Thursday, January 31, 2008

Re: Vista & Office 2007 on new student laptops

Jason,
We tested Vista on our Lenovo tablets and decided based on that test not to=
move to Vista this coming summer. We just weren't please enough with the =
performance to move in that direction. XP Tablet Edition does fine on the =
tablets and has been very stable.

We moved to Office 2007 last summer and have had no issues. OneNote 2007 i=
s, as many have said, much better than 2003. The incorporation of tables i=
nto the new version would be enough on its own to make the switch worth it.=
The only user problems we have had with the Office switch have been of th=
e "where did that button go" vein. Also, most of our students haven't dealt=
with incompatibility between versions of their Office before. It took a c=
ouple of reminders about saving into "Word 97 - 2003" format before mailing=
that document to mom and dad to get the students to remember to take that =
step.

Jessica
------------
Jessica Sepke
Director of Technology and Information Systems
Saint Mary's School
Raleigh, North Carolina
www.saint-marys.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators [mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.=
EDU] On Behalf Of Jason Hyams
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 8:19 AM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Vista & Office 2007 on new student laptops

We plan on moving our incoming students to tablet computers.
The reason for my interest in Vista is how it performs on a tablet
versus XP.

The Office 2007 package ships with OneNote and our faculty currently use
Office 2003 with OneNote.

Does Open Office or Google Docs have an alternative to OneNote that
integrates with the other office applications?

Has any tablet school been successful using the OneNote alternative?


Thank you for replying to this discussion!


Jason Hyams
Director of Technology
St. Agnes Academy


-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators
[mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Greg Kearney
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 6:48 PM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Vista & Office 2007 on new student laptops

I always ask this question when this kind of thing comes up. "Which
children on the scholarship list do not get to come to our school so
we can send money to the richest man in the world? (Bill Gates)" You
should see the looks on peoples faces when I ask it. At times I have
resorted to taking the scholarship wait list into the meeting and
asking those pushing for the latest version of Office to select the
children that will not be able to attend by name.

We use OpenOffice and Google Docs and save our money for better use.

Greg
On Jan 30, 2008, at 5:00 PM, Norman Maynard wrote:

> I would echo the opinions that the move to Office 07 would be
> easier than
> the move to Vista; however, I would offer that perhaps a better move
> would
> be away from proprietary suites altogether. I absolutely do not mean
> to
> start any kind of OS-type flame war, etc., but the future, it seems
> to me,
> is in open-source and more so, web-based apps. Why not save money
> and move
> kids from Office 2003 to Google Docs, or Zoho, or Buzzword, which
> kids seem
> to really like? We've moved to OpenOffice, and though there has been
> some
> difficulties, they've been pretty minor.
>
> Bottom line, it seems to me that as educators we ought to be pushing
> collaborative models whcih invite learning and user involvement over
> proprietary, for-profit models. Add to that Office's troubling .docx
> format,
> and I see no reason for us to spend valuable resources on overpriced,
> overpowered, non-cooperative software.
>
> My $0.02
>
> Norman Maynard
> Principal, Upper School
> Thornton Friends School
> 13925 New Hampshire Ave.
> Silver Spring, MD
> 301.384.0320
>
> On Jan 30, 2008 5:05 PM, Karen Douse <douse@harpethhall.org> wrote:
>
>> A forum for independent school educators <ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> on
>> Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at 11:53 AM -0600 wrote:
>>> Would you stay with XP or go to Vista this summer?
>>
>> We plan to stay with XP - too many negative reports about Vista. XP
>> works
>> great and we don't see any advantage to changing right now.
>>>
>>> Would you stay with Office 2003 or move to Office 2007 this year?
>> We moved to Office 2007 for everyone on our campus last fall. We
>> did some
>> preview sessions in the spring and offered lots of training time
>> before
>> school started. The transition went as well as any of us could have
>> expected. The students learned it easily
>> and immediately, and most faculty members picked up the differences
>> very
>> quickly. I wouldn't hesitate on this as long as you prepare
>> everyone in
>> advance to expect the change.
>>
>> Karen
>>
>> Karen Douse
>> Director of Library and Information Services
>> Ann Scott Carell Library
>> Harpeth Hall School
>> 615-346-0116
>> douse@harpethhall.org
>>
>>
>> [ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
>> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons,
>> attribution,
>> non-commercial, share-alike license.
>>
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons,
> attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.

[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons,
attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.

[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, n=
on-commercial, share-alike license.

[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.