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Grant Sewell wrote: >> I have difficulty trying to get away from the big M at university, for >> example I got told for one of my assignments I had to call my ER >> diagram "er.doc". > > I usually submit my stuff in both their preferred format and in my > preferred format, zipped up with a readme.txt file explaining why I > have done what I have done. It has annoyed some people but others have > commented that they were completely unaware of the other options > available to them. > A colleague of mine was e-mailed a .docx file yesterday. I managed to open it after downloading a 27MB update for Office XP (which in turn needed another couple of megs of Windows updates!!!). I did tell him though to ask the sender to either next time send the document in Word 97 format, install PDF Creator (which is GPL) or install and use OpenOffice! > > <gripe> > I have run into a bit of a pickle myself recently... one of the topics > I teach has something along the lines of "install and configure a linux > machine" as part of the "indicative content" of the course. It is not > actually an assessment objective, so it doesn't have to be tested, but > it does have to be taught. All the machines easily available for them > to work on have WinXP on them, as mandated by the IT Services dept, and > installing a dual-boot would be a serious no-no, so they have to go > down the route of virtualisation, which although it is a useful tool it > doesn't really give fully native-install experience. > </gripe> > Sounds like you could do with some older machines to use as Linux boxes. When I worked at Exeter College (ooh, going back 10 years now!) they had a room full of old computers (386's) which the IT course trainee's used to learn technical hardware skills on. It didn't matter if the machines were trashed as they were being replaced with fancy new Pentium 100's (I remember them well, running Windows 95 and Office 95). Sounds like that's what the IT Services dept should do for the topics you teach, maybe provide a few older P3/P4 machines (surely they're replacing some of the older ones with new machines?). They'd be fine for teaching about Linux on real hardware and if they get trashed what does it matter? Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html