Firefox Saves the school day

Posted by jmorriso on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 22:07Your Firefox Switch Stories

I'm a technology coordinator for Farmington School district in Arkansas.  I'm an avid FF user and since getting this job this summer have been trying to convience our system administrator, who helped me get this job, that we need to switch to firefox!  However, she is stubborn and doesn't want to mess with switching to "that foxfire thing".   However, today we had a problem and firefox saved the day.  We have a secure lab of windows 98 machines that students use for basic word processing and simple tasks that don't require a lot of power.  A teacher planned a collaboration project with the University of Arkansas to come in and do science activities in the lab, but she didn't check with anyone in the technology dept. and the computers couldn't run the latest quicktime so the vidoes they wanted to show the kids wouldn't work.  We were on the brink of updating the entire lab to XP when I piped in, "lets try firefox, it owns IE and will probably work".  We installed...and poof, all the videos work!!!  Needless to say our SA is much more willing now to try firefox!


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I don't go to school (I'm
Submitted by mal1024 on Tue, 11/21/2006 - 17:56.

I don't go to school (I'm home educated), but I don't think my old school would have installed it.

IE Batch Files

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And you can try Ubuntu with Firefox on that pc
Submitted by elart.it on Sat, 09/23/2006 - 20:11.

If you have 5 giga or more of Fat32 free space and 192 Mb or more Ram
why don't you try Ubuntu on one of that Win98 PC ?

It's very simple to do:
- do a full defrag of the Win98 pc
- get a Ubuntu  PC (Intel x86) desktop CD iso image and burn it on a cd
- boot from cd and push the install Ubuntu Desktop Icon
- redim the Win98 partition install Ubuntu on new free space
- make some or all steps of this Ubuntu optimization tips

You can use a Linux with FF, Thunderbird, OpenOffice etc. etc. with no spyware, no viruses, no disk defrag, etc. ... with r/w access to Fat32 Win98 partition, full network access, the power of Linux.

You can still use Windows, at boot, you can choose the which OS use.

This works fine also on PC with win2000/2000pro/XPHome/XpPro and ntfs partition.

elart.it  - Go Firefox Go
 

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IE is *ANCIENT!*
Submitted by JustZisGuy on Sat, 09/23/2006 - 16:02.

You should remind these folks that not only is IE 6 ancient but also that IE 6 for anything other than Windows XP has not received any patches in many, many ages. If they value their security they should not run these unpatched versions of IE (of course, ideally they should not run IE at all).


Depending on the hardware an app software switching to Windows XP may not be feasible - they should consider that switching to Firefox will save them time and money. And they can have one standard browser version that runs on all of their Windows versions (and as a bonus Mac, Linux, and any other OS they may choose to run in the future)

Unfortunately, however, many schools, organizations, and businesses have licensing deals with MS that can quietly exclude non Microsoft software (MS rep comes to visit, sees Firefox running, next year for some unknown reason they don't get that discount on MS-Office licenses again).


 

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Using FF
Submitted by ice2004 on Mon, 09/18/2006 - 06:04.

I suggest there should be a well written article about Firefox to be used on school computers.

My school are MS fanatics and they always try to remove FF or non-MS products out of school computers without any  convincing reason.



Hated by many loved by few respected by all

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What schools are teaching...
Submitted by JustZisGuy on Sat, 09/23/2006 - 16:04.

It is disgusting what schools are teaching people these days... to be MS lackeys.

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Yes! In our high school,
Submitted by ThreeDee912 on Thu, 11/23/2006 - 21:34.

Yes! In our high school, there are actually classes on M$ powerpoint and frontpage! I can't believe they teach that!
 

ThreeDee912 aka. Big Pixel Software

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Well...
Submitted by 3518742690 on Thu, 11/30/2006 - 02:03.

...considering that the general public knows only about Microsoft, we'd better show them that there are alternatives that are better. Well, maybe not Microsoft Office... OpenOffice is great, but it doesn't support the new .docx, .xlsx, etc. files that MSO2007 can create.

As soon as trade secrets are abolished, I'll definitely go OpenOffice all the way.

One more thing...

Visit my Top 18 reasons to use Firefox page!

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Yeah that would be great!
Submitted by Macedonian on Fri, 09/22/2006 - 13:14.

It would be great if on all school computers install Mozilla Firefox that would be definitely like some kind of revolution for Firefox then it would be used by more people and they will see the differences between Microsoft IE and M.Firefox, the opportunities that Firefox offers you so I strongly believe that they will continue using M.Firefox.

I apresheade Mozilla Firefox very much  and i love all her stuff expecially Mozilla Thunderbird.

 

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Very nice
Submitted by benstokes on Mon, 09/18/2006 - 05:50.

Our school used to have FireFox once also, but alas, they decided to remove it!

What the hell they think they were doind I don't know. 

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Re: Very Nice
Submitted by JustZisGuy on Sat, 09/23/2006 - 16:26.

They probably got a visit from Bill's henchmen. I wish I were joking.

MS once threatened to stop selling MS-Windows to Compaq because Compaq removed the IE icon from the desktop and promoted Netscape instead. This is fact. 

They may not be as blunt to other companies or schools, but they can and do manipulate by granting or refusing various kinds of deals, discounts, and "incentives".

If you want Firefox at your school(s) you will have to get it approved by management higherups and they will have to deal with MS. Personally I would be very interested in hearing more stories about how upper management deals with this (hopefully there are some successes out there) - I believe this is of utmost importance for Firefox adoption in businesses and originazations.

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My school has Firefox and IE
Submitted by RainCT on Fri, 12/15/2006 - 21:11.

My school has Firefox and IE both installed (and The Gimp and Photoshop, too). And our school magazine is done with an Open Source program too (Scribus) :)

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school firefox
Submitted by klanger21 on Fri, 09/15/2006 - 18:22.

our school had firefox, it even had a 'get firefox ' button on the school website homepage, but now both have disappeared this year. what do the admins think they are doing!

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To stubborn
Submitted by teenpspjunkie on Wed, 09/13/2006 - 16:59.

Our school is too stubborn to change to firefox, but last year we had a small group of ppl who's only goal was to install firefox on every computer in the school. And we did but at he end of the school year they reset their computer to their defults so we have to do it all over this year.

Stupid school.

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lucky you
Submitted by Braaropolis on Wed, 09/13/2006 - 05:47.

My school district doesn't like Firefox for some reason (probably because of the inept district tech dept)...although some of us put it on USB drives just for fun.  If the district computer people knew half the things we've hacked on those computers...

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Finally
Submitted by N1ghtshade on Mon, 09/11/2006 - 03:26.

My school has finally started using firefox. But IE is still on there. I wonder who got it changed?

PISD, Plano Texas 

 

zpwn06@gmail.com

 


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Great, but...
Submitted by ThreeDee912 on Sun, 09/10/2006 - 23:48.

How does Firefox make a QuickTime movie compatible?!

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My school uses and supports Mozilla Firefox
Submitted by Macedonian on Fri, 09/22/2006 - 13:25.

As i sad my school supports Firefox and also gives advises to the students to install it too.

They explain to students how to use it and i don't know why they are doing this cause Firefox is so easy and convinient so simple everyone could use it this is unneseserily.

They should spent more time on convinsing the student's to install Firefox and to enter  in the new world of the Mozilla Firefox Internet.

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If only...
Submitted by dasunst3r on Sun, 09/10/2006 - 17:45.

I tried to convince my high school to consider switching to Firefox, but they keep hanging on to IE on the basis that it uses up too much memory.  It's a pretty lame excuse, yes?

www.cyeungrun.com

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Firefox at my daughter's school
Submitted by chrisdavistech.com on Sat, 09/09/2006 - 18:40.

Keep up the good work! You might want to contact other school districts and see what they use and if they have switched use them to reenforce your argument.  My daughter goes to McIntosh Middle School in Sarasota, FL.  I noticed recently at the open house that their computers (all mac) had firefox installed.  I have not yet checked into it, but want to contact the school and the county and find out why they added it and if the other schools have it too. Maybe you could contact them and talk with them too? 

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Yeah not only in the school in the Internet caffee's too
Submitted by Macedonian on Fri, 09/22/2006 - 13:35.

In my country not only the school but internet caffee's also are using Firefox... they know it is much better that IE. I think that 80% of the people from my country uses  Mozilla Firefox but still they don't want to uninstall IE. The only reason (problem) why they can't uninstall IE is because of the Windows Live Messenger 8.0 we all use it here and when we want to check our messages (inbox) it opens IE and not Mozilla Firefox, if this problem can be solved they sertanly would uninstall IE by now.

If anyone has a solution for this problem please write us.

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There's no reason to
Submitted by knowing_prophet on Sun, 09/24/2006 - 04:33.

There's no reason to uninstall Internet Explorer, and it is not recommended that anyone does so without knowing exactly the complication behind it.

We all know that Firefox is the best browser for day-to-day browsing, but Internet Explorer is a very important part of the Windows operating system. Windows itself uses IE for software/OS updates (Firefox can be used for this, though it is not recommended for security reasons), and many Windows applications rely on IE for their functionality.

Only when you fully realize the implications of not having IE on your computer, and know exactly how to uninstall it should you attempt to uninstall it.

I hope this helps, 

-Ethan
-firefoxtutor.com
-firemonger.org

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Nice story...
Submitted by 3518742690 on Sat, 09/09/2006 - 00:55.

...but I don't think windows 98 is really that modern. If your computers are optimized for Windows 2000, I strongly suggest that you upgrade as much of the lab as possible or economical to 2000. No need to upgrade to XP. If your computers are clearly optimized for Windows 98 and incapable of Windows 2000, then forget it.

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Very cool
Submitted by Ken Saunders on Thu, 09/07/2006 - 22:27.

That's a great story, thanks for sharing it.


Firefox Guide

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