Re: [school-discuss] StarOffice in Edu.

[Anna Johnson <anna_m_johnson@yahoo.com>]

Visibility.  I don't see Star Office on the
bookshelves in the campus bookstores or talked about
at the edu conferences.  I also don't see any
advertising for it in any of the standard edu
pubs...especially k-12.  Most teachers and
administrators don't know about it.  And if they have
heard about it, they assume it doesn't run on windows.

I also think that a lot of the open-source apps have
been particularly successful at marketing the back-end
technologies as opposed to desktop apps.  

One more thing, free often means substandard to a lot
of people.  Educators are tired of getting the
leftovers and now that they have the IT $$$ to spend
on technology, they want to purchase something that's
marketed as being "prestigious and
state-of-the-art...use what the leading corporations
use so your students are prepared for the future...."

I obviously don't agree with the "free"
association...just relaying the feedback I've heard
over the years.

Good to hear from you Chris!  :-)
Anna

--- Christopher Reed <reed@affero.com> wrote:
> I read today in a release on zdnet "Sun expands
> StarOffice giveway" (see link 
> below) that Microsoft has 90% of the office suite
> market in Edu. 
> 
> I'm curious why a free product like StarOffice is
> not more prevalent in 
> education. Is it an issue of support? Usability?
> Laziness (people don't want 
> to switch ffrom MS Office)? Or other?
> 
> I appreciate your thoughts.
> 
> Chris 
> 
>
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-09-17-009-26-NW-SW-PB
> 
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