Ed Tech Review » Microsoft

Windows 7 can wait!

MrYardley — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:53:46 +0000

I have been very impressed by the rave reviews I’ve been hearing for the Beta of Windows 7. Unfortunately, reviews and reality are two seperate things. I was quick to join the beta program when it became publicly availible because I was excited to try out the “Vista that works”. After trying a few times, with some aggrivation I got it installed. It was late so I let the install finnish while I went home to bed. The next morning I launched the beautifull new Windows 7. After clicking through several nags for not having an antivirus, and permission for my Amazon Unbox app (I had to do this every time I boot about 6 times before it quits popping up) I finally lauch my first application. I use a Promethean Digital Whiteboard and I started up the software for the first lesson. It started great! I opened the slide show for the Mornings lesson and it came write up. I clicked on the X to get rid of the splash screen, and my screen went black. This does not look good, then I notice that my machine is rebooting. I have had a few crashes in my day. Sometimes when a machine gets a virus attack it will get overloaded and crash. Sometimes there are hardware malfunctions or the processor overheats and it will immediately shut down. This is the first time I’ve been running a program where it is perfectly reproducable every time. I must have this application as part of what I do, so I realized that I needed to downgrade back to Vista. I decided to do somthing productive on 7 before I bailed ship, so I launched IE 8 to make this post on Ed Tech Review. When I tried to log into the admin, IE 8 Beta also crashed. To be fair both applications are Beta and as such you can expect problems, but, I personally don’t have the time to play when two of the applications I use most consistantly crash my machine. I put Vista on the machine about two weeks before I tried the upgrade and it seemed to be working fine, but it looks like I will be waiting for Version 7 sp1 before my other XP machines will see an upgrade.

Mac Express! School Trends vs. Tech Trends!

MrYardley — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:16:22 +0000

In fourth Grade my elementary school got it’s first computers. They were the state of the art amazing Apple II Computers. These amazing machines allowed you to type and correct mistakes, without starting all over, and create cool looking banners with Print Shop. It seemed that Mac had a strong hold on the education market early on, especially in the elementary sector. This trend continued through my high school years, where I spent my time programming in basic and pascal on our Apple IIe’s. There was a crack in the dam, when our school purchased a PC lab for the CAD program my senior year. Soon high schools colleges, and businesses were dominated by the PC. But Apple despite inferior technology at the time held strong in the Elementary School market. Apple was nearly dead with a fledgling user base of dedicated fanatics that still swear up and down that pre-OSX operating systems were better than Windows XP. Based on the frequent crashes an multiple systems with my Macs I would respectfully disagree with these fanatics. Finally the Elementary Schools got some sense and realized that they were wasting money on Macs, and started making the shift to PC’s But Apple still had some fight left in them. The iPod was introduced and widely accepted as the music player of choice, and with this significant influx of cash they transformed the there sub par Hardware and Software into the Modern powerhouse of computing. Consumers are flocking to Mac in record numbers, and businesses are beginning to shift. But what about the strong base of Elementary schools, Well Mac labs continue to be replaced by PC’s. Finally Mac has the best product out there, and it the schools are dropping it like flies. In reality, I understand why. Schools have begun to realize that Apple does not have a competitive price. I can put together a computer that is component for component identical or superior to Mac technology for about half of what Apple charges. Software is much more available for PC than Mac, especially in regards to open source tools. It is easier and more affordable to find PC techs. You can save a lot of money going the PC route. But it does seem a little ironic that schools stuck with Apple until they produced a good product and then jumped ship.

The Best Word Processor for Teachers

MrYardley — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:41:07 +0000

Many years ago before the dawn of the internet age a company dominated the word processing market. Wordperfect was the standard in most businesses that used word processing. Then another powerhouse entered the market in 1995 and there was a significant shift in the business market to Microsoft Office. Quite honestly at that time Microsoft had a little better package available for business and Businesses converted in masses and never looked back. Should they? In the title wave of Microsoft dominance, Wordperfect now owned by Corel has been responding by pushing invasion to make a better product and reducing there price to make an office suite more affordable. Has all of this work been enough to catch up to Microsoft. Well in sales no, but when it comes to the quality and value of the product, I think they have.

I am reasonably adept at Microsoft Office, and personally love the enhancements in Office 2007. I have not used Wordperfect in 10 years, So I thought that I could not give a fair comparison to the products since Corel Wordperfect X3 is so new to me. I was wrong. Within 5 Minutes on Corel Wordperfect X3 I knew I was using a far superior tool than Microsoft Office 2007. I was doing advanced formating of a document with tables, photos, dynamic links, within 20 minutes without even referring to the help menu. I have used Corel Wordperfect X3 for about 4 days and can not ever see me going back to the miserable limitations of Microsoft word. Unfortunately my trial version runs out in about three weeks, and I’ll have to pay for my copy, but with the reasonable price point I have no problem with the change. There ya go Corel your market share just went up .00001% Another small step in the right direction.

MS Office 2007 First Impressions

MrYardley — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 23:11:00 +0000

Microsoft is releasing it’s Office 2007 product to the general public within the next week. With an academic version priced at about $150 it seems a steep price point to upgrade on a product that basically types letters, and make Power Point slides. It is especially difficult to consider when there are free programs such as Open Office 2.0 that can accomplish the same thing. In my humble opinion if you are an active computer user or if your considering an office application for your classroom computers, Office 2007 is worth the cost and is a significant upgrade for most users.

The biggest strength in the new version of office is what Microsoft now calls the ribbon. This new feature and user interface makes it easy to find advanced features that were somewhat buried in menus in previous versions. It makes it easy for basic users to become power users. I have seen many articles that contend that the change in the interface is going to require a significant investment in retraining employees and teachers to use the new system. I don’t agree! There will be some training necessary, however the intuitive nature of the new interface will make it easier to train and over time the need for training on Office products will be significantly reduced. Office 2007 will also make it easier for students to get amazing results on student projects.

There are many internal enhancements that allow for greater collaboration capabilities, and integration with other products. One example is it’s new blogging features. You can create a blog post from within Microsoft Office and directly submit the post from within word. The collaboration capabilities will make it easier for students to work together on projects. Many months ago I looked at Open Office 2.0, and stated that it was a close toss up when compared with MS Office, well now now there is a clear winner. MS office 2007 is clearly the best Office application available.