you may be aware that StarOffice 6.0 final release is due very soon and that it will have an educational license cost. Details from the NAACE conference this week.- - £50 per primary, £150 per secondary, for two sets of CD.s - covers staff and student home use - telephone support Learning Pathways are the distributors/resellers/support for Sun in the schools market and state that this cost will help them develop training and support for schools. if you want to contact them, http://www.learnpath.com interested in your reaction Malc -- -------------------------------------- Malcolm Herbert Red Hat Europe t: +44 1483 734955 m: +44 7720 079845 --------------------------------------
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday 09 Feb 2002 00:08 am, Malcolm Herbert wrote:
you may be aware that StarOffice 6.0 final release is due very soon and that it will have an educational license cost. Details from the NAACE conference this week.- - £50 per primary, £150 per secondary, for two sets of CD.s
Per school, or per machine in a school?
interested in your reaction
If you don't want to fork out money, then there's always OpenOffice, which is essentially StarOffice under a Free licence. www.openoffice.org Dan - -- dankolb@ox.compsoc.net - --I reserve the right to be completely wrong about any comments or opinions expressed; don't trust everything you read above-- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBPGRmbpdDUnce+EgsEQLsQQCeK1fOYM0GfqBQH6dc5xJyGFcJkssAoLA3 iJEhNWPsn9siFOAOu7KFJ8ik =vszI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Friday 08 February 2002 23h59, Dan Kolb wrote:
On Saturday 09 Feb 2002 00:08 am, Malcolm Herbert wrote:
you may be aware that StarOffice 6.0 final release is due very soon and that it will have an educational license cost. Details from the NAACE conference this week.- - £50 per primary, £150 per secondary, for two sets of CD.s
Per school, or per machine in a school?
interested in your reaction
If you don't want to fork out money, then there's always OpenOffice, which is essentially StarOffice under a Free licence. www.openoffice.org
Dan
Or is that the licence price for the Win version which isn't available from opensource? -- Best wishes, Derek
On Friday 08 February 2002 19:08, Malcolm Herbert wrote:
you may be aware that StarOffice 6.0 final release is due very soon and that it will have an educational license cost. Details from the NAACE conference this week.- - £50 per primary, £150 per secondary, for two sets of CD.s - covers staff and student home use - telephone support
Two sets of CDs? Linux and Windows? Linux and Solaris? Sounds good. Low cost enough to be almost free! I don't think those price levels will cause a problem but I expect some of the purists will be appauled! To me that is good news, sooner its released the better - as long as they got rid of all the bugs!. Regards, -- IanL
Learning Pathways had a good stand at BETT. They were pitching StarOffice6 very well, explaining their distribution efforts, and the price. I told the guy I thought it was going to be free. He told me I was wrong, and I humoured his dillusions. He turns out to be correct it would seem. Bugger. I pitch this stuff quite regularly to management in schools. I come up against the 'if it's free it can't be good' syndrome quite a lot. You can see it on their faces as you finish the sentence. Society constantly bombards us with, 'you get what you pay for', or 'you don't get anything for nothing in this world my lad'. I think the 'site licence' cost for a school could lead to some real interest. I reckon it could be easier to convince heads that the software is 'worth' something if they feel they're getting a good deal - i.e. the �50 is so cheap because it's at an educational rate. In some bizarre twisted way the 'it's free for everyone who wants it' automatically raises issues over quality/desirability. Personally, I'm more interested in OpenOffice.org because it's truely free. That's the one I'm sticking to. For schools? I reckon StarOffice 6 is going to be a blinder! -- Matt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com
Learning Pathways had a good stand at BETT. They were pitching StarOffice6 very well, explaining their distribution efforts, and the price. I told the guy I thought it was going to be free. He told me I was wrong, and I humoured his dillusions. He turns out to be correct it would seem. Bugger.
Are they going to address the issues of multi- user use and avoiding end user configuration. Something which the beta handles in the same way as 5.2?
I pitch this stuff quite regularly to management in schools. I come up against the 'if it's free it can't be good' syndrome quite a lot. You can see it on their faces as you finish the sentence. Society constantly
It's not quite so simple, if it were no-one would ever take any notice of the things like the Tesco scheme... -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763
On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Mark Evans wrote:
Learning Pathways had a good stand at BETT. They were pitching StarOffice6 very well, explaining their distribution efforts, and the price. I told the guy I thought it was going to be free. He told me I was wrong, and I humoured his dillusions. He turns out to be correct it would seem. Bugger. Are they going to address the issues of multi- user use and avoiding end user configuration. Something which the beta handles in the same way as 5.2?
We fixed this "feature" for 5.2 and will do the same for 6.0. Basically, we have a .nosrc.srpm file to which you can add the downloaded StarOffice. You then build the RPM, which requires going through the graphical installation (although it is automated as far as possible: automatic invocation, automatic selection of installation target etc.). The RPM can then be installed on any system in the same way as any other RPM: no need to go through any tedious GUI setup. Once the RPM is installed users can simply run "soffice" (or "swriter", "scalc" etc.). Sensible default user settings are automatically created so users don't need to go through the setup wizard. Menu entries are provided via the Debian menu system (adopted by Mandrake and probably others) and MIME associations are set up for the StarOffice document types. Michael
It's not quite so simple, if it were no-one would ever take any notice of the things like the Tesco scheme...
That's not something for nothing though. I did the maths on it some time ago. Tescos don't excatly loose there. I totally agree that the notion of something for nothing is both wrong, and wrong (i.e. incorrect, and wrong (morally)). -- Matt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com
--- Matt Johnson
I totally agree that the notion of something for nothing is both wrong, and wrong (i.e. incorrect, and wrong (morally)).
I meant: I totally agree that believing you cannot get anything for nothing, is wrong. i.e. I believe that it is wrong to think the human race are _only_ motivated by $$$. Hence, I am a 'member' of an online community, where at least, I _try_ to offer the somewhat limited expertise I have. Cheers -- Matt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com
On Monday 11 February 2002 11:22, Matt Johnson wrote:
I totally agree that the notion of something for nothing is both wrong, and wrong (i.e. incorrect, and wrong (morally)).
I think that this is to misunderstand computing. Computing has something in common with literature and language. Sure Shakespeare was paid, or patronised, during his (or her) life, but we receive Shakespeares work as 'something for nothing' not withstanding the money we may pay a particular publisher. So open-source software is software which hopes to become part of the corpus of computer science which will survive the original author and become part of human culture. Can't see anything wrong or wrong here. Just the normal standing on the shoulders of giants which pervades civilisaton. cheers timp
Compared to MS office it's very good value. Users expect to pay something,
and expect tech support, so £50 for software (site licence), support is
great, and should be supported, I look forward to release as I really need
a replacement for MS Works. MS office is far too expensive.
Look forward to training also.
As this covers home and office use, does this mean that the cd's can be
copied and installed on home machines? Hence allowing both staff and
students access to the same software?
Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: "Malcolm Herbert"
you may be aware that StarOffice 6.0 final release is due very soon and that it will have an educational license cost. Details from the NAACE conference this week.- - £50 per primary, £150 per secondary, for two sets of CD.s - covers staff and student home use - telephone support
Learning Pathways are the distributors/resellers/support for Sun in the schools market and state that this cost will help them develop training and support for schools.
if you want to contact them, http://www.learnpath.com
interested in your reaction
Malc -- -------------------------------------- Malcolm Herbert Red Hat Europe t: +44 1483 734955 m: +44 7720 079845 --------------------------------------
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com
Here's a conundrum for you guys. My mum, although a fast touch-typist and shorthand demon, was, until a few months ago, a complete computer-phobe. The small company she works for have a Windows network with MS Office and some dodgy macros for doing their most common tasks. Like most British small private companies they provide no training. After struggling with the system for a while she signed up (with my encouragement) for some hugely (EU-)subsidized "computing" courses. These courses turned out to be very well run, carefully tested and graded Microsoft Office indoctrination classes. My mum has worked hard at them, enjoyed them immensely and made excellent progress. She has not been taught how to use a wordprocessor, but is brilliant with Word. She has no deep understanding of databases, but can do a dozen amazing things with Access before breakfast etc etc. Now she is the computer goddess at work. For her 60th birthday we (the rest of the family) want to buy her a computer so she can practise at home. A decent PC can be had for 650UKP. MS Office with all the components (I think the market-speak is "Office Pro") is at least 200UKP, more usually 250UKP, when bought with a new machine. This is, of course, a rip-off. What do we do (legally) to avoid paying this obscene sum? (Incidentally my sister teaches sixth formers, my dad is an ex-teacher and I lecture in a university so if any of you can think of a nifty educational deal I would be very interested. The impression I get is that there is no official discount for single, personal copies of the "full" MS Office suite, though there is one for "MS Office Standard" which doesn't have Access.) On a more philosophical note, I feel rather guilty about pushing the whole training business with her. It's like bad parenting in reverse. Imagine suggesting to your rather conservative teenage daughter that she should "get out a bit more" and finding out a few months later that she's become an enthusiastic drug addict :-) ... Anguished of Cambridge Malcolm Herbert wrote:
you may be aware that StarOffice 6.0 final release is due very soon and that it will have an educational license cost. Details from the NAACE conference this week.- - £50 per primary, £150 per secondary, for two sets of CD.s - covers staff and student home use - telephone support
Learning Pathways are the distributors/resellers/support for Sun in the schools market and state that this cost will help them develop training and support for schools.
if you want to contact them, http://www.learnpath.com
interested in your reaction
Malc
-- Damian COUNSELL http://www.counsell.com/ -- Damian COUNSELL http://www.counsell.com/
On Tuesday 12 February 2002 07h44, Damian Counsell wrote:
These courses turned out to be very well run, carefully tested and graded Microsoft Office indoctrination classes. My mum has worked hard at them, enjoyed them immensely and made excellent progress. She has not been taught how to use a wordprocessor, but is brilliant with Word. She has no deep understanding of databases, but can do a dozen amazing things with Access before breakfast etc etc. Now she is the computer goddess at work.
I walked out of the MCSE crammer when the guy insisted that MS had invented the GUI and was the first DOS. He told me C/PM wasn't a true OS and that the mouse and windows-like environments (Apple, Amstrad et al) weren't GUIs. He did have the grace to admit that Novell was a network OS.
For her 60th birthday we (the rest of the family) want to buy her a computer so she can practise at home. A decent PC can be had for 650UKP. MS Office with all the components (I think the market-speak is "Office Pro") is at least 200UKP, more usually 250UKP, when bought with a new machine. This is, of course, a rip-off.
What do we do (legally) to avoid paying this obscene sum?
Why stick with MS? She doesn't seem to need it. I got a refund of MS licence from one small supplier when I argued loudly in the shop about pressing the "I don't accept" button but many suppliers are bound by their licence agreements to provide MS preloaded. I think my experience in this is rare indeed. My Mum is in a similar situation but didn't notice the difference except superficially when I bought her a basic system only and loaded Opera (licenced - I like it), Pegasus and Star Office Beta 6. She came to my house and used my Linux workstation without any help except to log on. My neighbour is running dual boot but hasn't loaded Win for several months now and want's me to reconfigure it a single boot only. In both cases they aren't "computer wizzes", moving mum from Wordperfect 3 was a major step, yet they are turning out normal office work with Star Office and using "save as" to take stuff in to work. The neighbour's machine is actually mission critical and they don't realise at work that he isn't MS based anymore. -- Best wishes, Derek
[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
On Tuesday 12 February 2002 07h44, Damian Counsell wrote:
These courses turned out to be very well run, carefully tested and graded Microsoft Office indoctrination classes. My mum has worked hard at them, enjoyed them immensely and made excellent progress. She has not been taught how to use a wordprocessor, but is brilliant with Word. She has no deep understanding of databases, but can do a dozen amazing things with Access before breakfast etc etc. Now she is the computer goddess at work.
I walked out of the MCSE crammer when the guy insisted that MS had invented the GUI and was the first DOS. He told me C/PM wasn't a true OS and that the
But all the bits in CP/M (and for that matter MP/M and CP/Net) actually worked, which is more than can be said for the rather bad *copy*, known as QDOS which Microsoft branded MS-DOS.
mouse and windows-like environments (Apple, Amstrad et al) weren't GUIs. He
Obviously never seen anything made by Atari, Acron or Commodore either. Even a Sinclair QL is better than Windows V1.
did have the grace to admit that Novell was a network OS.
Hope they payed their dues to the estate of a certain E. Blair (Better known as G. Orwell)... -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763
Learning Pathways are the distributors/resellers/support for Sun in the schools market and state that this cost will help them develop training and support for schools.
if you want to contact them, http://www.learnpath.com
interested in your reaction
I did complete their web form a fortnight ago and have as yet had no reply. I hope this is not indicative of the support scenario. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-822698/821076 or 07798 636725 cchd@felsted.essex.sch.uk
On Sunday 24 February 2002 09:56, you wrote:
Learning Pathways are the distributors/resellers/support for Sun in the schools market and state that this cost will help them develop training and support for schools.
if you want to contact them, http://www.learnpath.com
interested in your reaction
I did complete their web form a fortnight ago and have as yet had no reply. I hope this is not indicative of the support scenario.
As far as I am aware Learning Pathways do not have a monopoly on the distribution of Star Office. Talking to Sun in the USA they knew nothing about them and were rather surprised by the £100 per school charge which I guess is for the support. I am currently trying to contact the relevant part of Sun UK to clarify the position because IRL Computer Systems Ltd are a Sun Star Office Now partner. I intend to distribute Star Office 6 with a full SOW including assessment and lesson plans for KS3 a la new NC so that there really is an education reason to switch to Star Office. We will then gradually build more applications around Star Office with a view to filling the CD with useful materials. Regards, -- IanL
--- Ian
On Sunday 24 February 2002 09:56, you wrote:
Learning Pathways are the distributors/resellers/support for Sun in the schools market and state that this cost will help them develop training and support for schools.
if you want to contact them, http://www.learnpath.com
interested in your reaction
I did complete their web form a fortnight ago and have as yet had no reply. I hope this is not indicative of the support scenario.
As far as I am aware Learning Pathways do not have a monopoly on the distribution of Star Office. Talking to Sun in the USA they knew nothing about them and were rather surprised by the �100 per school charge which I guess is for the support. I am currently trying to contact the relevant part of Sun UK to clarify the position because IRL Computer Systems Ltd are a Sun Star Office Now partner.
Hmm, I must admit that I was surprised when talking to the Learning Pathways stand at BETT. The bloke there definately gave me the impression that he had some kind of exclusive deal going on. He said it was no longer free (free beer), and that schools would be paying for it - and getting it from Learning Pathways because of the deal they had with SUN. I didn't press him on it. -- Matt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - Coverage of the 2002 Olympic Games http://sports.yahoo.com
participants (11)
-
Christopher Dawkins -
Damian Counsell -
Dan Kolb -
Derek Harding -
Ian -
Malcolm Herbert -
Mark Evans -
Matt Johnson -
Michael Brown -
Paul Sutton -
Tim Pizey