While students at the University of Miami are technologically inclined, they are compatibility challenged.
The Microsoft Campus Agreement License allows students to download Microsoft Office free of charge. Some students choose to do so, but have trouble in computer labs and classrooms, where many computers are still not updated.
Tomas Ortiz, director of engineering and operations, said he is looking into updating the computers during the summer semester. Ortiz also noted that new software is often accompanied by system kinks that need to be straightened out by Microsoft.
“I will make my determination before we break [for] the semester,” Ortiz said. “By that time any bugs will be addressed.”
Microsoft didn’t release the new version of Microsoft Office for Mac, Office 2008, until Jan. 15, and the university did not have access to it until this month. Until then, Mac users were unable to open Office 2007 documents. For students who do not choose to download Office 2008, the document converter for Office 2004 will not be available until late June.
Meanwhile, the campus remains divided by the two incompatible Office versions, and this has affected the normal flow of classes.
“I had to install a format converter so that I could