[The OSX Guy]

Dear board members,

I am writing to get some words of wisdom from you all. I recently started a new job as Director of Technology for a school district in the northbay area of California. My school's tech needs have not been met over the last few years., such as we are still using the fisher price imacs with 128mb of ram and Appleworks. I have recently purchased 40 new macbooks for all the staff members, I did not even know that Appleworks were on the old machines. So I did not include it in my netboot image. Well, needless to say I have my first crisis on my hands. These teachers have refused to transition to both newer products that I have purchased (MS Office 04 and iWork 08)

What am I to do? From what I have read and tried, I can open documents in Pages. There are a few minor problems with fonts and such, but it works 90% of the time. I am not going to support a product that has reached the end of its life cycle, but I do not want to make the teachers mad at me and make my job a living hell.

Please Help!!! Any word of advice?????

Thanks,

The OSX Guy

[analogika]

The last version of AppleWorks will still run fine on the Intel Macs.

[Cold Warrior]

Give them a cut-off date as a compromise, say a couple months. Say that budget and personnel don't allow you to support this old product, and that the ones you gave them (Office and iWork 08) offer better functionality, features, and compatibility with other school districts at large.

[pcryan5]

Unless you have nothing else to do on your new job I suggest you give them Appleworks.

Once settled in find a few early adopters to use PAGES or Office 2004. Or wait for Office 2008 then find early adopters.
(My main concern is Office 2008 is due within 6 - 8 months. Making them change twice is not recommended.)

FYI - Our team manages a fleet of 30,000+ users - so been there done that and I feel your pain.