000 copies at the student/teacher price of $149 for a full version only comes to 3.75 Mill
OpenOfficeX? (Score:2)
Dead end (Score:2)
donate to help make improvements (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not donate a significant amount to the Neo Office project each year to encourage development and/or place a bounty on features that they'd like to see included or fixed.
If every district/county/state/country did something like that we'd have the best of breed open source software in the world available for everyone to use for free.
Even though some software is free as is beer, the reason for this is so that it can truely be free as in freedom. Free as in beer doesn't stop you contributing back whatever you can to benefit everyone.
I'm no tree-hugging GPL/GNU beardy freak, but I do appriecate the efforts these guys have made for the Mac Platform and have been thinking about donating myself - even though I only downloaded and used it once to open a single document.
my prob with NeoOffice (Score:3, Interesting)
When I copy/paste into Neooffice, I get just the plain text--no links are preserved. I looked through the options to try to figure it out, to no avail. Haven't opened up NeoOffice since then. If anyone knows a way to fix that problem, please tell me. You can even throw in some gratuitous "lame noob" insults if it makes you feel better.
On a side note, I really wish someone smarter than me (is that a big enough labor pool for you?) would write a print-to-pdf type program that keeps the hyperlinks intact. I don't know what mojo OpenOffice uses to preserve the hyperlinks from text copied to the clipboard, but there is no doubt a way to make a one-trick application that prints a section of html to pdf while keeping the hyperlinks intact. Yes, I'd pay for it. Any ideas?
Office in schools (Score:3, Informative)
Working as the the technology admin for a school district, I can vouch for the insanity that runs through educators minds.
I'm amazed when the majority of the people tasked with teaching our children the fundamentals of computing (basic word processing etc..) in a completely controlled environment can even turn their computers on and log in. Most educators learn to navigate around in MS office and the mention of new software generally causes them to wet themselves. Anytime a move to a open source solution is discussed, it is almost immediately destroyed by administration. This is despite the fact that most public schools are extremely cash strapped and moving to open source makes immediate financial sense. This has more to do with fear than anything else. Even though education recieves discounts from MS and others, the costs can still be considered high.
Lobbying for open source office solutions makes sense in school settings for a simple reason: anyone can acquire and use this stuff at home. I can't tell you the amount of times we've had to help students convert files between platforms so we get their work to jive with MS office. Most people can't afford or are willing to purchase this software for home use, yet in schools we are using full versions of MS office.Experience (Score:3, Informative)
To compare MS Office and OO/NeoOffice and say MS Office has no problems would be stretching the truth. I've had to deal with some show stoppers on MS Office - particularly its inconsistent spreadsheet support for
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Re:Silly principal.... (Score:4, Insightful)
MS *doesn't* lie at all (Score:3, Informative)
You did read the EULA didn't you? No? Really?