vincevincevince - 4:43 am on May 18, 2008 (gmt 0)

"... they say that Windows opens job opportunities..." That is pretty accurate in my third world country.

The key word here is 'is'. When you talk education, you must talk not about what 'is' but what 'will be'. Don't teach children to fill the jobs of today - teach them to fill the jobs of tomorrow.

Don't forget that employers tailor their jobs to the employee market as much as the employee tailors his training to the employment market. Today, Microsoft Office is specified because that's about all they can expect to get. With a generation of users able to work with zero software licensing costs and greater interoperability, it's a foregone conclusion that employers would start specifying 'Word processing skills, preferably Open Office, Microsoft Office also considered'.

I wonder why Microsoft have integrated an end of life operating system for them. What kind of a security disaster is this going to be with no updates coming out? Whole education systems being at the mercy of teenagers. Does Microsoft seriously think that these governments are going to shell out for new hardware for running Vista and Microsoft Bloat 2007?

As for activation... when did you see a third option after online and telephone activation for "no phone line, no internet and my arm's aching from winding the battery so just let me use the machine".