Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
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Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
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Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#2Hmm, there's a mixture of interesting and fairly mundane stuff in here. On the mundane side: one of the points is that Microsoft objects to the requirement to procure the lowest-price software that meets the specs, because there is FOSS that meets many of the specs (as written) and it's no-cost, therefore no commercial supplier can possibly compete. That's an argument you'd expect any commercial software supplier to make, and in fact they do make that argument pretty much anywhere those kinds of procurement rules come up. Whether making that argument is trying to fleece the government or not probably depends on whether you agree with commercial software providers' arguments about benefits of their software vs. FOSS, e.g. in functionality and/or total cost of ownership.
Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#3What a load of crap. Grow up people. Microsoft Office is worth every single cent.
Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#4What a load of crap. Grow up people. Microsoft Office is worth every single cent.
Of course Microsoft software is worth every cent (dollars many of them) that Microsoft thinks it is, the question here is, 'Is public debate of Microsoft's sales to the schools of Greece up for public debate?'.
Microsoft certainly wants to be a sole supplier on a privately discussed contract. If I were trying to maximize my profits, I'd want exactly the same.
Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#5What a load of crap. Grow up people. Microsoft Office is worth every single cent.
That's your opinion on the pricing of MS Office and its commercial value - correct or otherwise. However, I think the question is whether it makes sense to mandate its use in the education system, in several years time, given the rapidly changing commercial realities and - good value for businesses or not - the high price of using Microsoft products in such an environment by a government that is virtually bankrupt.
You may or may not be right on the value of MS Office, but I think its use in this context is easily and legitimately challenged.
Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#6What a load of crap. Grow up people. Microsoft Office is worth every single cent.
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Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#7What a load of crap. Grow up people. Microsoft Office is worth every single cent.
No, it doesn't. Especially for schools - it's a pointless waste of money and sneaky tactic by MS to hook students on their products early on. Schools should ditch MS and adopt open source solutions for the sake of the future generations.
Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#8MS is not a newcomer to pushing their solutions to schools through government channels. It's their way to prevent people from learning about alternatives. Corruption is all around in these schemes.
Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#9What a load of crap. Grow up people. Microsoft Office is worth every single cent.
That's your opinion on the pricing of MS Office and its commercial value - correct or otherwise. However, I think the question is whether it makes sense to mandate its use in the education system, in several years time, given the rapidly changing commercial realities and - good value for businesses or not - the high price of using Microsoft products in such an environment by a government that is virtually bankrupt. Y…
"Rapidly changing commercial realities" haven't produced a tool as useful or flexible for analyzing large amounts of financial data as Excel. They also haven't produced an alternative word processor that can correctly read and format any arbitrary Word document. Go ahead, try and tell your boss that you never read that important memo he sent out because your office suite mangled the document.
For interacting with the business world, Microsoft Office is absolutely essential -- a bargain at thrice the price.
Re: Debating Microsoft's comments on the Greek Ministry of Education laptops program
#10Even being a Linux fan boy, I still hate OpenOffice/Libre because it's so clunky and doesn't play as nice as MS Office when you need to do some complicated things for the workplace. I actually even prefer Google docs now over OpenOffice and find the gmail/Drive integration so handy.
As for the Greece thing, MS has a good product (Office), but a bad OS (for the money they charge). They need to approach this differently, like porting Office to Linux.