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Concerns when Switching Offices to Linux and StarOffice?
Reezle asks: "I am a reluctant Microsoft Engineer who has a few customers sitting on the fence whether to go the XP route, or bite the bullet and switch an entire office over to Linux. I would love to assist them, and educate myself at the same time, but am unsure of the limitations of file type interoperability between MS Office, and Linux programs (Star Office is the only one I'm familiar with). I assume anything they create could be saved in formats that their business partners will be able to open (i.e. RTF), but what happens when they receive attachments encoded with Office 2000 or XP (ie DOC, XLS, PUB, etc)? I'd love to encourage them to make the switch, but would hate to see them unexpectedly cut off from the people they need to communicate with. Any help/advice would be appreciated."
I think the whole concept of avoiding XP is silly in the extreme.
It will happen, no matter what.
Windows is the user standard, and for good reason.
It all comes down to User Interface testing and
experience. Someone had to foot the bill to find
out what worked, and then educated people how to
use the widgets that were discovered to work.
Netscape versus Internet Explorer?
It was much darker than your imagination.. IE
was quite simply the trojan horse to spread the
familarity with standard Microsoft Windows
controls, it was the best marketing seducement
ever!
Okay, now enough with the conspiracy theories.
What better way to sell business software than
sneak the educational overhead in through
Entertainment? Games, Free software, Browsers.
Fisher Price Interface.. Guess where the next
generation is coming from. And don't tell me
you think its targeted at kids.
Fact is Disneyland, Six Flags, Fisher Price
would horrify and permenantly damage children
dragged through their pearly gates, lest their
parents weren't dizzily enjoying themselves..
retribution for the hazing ritual their parents
put them through at that age.
Rather, Fisher Price plays towards parents and
grand parents.. after all if it looks that goofy
it's got to be easy for an adult, right?
As for reality, if you can't afford a sysadmin,
XP servers will close the deal.. then you can scoot, hook them up with Microsoft support.
As for longer terms.. everyone knows Microsoft
repackages standards and makes sales off
opensource rethreaded as DLLs.. get over it.
They do a service themselves, Microsoft is probably the largest, most successful Opensource with redefined licening terms in history.
What's the alternative? It's not some single
sysadmin redeveloping or finishing the development of all the half-baked standard opensource reference software.
Truth be known, and this is a deep dark secret.. the first "real", complete, software solution company has yet to evolve.
Company in a box? Please, get me a Kleenex, and pass the QuickBooks cd.