Gimp.org
inkscape.org
Firefox browser
Thunderbird email
and a lot more
I usually recommend to anyone considering Linux that they first try out these programs on their windows machine - as they will mostly be using them on Linux.
I used to use MSProject... now I use GanttProject (ganttproject.biz) primarily or OpenProj (openproj.org).
I do consulting (including engineering and global program management) for Fortune 10 companies.
Are there nuances to these programs? Sure, but not any more issues than I found with MSProject (and some things work a whole lot better). These two programs also run on Windows (for those who just can't make the leap to Linux yet).
A few commands and it's all set up. The thin clients can be pc's as old as Pentium 2 - 233Mhz with no drives. If any particular unit goes bad it's easy to replace and get that station back up.
Maybe all those hardware manufacturers already gave Microsoft buggy drivers.... Oops, sorry you're having trouble with your user base. Now everyone wants Mac or Linux... Oops. I think customers are blaming MS not any hardware manufacturers for Vista problems.
If the telcos are intent on offering netbooks subsidized with service fee... why even bring MS into the phone booth in the first place? It's not like the telco is selling their plan based on MS's brand (which Apple advertising is squashing daily). MS doesn't have the best reputation among hardware vendors and strategically would a telco want to risk getting tied to MS? The telcos will be selling their service and their brand.
So the telcos may even offer "ATT-buntu" as a privately branded Linux, which they could do as long as they abide by the GPL requirements. Or just offer standard Ubuntu/etc "for free" and still sell the connection, voip, and long distance services - since that is where they plan to make their money anyway.
The Ubuntu's are showing people there is another viable option. No cost, unless they are a business that desires some hand-holding with consulting and coaching.
Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp/Inkscape, etc are all getting picked up by Windows and Linux users alike. (handy features lure some in like Open Office will export to pdf, last I heard MSOffice didn't do that). Using that software base then makes a transition to Linux easy - they will be using familiar programs - like getting a Netbook running Linux.
In the future Microsoft will be smaller. They will need to adapt to the Linux model to compete. They will need to offer a mix of open source, industry compliant file format standards, and "play nice" with computer manufacturers and consumers.
The reason for the longevity of the installed PC base, and the reason Dell and Microsoft have been struggling, is the computing task bottleneck is Internet Broadband speed not the hardware or software you're running. Anything made in the last 5 years runs well (you can go 10 years if you use Linux rather than Windows). Most users are running a browser and typing a letter or report on an office productivity suite (MSOffice or OpenOffice).
Some of that is changing though with content providers (networks like abc, nbc, etc and movie downloads such as Netflix). Moving this much data will force Internet upgrades which will then begin to show the age of PCs and what cannot keep up. And then people will be upgrading again.
I run a 1999 era HP laptop Pentium-3 at 500Mhz with 256MB ram with Xubuntu 8.04 just fine for Open Office presentations with clients, and run firefox 3 and thunderbird on it. I even have a 1997 300mhz P2 that can run it (video out port has too few colors for presentations though).
I refurbish desktop and laptop pc's and generally find the best range is to put Ubuntu on 1Ghz+, Kubuntu on 700Mhz+ or Xubuntu on 450Mhz+ machines. More ram obviously helps. A Netbook with 1Ghz processor and 1-2GB ram can be a great system (especially running Xubuntu with Xfce window manager).
This is why when I saw that Linux could be a "Modern operating system" on the Netbooks that there would be no stopping people buying this niche. There are a lot of people looking for inexpensive computers (check out ebay and craigslist some time).
The risk with the Netbooks is they start listening to potential users... "I'd want a bigger screen", "faster processor" out of vanity, "bigger keys", "how about Windows",... and the slim tiny netbook suddenly transforms into an expensive sub-notebook in features and price.
Keep pushing the price down and do it with an unmodified Xubuntu or Kubuntu OS and more of the market will be opened up.
I run a 500Mhz Pentium III with Xubuntu 8.04.1 on it and use Open Office for presentations with clients.
So anything faster than that and you're in good shape - or look for something with fluxbox on it. If you want a really slim system, look for "damn small linux"
I made the switch to Linux (including Kubuntu, Xubuntu, DSL, Kanotix, Knoppix) due to the high quality alternatives provided by Open Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird.
I know a lot of people that switched to OO just to get the pdf output format. Sun continues to do an amazing job with the open source community on OO.
Linux WoW client support is inevitable - personal user reasons favor an expanding Linux market - and business will naturally follow.
Look at the growth of Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, etc as people avoid Vista and forced hardware upgrades. see www.distrowatch.com for a popularity chart of distros.
Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others have been selling preinstalled Linux - because there are enough users asking for it to make sense for them to support it.
Netbook sales are rapidly expanding (ASUS Eeepc leading the charge), with Linux preinstalled. These machines may not be great for graphics to run Wow, but they are getting people used to seeing Linux on their second machine. So when desktop upgrade time comes... they start to consider installing Ubuntu (a new updated version is launched every six months vs 5 years for Windows or 3 years for Apple OS).
Linux also tends to have a lighter framework (10M lines of code for Linux vs XP at 40M and Vista at 50M) - and some window managers on Linux allow "full effects" comparable to OSX and Vista that consume much more ram and cpu power.
The lighter framework allows WoW to expand into a much wider audience (those able to pay WoW subscriptions/expansion packs but unable to afford a $1000 new computer... like teenagers and college players and the stay-at-home-moms dedicated to playing Wow while the kids nap group).
If Blizzard approached it right... there are also a lot of old pc's sitting in basement storage, installed with windows pre-XP and choked with viruses and spam (that people hang onto because of fears about personal data on them). Maybe Blizzard puts together a kit with both a Xubuntu.com (which is faster than base Ubuntu) install disk and a WoW-Optimized-for-Linux install disk that can transform a pile of hazardous waste into a dedicated WoW client or LAN server.
Dry the items out good (like put in car on hot summer day with window just cracked to let the steam out). When the windows aren't fogged anymore then you can think they are dry.
I get computer towers that have sometimes been left out overnight in rainstorms. Let them dry in the garage for a week or two is usually enough to to dry them out (especially during summer). Then carefully plug in and turn on.
I agree that Navigator is not exactly what people want in Outline View (it's one of the features I myself continue looking for as I do some writing and used to use this feater in MSOffice)...
but my point: there _is_ a feature that is closer than nothing (as most of the wailing is about) and possibly be workable for many. It's as elegant as using a rock for pounding nails, but at least there's a rock.
As you mention it is very likely a while before improvements (partly because there's at least a "rock" and other more pressing issues). And there are some code structure issues that make it tougher to implement than it was in MSOffice.
Glad to hear your updates that the devs are understanding the "customer wants" and are thinking on how to solve the issues. There's a chance now and I can't hardly wait for developments here.
Basically, the netbook market is driven by cost and size. Expand either of those two parameters and you end up with a standard notebook.
Can't type with fat fingers then onto a notebook, need a big display then onto a notebook, need a huge amount of disk space ram etc then onto a notebook - and forget a 'cheap netbook'
I currently use either a P2-300Mhz or a P3-500Mhz laptop for travel and client presentations. I run Xubuntu 8.04 on them and use Open Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird. These machines were built in the 1997-1999 time frame.
Other than the weight factor these machines perform well for this task. Any netbook with these specs will work well too (provided it's Linux with a lightweight window manager).
The netbook market is really the traveler that has a desktop at home/office and just needs the portability. And since you're traveling you'll need great battery life.
Apple's "Air" looks great for thin, but it's still not small. ASUS hit the form factor perfectly and this is where others will (and are) heading toward. Think how handy it is to carry around a paperback book; remember those?... : )
The market is really looking for the $100-$200 netbook, then sitting at a $400-$500 portable laptop (with more features like DVD drive to watch movies etc), and then the $1000 "Branded" or "Desktop replacement" larger form factor with lots of ram, big HDD, etc. Companies that blur the lines across these form factors and pricing will only hurt themselves..."why do I want a $400 netbook when I can get this "brandX" for the same price and it's got a DVD drive?" Easy clear steps for consumers to see. But make sure you get the low price point - people will buy several for the kids, grandkids, favorite traveler, and so on (hint... it's about big volume in those small sizes)
is to load Damn Small Linux onto a USB flash drive and boot from there. Then you've got a full desktop to actually do a few things with and you don't have to spend a bunch of time "compiling" other stuff; unless of course that's your hobby.
Different application, but check into ltsp.org as they made significant boot time reductions for the client machines. If you're doing a project to compress the next Windows or Ubuntu boot code then look there for what they did as a good proxy.
get "cvs" stock data from a site (like yahoo.com), download that to a file (.txt typically) and then open or import into OO Calc. You'll probably be asked by OOCalc to parse the columns where it already selects "," comma as parsing tool.
Harder though is to use a browser bookmark that grabs the stocks data you want from Yahoo (like just the end of day) for a "dozen" stocks at once that prompts for save to cvs file, then launch Calc and have a macro that pulls in the download file data and pastes it all as a new line. Then I had charts set up to track trends. Been a while since I did this (and it had to be done every day). I just installed grism and it does raw data reviews for stocks, pulling in fresh data so might be a solution (however I saw no technical indicators, may need more testing/review on my part to find it). For the most part I just use StockCharts.com for rough technical analysis.Example:
just bookmark the above line in your browser and change the company in the bookmark line and re-bookmark for each security you want to save for daily review (if you use default site you don't get the flexibility of this line option).
For most "what's this stock and what has it been doing" type of questions I use the "google" bookmark above and then enter in the new stock id and press enter.
You actually need to use Technical analysis along with fundamentals.
Fundamentals only measure "the past" (last time a company produced earnings/losses and possibly massaged the numbers one way or the other - "we managed earnings"). You can anticipate how the Fundamental traders will react though.
Technical analysis does tend to do some predictions of current state and future states (indicates trader trends). But is not always very accurate. However, there are a lot of people who follow the Technical side so you can anticipate what they will do when the "signals" appear.
End result - you need to analyze both techniques and know when to use one tool or the other.
Stockcharts.com for technical analysis.
Spreadsheets (with custom macros) Open Office "Calc", or you can use Excel if you're not on Linux.
Yahoo.com for Fundamental analysis data.
Some stuff on Edgar, and other misc sites.
Slashdot Mirror
Also look into
Gimp.org
inkscape.org
Firefox browser
Thunderbird email
and a lot more
I usually recommend to anyone considering Linux that they first try out these programs on their windows machine - as they will mostly be using them on Linux.
Commodity markets are down and the scrap yards are taking less/paying less - so less incentive to steal copper/aluminum/etc.
Economy is just correcting itself. No regulation required.
I used to use MSProject... now I use GanttProject (ganttproject.biz) primarily or OpenProj (openproj.org).
I do consulting (including engineering and global program management) for Fortune 10 companies.
Are there nuances to these programs? Sure, but not any more issues than I found with MSProject (and some things work a whole lot better). These two programs also run on Windows (for those who just can't make the leap to Linux yet).
A few commands and it's all set up. The thin clients can be pc's as old as Pentium 2 - 233Mhz with no drives. If any particular unit goes bad it's easy to replace and get that station back up.
My Saturn had 176,000 miles, was 10yrs old, and got 40mpg easily (sold it a few years ago).
Fancy Toyota Prius, from owner's message board, said they typically get 48mpg in real world driving.
Maybe all those hardware manufacturers already gave Microsoft buggy drivers.... Oops, sorry you're having trouble with your user base. Now everyone wants Mac or Linux... Oops. I think customers are blaming MS not any hardware manufacturers for Vista problems.
Great Quote!
If the telcos are intent on offering netbooks subsidized with service fee... why even bring MS into the phone booth in the first place? It's not like the telco is selling their plan based on MS's brand (which Apple advertising is squashing daily). MS doesn't have the best reputation among hardware vendors and strategically would a telco want to risk getting tied to MS? The telcos will be selling their service and their brand.
So the telcos may even offer "ATT-buntu" as a privately branded Linux, which they could do as long as they abide by the GPL requirements. Or just offer standard Ubuntu/etc "for free" and still sell the connection, voip, and long distance services - since that is where they plan to make their money anyway.
MSFT will fail with SaaS. Real users hate it.
The Ubuntu's are showing people there is another viable option. No cost, unless they are a business that desires some hand-holding with consulting and coaching.
Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp/Inkscape, etc are all getting picked up by Windows and Linux users alike. (handy features lure some in like Open Office will export to pdf, last I heard MSOffice didn't do that). Using that software base then makes a transition to Linux easy - they will be using familiar programs - like getting a Netbook running Linux.
In the future Microsoft will be smaller. They will need to adapt to the Linux model to compete. They will need to offer a mix of open source, industry compliant file format standards, and "play nice" with computer manufacturers and consumers.
Or else they will fail.
The reason for the longevity of the installed PC base, and the reason Dell and Microsoft have been struggling, is the computing task bottleneck is Internet Broadband speed not the hardware or software you're running. Anything made in the last 5 years runs well (you can go 10 years if you use Linux rather than Windows). Most users are running a browser and typing a letter or report on an office productivity suite (MSOffice or OpenOffice).
Some of that is changing though with content providers (networks like abc, nbc, etc and movie downloads such as Netflix). Moving this much data will force Internet upgrades which will then begin to show the age of PCs and what cannot keep up. And then people will be upgrading again.
I run a 1999 era HP laptop Pentium-3 at 500Mhz with 256MB ram with Xubuntu 8.04 just fine for Open Office presentations with clients, and run firefox 3 and thunderbird on it. I even have a 1997 300mhz P2 that can run it (video out port has too few colors for presentations though).
... and the slim tiny netbook suddenly transforms into an expensive sub-notebook in features and price.
I refurbish desktop and laptop pc's and generally find the best range is to put Ubuntu on 1Ghz+, Kubuntu on 700Mhz+ or Xubuntu on 450Mhz+ machines. More ram obviously helps. A Netbook with 1Ghz processor and 1-2GB ram can be a great system (especially running Xubuntu with Xfce window manager).
This is why when I saw that Linux could be a "Modern operating system" on the Netbooks that there would be no stopping people buying this niche. There are a lot of people looking for inexpensive computers (check out ebay and craigslist some time).
The risk with the Netbooks is they start listening to potential users... "I'd want a bigger screen", "faster processor" out of vanity, "bigger keys", "how about Windows",
Keep pushing the price down and do it with an unmodified Xubuntu or Kubuntu OS and more of the market will be opened up.
I run a 500Mhz Pentium III with Xubuntu 8.04.1 on it and use Open Office for presentations with clients.
So anything faster than that and you're in good shape - or look for something with fluxbox on it. If you want a really slim system, look for "damn small linux"
I made the switch to Linux (including Kubuntu, Xubuntu, DSL, Kanotix, Knoppix) due to the high quality alternatives provided by Open Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird.
I know a lot of people that switched to OO just to get the pdf output format. Sun continues to do an amazing job with the open source community on OO.
Linux WoW client support is inevitable - personal user reasons favor an expanding Linux market - and business will naturally follow.
Look at the growth of Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, etc as people avoid Vista and forced hardware upgrades. see www.distrowatch.com for a popularity chart of distros.
Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others have been selling preinstalled Linux - because there are enough users asking for it to make sense for them to support it.
Netbook sales are rapidly expanding (ASUS Eeepc leading the charge), with Linux preinstalled. These machines may not be great for graphics to run Wow, but they are getting people used to seeing Linux on their second machine. So when desktop upgrade time comes... they start to consider installing Ubuntu (a new updated version is launched every six months vs 5 years for Windows or 3 years for Apple OS). Linux also tends to have a lighter framework (10M lines of code for Linux vs XP at 40M and Vista at 50M) - and some window managers on Linux allow "full effects" comparable to OSX and Vista that consume much more ram and cpu power.
The lighter framework allows WoW to expand into a much wider audience (those able to pay WoW subscriptions/expansion packs but unable to afford a $1000 new computer... like teenagers and college players and the stay-at-home-moms dedicated to playing Wow while the kids nap group).
If Blizzard approached it right... there are also a lot of old pc's sitting in basement storage, installed with windows pre-XP and choked with viruses and spam (that people hang onto because of fears about personal data on them). Maybe Blizzard puts together a kit with both a Xubuntu.com (which is faster than base Ubuntu) install disk and a WoW-Optimized-for-Linux install disk that can transform a pile of hazardous waste into a dedicated WoW client or LAN server.
Dry the items out good (like put in car on hot summer day with window just cracked to let the steam out). When the windows aren't fogged anymore then you can think they are dry. I get computer towers that have sometimes been left out overnight in rainstorms. Let them dry in the garage for a week or two is usually enough to to dry them out (especially during summer). Then carefully plug in and turn on.
I agree that Navigator is not exactly what people want in Outline View (it's one of the features I myself continue looking for as I do some writing and used to use this feater in MSOffice)...
but my point: there _is_ a feature that is closer than nothing (as most of the wailing is about) and possibly be workable for many. It's as elegant as using a rock for pounding nails, but at least there's a rock.
As you mention it is very likely a while before improvements (partly because there's at least a "rock" and other more pressing issues). And there are some code structure issues that make it tougher to implement than it was in MSOffice.
Glad to hear your updates that the devs are understanding the "customer wants" and are thinking on how to solve the issues. There's a chance now and I can't hardly wait for developments here.
It's called Navigator and it's under Menu/Edit/Navigator. A good description on use and nuances is http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2008/03/an-equivalent-o.html
and won't this assistant have a pattern of expressing things roughly?
Or use 'calc' in Open Office and have no cost. (you can save in Excel format or tell your buddy to download Open Office if they do not have it).
Really like $100-$200 (or what's the point, people will upgrade to standard laptop at $300-$400)
And about the same specs as a 1999 P3-500Mhz laptop (that can run Xubuntu 8.04 with Open Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird fine).
Size of a paperback
And battery for several hours
And get the plant capacity ready to sell a lot of them !
Basically, the netbook market is driven by cost and size. Expand either of those two parameters and you end up with a standard notebook.
Can't type with fat fingers then onto a notebook, need a big display then onto a notebook, need a huge amount of disk space ram etc then onto a notebook - and forget a 'cheap netbook'
I currently use either a P2-300Mhz or a P3-500Mhz laptop for travel and client presentations. I run Xubuntu 8.04 on them and use Open Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird. These machines were built in the 1997-1999 time frame. Other than the weight factor these machines perform well for this task. Any netbook with these specs will work well too (provided it's Linux with a lightweight window manager).
The netbook market is really the traveler that has a desktop at home/office and just needs the portability. And since you're traveling you'll need great battery life.
Apple's "Air" looks great for thin, but it's still not small. ASUS hit the form factor perfectly and this is where others will (and are) heading toward. Think how handy it is to carry around a paperback book; remember those?... : )
The market is really looking for the $100-$200 netbook, then sitting at a $400-$500 portable laptop (with more features like DVD drive to watch movies etc), and then the $1000 "Branded" or "Desktop replacement" larger form factor with lots of ram, big HDD, etc. Companies that blur the lines across these form factors and pricing will only hurt themselves..."why do I want a $400 netbook when I can get this "brandX" for the same price and it's got a DVD drive?" Easy clear steps for consumers to see. But make sure you get the low price point - people will buy several for the kids, grandkids, favorite traveler, and so on (hint... it's about big volume in those small sizes)
I find it funny that the iPhone had trouble in the Japanese market because it was so far behind their technology and didn't offer enough features.
is to load Damn Small Linux onto a USB flash drive and boot from there. Then you've got a full desktop to actually do a few things with and you don't have to spend a bunch of time "compiling" other stuff; unless of course that's your hobby.
Different application, but check into ltsp.org as they made significant boot time reductions for the client machines. If you're doing a project to compress the next Windows or Ubuntu boot code then look there for what they did as a good proxy.
get "cvs" stock data from a site (like yahoo.com), download that to a file (.txt typically) and then open or import into OO Calc. You'll probably be asked by OOCalc to parse the columns where it already selects "," comma as parsing tool.
Harder though is to use a browser bookmark that grabs the stocks data you want from Yahoo (like just the end of day) for a "dozen" stocks at once that prompts for save to cvs file, then launch Calc and have a macro that pulls in the download file data and pastes it all as a new line. Then I had charts set up to track trends. Been a while since I did this (and it had to be done every day). I just installed grism and it does raw data reviews for stocks, pulling in fresh data so might be a solution (however I saw no technical indicators, may need more testing/review on my part to find it). For the most part I just use StockCharts.com for rough technical analysis.Example:
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?c=goog,uu%5Bh,a%5Ddaclyyay%5Bdd%5D%5Bpb50!h.02,.20%5D%5Bvc60%5D%5Biuf!ua12,26,9%5D
just bookmark the above line in your browser and change the company in the bookmark line and re-bookmark for each security you want to save for daily review (if you use default site you don't get the flexibility of this line option). For most "what's this stock and what has it been doing" type of questions I use the "google" bookmark above and then enter in the new stock id and press enter.
You actually need to use Technical analysis along with fundamentals.
Fundamentals only measure "the past" (last time a company produced earnings/losses and possibly massaged the numbers one way or the other - "we managed earnings"). You can anticipate how the Fundamental traders will react though.
Technical analysis does tend to do some predictions of current state and future states (indicates trader trends). But is not always very accurate. However, there are a lot of people who follow the Technical side so you can anticipate what they will do when the "signals" appear.
End result - you need to analyze both techniques and know when to use one tool or the other.
Stockcharts.com for technical analysis.
Spreadsheets (with custom macros) Open Office "Calc", or you can use Excel if you're not on Linux.
Yahoo.com for Fundamental analysis data.
Some stuff on Edgar, and other misc sites.