I remember similar question popping up maybe a year or so ago, sadly the answer is still no, at least in legal vertical.
Why? Integration with various "Office Helpers" - document management systems (keeping track of client/matter), contact management (keeping track of mailing addresses, fax numbers, etc.), cost recovery/time docketing....All these third-party apps are written using Office API and show as buttons in Word, Excel and other Office apps.
Until vendors start writing plug-ins for OpenOffice apps, I will have a really hard time selling the idea of anything but Microsoft Office to my executive committee.
Cost alone won't do it - things have to click, and click good.
"What happens when the entire network is taken down by some new exploit/bug?"
Tell me about it. So far we've been either dumb lucky or we have a really disciplined, smart users (my vote is for the former) - we had only one major outbreak in the last 3 years.
In the same parallel universe, OS/2 took off and Microsoft remained a bit player in office software business.....;)
Similar story here - We've been Novell shop since NetWare 2 days and kept using most of the product line until recently. The fragmentation of the product lines and management tools is becoming painfully obvious - NWAdmin, ConsoleOne, iManager, snapins flying all over the place and most of them don't work as advertised.
iManager (web admin) looked interesting during its early beta stages (cca. NetWare 6 release), then inevitable question was asked - "How are we going to do administration if the web server (the whole Apache/Tomcat/Java stack) is down for some reason?"
So now we are administering what was left of the NetWare/Zen infrastructure with the combination of NWAdmin and ConsoleOne and anxiously awaiting for the other shoe to drop - IT Director informing us that we are going pure Microsoft (probably later this year).
Joel, thanks for the info - I've been thinking about doing this myself for quite a while, but never got enough information/time/guts (pun intended) to actually do it.
One question, though - you said "you will continue to poop, and poop, and poop.." Will it stop eventually and go back to "normal" (whatever that is, I guess once or twice a day) or should I expect much higher, ehm, frequency than before the treatment?
For whatever it's worth:
As a child (from age 5 up to 14-15) I used to suffer a lot from streptococcal sore throats and was regularly prescribed daily injections of extencillin (very high dose of penicillin - 2400000 units per injection made in Eastern Europe and Russia) in sets of 10-12, which absolutely decimated my intestinal flora. To offset these effects I was told to drink milk and eat plain yogurt (kefir is even better) daily. I am 33 now and haven't had any residual issues from these treatments.
Recently I sat with my CIO for a little chat re: possibilities of moving our 1000+ desktops from Windows to Linux. Being in a law firm, we made a checklist of apps that our users would not be able to function without. The regular document-churning and groupware apps were easy to replace (OpenOffice, Evolution and such), but when we got to time and billing (currently using Carpe Diem) and document management (DOCSOpen) we couldn't find anything comparable on Linux side. The concensus was that we are not quite there yet - 2-3 years down the road, maybe, but not right now, at least not for the company of our size.
I still have mine, with doubled RAM (16MB), rechargeable battery pack, 256MB CF card and EB leather case. I don't anticipate getting a new PDA any time soon - I'll keep using my 330 for as long as I can.
I use iSilo for ebooks and almost totally depend on Mapopolis mapping software for driving directions.
Shortly after TRG discontinued 330, an almost finished version PalmOS 4.1 with custom 330 add-ons was leaked to the internet and I managed to scoop it up and do the upgrade. Gone are some strange PalmOS 3.5 bugs and the need to use TRG customizations in order to run apps directly from CF/SD card.
Rumors swirled that they had color version in pre-production, then they scrapped the whole project.
It is really a shame that TRG decided to exit PDA market - they really knew how to make a good, functional PalmOS PDA.
"So what's the "raison d'etre" for Amigas, now?"
I dunno, choice, maybe?
Because it is being offered and some people perceive it as better value than other offerings?
As long as they have willing, paying customers, I say more power to them.
In a car analogy, why would anybody want to drive anything but/*insert your favorite car here*/?
1. Why would I "help them fly the plane?"
2. Why would I contribute *anything* to Microsoft(positive/negative comment, let alone code) - so they could turn around and eihter sell it or maybe even use it against me?
3. How much are Bill Hill and the rest of Microsoft alumni paid for their blog appearances and patronizing comments like "The most important operating system is not Windows"? (coming from a guy on Microsoft's payroll, this comes across as almost hypocritical)
4. What's up with dorky one-size-too small gray golf shirts?
Seriously, what is the point of Channel 9?
Oh yeah, and BeOS called and it wants its color scheme back.
Yet another opportunity for Novell/Linux
on
Passport to Nowhere
·
· Score: 1
Novell has two great XML-based products that compete head-to-head with Passport - NSure and iChain, providing basically the same functionality, but built around eDirectory. Now that Novell is becoming serious Linux player, it will be interesting to see what they can do with these.
Links:
http://www.novell.com/products/nsureidentitymanage r/
http://www.novell.com/products/ichain/
Wrong again - this was the case about 4 years ago, you can now have completely standalone eDirectory 8.x running natively on non-NetWare platform - yes, even Win2K can be the master of your NDS tree, with replicas sitting on Linux/UNIX and NetWare.
First off, Novell services for Linux is much more than directory alone, although NDS is the central point.
Reasons why I wouldn't buy MSAD for Linux:
- MS would never release it, since they perceive Linux as their No.1 threat
- from my experience working with AD, it is not as robust and scalable as NDS, not to mention the maturity level. (Novell started with NDS back in 1993, first shipping version of AD came out in 2000, but was virtually unusable until SP1) AD also needs a lot more hardware to accomplish the same thing NDS does (again, think thousands of directory objects-users, printers, OUs..., not a single 20-people office)
Reasons why I would buy NetWare services on Linux:
- Novell's reputation. Yes, they are bad at marketing, but they do have good products that actually work. They also seem to understand how the networks *really* work and what people do on them and make products to fill those needs, as opposed to trying to push whatever marketing drones think of
- Novell's commitment to Linux/OSS. Yes, they are doing this in order to compete, but if they are playing nice and continue doing so, what's bad about it?
- Other products in this suite, especially ZENWorks. You might be able to get by administering applications on 50+ client network by hand, try that with 1000+ or bigger, with multiple locations/operating systems accross WAN.
Show me one product on Linux that can do it today.
- Need for products like this in Linux space. Linux is cool and there are tons of free solutions around, but to truly compete, we need established software makers both contributing and competing on Linux platform.
"Its too bad that Banyan didn't open source their software when they got out of the NOS business."
Could it be because Jim Allchin went to Microsoft and used parts of Street Talk as the basis for Active Directory?
Ummm, last time I checked, Novell eDirectory 8.7 (NDS), eGuide (web LDAP lookup tool) and DirXML worked very nicely on Red Hat 8.0. And that was TWO DAYS AGO!
Just about to finish it, and it is one wild book.
Combine good old detective Raymond Chandler stories with Neil Stephenson and you'll get the idea.
Highly recommended!
(Added The Cassini Division to the list to check out)
My company is currently in the process of migrating from GroupWise 6 to Exchange 2000, after being a loyal GroupWise shop since the WordPerfect Office 3.x days.
The reason?
The client. Server side of things has been very stable (save for occasional GWIA ABENDs), but the client is simply atrocious.
Design-wise is is stuck in the mid-90's: any custom coding for it has to be done in either Delphi or Formativ (sort of like VBA for GroupWise) and even then it doesn't work all that well, integration with other products is minimal, and on top of everything it crashes at least a couple of times a day no matter what we do with it (patch it, unpatch it, involve Novell to fix it, doesn't matter). Users hate it, since 90% of them either used or currently use some form of Outlook at home or had it on their previous job, so they find GroupWise client rather counter-intuitive.
The biggest problem is that Novell built the client on top of Windows' MAPI and got stuck
with it.
(Microsoft kept rewriting Windows MAPI until they ultimately scrapped it alltogether for "something better")
At one point Novell tried to make a GroupWise connector for Outlook client, which worked so-so with Outlook 97, then Microsoft tweaked the MAPI again and broke this connector beyond repair.
Tech support for the product outside of Novell is non-existent, and the remaining techs and consultants are busily converting to Exchange, Notes, in fact ANYTHING BUT GroupWise.
This situation put a tremendous burden on our users (and helpdesk support), so the company finally gave up and went Microsoft full-on.
Slashdot Mirror
Try Alternate Install CD for your platform - it uses Debian-style (text mode) installer
http://releases.ubuntu.com/feisty/
....not that there's anything wrong with that. :P
I remember similar question popping up maybe a year or so ago, sadly the answer is still no, at least in legal vertical.
Why?
Integration with various "Office Helpers" - document management systems (keeping track of client/matter), contact management (keeping track of mailing addresses, fax numbers, etc.), cost recovery/time docketing....All these third-party apps are written using Office API and show as buttons in Word, Excel and other Office apps.
Until vendors start writing plug-ins for OpenOffice apps, I will have a really hard time selling the idea of anything but Microsoft Office to my executive committee.
Cost alone won't do it - things have to click, and click good.
Wow.
Touche.
Too bad. Handled properly, Automatix seemed like a nice idea to quickly get Ubuntu system up to speed.
Then again, "If it sounds too good to be true...."
Thanks for that link, Red Alastor.
I dunno, I trust him more than the guys at Microsoft for some reason....:P
I though Automatix is open source - can't you just open it up and see what it does?
"What happens when the entire network is taken down by some new exploit/bug?"
Tell me about it. So far we've been either dumb lucky or we have a really disciplined, smart users (my vote is for the former) - we had only one major outbreak in the last 3 years.
In the same parallel universe, OS/2 took off and Microsoft remained a bit player in office software business.....;)
Similar story here - We've been Novell shop since NetWare 2 days and kept using most of the product line until recently. The fragmentation of the product lines and management tools is becoming painfully obvious - NWAdmin, ConsoleOne, iManager, snapins flying all over the place and most of them don't work as advertised.
iManager (web admin) looked interesting during its early beta stages (cca. NetWare 6 release), then inevitable question was asked - "How are we going to do administration if the web server (the whole Apache/Tomcat/Java stack) is down for some reason?"
So now we are administering what was left of the NetWare/Zen infrastructure with the combination of NWAdmin and ConsoleOne and anxiously awaiting for the other shoe to drop - IT Director informing us that we are going pure Microsoft (probably later this year).
Joel, thanks for the info - I've been thinking about doing this myself for quite a while, but never got enough information/time/guts (pun intended) to actually do it.
One question, though - you said "you will continue to poop, and poop, and poop.." Will it stop eventually and go back to "normal" (whatever that is, I guess once or twice a day) or should I expect much higher, ehm, frequency than before the treatment?
For whatever it's worth:
As a child (from age 5 up to 14-15) I used to suffer a lot from streptococcal sore throats and was regularly prescribed daily injections of extencillin (very high dose of penicillin - 2400000 units per injection made in Eastern Europe and Russia) in sets of 10-12, which absolutely decimated my intestinal flora. To offset these effects I was told to drink milk and eat plain yogurt (kefir is even better) daily. I am 33 now and haven't had any residual issues from these treatments.
Recently I sat with my CIO for a little chat re: possibilities of moving our 1000+ desktops from Windows to Linux. Being in a law firm, we made a checklist of apps that our users would not be able to function without. The regular document-churning and groupware apps were easy to replace (OpenOffice, Evolution and such), but when we got to time and billing (currently using Carpe Diem) and document management (DOCSOpen) we couldn't find anything comparable on Linux side. The concensus was that we are not quite there yet - 2-3 years down the road, maybe, but not right now, at least not for the company of our size.
I still have mine, with doubled RAM (16MB), rechargeable battery pack, 256MB CF card and EB leather case.
I don't anticipate getting a new PDA any time soon - I'll keep using my 330 for as long as I can.
I use iSilo for ebooks and almost totally depend on Mapopolis mapping software for driving directions.
Shortly after TRG discontinued 330, an almost finished version PalmOS 4.1 with custom 330 add-ons was leaked to the internet and I managed to scoop it up and do the upgrade. Gone are some strange PalmOS 3.5 bugs and the need to use TRG customizations in order to run apps directly from CF/SD card.
Rumors swirled that they had color version in pre-production, then they scrapped the whole project.
It is really a shame that TRG decided to exit PDA market - they really knew how to make a good, functional PalmOS PDA.
"So what's the "raison d'etre" for Amigas, now?" /*insert your favorite car here*/?
I dunno, choice, maybe?
Because it is being offered and some people perceive it as better value than other offerings?
As long as they have willing, paying customers, I say more power to them.
In a car analogy, why would anybody want to drive anything but
Questions that arose after a brief visit to Ch.9:
1. Why would I "help them fly the plane?"
2. Why would I contribute *anything* to Microsoft(positive/negative comment, let alone code) - so they could turn around and eihter sell it or maybe even use it against me?
3. How much are Bill Hill and the rest of Microsoft alumni paid for their blog appearances and patronizing comments like "The most important operating system is not Windows"? (coming from a guy on Microsoft's payroll, this comes across as almost hypocritical)
4. What's up with dorky one-size-too small gray golf shirts?
Seriously, what is the point of Channel 9?
Oh yeah, and BeOS called and it wants its color scheme back.
Novell has two great XML-based products that compete head-to-head with Passport - NSure and iChain, providing basically the same functionality, but built around eDirectory.e r/
http://www.novell.com/products/ichain/
Now that Novell is becoming serious Linux player, it will be interesting to see what they can do with these.
Links: http://www.novell.com/products/nsureidentitymanag
Bu using SuSE 8.1 (or was it 8.2?) as the base for Java Desktop - essentially adding Sun logos and some extra content to it.
$8500 for the top of the line (Dual 2GHz Opteron, 2GB RAM)
e /E CommStoreFront.woa/6/wa/DSCDirectAction/descriptio n?part=neKo64762T&wosid=eq7K146htvRy2So6qmj1yq5N29 B&pageName=ECSFStoreHome&store=Openlabs¤tBat ch=0&sortBy=1
http://store.openlabs.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects.ex
CEOs are easily replaceable, you know.....;)
Wrong again - this was the case about 4 years ago, you can now have completely standalone eDirectory 8.x running natively on non-NetWare platform - yes, even Win2K can be the master of your NDS tree, with replicas sitting on Linux/UNIX and NetWare.
First off, Novell services for Linux is much more than directory alone, although NDS is the central point.
Reasons why I wouldn't buy MSAD for Linux:
- MS would never release it, since they perceive Linux as their No.1 threat
- from my experience working with AD, it is not as robust and scalable as NDS, not to mention the maturity level. (Novell started with NDS back in 1993, first shipping version of AD came out in 2000, but was virtually unusable until SP1) AD also needs a lot more hardware to accomplish the same thing NDS does (again, think thousands of directory objects-users, printers, OUs..., not a single 20-people office)
Reasons why I would buy NetWare services on Linux:
- Novell's reputation. Yes, they are bad at marketing, but they do have good products that actually work. They also seem to understand how the networks *really* work and what people do on them and make products to fill those needs, as opposed to trying to push whatever marketing drones think of
- Novell's commitment to Linux/OSS. Yes, they are doing this in order to compete, but if they are playing nice and continue doing so, what's bad about it?
- Other products in this suite, especially ZENWorks. You might be able to get by administering applications on 50+ client network by hand, try that with 1000+ or bigger, with multiple locations/operating systems accross WAN. Show me one product on Linux that can do it today.
- Need for products like this in Linux space. Linux is cool and there are tons of free solutions around, but to truly compete, we need established software makers both contributing and competing on Linux platform.
"Its too bad that Banyan didn't open source their software when they got out of the NOS business."
Could it be because Jim Allchin went to Microsoft and used parts of Street Talk as the basis for Active Directory?
Ummm, last time I checked, Novell eDirectory 8.7 (NDS), eGuide (web LDAP lookup tool) and DirXML worked very nicely on Red Hat 8.0. And that was TWO DAYS AGO!
Just about to finish it, and it is one wild book. Combine good old detective Raymond Chandler stories with Neil Stephenson and you'll get the idea.
Highly recommended!
(Added The Cassini Division to the list to check out)
WinInternals guys have something like that, it's called ERDCommander, but it costs money.
Check it out at:
http://www.wininternals.com/
My company is currently in the process of migrating from GroupWise 6 to Exchange 2000, after being a loyal GroupWise shop since the WordPerfect Office 3.x days.
The reason?
The client. Server side of things has been very stable (save for occasional GWIA ABENDs), but the client is simply atrocious. Design-wise is is stuck in the mid-90's: any custom coding for it has to be done in either Delphi or Formativ (sort of like VBA for GroupWise) and even then it doesn't work all that well, integration with other products is minimal, and on top of everything it crashes at least a couple of times a day no matter what we do with it (patch it, unpatch it, involve Novell to fix it, doesn't matter). Users hate it, since 90% of them either used or currently use some form of Outlook at home or had it on their previous job, so they find GroupWise client rather counter-intuitive.
The biggest problem is that Novell built the client on top of Windows' MAPI and got stuck with it.
(Microsoft kept rewriting Windows MAPI until they ultimately scrapped it alltogether for "something better")
At one point Novell tried to make a GroupWise connector for Outlook client, which worked so-so with Outlook 97, then Microsoft tweaked the MAPI again and broke this connector beyond repair.
Tech support for the product outside of Novell is non-existent, and the remaining techs and consultants are busily converting to Exchange, Notes, in fact ANYTHING BUT GroupWise.
This situation put a tremendous burden on our users (and helpdesk support), so the company finally gave up and went Microsoft full-on.
...and terrorists! Don't forget terrorists!