IT use deserves more thought

I was interested in your report "Software vendor switch 'could save Pounds 10m'" (THES, March 26). I am a third-year PhD student at the University of Nottingham, whose information technology policy is more concerned with corporate standardisation than the needs of students and staff.

The chicken-licken attitude of those who make IT policy, that all must use MS Office or the sky will fall in, not only wastes valuable resources at the time of purchase but hinders productivity in perpetuity.

I know people who still use a pencil and paper to average student essay and exam marks to give an overall grade because they have not the slightest idea where to start with software such as Access. Such activity wastes hours and hours, but not as many hours, perhaps, as trying to learn Access or Excel.

Not mentioned in your piece is the excellent and extremely cheap ClarisWorks (aka AppleWorks), which for 90 per cent of the world is a better product than MS Office: easier to use, easier to learn. You can create a student records database in ClarisWorks in an hour or so. The word processor is excellent, robust and able to read and write standard formats such as RTF and HTML. The spreadsheet will handle all but the most complex corporate tasks. The graphics modules make desktop publishing a snip.

Alternatively, Nisus Software has been offering a free download of Nisus Compact, a lightweight but versatile text editor, which will handle footnotes and such but requires almost no disk space or RAM.

Robert McMinn Long Eaton Nottingham