Preparing to convince to shift to non-propriety documents formats

[Nadav Har'El]

On Sun, Feb 05, 2012, geoffrey mendelson wrote about "Re: Preparing to convince to shift to non-propriety documents formats":
> student/home version of office (Word and Execel but no Outlook
> (scheduling/email) and Access (database)) which can be found on sale
> for as low as 300 NIS for a three computer license.
> 
> Last year (2010 school year) a student organization was offering a
> netbook with Windows XP and Office included for 1200 NIS. This year,
> there were still some being sold for as little as 800 NIS at places
> like Machsani Chasmal.

I looked now at ivory.co.il and saw that the cheapest Microsoft Office 
cost there 385 shekels. It's a bit cheaper than the 500 shekels I
quoted, but not much cheaper. The 3-user version (I have no idea if this
actually allows you to use it on 3 separate machines) cost 550 shekels,
and won't make any sense to poor people (who are not likely to have more
than one machine anyway).

The cheapest Windows 7 on that site is 430 shekels.

So together, these cost 815 shekels - about the same price as the cheapest
brand new desktop machine from the same seller. Wow.

I'm sure that you can find some deal if you're member of some pressure
group, e.g., the teachers themselves get (if I remember correctly)
discounted Microsoft products. But I don't think the school children
themselves or their parents get any deals. It would make little sense,
given that virtually everybody in the country is a parent to a child at
school (or knows one), so everyone would be entitled to such a deal.

> No, the teachers know how to email. They would have to hire a
> webmaster to post them and coordinate the postings.

And given that the teachers are probably not even paid for the time they
spend on these mails (not to mention the cost to buy the computer, and
connect to the Internet), we should be thankful that they do whatever
they can.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |                     Sunday, Feb 5 2012, 
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |I want to be a human being, not a human
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |doing -- Scatman John