Office 2007 Overkill for Schools

Via Stephen Downes and Dave Warlick is a previous report I filed away in January. It seems that the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) doesn’t see much value in adopting MS Office 2007 for schools:

A Becta review of Office 2007 identified more than 170 new features, but considered many of them to be of more use in a business environment than an educational one.

A detailed analysis of the new functionality again found that none of the new features was a “must haveâ€ for schools and colleges.

Becta said, “As the costs of deployment of Office 2007 would be significant, Becta has not identified any convincing justification for the early adoption of Office 2007.â€

I’ve already said why I won’t use Vista and I don’t feel any pressure to start with Office 2007 either.