Live data from Hacker News

German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

techgenix.com

81–90 of 117 posts

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#81
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Takes 520 MB right now for sitting idling in the background. That's how well it runs on Windows...

That's 6.5 % of available memory of a computer with 8 GB of RAM.

Most of our systems here are equipped with 8 GB only, where it's 15.75% as said by somebody else.

With everything else that runs, you're out of RAM pretty quick: Our production software takes around 1 GB when running, Firefox/Chrome with a few tabs, Acrobat Pro...

I'm lucky that I've received an upgrade to 16 GB because I need special software for my work. For the next system I'll ask for 32 GB and 16 GB for my teams. Don't understand why the corporate IT is so sparse with RAM...

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#82
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the best conferencing tool for recurring cadence What does this mean?

He means having a video call linked to a recurring meeting.

> What does this mean?

Apparently it's corpo/PM speak [0] for meeting #'s, which judging by his stance on the poorly reviewed Teams app so far makes me think that MS product market fit strategy worked in this case: it knows who it built Teams for.

Just look at who this is aimed at:

> Where the Action Is is a book for leaders seeking to make sense of their meetings and master their business.

0: https://www.lucidmeetings.com/meeting-types/team-cadence-mee...

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#83
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm wondering is, how is office 365 really any worse than Windows 10/11 itself?

I am also wondering this. But I hope it won't move quite so far or fast as to ban Windows.

Oh, this would be absolutely great and a day to celebrate for me.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#84
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only software that someone actively sells can ever make it through. Only software that someone actively supports*

No I think it is the sales that counts. That 200k salesperson will of course make PowerPoint decks showing all the support options. But, the main barrier to take is convincing 10+ people with different incentives to all sign off on your product, and that is what enterprise sales gets done.

If you show up with a PowerPoint deck to use as evidence for your competitor to Microsoft Office you’re off to a bad start

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#85
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 6.5 % of available memory of a computer with 8 GB of RAM.

Most of our systems here are equipped with 8 GB only, where it's 15.75% as said by somebody else. With everything else that runs, you're out of RAM pretty quick: Our production software takes around 1 GB when running, Firefox/Chrome with a few tabs, Acrobat Pro... I'm lucky that I've received an upgrade to 16 GB because I need special software for my work. For the next system I'll ask for 32 GB and 16 GB for my teams…

> Most of our systems here are equipped with 8 GB only, where it's 15.75% as said by somebody else.

520/8192 = 0.0635

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#86
post #22
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neoliberalism is super entrenched here. It is almost impossible to create a state/county/municipal IT department that would actually have enough sysadmins. All such departments rely almost entirely on external suppliers. One way this happens are salary controls. It is impossible to hire someone and give him the market rate, but it is trivial to tender the work associated with such position to a random external compan…

> Only software that someone actively sells can ever make it through. Only software that someone actively supports*

Can concur. A software project could be feasibly implemented in-house but in-house technological teams are both under-staffed (lots of "teams" of just one or two people) and the staff themselves have much lower salaries compared to a similar role in the private sector. As a result, there's no incentive for technologically competent staff to stick around and provide support for software/systems that they implement.

On the other hand, there are very large budgets available for purchasing software with support contracts and even more so for IT consultancy services. In practice, this neo-liberal push to outsource rather than develop in-house capabilities results in all sorts of inefficiencies and deficiencies in the ability of public servants to provide a quality public service.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#87
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the teams hate. I personally find it the best conferencing tool for recurring cadence

Audio quality is very poor by default (you can switch in better with a setting). Uses a lot of memory and is slow Frequently crashes my machine The UI for discussions I find poor. No one uses the "teams" concept and everything is done in private chats.

User mode apps that crash the machine are not the app's fault. It's your machine's fault. You either have buggy drivers or faulty hardware.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#88
post #60
post #35

MSFT should be leading the way. In what universe do they need to be collecting data from kids, especially that which cannot be kept locally. Telemetry data (which I suggest is reasonable that they collect) can be stored in local 'log' style DBs. It's not data they need to repatriate. Although for login and identity management, it might be reasonable to have that quasi centralized for security reasons. While MS could…

MS, G, AWS will end up offering local datacenters operated by local companies owned by them. They'll cost a little more.

Microsoft tried, using some Deutsche Telekom subsidiary as data processor. They sunset it.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#89

At the beginning of the pandemic Microsoft Teams was practically forced on everyone with children in Bavaria. With practically forced I mean you could either sign a document to get Teams for free or your child could not participate in online classes. A whole age group of children whose first online experience is Microsoft. In my opinion we should start there: Instead of unrealistic bans that no one will ever enforce…

The problem is those free and open-source tools may simply stop existing and all the skills the students learned with those programs could become completely useless. Germany, somehow, is a decade behind most of the other Western industrial powerhouses in terms of digitizing. I think the constant flux and reluctance to just move on is holding them back.

Re: German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools

#90

At the beginning of the pandemic Microsoft Teams was practically forced on everyone with children in Bavaria. With practically forced I mean you could either sign a document to get Teams for free or your child could not participate in online classes. A whole age group of children whose first online experience is Microsoft. In my opinion we should start there: Instead of unrealistic bans that no one will ever enforce…

I still can't believe with all the other examples MS had they managed to make Teams the worst chat experience I think I ever used
Post reply on HN