Remember grammar school? If you're of an age, where "an age" means approximately mine, you got used to using the Apple IIe with Logo and The Oregon Trail and even, for many of us, BASIC. Ah, 10 PRINT <Control-G> 20 GOTO 10. Even in AP Pascal a decade later, I'm using an LC in our class to hack up my code. Apple's aggressive marketing to schools was a brilliant move.

Is this positive experience why I have Macs now? Um, duh. Yes. If it's not a direct correlation, the indirect quotient is so small as to be nearly negligible. Heck, I still like using OS 9 every so often on my StarMax clone, so it's not even the recent Apple cache that's sucked me back in. I was brainwashed.

Why aren't we doing that with Linux and grammar schools today? Why are kids learning how to present with Powerpoint instead of OpenOffice? Do I even need to argue the merits of going with "free as in beer" software that's function complete? A local school is using Powerpoint 2007, so many kids can't even edit their Powerpoints at home if they wanted to, even if they did shell out for Office 2003 or 2004. You get the picture.

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