I'm not even sure why I'm entering into this...
Vincent, I use OpenOffice on a daily basis, interact with Windows users
w/ Word, and have no problems. I do considerably more than printing
labels, too. We trade documents and spreadsheets back and forth, in
support of my projects.
The only application I've seen trouble with was a document created using
Office (not OpenOffice) for the Mac, by a user who sent the result out
in RTF. I'm not sure what he did but I couldn't process it in MS Office
on *my* iMac at the office, nor on OpenOffice on the iMac, my laptop,
nor my home systems.
My family uses OpenOffice, including my kids for whom "Office" is a
school requirement. They have no problems, and their teachers see no
difference. My wife is not an IT professional (she delivers babies as a
midwife) and her frustration with Office is greater than with OpenOffice.
If you don't like open-source solutions, fine, but why don't you stop
trying to convince a reasonably large group of reasonably intelligent
folk to follow your lead?
gc
Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
You pay a fulltime sysadmin to solve your problems in that case :)
pay as in 'salary pay'.
Though i'm very positive about for example Sun's open office,
and open source in general,
it's quite clumsy to use practical for simple things like printing name
labels
to stick on envelopes ('etiketten' we call 'em).
If experienced IT guys don't manage within 1 day to get something like
that done with it,
for sure office personnel with less of an experience there will fail.
Then additional the
documentation totally fails there.
Now i won't bother you with the fact that i have an apple macbookpro
laptop with
open-office for it, and that despite hours of googling, it just doesn't
work.
Good old win2000 + old word version had to solve it.
In short open source can work only if you have experienced Linux guys
who make ready
whatever you need on it, and if the functionality you need is sufficient
and documented.
This usually is the case for the top1000 companies.
Netherlands has about 1021 (roughly) companies of 1000+ personnel, not
to mention
governments. For these open source is a possibility.
Not for the majority of users and companies.
Clusters and Beowulf type systems are definitely the exception here; for
them modifying that kernel
and a security that only allows intelligence agencies to enter and no
one else, is important.
On Mar 23, 2009, at 7:58 PM, Douglas Eadline wrote:
Also, if you get what you pay for -- exactly what do you get when you
use
Open-source software?
Interesting question. How do you define "pay" ?
--
Doug
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Gerry Creager -- [email protected]
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983
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