UK Schools At Risk of Microsoft Lock-In

Robert writes "UK schools and colleges that have signed up to Microsoft Corp's academic licensing programs face the significant potential of being locked in to the company's software, according to an interim review by Becta, the UK government agency responsible for technology in education. The report also states that most establishments surveyed do not believe that Microsoft's licensing agreements provide value for money." In a separate report, Becta offered the opinion that schools should avoid Vista for at least another year, since neither Vista nor Office 2007 offers any compelling reasons for schools to upgrade.

Re:A good start

[NineNine]

Well, who else is there to go with? You can spend twice as much (at least) and get hardware AND software lock-in by going with Apple. You can spend $0 on the software, and hire twice as many admins/trainers and go with Linux. What else is there? MS is still the cheapest, and the most open.

And this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there will be some minor bugs with the OS, but the switch would force us into using a lot of web-based software, which is what we want. That essentially removes our software-related bugs.

... and this, incidentally, also has a name. It's known as the Head in The Sand approach.