Grassroots Response to .doc E-mail Attachments?

LurkingAbout asks: "Maybe it's just me, but it feels like people are sending Word .doc files as attachments more then ever. Typically it's a friendly acquaintance who doesn't realize that .doc is one of Microsoft's ploys to force the few remaining holdouts, like me, to shell out for a copy of Word (or better yet Office). This morning it was the director of my daughter's preschool with the monthly parent newsletter. I've taken to responding with a polite-but-educational message requesting that the sender save the file as RTF or HTML and resend. If I'm feeling long winded I sometimes go into a diatribe about the Evil Empire. Today I started thinking that maybe there's an opportunity for some grassroots organization here. Maybe a concise well-written boilerplate paragraph for just this situation? Or a link to a web page to help educate the masses who think .doc is like air. What do other Slashdot readers do in this situation?"

Comments

Re:It's easy to make them paranoid about using DOC

[Halfbaked Plan]

If I got a snippy response like that, I'd have a lot of fun with the fax number. It's pretty easy, with a fax modem, to fax someone a 35 page document composed of all black pages.

Uses up a lot of ink/toner and has been known to burn out the stylus on thermal fax printers.

Still using MS Windows?

[rawg]

I run a small ISP, and after all the problems that I see with MS Windows I just can't for the life of me understand why people are still using it. They get viruses, adware, spyware, you name it. Their systems get all junked up with applications and crap. They constantly have printing problems. Yet, they just nuke their systems and reinstall everything like it's normal. If I had to reinstall my system every month, I would not use that system any more. I went to a customers home to install internet one day last month and their system was running very slow. I check it out and it's a 1.5GHz system. It took 10 minutes to boot. It would take 3 minutes just to get into the network configuration window. She just shook her head and said, "It used to be fast. I guess I need a new system." I just about lost it.

It's just mind boggling to me.