The only drawback is the security, or lack-thereof, in wireless. I'm sure the security concerns can be ironed out, but you'll have to assuage a lot of people's concerns to privacy, even if it is a non-issue (anyone can walk up to any residence/business and look at the usage gauges).
...until all these alternatives can do everything M$ Office can do (namely PowerPoint, its the new Latin for scientists) and do it better and make it easier, this is all just pissing in the wind. Personally, I use OOo to do all my work, but it did take significant time to get used to how it does things. This initial diffuculty is what will really keep these products from taking over Office.
Remember, the reason so many people switched to Mozilla/FireFox/Opera a ways back was that they were just as easyt o use as IE from the beginning and that there was major news coverage of the security flaws in IE. Yeah, so Office can be hijacked by a macro in a Word document. I have yet to meet someone dumb enough (or just plain unlucky enough) to have succumbed to this.
Free really doesn't mean anything to the average user if its not mind-numbingly simple and familiar. Word has almost 20 years on most word processors (emacs, vi and brethern excluded). That's familiarity M$ takes to the bank every day.
To be slightly off-topic, I've used LaTeX before for various classes (best damn physics papers in the class), but it took a significant amount of effort to learn the quirks (namely man, info and google scrounging). LaTeX beats the pants off M$ for technical and scientific documents, but it never gets used due to its idiosyncrasies.
What it really comes down to goes soemthign like this: programming languages are just tools to be used as a means to an end, not the end in themselves. Java is great if I want to write a highly dynamic and modular system (dynamic state modelling), but I would shudder at the though of using it to perform high performance reading (such as for MD5 or SHA* hashing). It all hinges on what you need to do. Don't use a sledgehammer to do finished carpentry.
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The only drawback is the security, or lack-thereof, in wireless. I'm sure the security concerns can be ironed out, but you'll have to assuage a lot of people's concerns to privacy, even if it is a non-issue (anyone can walk up to any residence/business and look at the usage gauges).
...until all these alternatives can do everything M$ Office can do (namely PowerPoint, its the new Latin for scientists) and do it better and make it easier, this is all just pissing in the wind. Personally, I use OOo to do all my work, but it did take significant time to get used to how it does things. This initial diffuculty is what will really keep these products from taking over Office.
Remember, the reason so many people switched to Mozilla/FireFox/Opera a ways back was that they were just as easyt o use as IE from the beginning and that there was major news coverage of the security flaws in IE. Yeah, so Office can be hijacked by a macro in a Word document. I have yet to meet someone dumb enough (or just plain unlucky enough) to have succumbed to this.
Free really doesn't mean anything to the average user if its not mind-numbingly simple and familiar. Word has almost 20 years on most word processors (emacs, vi and brethern excluded). That's familiarity M$ takes to the bank every day.
To be slightly off-topic, I've used LaTeX before for various classes (best damn physics papers in the class), but it took a significant amount of effort to learn the quirks (namely man, info and google scrounging). LaTeX beats the pants off M$ for technical and scientific documents, but it never gets used due to its idiosyncrasies.
Sorry, but I can't resist, the computer doesn't need the tech support, the user does.
And as for computers becoming stable enough to not need it, well, I would say sustainable and useable fusion power comes first.
What it really comes down to goes soemthign like this: programming languages are just tools to be used as a means to an end, not the end in themselves. Java is great if I want to write a highly dynamic and modular system (dynamic state modelling), but I would shudder at the though of using it to perform high performance reading (such as for MD5 or SHA* hashing). It all hinges on what you need to do. Don't use a sledgehammer to do finished carpentry.