A lot of people are talking about how current Win9x/2000/XP + Office97/2000 users do not really have a need for Crossover Office, or will not save money with it. That may or may not be true, personally I think it will depend on a more case by case basis.
But there are a group of people who do have a definate need for a program like this; those who have to use Linux and Office97/2000, but for whom dual-booting and/or multiple machines is not an acceptable path. I speak from experience here. In our lab at OSU we use Irix 6.3 (Unix) and RedHat 7.2 (Linux) because our highly-specific analysis programs are written only for the Unix/Linux environment and porting to windows is not possible (maybe the authors could, but highly unlikely they would ever want to, there would be no gain especially with other software and hardware issues specific to our research). But when we want to write up data and generate graphics for publication, we have to do it on our home machines or wait in line for the one old celeron PC because, to maintain compatibility with everyone else, we have to use Office97/2000. Dual-booting is not an option because our systems 1. Need to stay on at all times for everyone to use and 2. Run several servers that can't just go up and down randomaly as people need to work in Office.
Therefore we need a program that lets us use Office97/2000 in a linux environment. At the moment, I have had to write all my papers on my personal P133 laptop, and having to port output and grahics files and whatelse back and forth between machines and reformat files for different systems is a serious productivity drain.
A program like Crossover Office fits our needs perfectly, and I know of several other research labs in the exact same fix looking for the same solution.
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A lot of people are talking about how current Win9x/2000/XP + Office97/2000 users do not really have a need for Crossover Office, or will not save money with it. That may or may not be true, personally I think it will depend on a more case by case basis. But there are a group of people who do have a definate need for a program like this; those who have to use Linux and Office97/2000, but for whom dual-booting and/or multiple machines is not an acceptable path. I speak from experience here. In our lab at OSU we use Irix 6.3 (Unix) and RedHat 7.2 (Linux) because our highly-specific analysis programs are written only for the Unix/Linux environment and porting to windows is not possible (maybe the authors could, but highly unlikely they would ever want to, there would be no gain especially with other software and hardware issues specific to our research). But when we want to write up data and generate graphics for publication, we have to do it on our home machines or wait in line for the one old celeron PC because, to maintain compatibility with everyone else, we have to use Office97/2000. Dual-booting is not an option because our systems 1. Need to stay on at all times for everyone to use and 2. Run several servers that can't just go up and down randomaly as people need to work in Office. Therefore we need a program that lets us use Office97/2000 in a linux environment. At the moment, I have had to write all my papers on my personal P133 laptop, and having to port output and grahics files and whatelse back and forth between machines and reformat files for different systems is a serious productivity drain. A program like Crossover Office fits our needs perfectly, and I know of several other research labs in the exact same fix looking for the same solution.