Imposing a proprietary Operating System to the students | Hacker News Reader

Imposing a proprietary Operating System to the students

8 pointsRenardP13 comments

Recently my girlfriend was accepted in one of the universities with economical profile from Montreal (HEC Montreal). Everyting seems perfect until she was obliged to buy a laptop (you must have a laptop at all courses) selled by the university.

If you want to use your own laptop you must respect certains standars:

http://web.hec.ca/virtuose/index.cfm?page=374

1.Minimum Windows Xp Professional (the university recommands Vista !!! ). This is an interesting choice give the fact that the norm for a laptop selled two years ago was Windows Xp Media Center edition. 2.Office 2007. 3.An antivirus.

In order to be able to use your own computer you have to give your machine to the university for tests, the software will be checked if it has a legal and regiestered copy of the above three items.

If you want to use a Mac the university simply saids it won't work. No word about Linux.

What do you think about this ?

My niece had the same experience in Biz School. Turns out that the lecturers and tech support are so limited in their understanding that they run screaming from anything that they don't understand / take the time to understand. File compatability with Excel was also a major issue with macros and add-ons. Interestingly at the same Uni if you do CS or IT course, you can use whatever you damn well please because tech support is more broadly skilled. BTW, most CS majors use Macbooks.

My University provides free access to computers with Windows and Office, even they offer me Windows XP. Also they let me to use Linux on my laptop.

What is unfair at my girlfriend University is that you MUST use Windows. You are simply not allowed to use other OS on your computer.

If the university offers to give you licenses for this software then fair enough - this is one way to rule out compatibility issues for the IT department.

Surprised that they check if the software is legal however, what happens in the case that you've put cracked software on? Also do they not allow the laptop on campus if it hasn't been checked, or do they just not provide support if it hasn't been tested by them? This would go with my first point.

I assume they're not imposing something silly like "you must only use Windows on your laptop" (ruling out dual-booting or something).

My girlfriend's University won't let you use your laptop unless it has been "checked" by their technical staff.

If they say OK you will have the right to use your laptop in the University network.

The University offer technical expertize only for Windows (as a minimum you must have XP Professional).

Check this link for further informations:

http://web.hec.ca/virtuose/index.cfm?page=374

The page has an English version too.

There are a lot of interesting tools that run as plug-ins within Excel. Of course, all functionality could be obtained with other tools, but that's not the point: they are not studying Windows - they study Economics and use Windows as a teaching tool. My suggestion? Get your own laptop and run Windows under a virtual machine.

I have nothing personal against using Windows if this is what you want. However I don't like to be forced to use an OS (any OS), and also I don't like to be practically forced to buy a laptop from the University.

I would be surprised if they actually enforce this -- I bet you are smart enough to figure out a way to get a Mac on the network. Ask existing students.

Flagged because Windows-bashing is dull.

Didn't strike me as Windows-bashing. I'd object too - if the university wants to use only certain tools, they can provide them (and have the responsibility for being able to load & export Excel data with OpenOffice). If the student wants to use other but equally powerful tools, it's not the university's business. I suspect this was dreamed up by accountants rather than faculty.

if the university wants to use only certain tools, they can provide them

If you don't want to buy the tools needed to take the class, then don't take the class. Universities don't provide free textbooks, for example.

Of course, it would be better if the university provided the required tools or offered more flexibility, but I agree with the parent poster that this is not an interesting subject.

What I meant to say (but did so poorly) was that requiring a certain software platform is like requiring certain brands of paper and pencils to be used for note taking. I draw a distinction between course materials and the tools used to study them.

Using Excel spreadsheets as teaching/submission materials is fine by me, but it's not their business how the student deals with that, eg by using alternative software. I don't see why students should be required to only use Windows, any more than why they would be required to only use Dell laptops. FWIW I'm happily using windows right now...by choice.

Until you get to the point at which students work needs to be assessed. In most CS courses if it doesn't run first time on the prof's machine, that's an automatic fail.

Most universities provide XP and Vista to their students via the university's software download repository.

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