BETT: Schools warned against Microsoft upgrades

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Schools have been told to hold off upgrading to Microsoft's new operating system and office software suite in a report by the government's education technology agency.

In a follow up report released at the BETT show in London, Becta has again called the software's interoperability and value into question, warning schools off upgrading to Microsoft Vista and Office 2007.

Dr Stephen Lucey, Becta's executive director of strategic technologies, said: "Our objective is to make sure schools and colleges get the best possible value for money. Our advice is to be sure there is a strong business case before upgrading to these products as the costs are significant and the benefits remain unclear."

But on the sidelines of the BETT show, Microsoft's education and marketing manager Ray Fleming said the firm wasn't concerned. "We don't see this as a big issue... it's just a repeat from last year," he said. "The message from schools is they love the new software. This seems like a departmental debate which is very much detached from schools."

In an interim report last January, Becta said that Microsoft Vista's new features did add value, but were not enough to justify early deployment. It was harsher on Office 2007, saying the software package had no "must have" features for the education sector.

In the newly-released final report, Becta said schools should wait to upgrade to Vista. While the researchers found the operating system was stable and reliable, they had cost concerns.

Becta estimated that upgrading each primary school machine to the new operating system would cost £125, while doing the same for secondary school machines would cost £75 each. Overall, that would cost the £175 million across England and Wales - a third of which would go to Microsoft in the form of licensing fees.

Becta claimed that Microsoft had been asked to run pilots to determine the actually cost of deployment, but said the firm had not yet done so.

But Microsoft countered that many schools have already implemented Vista and Office 2007, making such pilots unnecessary. "We've got quite a lot of schools which have done deployment," said Fleming.

Indeed, uptake is outstripping their last operating system release, XP, the firm said. "More schools have moved to Vista so far than the same point when Windows XP was released," Fleming said.

But Becta reported that while 66 per cent of school machines meet Microsoft's Vista-capable definition, just 22 per cent had high enough specifications to be efficient. The report did advise that Vista could be used if hardware was also being upgraded.

Becta also advised schools against installing Office 2007 unless they fully understand the interoperability issues. It advised any schools already using the Office 2007 suite to not save in Microsoft's Open Office XML format, which no other product supports - which they said could potentially exacerbate digital divide issues, as home computers may not be able to upgrade or may use free office software packages.

In order to ensure long-term compatibility between applications, and avoid such digital divide issues, Becta said school users should be told to save in .doc, .xls and .ppt formats.

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