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> You have to beat Microsoft Office ^H^H^H Outlook.
FTFY. Office per say isn't the problem -- the integrated calendar / contacts of Exchange is the problem that sadly Open Source (OS) hasn't quite solved (yet). :-(

> is nothing compared to the productivity you'd give up to lose Excel.
Having used Excel since before verison 5 ( http://www.cpearson.com/excel/versions.htm ) I find OpenOffice, sorry, Libre Office to be better in some ways and worse in others. LibreOffice is a perfectly fine replacement for Excel.

IMHO the main problem is Power Point which all the PHB seem to love. Maybe there is an OS replacement but I haven't seen one that will natively support .pptx properly.

> Linux isn't being ignored because it's bad - it's being ignored because it does not contain a worthwhile replacement to the jobs people are already doing
That is exactly right. If someone were to focus on Enterprise Linux providing all the functionality and apps that the full Office + Exchange does then businesses would switch over to Linux.

> the cost of a $90 Windows license is nothing compared to the productivity you'd give
Apologies to whoever recently posted this link but that is not quite true. For a "small business" the costs of licenses add up that could be used towards upgrading / replacing machines.

"Newsmaker: Rockin' on without Microsoft"
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

For financial purposes, you might want to consider checking the calculation option "Precision as displayed". See a good reference on this page: http://www.cpearson.com/excel/rounding.htm

Are you this cpearson? If you are, your excel website is very helpful, thanks a ton.

"Can anyone explain to me, clearly and convincingly, exactly how the average joe office worker's life benefits from the capabilities of Excel in 2005 versus Lotus 123 in, say, 1990, excluding Y2000 fixes, speed and memory?"

To pick one example, pivot tables. Pivot tables enable Excel to do a form of OLAP that a lot of businesses are getting a lot of mileage out of.

Note that I'm not a big fan of Excel, or indeed of spreadsheets in general. But I'm not sure the form of the critique given above is fair. Once VisiCalc established the basic spreadsheet idea, the rest almost necessarily consisted of minor improvements. So what? It's hardly like spreadsheets are the only financial tool commonly used by office workers in 2005---a very different situation from 1990. Modern expert-system tax preparation, for example, has revolutionized some classes of office work. There's innovation still going on; it's evident in VisiCalc-like groundbreaking products for the most part, though; not so much in feature enhancements.

owever, an EULA isn't a legal contract, and causing an animation of a button depress on a TV screen isn't legally binding either.

Are you so sure about that?

EULAs have been tested, and enforced,many times many times in court. Shrink-wrapped EULAs ("You agree by opening this box to... even though you haven't seen the agreement yet") might little easier to circumvent through a court case, but even those are valid contracts.

You don't need to sign every contract with a pen. People sign the FAFSA all the time without ever touching a mouse, and verbal contracts are also seen as legally binding in many places.

Right Here

This page explains what they do, at a very basic level.
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/pivots.htm

Here is a good break down of MS's restrictive EULA. As you can read, it does not. There is ONE exception and that is for a laptop and MS Office. If you have two computers at home, you cannot put the same copy on both computers without violating your MS EULA, unless one computer is a desktop and the other is a laptop and ONLY the same person can use it. So that means you cannot put it on your desktop and use the same copy for your wifes laptop without violating the MS EULA.

Here is a good break down of MS's restrictive EULA.

Just what did I purchase when I bought Office?
You bought, and you own, the physical media -- the CDs and some paperwork. You also bought the rights (a license) to use the software in the manner outlined by the EULA. You may own the actual CDs, but you don't own the content (intellectual property) contained on the CDs. You own the right to use that intellectual property in certain ways. The ways in which you use that intellectual property are dictated by the EULA.