[ale] OT Windows Requirements in Universities was VM ? (addendum: without windows licenses?)

[Brian Pitts]

>  have been avoiding the use of Windows for almost a year at WIU. I am 
> still stuck with using OpenOffice.org, though, because they require 
> that papers be in .DOC format (part of their "commitment to academic 
> honesty" is using some software that looks for plagiarism in MS Word 
> files), math assignments must be in .DOC format with embedded items 
> from Microsoft Equation Editor (which OOo doesn't seem to export so 
> well, according to my math teacher). I suspect that my own Java class 
> that will be upcoming will be just fine without the presence of 
> Windows, though, and I only intend on using it for the two math 
> classes that I am presently in. If I could afford to just suck up the 
> expense of starting over at another college, that would definitely be 
> an option for me. Alas, I cannot afford to do that.

As a political science student at Emory, the only times I've had to use 
Windows involved running statistical software. GNU PSPP isn't anywhere 
close to duplicating SPSS. The computer science courses (other than the 
Java intros) tend to rely on such obscure or out of date software that 
it's better just to run it on the Slowlaris lab machines.

-Brian