When Shanghai students start a new semester on September 1, they will find that they won't be able to click on the popular Microsoft Office program on their computers in school labs any more. The world's most popular office application software will be substituted by a domestic software, education officials in Shanghai confirmed Saturday.

Shanghai Education Research Center, which is responsible for the procurement of software for public schools, signed a contract a week ago with Kingsoft Corp to buy its WPSOffice 2003 software.

The center has sent a notice to each school in the city, notifying of the change. Most schools have already removed their Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint programs to leave space for the Chinese-made software. In addition, they will use a new computer textbook containing little content about the Microsoft Office starting next month.

"The change is a manifestation of the Shanghai Education Commission's commitment to using the official version of the software," said Xu Dianfang, director of the center.

Three months ago, Microsoft started an investigation and found many local schools were teaching students on how to use Microsoft Office. However, it was suspected that some Shanghai schools were using pirated discs.

"The computers in our school lab were running pirate version of Microsoft Office," admitted Wang Kai, a local high school computer teacher. "Some other schools in the district are doing the same thing from what I know." He declined to identify his school name and district.

The US-based company asked the Shanghai Education Commission to sign a contract with it to license Microsoft Office on every school computer.

But after negotiations, the center decided to sign up with Kingsoft, whose newest offering WPSOffice 2003 is half the price and yet provides almost the same functions.

The Beijing-based company plans to market its WPSOffice 2003 on the last day of this month. Its retail price will be 1,298 yuan (US$156), compared with Microsoft Office XP's 3,840 yuan (US$464.52).

"As schools are often limited in funds, we will sell our software at a big discount," said Xia Ji, the marketing manager of WPS business unit of Kingsoft.

Kingsoft's new software features functions that are often used by students but not included in Microsoft's Office program. The company has developed some special functions for this project, such as launching online examinations through schools' local area network.

(eastday.com August 24, 2003)