Eee PC could rock Microsoft if it got out of Geeksville

The Test Bed is reporting that Becta, the UK agency for schools IT, has recommended schools and other educational institutions to look at alternatives, including open source, before signing expensive contracts with Microsoft to upgrade to Vista or Office 2007. It estimates it would cost an average secondary school some £26,000 to upgrade to Office 2007, and almost as much again for Vista – and that’s not factoring in any hardware upgrades involved.

But for £50,000 a school could get more than 300 Eee PCs complete with Linux software and the open-source OpenOffice suite. Of course, with open-source, bugs are commonplace. While Microsoft software is not bug free its basic functionalities work as expected.

However, the recent successful launch of Linux-based Asus Eee PC has proven that open-source software can actually be reliable. Though still limited, Eee PC's early success is nevertheless enough cause for Microsoft to worry about. While open-source has a long way to go before becoming mainstream, Microsoft knows too well if kids learn on non-Microsoft software they are likely to carry on using it later in life.

Complete details here.