Re: Cost of MS Office relative to LO, was: Fwd: [libreoffice-users] Re: moving to new version of MS Office

Hi :)
In Italy you have an excellent resource to call on.  Italo Vignoli.
http://www.documentfoundation.org/contact/
He is excellent at promoting LibreOffice and is great at doing talks
or lectures about LibreOffice.  Unlike some FOSS people he is
excellent at creating a good impression and at working with people who
are very high in authority in global organisations or governments.  He
is roughly the equivalent (or one of the equivalents) of Head of
Marketing, or Marketing CEO, or something around that level or higher.

If you could contact him off-list then he might be quite keen to
handle the school's governing body, probably using a top-down approach
to contrast with your "grass-roots"-up approach.  He can probably give
a some good advice on how to handle the whole thing and maybe develop
an "action plan" with you, using your "local knowledge".  It might
even be possible for TDF to fund a trip or 2 to your school or at
least pay for travel and overnight costs.

Apparently LibreOffice/OpenOffice is around 20% of the market segment
in Europe.  MS Office only has around 80% or less.  It's largely down
to Italo, Sophie, and many others and local users groups.
Regards from
Tom :)




On 29 November 2013 21:57, Paolo Debortoli <paolo_debortoli@yahoo.com> wrote:
> hi. I work in a state school, using ms windows and ms office...  i think I know the policy of 
> microsoft.  I think they use a sort of (apparent) programmed obsolescence for the software.  I 
> mean: periodically they add a new version with some changes in interface, macro programming, 
> functions and file structure, which is installed on new computers. the new version is voluntarily 
> incompatible with the previous ones.  It's a matter of marketing, not innovation.  where I work, 
> people are always complaining that what works on a computer (files, macro etc..)  doesn't work on 
> another.  the school, on the other way, doesn't want to spend money on new software licenses  
> (very expensive in italy).  so, why don't they change ?   they don't know enough about 
> LibreOffice; they would need demonstrations or some training (some training is done, but always 
> on ms office, I don't know which version...  are they trained every new version?), I guess...   I
>  think microsoft did the same politics with charities and schools:  discounted prices (but they 
> are still stealing money somehow...). other software producers (autodesk) are doing similar 
> things...   schools are good marketing targets... ideas?
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, November 29, 2013 8:31 PM, John Meyer <john.l.meyer@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I didn't know we considered trialware "cunning".
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 10:04 AM, James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com>wrote:
>
> > Tom Davies wrote:
> > > Also on newer machines MS have started running a cunning scheme
> > > whereby people get to use a trial version of MS Office which then
> > > stops working after a month or so.  In order to keep on using it
> > > people have to pay an extra bit.
> >
> > That happened to a friend of mine about 3 years ago.  She's now running
> > OpenOffice.
> >
> >
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