Re: Only 16 More Days to Go



The poster formerly known as 'The Poster Formerly Known as Nina DiBoy' wrote:
Mike Hall - MVP wrote:
Lots want to be spoon fed. Computer users are like car owners. Most don't care about the inner workings. They just want it to start and do what they expect it to do or have been told that it will do.

Which is why it doesn't matter what's under the hood so to speak. If an organization decided to build a linux system to spoon feed the untechnical masses and did it well, it is quite possible that linux could do this job better than windows does.


The reason I singled out home finance was because the developers of the open source variants openly admitted that the programs on offer did not have all of the facilities of the Windows variants. The developers would seem to be more truthful than some avid fans of Linux. It would do better if software was on show as it has been for Windows. I know that boxed software is a little passé these days, but somebody looking at computers in a store will also wander down the software aisles too, and there is nothing obviously Linux amongst it all.

This is true, but considering most linux software is free, it would be awfully silly for those individuals/organizations that develop the free software to spend money putting a CD in a pretty box and shrink wrap, no?


The Windows OEMs also include MS Works in their packages which, while not being as advanced as OO3, admirably panders to those who want 'simple to use', and gets over the huge cost and complexity of MS Office. Only people building their own systems do not get the benefit of 'Works et al'.

Works...ugh! Again this is just my opinion and experience speaking, but Works is horrible! OOo files are so much easier to open than Works files, too! Yet I have to admit that when Joe Blow goes out and purchases a computer, if Works is the office suite that's installed, they will usually use it because it's already there.


And then, of course, there is the mighty Mac which is a nicely polished and very stylish alternative to a Windows PC. Even though more expensive, the Mac has made more ground re new sales than Linux. A good proportion of software sold in stores will also run on Macs. It says so on the boxes. One sees 'Mac compatible' on the sides of new hardware boxes, printers, scanners, webcams etc too.

I have my own reasons to dislike Macs, but what you say about them is true.


There are no free lunches. Software like OO owes much to personnel within empires like IBM and Sun. Programs suitable for family computers are not in the picture for companies like these, and solo programmers typing away beyond the witching hour are not capable of producing polished stuff suitable for attaching a price tag in a store.

Maybe Alias can learn to program and surprise us all.. :-)


Whether OOo was designed for home machines or not, in my experience, it seems to fit better than Office 2007 so far.



Hehe, you are both right of course, but as I mentioned in another thread (Lost it - oh well) there is a market shift toward mobile devices. Sure, it's a "Yuppy" thing and won't become a "General Usage" thing, but many in business are being pushed toward LapTop computing even in their office - so that they can take work home with them.

Many have resisted Vista because their IT people are unsure about it. OEMs all advertise "Downgrade to XP" as an option. So as I see it the market is mostly frozen where mainstream operating systems are concerned. The financial mess is not helping anybody either.

Obviously MS are aware of this, and are pushing ahead with W7, but to be honest if I were an IT pro considering purchasing for a corporation then I'd feel obliged to at least see if there were cheaper alternatives.

Laptops are (IMNSHO) are a security risk, a recently terminated employee raised this issue right here so to speak... OMG she still has her Laptop. First thought was the cost of the machine which was brand new, seems like only me and the IT guy saw what the real cost of that could amount to. If you are going the way of people taking home work the way to do it is NOT to have the data on their Laptop. Since this implies a server based methodology the OS at either end does not matter at all. What matters is the software you want it to run.

At this time the bells and whistles that come with Vista are not necessary for many people. Sure, I find Vista 64 is now stable, reliable, and faster then it was to begin with, however for the business we are in it really does not offer much more than XP or Linux. Seems to me that the advantage MS has is really being diminished by XP more than anything else, so MS faces the task of persuading business to switch by changing the way businesses think about computing. I'm not sure that an OS with everything in it already is the answer, it may be a bare bones system with modular structure.
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