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An area, often forgotten, that has a huge impact on whether open source products are easily useable is documentation. In this respect, kudos to the OOo documentation project who have done a great job this year.

Useful to a smaller group, but very useful to me this year, has been the excellent Linux Terminal Server Project Wiki.

The usefulness of the above resources is in sad contrast to the documentation available for most open source application software. I am very keen to make more use of some of these products, but a lack of good documentation is pretty much a show stopper.

"Needless to say I long for a decent spreadsheet implementation, because, to put it politely, Kspread is a bit lacking. How about a Knumeric, team?"

http://www.openoffice.org/ ?

They don't offer support?

That's news to me!

http://support.openoffice.org/index.html

I'm so glad that /. story submitters are not contributing to FUD.

You can most certainly get support for OpenOffice from the primary sponsor of OpenOffice.org (Sun Microsoystems) as well as for the commercial product, StarOffice.

OpenOffice.org has come a long way. In fact if they clean up the I/O and fix the related I/O performance bottlenecks I plan to buy StarOffice as an upgrade to OpenOffice for all of my users next year. We've already switched most of our users from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice and have lost little to no functionality (and have gained some functionality in some ways).

I have known about (and submited) a bug Issue 13939 regarding OLE automation to 'search and replace' text w/ images. Others have voted on the issue but we don't have a critical mass to get it fixed.

Any suggestions?

It's interesting you should mention this.

I'd personally have contrasted Eclipse (IBM http://www.eclipse.org/) to OpenOffice.Org (Sun http://www.openoffice.org/) in that kind of article.

On one hand, we've got a product that's exploded with features in the past few years, vs a product that's gotten better, but not by a lot.

Eclipse has matured extremely quickly into not only a base for building IDE tools, but as a base for building complete applications (rich client applications), and an excellent community has formed, with both opensource and closed source/commercial plugins available from a variety of locations.

OpenOffice has grown to be effectively a cut down, free, version of Sun's StarOffice, with features that get left out due to Sun's policy on making sure that the commercial StarOffice contains more features and has more QA. This appears to be in an effort to maintain control over the *Office codebase.

At first glance, it's hard to tell why the differences exist. Both were commercial products, that were opensourced. Both are still maintained by a central company's policy. Both have benefitted from patches from the community. Yet only one is what I'd call a successful opensource product.

I think it's fairly safe to say that Sun has a poor mindset when it comes to opensource software. I'd be completely unsurprised if OpenSolaris falls straight down the same tube. I don't see how anyone can draw the conclusion that opensourcing a commercial product will fail. It still comes down to the processes in place.

ash

There are other related costs that need to be considered with a large changeover to a different document standard. Not least there's the cost of re/training staff to use new software.

Anyway, if Massachusetts (or anybody else for that matter) decides instead to wait for MS Office 12 (if/when it is ready) to use MOOX format (if/when it is ready) then you still have the retraining costs. If anything they may even be higher than when switching from current versions of MS Office to OpenOffice.org.

"Power users can probably worm their way through, though there are enough advanced features that they'll almost certainly screw something up without proper documentation."

"But average users will be lost if confronted with these screens out of the blue, and you'll wind up with a help desk nightmare. Moreover, it's easy to see that this version is going to impact even network and desktop administrators in a big way."

Iif you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave .. they need to keep their skills current just as much as the resident IT geeks .. and in the secretarial world 'current' = latest version of Office.

Or perhaps, are there no open source apps with spelling and grammar checking?

There are.

this and this.

Hope those help.

Well, Microsoft IS trying to "extend their influence". Just like any good company should.

Personaly I think this is good news, since it seems that MS is attempting to address one of it's perceived weeknesses against OpenOffice which already supports lots of languages. Competition is always good and the fact that MS are doing this means they are taking the OO.o threat very seriously indeed.

I doubt they can win in this area though (unless they are willing to spend a lot of money), because the Open Source model is far better for this sort of thing than a proprietary model. EG OSS translations get done if there is a need for the product, MS translations get done if there is a visible market for a product. And since there is a requirement before there is a market, OSS will tend to beat MS to the door on this one. Ofcourse this won't always be the case, but still...

Openoffice.org 2.0 was released a month ago. http://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/press_release. html

Thanks, I was just going to ask this. I'm hoping it was just poorly worded, because OOo has a ton of projects in the development pipeline.

Make an OpenOffice.org BASIC macro that sets the configuration settings. Put the macro in an empty document, and make it autoopen that document on startup only once (also code the document so it closes automatically once it's done).

Kexi reads Microsoft Access databases.

See more at http://www.kexi-project.org/wiki/wikiview/index.ph p?MDBDriver

OpenOffice.org Base reads Access too:
http://dba.openoffice.org/ (MDB tools for Linux)

Oh, and so does Knoda::
http://www.knoda.org/

I'm sure that there are more apps that can read Access files. I think the Access functionality is done by mdbtools.

I've also used MS Access 2000 on Wine, and it worked quite well. I have to disagree with you about emulation: If you want to run GNU/Linux, and need one or few Win32 applications running on it, why not run them on Wine?

So not a big issue IMHO :)

Eleknader

OpenOffice more than does the job for most users...why pay the large cash to M$ when OO comes for free DL...or buy a CD-rom from a community distribution partner if bandwidth is an issue.

In an effort to make http://www.openoffice.org/ 2.0 more MS Office compatible, the beloved office assistant "Clippy" has been included in the open source software. It's thought that Clippy's comforting and helpful questions will ease users into the harsh and different world of Open Office.

Instead of Clippy asking:
"It looks like you're writing a letter, would you like help?"
He'll be asking:
"It looks like you're writing a letter, would you like to release it under the LGPL or BSD license?"

It is just a matter of time before people everywhere (even people with disabilities) start using Open Source software as a legitimate alternative to Office (for example.) But, like everything else new to the market, it will have to make a name for itself first.
OpenOffice 2.0 is a great start. Integrated voice-recognition, closed-captioning and text readers will come with time. For now, just get the product out there, get as many people as possible using it as their first choice in software. I believe it will follow in the footsteps of Google's success and become as ubiquitous as Office is today. New innovations and features will come with time.
Read more here:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/

In bulk, MS Office is a LOT cheaper than what you see shrinkwrapped at the store.

And then, you have to explain to your boss why it takes five times longer to start up, twenty times longer to open large spreadsheets, and is just as capable of mangling its own documents:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2 7748

To hell with Microsoft then! They can use OpenOffice to draft any damn format they want! Cry Havoc, and let loose the dogs of war!

* tongue planted firmly in cheek :-)

OSX is awesome. So far it seems to have less bugs, it's easy to set up its firewall, and you can use other programs that will do spreadsheets, documents, and email such as...

Open Office - http://www.openoffice.org/index.html
Office2004 - http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/o ffice2004.aspx?pid=office2004

This is not about preaching. This is not about pushing ideology. This is about developers maintaining creative control over the kernel, the kernel that they themselves have been building. Exactly what is your problem with this?

You say here that 'not only do users not care about "Free", but they will actively dislike "Free".' While regrettable, that is fine -- that is the users' prerogative. I sincerely expect they will think more highly of "Free" the tighter the IP and DRM restrictions become, but these related issues have been discussed to better effect in many other threads.

The trouble with your argument here is that the folks building and maintaining the Linux kernel (and most of the rest of userland Linux software too) are precisely the people who are concerned with this "Free" that you apparently couldn't give a rat's ass about. This has nothing to do with wanting 'to push their ideoligy [sic] on others', and everything to do with wanting to stay in control. As A nonymous Coward noted, building an unchanging driver API for the convenience of corporates does nothing for the kernel:

A "stable" binary API removes the possibility of keeping everything up to date and would dramatically show down the adoption of new features and general improvements.

Again, this has nothing to do with pushing ideology. This has to do with developers maintaining control over their own project, a project that has been provided to you as a courtesy out of the strong moral belief of many in the OSS community that the tools we use to get our work done should be freely available.

Furthermore, given the significant number of websites devoted to OSS usability concerns (over 17,000 at last count), I think we can safely regard as invalidated your claim that '"Free" software people ... don't care about makeing [sic] functional easy to use systems.' They would indeed seem to care, but specifically within the scope of making free software -- i.e., they are not interested in kowtowing to your whinging demands that they gut their principles solely to make something passably usable right this very moment, and shackle themselves with a rigid driver API that hampers kernel development far into the future and threatens to scuttle years of effort to make a fully-usable computer system that is not beholden to secret vested interests.

You, sir, appear to be crying out that consumer convenience is more important than freedom. This is much in tune with the prevailing cultural trends in the United States. I find this deeply ironic -- "Give me liberty or give me death" has been turned into "give me convenience or I shall whinge", while "the land of the free and the home of the brave" has become "the land of the sheep and the home of the enslaved". While I understand the frustration apparent in your posting regarding when things do not work, I cannot agree with your sentiment. Some things, sir, are more important than instant gratification. I am deeply sorry that you do not appear able to recognize this.

"but as soon as ReactOS can run everything I need, I'll switch for sure!"

I said the same thing not but eight months ago. Then, about two months ago, I installed a Linux distro on my home desktop. I've installed plenty of them before, but they never stuck. Even the one I'm using right now (Gentoo) has been on this system at least half-a-dozen times. However, this time it stuck.

"And why's that?", you may ask. Well, over the past few years I've been migrating to Open Source Software! Replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, replacing Photoshop with The GIMP, and of course replacing Internet Explorer with Firefox.

Anyway, once I got comforatible with the administration aspects of a Unix-like system, the software all fell into place. Most of the programs I use now on my NIX system are the same programs I used to use on my Windows install. And the best part is, if you enjoy fidling with stuff and don't mind recompiling loads of code, a Gentoo system (or just about any other non-bloated NIX distro) is at least twice as fast as a Win system.

Anyway, just saying Mac guy, if you want to take the plunge, go ahead and do it. You'll be pleasently supprised.

That's my $0.02.
QBRADQ

Oh, so what you don't like is the way OO.o looks on Linux? That's not a desktop problem, or a Linux problem - that's an OpenOffice problem. It's a legitimate complaint, and I completely agree with you - but your unhappiness is the result of how OO.o uses system fonts, not the result of poor-looking fonts on Linux. OO.o apparently needs to be tweaked to look nice on linux for a variety of reasons, none of which seem logical to me but I'm not an OO.o developer.

Linux fonts look fine. OO.o doesn't by default use those perfectly suitable fonts. It can be made to look fine: this page seems to have some useful information, and even though one of the suggestions does talk about editing your xorg.conf (may be distro-specific instructions) it shouldn't take any four hours to do it. I'm sure that a less cursory Googling would turn up even better results, like this one. I know, I know - you shouldn't have to Google to solve basic problems like this. You're right. Email the OO.o devs and let them know. It's still not a Linux problem, it's an OO.o problem.

I have never argued that OO.o looks as good on Linux as it does on Windows. That wasn't what your original comment implied, though - it implied that the default fonts in Linux were ugly, required lots of configuration to make the desktop usable, and that the OO.o problems were a symptom of that. THAT implication is incorrect. Since you no longer appear to be maintaining that position, though, we can consider this conversation to be complete.

I looked at your company's website, and it looks like you are pretty entry level... in any case I doubt you are an employee (other then a random consult, probably for Ferdi up at the high school, hardly a state employee).

In response to your 1-7 bullets.

1.) - That simply is crap. Word Pad (and hundreds of other editors) can open pretty much all MS Word files (Macros aside, and they wouldn't be used in public documents). Formatting may be lost, but you the content is still there. MS Docs are large because they offer backwards compatibility for a few generations. Not to mention 2003 opens all the documents from 97-on. You are spreading disinformation here.

2.) - Romney appointed this position. "elected representatives" is wrong. 1 person, the governor, that is accurate. The very nature of my statement "appointed" implies an elected official put them there. However, the CIO is not accountable to the people, they are accountable to an elected official. Nobody knows who appointed this yahoo, look at yourself. You didn't even know. There is no accountability to the people.

3.) - No. What happened is the CIO made a bad decision, and due to checks and balances state officials stepped in. What if the CIO woke up this morning and decided to move the state back to DOS? Pretty stupid, huh? Well it would be important to allow the elected officials to step in and stop it. This is a similar case.

4.) - Clearly you haven't followed this case. For one, it isn't referring to any random state computer. Secondly, tens of thousands are not 125,000 (10,000 are not even being talked about for THIS upgrade anyways). Thirdly, the majority of the registry machines run their own software and don't need any office, a pdf viewer at most, courts aren't in this discussion (the rmv isn't either for that matter), and frankly your list is uniformed and just FUD. Your incorrect generalizations, your numbers, are all just pulled out of your ASS.

5.) - This is one of your more stupid points. NT 4 is over a decade old. The handful of machines using it would be upgraded soon anyways. Not only are there very FEW, but even FEWER that are actually used as a desktop where people need office solutions. Win98 is in the same boat, and most of those got upgraded to Win2k so incredibly fast it's not even funny. Win98 was very unstable, and certainly hasn't been left around for a decade. Anyone who is using 98 is going to be upgraded soon anyways, and frankly is so neglected they probably wouldn't get the open format software to begin with. But more specifically to the absurdity of your point.

Here are the hardware specs for OO and MS Office 2k3. The hardware requirements are virtually identical.
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs _20.html
http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/product.asp x?view=22&pcid=3c3bd1bb-5595-4512-bcca-f764770e1d7 1&type=req

6.) - I disagree, but let's take it as accurate just for fun. It still doesn't even out her fake numbers. Nice try though.

7.) - People are familiar with Acrobat. They use it all day at work, and it's all over the internet TODAY. PDF's are just as common (if not more so) as word files. It is a proprietary format owned by Adobe, just like MS owns the .doc format (actually MS's format is more open). Almost nobody in the general public has heard of your open format crap. After everyone's bout with spyware they are hesitant to download software. Maybe not 2 years ago, but today people are... certainly not some random program that they have never heard of before.

As far as elected officials getting their ear bent. MS gave Romney more money in the last Election then Obrien. The money trail stops at the CIO's boss' front

One strategy, Hit and run is common enough as a tactic that it is well documented. The other twenty four tactics will also look familiar. Slashdot has become mainstream some while ago, you do see it mentioned and even cited in non-tech print media. So that means you will get a fair number of people that don't know any better than to swallow the marketing. But there are also those that do know better and do seem to have an agenda.

The implications are that no one would support MS without getting paid in some way.

Anyway, MS is probably making so much noise about vaporware like 'Internet versions of Office and Windows' in order to steal thunder from discussions of open standards like OpenDocument or to get people from downloading and testing OpenOffice.org. I mean if MS Office is so much better, what does M$ have to lose? People would try OOo, say 'nah', and then go back to MS Office, right? Or won't that happen ?

Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

. Did I read that right? MS supporting Firefox?

Given the company's history on meeting deadlines, it's not going to be any time soon, unless it's a priority. Given the company's history on interoperability and supporting competing products, protocols and formats, it's not going to be a priority.

It's just a placation to encourage users of competing software to postpone action. You must be new here, and new anywhere else for that matter. ;)

People that need an office suite via the net can download OpenOffice.org or individual packages like AbiWord for free.

not to mention that they have a torrent....

http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/

it's not really that big.

It's just the people who write slashdot are that old... it's 80 megs, whatever shall we do, while they're downloading 200 meg video game demos....

Excuse me for being contrarian (and I don't have all the links), but TFA's headline is a good example of what's wrong: "Google throws bodies at OpenOffice"

OpenOffice is not self-sustaining. It only exists because people are being paid to work on it. I believe a decent link is the following...

http://www.openoffice.org/editorial/interview_joer g_heilig.html:
"""What is your role now in OpenOffice.org/StarOffice and what was your role in architecting the OpenOffice.org project at its inception?

I am responsible for the StarOffice engineering and in this role also responsible for all engineering work on OpenOffice.org done by Sun employees. At the time of OpenOffice.org's inception I was responsible for StarOffice's base technology and involved in all the engineering discussions around open sourcing StarOffice. """

IANAOSOSC (I am Not an Open Source Office Software Contributor)... but contrast that statement with AbiWord, KOffice, Evolution, InkScape, etc. (AbiWord and KOffice both had their versions of kernel-traffic-like summaries which allowed me keep up with various development issues and see how their insides worked at one point or another. OpenOffice needing an FTE to manage other FTE's who are writing code is a recipe for "code because we tell you to".

It seems like certain types of companies exist solely to make the most complicated build processes, technology decisions, etc. This is as opposed to the OSS way of "Keep it Simple, Stupid" ... when you start making it complex with $n+1 dependencies and steps the project either gets refactored or dies (and "Large(tm)" corporate invovlement generally has higher resistance to both the refactor and die options, as some areas seem to be personal vanity areas or have other political rather than technical motivations ... aka: Java).

http://ooo.ximian.com/hackers-guide.html:

"""Building and hacking on OpenOffice.org (OO.o) entails climbing a fairly lengthy incline. Hopefully this document will make the learning curve somewhat steeper and more abrupt, and will give you a walking stick to help you out."""

Which isn't to say that having somebody "big" like Sun behind an office suite is all bad. It's because of them that we have the clippy-like thing, the chm-like thing, the templates, wizards, import filters, and all the other mostly boring "feature checkboxes" that we do now in OO.o.

If I could wave my magic wand and have everything the way that I want, I'd split out the OO input filters (seem to get really good reviews and good personal results). Kill the really-tight integration between Presenter, Writer, Drawer, etc... (although if that's the way MSOffice handles embedded tables, etc., maybe it's a necessary evil?). And a healthy helping of de-cruftify, especially the preferences panels. Maybe a FireFox-like project to strip down OpenOffice would be helpful.

Just my outsider's perspective....

--Robert

I am not being a troll but hopefully some of these programmers can help fix some of the http://qa.openoffice.org/iz_statistic.html 5721 bugs listed, some of which are from 2002!

My boss has made it a priority to seriously look at replacing MS Office with OpenOffice when that buglist gets below 1000. We shall see if that can happen.

'Many are specially trained, sometimes at corporate headquarters, Gossett said, as in the case with Microsoft. They are expected to devote about 10 to 15 hours a week talking up the products to friends, securing corporate sponsorship of campus events and lobbying student newspaper reporters to mention products in articles. They also must plaster bulletin boards with posters and chalk sidewalks -- tactics known as "guerrilla marketing," which, marketing firms acknowledge, intentionally skirt the boundaries of campus rules.'

The special training at corporate headquarters is probably one of the reasons there is sometimes a hiatus and it'll go a few days without a peep in defense of M$. They'll also attack, usually with logical fallacies (e.g. ad hominem), any criticism or even critique of products or initiatives that are being launched. (e.g. right now MS SQL.) Read carefully the next attacks from MS fanbois and see that they usually change the topic or go into name calling.

Anyway, it's not a surprise to see them go after OOo and less so for OpenDocument. Both cut into their MS Office revenue. OpenDocument cuts off the lock-in at the file format level, removing dependence on MS for continued use of the documents.

Of course, we're also forgetting that by the time this article falls off the /. homepage, there will probably be workable text readers for the blind available in Linux and FreeBSD releases.

You'd hope so, but it looks like the OOo Accessibility Project has been dead in the water for more than a year. http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/ Maybe they could use some help.

Btw, the Exeloo self-cleaning toilets over here in Perth have full disabled access, so NYC should be able to do the same.

See this page for details.

There's support for AT tools in OpenOffice.org.

Read:

http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/index.html
http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/at.html

and might be a lack of companies supporting the Java Access Bridge

There's support for AT tools in OpenOffice.org.

Read:

http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/index.html
http://ui.openoffice.org/accessibility/at.html

and might be a lack of companies supporting the Java Access Bridge

bug 4914 "normal" view option needed http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4 914 Once OO fixes this I don't care how much bloat they add.

Any other thoughts you have?

OpenOffice.org is not a "giant Java app." Some of the features require Java, but the main app is written in C++. See the build instructions.

There is a pdf installation guide on the download page with instruction on how to install in different OSs including OSX, Solaris and FreeBSD, and other Distros including Debian, Gentoo and Slackware. It's here:

http://documentation.openoffice.org/setup_guide2/2 .x/en/SETUP_GUIDE_draft.pdf

How?

I wanted to try the OOo 2 beta a long time ago, so I downloaded it. To my bemusement, it consisted of a series of RPMs. I do not use an RPM based distro, nor have any experience with RPMs, so I decided it wasn't worth the trouble and didn't install it. Now the release is just RPMs. Wtf do I do?

So I downloaded the source, and there's nothing there! It's three dozen folders which only have more folders in them! How it adds up to 250mb must have something to do with the fact that you have to dig 4 layers deep to find any files.

I've compiled from source before. Usually with nice, handy instructions, or with the normal autogen system. Heck, I even compile my own source with autogen now. But there's nothing like that here! And their help page (as of now) doesn't cover linux. They say they do, but the page just ends after the Windows part.

I told Konqueror to delete the folder with the Open Office source, and now it's up to 89220 files, so they're in there somewhere.

I wanna install OOo 2, but I cannot =[.

In answer to your question why anyone would still use MSO, there is still some functionality that OOo cannot match. Word count stands out as a biggie for most professional writers. Some of the things we need any word count feature to do include:

1. Count words / chars for the whole doc
2. Count words / chars for a portion of the doc
3. Include or exclude footnotes from the count

OOo has long had the ability to do #1 above, and, cosmetically, has moved the word count function since the 1.9 series to where MS Word users expect it -- not in doc stats under the File menu, but rather under the Tools menu. OOo has also finally came up to par for #2, allowing us to count words for selections. However, OOo is still incapable of #3, ensuring that no one in academia (a notable target population) can use OOo for serious paper writing.

Another important facet of any major international office suite is the ability to handle multiple languages. I'm a Japanese translator, and CJK support is an absolute must for any product I'll consider. OOo has happily had Asian language support for as long as I've known it, but word count falls through again. Any professional writing in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean requires:

4. Count of any non-CJK words, together with a
count of any CJK characters, not including spaces

MS Word has done this since at least 1998 (provided you had the right options installed), yet OOo fails, and thus renders itself unusable for those of us dealing with CJK text in a professional setting.

Issue 17964, focusing on these word count issues, has been open for more than two years now. While it's good to see some progress (counts of selections), the lack of proper CJK counting means I still have no other option than to use MSO for my business needs.

Sure, the OOo source is freely available, and, in principle, I could develop a proper word count on my own. But I must point out again that I am a translator, not a coder -- and though I have fun learning about programming in my spare time, I don't have much of it, and I already have a product that does the job for me: MSO. I have no need to fix OOo, and I haven't the time or expertise to do so. OOo's shortcomings simply prevent me from adopting it for myself, and worse, prevent me from promoting its use in my office. There are many things about OOo that would be fabulous to be able to use, from the better data source integration to the open XML doc format and file import/export XSL transformation capabilities. But the lack of an adequate and accurate CJK count is a show-stopper for all of us at my workplace.

http://www.openoffice.org/screenshots/ooo20/index. html

For those who don't know, openoffice has an excellent API. It will run in server mode with an open port on the server so you can query it and perform almost any operation including File conversion, pdf export, calculations, etc. Check it out!

http://api.openoffice.org/

Try here - seems to be .tar.gz, about to download now ..... :-)

I have the distinct feeling I'll be losing some Karma for saying this but I'm REALLY disappointed that they didn't solve the Java issue.

According to the System Requirements page it still requires the Sun JVM.

Last I heard (admittedly sometime last year) they had found a likely solution in the ability to compile the Java stuff into binary for each platorm, I guess that didn't pan out.

I've said it before but I really don't see the advantage of having an OSS product if you are still dependent on a definitively non-open product. Ofr course I know it's completely different sice Sun isn't evil like Microsoft is.

BitTorrent I'm downloading it right now. I've used the beta and RC1 version for months now, and I've only seen it crash once, and I've used it on various computers.

A million Microsoft shareholders cried out in pain today.

This page has bittorrent links.

http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/download.ht ml

How long until the "OpenOffice 2.0 officially released" story appears on Slashdot?

If a few of your contacts start sending you .docx files, you'll have to replace your existing copy of MS Word with Office 12

MS can only use the steamroller method if they have enough market share and so far the latest versions of MS Office (with the new unreadable formats) are not moving off the shelves. Many are sticking with the oldest versions they can get away with or migrating to OpenOffice.org

JUST DO IT. Go to http://www.openoffice.org/ and download it. It installs cleanly, uninstalls cleanly, and does not interfere at all with your current install of MS Office (just choose "NO" when asked if you want to link OpenOffice to MS Office file types).

Use it, and I bet most, if not all of you, will find yourself not needing MS Office.

Oh, and try that Save to PDF button. Yum.

Good night, and good luck!

That's a good MS promoter!
If it doesn't run on Windows, it's Jerry-rigged, and pushing companies to write cross-platform software would just be pushy.

Here's a little-known-fact about linux: Many major software manufacturers write software that runs on linux. The ones that don't, are doing it based on marketing strategies. If the market changed, so would their coding practices. As a business owner, I do not have the type of money to back up a Microsoft platform, and I also cannot justify using the software due to quality and corporate tie-ins. When I'm bigger, maybe I'll dig myself a hole and dive in head first (Microsoft said they already have it started for me whenever I feel like jumping).

Honestly, if Adobe made their software for Linux, then I would guess at least another 29 million people would switch over to linux. I just love how software like Blender 3d, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Zend Studio, Star Office, MySQL, Oracle, Apache, PHP, and many many others all work on Windows and Linux, and oftentimes MacOSX, but lazy companies like Adobe/Macromedia, Autodesk, and most gaming companies choose to single out one or two platforms to target simply because of marketing strategies.

Microsoft has chosen time and time again to refuse to implement global standards simply because they want to lock people into using their software. Your post proves that their marketing strategy works.

Also keep in mind that hardware working with the operating system says more about the hardware manufacturers than the operating system. Microsoft has been known to strongarm hardware manufacturers to not create linux drivers, and many hardware manufacturers are just too lazy to work with the linux community.

So while Linux, being about half the age of windows, is still lacking in a few areas, it is still more stable and provides enough features for me to use. I still keep a windows box around at work for troubleshooting other users' microsoft office problems, and for running the Adobe Creative Suite, but you can bet I'll be formating every windows box I own as soon as Adobe releases Linux binaries. (considering how closely related OSX and Linux are, I still don't understand why they don't make a linux port)

In short, if industries really did shift to linux, companies that write software wouldn't hesitate to change as well. It is our fear of something different that keeps us on Windows, and keeps software developers from writing linux code, resulting in jerry-rigged solutions like Firefox, Thunderbird, PHP, Apache, Oracle Enterprise server, and others. (note the sarcasm)