has anyone had to upgrade software on pc for secondary school?

[wfrances]

hi all
ive got 3 dc in secondary school, i bought a new lap top in january and only now they are telling me it doesnt have the software they need/use in school.
so ive just googled and its £85 !!!
its called microsoft office ,home and student 2010.- they need it for powerpoint .
have you all got it ?if not what do your dc do?

Hi,

You can download it from here for £51, I bought it last week and it works perfectly.

www.buygenuinesoftware.com/product/Office-Home-and-Student-2010-For-one-PC/29F436FD

Good Luck!

We had to buy a bloody PC when dd went to secondary school! We use Macs, and absoultely nothing the school used was Mac compatible.

try software4students

software4students is the way to go. Its really cheap and you can dload it 5 times for one payment (so on more than one pc if necessary).

Use open office, just save things using the MS file format.

If you absoloutly have to have MS then have a look on ebay.

@ seeker - You do know that for about £45 you can get software that will let you run Windows on your Mac?

@seeker my kids have no problems using macs for their school stuff. And I have no problems using macs for my work (when most although not all of my colleagues use windows networks). Plus there's parallels or bootcamp if you really really want to run windows. But my kids haven't needed to use parallels or bootcamp. I'm intrigued to know what software your kids are using at their schools?

Open Office didn't work for us in long run :(
some work they've uploaded to MLA (under my supervision) couldn't open on teachers computers so I had no choice but to buy Windows machines for them :(

We run Windows machines as well as Macs because of this. Most homework can be done on Macs but some need Windows. We use Office for Mac on the Macbooks.

We used to use Parallels but it slowed the computers down. Now there is a decent Mac Office version I don't bother with Parallels.

So, I'm going to ask again, because nobody has answered - WHAT is this homework that can only be done on windows? I have 3 DCs, about to start Y10, Y8 and Y5 and we have never once had a homework that couldn't be done on a mac (although we have had homeworks that necessitated the use of Firefox rather than Safari).

They have to submit presentation or .doc file which teacher or friends that they work with on a given project can open on their PC

They have to use discs that go with certain Heinemann textbooks that need Windows.

Some file problems can be avoided by saving files as PDFs and then sending the PDFs.

@happy Macs can save files in office formats, whether it's doc (or docx), ppt (or pptx) or xls (xlsx). They can be read by pcs, linux boxes, anything running office. I work with people all over the world and mac for office (UK version) is completely compatible with every version of windows office there is except for the Chinese one. And that is basically not compatible with anything.

@future All the books on screen that I have used (or written) have had mac and PC versions available (these are legal and accounting things mainly) however obviously I haven't used all the books on screen that there are so maybe Heinemann don't offer mac versions however I have kids at 3 different schools and they have never used anything like that, all their stuff is online - who pays for these discs? If they are physical media they must cost a bomb and either be out of date quite quickly or cost even more for upgrade service (I used to be a freelance doing quarterly upgrades of something similar in the early years of the century and it was money for old rope as far as I was concerned but I know the provider of the publication charged a bomb for the upgrade subscription - these days it's all online all the time). But even if Heinemann have decided to completely ignore the mac market forever, there's still parallels. or bootcamp. Or that other thing they used to use in apple stores to register iphones with O2. That can run any windows software, including complex things like accounting packages.

The real problem seems to be that some teachers know little or nothing about macs and people get conned into buying expensive new kit when they really don't need it.

if you use open office, macs etc ensure that it is saved to enable any microsoft office version to open it.

The safest is for example to save a word document as .doc (rather than .docx for example)

I have had students unable to open work at school as the school system does not have the software to convert a word processing document to .doc (as their ICT teacher, they often coming running to me to help them but I am restricted to the software in school and therefore end up writing them a note stating that it wouldn't open in school)

@cricket but surely if you are running an out of date version of office (if it can't open .docx files) then this will be an issue for anyone who has bought a brand new pc and a new copy of office, unless they too are told to save their files in the old format rather than the default. I can understand schools having out of date software - often the older versions are more stable, the latest windows version of office is truly vile, for example - but this will be just as much (or as little) of a problem for the owners of brand new pcs as for Mac users.

Mordion - exactly!

We so warn students to save as 2003, but rather than going 'save as' and scrolling to the correct version for school, they hit the save icon.....

I have the same problem with some of my colleagues! ;)

Cricketballs - installing this will help with opening documents created in later versions of Office. I work in a primary school where we have Office 2003 on the laptop sets the children use, and later versions on other computers. The convertor works well and means the children don't need to remember to save as Word 97-2003. (although not all the features of the newer versions will work, it's normally good enough.)

we aren't allowed to install anything on our network the technicians think they are god; I often take in my own personal laptop to help with these situations, but if I haven't then I end up writing the students a note.....

MordionAgenos I am sure Mac Office does it all, but I can't afford Macs for my kids

@happyavocado But I was talking to a poster who had mac(s) and then bought PC(s) specifically for school age kids. I certainly wouldn't want to have to go out and buy new PCs for my kids when they already have computers.

@happy sorry, I did indeed respond directly to you but that was because you answered my original query to a Mac user with comments about document formats, which didn't make sense.

And I still haven't had a proper answer about what this special type of homework, unknown at any of the schools my 3 DCs attend, which can only be done on PCs actually is.