> It's not so much getting politicians away from using Microsoft's > products (although it could save a substantial amount) as getting them > away from closed, secret, non-free document formats.
Yeah, I don't dispute that open formats are a large issue. But a) saving money is not to be sniffed at, b) I am extremely skeptical about saving to an open(ish) default (RTF) happening in practice - esp. when many users respond to "Save As" with "No, no, it's all too complicated". Periodic noises are made about RTF where I work and .... nah... There are also issues over upgrade cycle, no? >I can foresee > problems ahead when all those documents written in Word 95 suddenly > aren't readable when Office 2005 comes out and support for older formats > is dropped (not that Microsoft would do such a thing, would they?) Course not. Lovely people. I'm not going to say proprietary software = proprietary formats, but the temptation is always going to be there. > Argh! Not Slackware? I'm definitely not voting for you! :-) Ian -- Ian Ruffell Tel.: 0781 3101934 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Scottish mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/scottish
