As for FOIA, they were never bound by the FOIA, since they are not a part of the US Government. If you tried to sue them and use discovery to gain access to their records, that was not possible since they were already covered by Section 2(b), which protects them from judicial processes.
This is insidious in that for less than $50 per Full Time Employee (FTE), the campus can install the OS, Office, and a large number of applications ON EVERY MACHINE. However, whenever this runs out, they have no software that they can use, so unless they have completely transitioned to non-MS software during the last year of the agreement, they have to renew.
The other side of the problem is that there are applications that will require them to use Windows and even MS Office. Some of this are back-ground programs you will never know about
However, all hope is not lost. First, since lab computers don't have to pay for licenses, it can be argued that they are freebies, and not using them is not wasting money. You can then start trying out alternatives there. This can also be done in smaller departments which will not see as much money lost by not using licenses off the Campus Agreement.
Also, Campus Agreements can be negotiated by department. Therefore, you can see if some departments can be exempted completely from having to participate. You can then show them how much they would save by going with the FOSS options, as compared to being forced into the MS CA.
Finally, look for departments with lots of Macs. While they are often hooked on MS Office for the Mac, they are usually more open to alternatives. Showing them NeoOffice or OO.org on OS X can be a first step for them.
As in all things, here is what you need to remember:
Remember, you want to help them, you want to help students, and they want to help students. Therefore (paraphrasing Jerry Maguire) you are trying to help them help students.
Good luck to you.
I wouldn't really expect any applications to run faster on Windows 7 unless the hardware was upgraded.
If that were true, then there shouldn't have been performance differences between XP and Vista, but there were. These differences continued on into the Vista SP 1 and XP SP3 upgrades.
Theoretically, there is a maximum "speed" that any application can run at. This is based upon the raw speed of the CPU, Memory, disks, graphics, and other subsystems, used in the most efficient manner. While no OS can ever achieve that, it is the function of the OS to maximize system performance.
System performance will always be a moving target, not just because of hardware changes or hardware options, but also because what is the best performance for a server differs from what is the best performance for a workstation.
As for the "Apple fanboys," they do have reason to poke fun. With each release of OS X, there have been performance improvements over the previous release; 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5. This has been improvements on the same physical hardware.
It appears that Microsoft has chosen to focus their work on improving the UI's responsiveness, or adding new bells and whistles, while not dealing with the performance issues that individual applications run into. While UI responsiveness can be helpful, if the application doesn't finish any faster, the UI being able to show you that it is still busy, doesn't make that much 'real' difference.
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -- William E. Davidsen