My Post on the cost of Microsoft licenses and lack of understanding of LEAs for open software had some good feed back. I thank everybody. I must also add my feedback to some of the comments made. LEA does actually make money selling software and other services to schools. This was not an accusation. However someone made the correct judgement as incompetent people. I don't think linux is ready to be fully deployed in schools as the GUI desktops are not so ready to replace windows fully. The teacher colleauge therefore must not worry too much about spending more hours on learning it than his/her working hours. My point is that it should be brought in gradually, especially when old machines are no longer powerful enough to run Microsoft applications. My thanks to a friend here who kindly but possibly rather bluntly referred me to various sources. Someone made a distinction between IT and ICT which are effectively the same thing except ICT is more of a common term in education now. If you look at the full definition which starts like this ..." storing, communication and transmission of information..." then one will see that the "C" was adopted into ICT from the definition of IT. I will be harsh to say that those teacher who are titled as ICT teacher are in fact NOT teaching ICT but generally using the means of ICT to deliver their lessons. Teachin Microsoft Exel is not teaching ICT for example. As far as my school is concerned, I gave up totally as all seems against me when I propose a very gradual move to alternative software, be it Open source or not. I do not wish to implicate myself here but regrettably as I am only the network manager and the Head of ICT who is a senior teacher makes those decisions...incompetently I might add. As to the comment of, the fact that all students have Microsoft Officve in their homes and transportability of documents from home to school etc would cause pain to students and parents...well, how many of those students have actually own a legitimate copy of Microsoft Office!! As far as trying to convince the Head masters and school governers is concerned, it's probably a dead issue as it's those incompetent teachers who win the fight of convincing that the change is catastrophic and the idea must be abandoned. My solution for myself is..... well, change to another school or better still, move to Spain where Spanish Government installed Linix with Gnome on 80,000 computers Best wishes