On Sun, 2008-01-06 at 02:00 -0800, phil bogle wrote: > Andrew: > I never write but this time I am compelled to respond. I have an IT > ministry involving 45 churches and 50 support ministries. I have tried > to get Open Office into use system wide. The problem is the different > churches have varying resources to draw upon. I have seen a couple of > churches with Windows 95 still in use! "It works why spend God's money > to change?" My biggest problem is training. There are too few online > training classes, and the lack of books on Open Office is marginally > better. When modern training tools are available all of us will have > better results gaining users of Open Office. Thunderbird and Firefox > are simple and anyone can use the software with little or no training. > I mention this because of the wide acceptance of these two packages, I > think folks want to use free software. IF Open Office were completely > intuitive (not an entirely desirable goal) OR if there were good > training tools available so the user could learn to use all the > features, then we would be one step closer to wide base acceptance. > > I say one step closer because the 2nd reason for paid software use, is > the inertia of humanity. None of use really wants to change much of > anything that we do, by habit. This would bring up what I think should > be the plan for unseating MS Office. Teacher support. If Open Office > had a complete set of tools for teachers--lesson plans, syllabus, tests, > evaluations materials, etc.. So that said--the key to advancing all of > the missions is training. > > JMHO, Blessings, > Phil Bogle > Tillamook County Oregon, USA
Hi Phil, Thank you for your message. I was a MS Office user in the nineties and I found that Outlook was like my right arm in my business. But I have run my businesses under Linux for the last 7 years, and OpenOffice.org has been a major and vital component. My experience is that if you already use MS Office, that the learning curve is almost flat. My wife is a power user of Excel, and I use OOo Calc. If I need to know how to do something I just ask how she would do it, and I do it that way. It works. There are some excellent tutorial materials on the OOo website, and combined with current knowledge of the MS product should see most people up to speed quickly. There is a qualifier, however, and that is the proverb that "repetition is the mother of skill". My father is 83 years old and I have set him up with a Linux system and OOo so he can write his business letters and print them on a laser. He turns on the computer about twice a month, and often rings me about stuff he has forgotten. I try to get him to use it more often but he has no need to. So I am pleased to play help desk to my Dad. ( I have another Dad, who is help desk to me, with better than broadband connection. Not a phone line, but a blood line.) I understand inertia, and in a volunteer base, it becomes harder. "We are not paid to do this stuff so why should we have to learn a new way?" Then, the answer comes down to a sense of mission or purpose, who is serving who? I think Watchman Nee made a case for waste once. I think he chipped the Lord about the "waste" of a woman's skill and wisdom, that it was devoted to teaching him and 6 others, and Watchman felt that she should have had a more public ministry so that many could be enriched by her gift. The Lord's reply was, I think, "Well what is that to you? Can I not use her in a way that I choose?" Of course her gift was multiplied manifold by the ministries of those young men in China. But the parable of the talents is a compelling argument for the careful choice of software. On the disks which I distribute I include some excellent Open Source Graphics Software: The Gimp, pixel based image manipulation like Photoshop; Scribus, desktop Publishing like Quark Express; and Inkscape, Vector Graphics like Adobe Illustrator. I also include the latest Firefox, Mozilla and Thunderbird. Some issues of Tux magazine with great articles on using OOo, a Zip utility called 7Zip and a pdf reader called Foxit, which, although Freeware, I have permission to distribute. With the exception of an accounting package, a Church should be able to run its office with that lot. God bless, Your brother in Christ Andrew --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
