RE: Why most people prefer Windows
It is kind of funny to follow this discussion ,because in one hand I am sure that linux community is a very skillful. On the other it is really really very difficult to fight its naive attitude concerning business applications. People prefer Window because of 2 main reasons: 1) Long ago MS has turned every single home to its Beta site (of course now they would like also to collect the money but that is another story). 2) As a consequence support on MS is much better, Just a little example from my own working experience. As an open minded company we have suggested Linux to some of our main customers on a product that we usually support on MS. Everything was really smooth, however when we run across issues you usually stuck with them for a very significant amount of time. One example is the problem we have posted here about a pdf printout which we needed to convert to pcl but resulted in a smaller size of printing area for some reason. Those little things are keeping you away for Linux, because it consume too much energy . I hope this explains a little why people prefer Windows although we personally would like to stay on Linux but also to stay alive. Israel -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Peter Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 2:59 PM To: Uri Even-Chen Cc: Ilya Konstantinov; Linux-IL Subject: Re: Why most people prefer Windows On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Ilya Konstantinov wrote: If software freedom is meaningless to you, 95% of the time non-free software gives you higher value (assuming you have the money :) I think that's why most people prefer Windows, MS Office and other non-free softwares. Most people don't care about software freedom, they care about ease of use and performance. If a non-free software is easier to use or has more features, people will use it. It's the same with any product, not only software. People care about functionality, ease of use and price. Freedom is not an issue. In the context of a power user and professional applications free access to code and a liberal licese ARE the keys to low cost and usability. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Sat, Oct 08, 2005 at 01:53:17AM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Oded Shimon wrote: It's much much more than that. People are scared of change, they are scared and revoke anything that is different than the norm, you could make a PERFECT windows clone in KDE somehow, and let people use that, telling em it's windows and they'd be happy, give them the exact thing and tell them it's NOT windows but something else, they'd revoke it, saying it's horrible, they don't want it, etc etc. My sister refused to switch to firefox, i kept trying to encourage her and my parents over and over and they simply kept refusing. I installed firefox, removed the internet explorer icon and put the an internet explorer icon on firefox, imported bookmarks, and let them use firefox for quite a while without knowing it. it was fine for about a month, till at some point they realized it was firefox when some site blocked them (israeli sites, blech), and then they started yelling at me like mad that i gave them that horrendous prog and demanded internet explorer back.. It's not nice to cheat your relatives :-) I understand why people don't like changing. You have to learn so much to use a computer, people don't want to start all over from the beginning. Especially for non-geeks it's so difficult. If they get used to something, they don't want to change. They also don't want to be different than most of their friends. If most of their friends are using something, they will use it too. That's why people prefer Windows, MS Office, IE etc. It's easy to use, everyone use it, and they got used to it. They don't want to get used to anything else. Because you're also their sysadmin and suppose to maintain their system. With IE they keep getting a feeling of where do you want to get hacked?. This is because of the poor record of Microsoft, that has left the door open for security companies like Symantec who sell you their products and services using scare tactics. I don't want my users to be in constant threat. And I rather avoid paying Symantec for that if I don't have to. Not to mention that FireFox is simply better than IE and provides a better exprince. Install FoxyTunes, ForcastFox and other toys. Show them the difference. Anyway, for the few poor sites, there is IEView. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Let's answer two arguments in one swoop. On Saturday, 8 בOctober 2005 01:53, Uri Even-Chen wrote: If they get used to something, they don't want to change. This is generally true but is a weak argument. As an example note how quick everybody converted from WfW-3.11 to Win95 (and it had a totally different interface). This means that clueless users can be converted on certain conditions, which leads us to... On Saturday, 8 בOctober 2005 01:43, Uri Even-Chen wrote: People care about functionality, ease of use and price. Yes, sure That's why in the beginning of the 90's they chose using the user-friendly Windows-3.0 over QuarterDeck-Deskview (or OS/2). [for the younger among us, that's a joke. Win-3.0 had a terrible user interface in comparison to the other systems. The only reason I didn't mention Mac, is because I want to keep hardware differences away from the comparison]. I agree most people don't care about freedom, but the same population don't choose software like you describe -- they simply use what is forced upon them by some external force (you haven't read the finding-of-facts document I pointed you to -- otherwise you wouldn't make the naive assumpsion that people choose their OS). The external force up to now is MS monopoly, but there are many other possible forces that are playing to our favor: Government policy (e.g: Massachusetts), ISV bias (e.g: try to get HPC software for Windows), price to the OEM (as hardware price is lower, the software becomes a bigger issue), etc. Of course we are fighting an uphill battle, but there is already a big change (e.g: more than 96,000,000 Firefox downloads. Even if only 10% of them actually uses it...) -- keep repeating the same arguments I used to hear 10 years ago is simply nonsense. -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 There's nothing wrong with Windows 2000... ...that Linux can't fix = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Amos Shapira wrote: Most home users care about their own money - once they won't be able to steal MS products they will start thinking about ways to save on the price of an MS Office license. YES! And the day the powers that be will start cracking down on piracy seriously I will celebrate. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Ilya Konstantinov wrote: If software freedom is meaningless to you, 95% of the time non-free software gives you higher value (assuming you have the money :) I think that's why most people prefer Windows, MS Office and other non-free softwares. Most people don't care about software freedom, they care about ease of use and performance. If a non-free software is easier to use or has more features, people will use it. It's the same with any product, not only software. People care about functionality, ease of use and price. Freedom is not an issue. In the context of a power user and professional applications free access to code and a liberal licese ARE the keys to low cost and usability. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On ה', 2005-10-06 at 21:09 +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: On 10/6/05, Uri Even-Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, but we can't actually use the standard as long as the majority of people can't read it. And they can't read it because they use MS Office. You can't send a non-MS-Office-compatible files to such people. It will not work. They will not install Open Office because of you (at least in most cases, if they are not geeks). Which just gave me an idea for the OO people - taking a page out of Firefox' book Which page? If you're referring to IE View, you're talking about the opposite: being able to view MS documents in your Free software _by using already-installed MS software_. If a person already has MS Office, he can just as well use it to open the Word documents. provide an MS Office plugin which can read OO (or OpenDocument?) files so people can read it easely using their existing MS office. Have it ever occured to you that not all word processors are the same? OO Writer is not intended to be item-by-item copy of MS Word, and therefore both programs have some exclusive features. How will this OO plugin for MS Word convert features which are unique to OO Writer? Rick Schaut of the Microsoft Mac Word team has put it pretty well in this blog entry: http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2005/09/29/475510.aspx P.S. This discussion is getting *so* redundant. Yes, it's harder using the less popular solution. Yes, often software developed by volunteers or a smaller staff will be of lesser quality. For example, Microsoft has a dedicated full-time performance team. OpenOffice has some brave hacker coming in to try and speed up its' startup once in a few years. If software freedom is meaningless to you, 95% of the time non-free software gives you higher value (assuming you have the money :) = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 10:56:25AM +0200, Anatoly Vorobey wrote: On Sun, Oct 02, 2005 at 10:05:56PM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: using some version of Windows. I wonder how come most people companies prefer Windows - is it because they're already used to it, or because they're afraid of changing, or because they want to use a specific software which is not available on Linux, or because they want to be like everyone else? It's because Windows is easier for them to learn and use than the alternatives. It's much much more than that. People are scared of change, they are scared and revoke anything that is different than the norm, you could make a PERFECT windows clone in KDE somehow, and let people use that, telling em it's windows and they'd be happy, give them the exact thing and tell them it's NOT windows but something else, they'd revoke it, saying it's horrible, they don't want it, etc etc. My sister refused to switch to firefox, i kept trying to encourage her and my parents over and over and they simply kept refusing. I installed firefox, removed the internet explorer icon and put the an internet explorer icon on firefox, imported bookmarks, and let them use firefox for quite a while without knowing it. it was fine for about a month, till at some point they realized it was firefox when some site blocked them (israeli sites, blech), and then they started yelling at me like mad that i gave them that horrendous prog and demanded internet explorer back.. - ods15 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Ilya Konstantinov wrote: If software freedom is meaningless to you, 95% of the time non-free software gives you higher value (assuming you have the money :) I think that's why most people prefer Windows, MS Office and other non-free softwares. Most people don't care about software freedom, they care about ease of use and performance. If a non-free software is easier to use or has more features, people will use it. It's the same with any product, not only software. People care about functionality, ease of use and price. Freedom is not an issue. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Oded Shimon wrote: It's much much more than that. People are scared of change, they are scared and revoke anything that is different than the norm, you could make a PERFECT windows clone in KDE somehow, and let people use that, telling em it's windows and they'd be happy, give them the exact thing and tell them it's NOT windows but something else, they'd revoke it, saying it's horrible, they don't want it, etc etc. My sister refused to switch to firefox, i kept trying to encourage her and my parents over and over and they simply kept refusing. I installed firefox, removed the internet explorer icon and put the an internet explorer icon on firefox, imported bookmarks, and let them use firefox for quite a while without knowing it. it was fine for about a month, till at some point they realized it was firefox when some site blocked them (israeli sites, blech), and then they started yelling at me like mad that i gave them that horrendous prog and demanded internet explorer back.. It's not nice to cheat your relatives :-) I understand why people don't like changing. You have to learn so much to use a computer, people don't want to start all over from the beginning. Especially for non-geeks it's so difficult. If they get used to something, they don't want to change. They also don't want to be different than most of their friends. If most of their friends are using something, they will use it too. That's why people prefer Windows, MS Office, IE etc. It's easy to use, everyone use it, and they got used to it. They don't want to get used to anything else. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/8/05, Ilya Konstantinov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On ה', 2005-10-06 at 21:09 +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: Which just gave me an idea for the OO people - taking a page out of Firefox' book Which page? If you're referring to IE View, you're talking about the No, I was reffering to the large amount of effort they put into converting existing IE settings into Firefox so people can get up and running with most of their important data on the new platform in no time. provide an MS Office plugin which can read OO (or OpenDocument?) files so people can read it easely using their existing MS office. Have it ever occured to you that not all word processors are the same? OO Writer is not intended to be item-by-item copy of MS Word, and therefore both programs have some exclusive features. How will this OO plugin for MS Word convert features which are unique to OO Writer? Just like OO has an import feature of MS Office format, and same as MS Office itself supports all sorts of different formats - provide an import/export feature of OO format to MS Office software. Rick Schaut of the Microsoft Mac Word team has put it pretty well in this blog entry: http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2005/09/29/475510.aspx Haven't got time to read *all* through this but skimming through it I don't accept his excuses for MS' XML format being open enough - MS retains (or planned to retain?) patents on this format and the sole right to change it at its own will. If MS really wanted to make its new format open it could have given up its rediculous patents claim and put the format under a fairer license. --Amos
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/8/05, Uri Even-Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ilya Konstantinov wrote: If software freedom is meaningless to you, 95% of the time non-free software gives you higher value (assuming you have the money :) I think that's why most people prefer Windows, MS Office and other non-free softwares. Most people don't care about software freedom, they Most home users care about their own money - once they won't be able to steal MS products they will start thinking about ways to save on the price of an MS Office license. See Adobe Acrobat - the reader is free and everybody installs it (including me on my Linux), the writer is expensive (and generally considered to have an awful interface) and only professionals buy it and even there I saw companies too cheap to upgrade to the latest version when not absoluetly necessary. care about ease of use and performance. If a non-free software is easier to use or has more features, people will use it. It's the same Photoshop is considered to have a better interface and maybe more features than The Gimp and still there is demand for The Gimp on Windows by people who don't want to steal Photoshop nor pay for its license. with any product, not only software. People care about functionality, ease of use and price. Freedom is not an issue. Now you slipped in the price and, IMHO, turned your argument up side down. I *agree* with that last sentence but it puts the rest of your arguments in a different light. Cheers, --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/3/05, Oded Shimon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: quite a while without knowing it. it was fine for about a month, till at And all this time without even installing the Firefox IE theme? Wow. Good for you! --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
I am also thinking of moving to linux-only for about 10 years now, both in work and home (my own system has always had dual os via dual boot, colinux, vmware, etc ..) 1. firefox (even on windows) does not support a lot of israely sites: my nephue can't play at fun.walla.com, i can't reach yes's program guide, etc 2. OO: even with OO 2.0 beta, i tried reading a word document - it worked, but when i saved it back, parts of it were net readble by word (which the targets of this doc use) also, the default format that OO 2.0 saves is not compatible by OO 1.0 , so saving it in oo 1.0's format is similiar to saving word in word97 format or rtf 3. things like GIMP: at my mother's house, i installed GIMP. but my sister is used to working with photoshop, and took her long time to find the functions she needed, and she said some are missing (or maybe they had different names, and she didn't find them). in short, most people are used to windows. 4. at my work place, we use exchange server. as i do not have a good open replacement, i had to leave it that way. i tried to set evolution to work with it, but after spending two days on it, i gave up as it didn't work. btw, command line is not obsolete, I use it more than i use gui, it is also better passed on a low bandwidth link, it is great for repeated jobs ( for instance, i needed to have 100 scans with my scanner. command line loop was a lot better then fireing up the gui each time). erez.
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Quoth Erez D: 1. firefox (even on windows) does not support a lot of israely sites: my nephue can't play at fun.walla.com http://fun.walla.com, i can't reach yes's program guide, etc True. Absolutely true. Linux is - alas - not yet for children. 2. OO: even with OO 2.0 beta, i tried reading a word document - it worked, but when i saved it back, parts of it were net readble by word (which the targets of this doc use) also, the default format that OO 2.0 saves is not compatible by OO 1.0 , so saving it in oo 1.0's format is similiar to saving word in word97 format or rtf Disagree - as gilf so adroitly pointed out - send RTF and the problems will be blamed on Microsoft anyway ;-). Or - educate or coerce your correspondents. 3. things like GIMP: at my mother's house, i installed GIMP. but my sister is used to working with photoshop, and took her long time to find the functions she needed, and she said some are missing (or maybe they had different names, and she didn't find them). in short, most people are used to windows. Agree completely and absolutely. GIMP (no matter which version) is a pile of tripe. It is not ready for work with digital photography. It _can_ and is being used to produce reasonable web-sites graphics, but no more. 4. at my work place, we use exchange server. as i do not have a good open replacement, i had to leave it that way. i tried to set evolution to work with it, but after spending two days on it, i gave up as it didn't work. True and no good solution. Life sucks. Some people make money on it ;-). M -- ---MAV Marc A. Volovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] Swiftouch, LTD +972-544-676764 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Tzafrir Cohen wrote: /me reminds Uri and Peter of an enlightened decision of some people in Massachusetts, that was already linked to in this thread. Yes, there is such a standard: Sun has submitted OpenOffice 1's document format to OASIS as a standard candidate. After some ammendements it was recieved as a document format. It has already been proven to be portable, as there are a number of independent implementations (OpenOffice 2, KOffice, Abiword (currently only import, hopefully soon also export), and hopefully soon also TextMaker). And recently Massachusetts declared it to be the official documents format for all govrement workers as of 2007. Which probably means MS-Office will be forced to support it as well by then. And what happens until 2007? They will keep using Word Document formats? Why wait 2 years? It's a free market. Then can either support the new standard and still keep that client or not support it and force the every civil servant to have OpenOffice (or a different conforming word processor) installed on his/her desktop. I agree. It's good to have a standard. But why only in Massachusetts? And why only in government offices? Why not include lawyers business offices too? [lawyers use almost 100% MS Office formats. Believe me, I know]. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Oron Peled wrote: On Wednesday, 5 בOctober 2005 12:54, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I think there should be a standard for office file formats, and the standard should not be owned by MS. There is. It is called OpenDocument (by OASIS). Tzafrir already pointed you to the Massachusetts decision to use it. It is supported by OpenOffice (2.0 and 1.1.5), Koffice and is making its way into Abiword and Gnumeric. OK, but we can't actually use the standard as long as the majority of people can't read it. And they can't read it because they use MS Office. You can't send a non-MS-Office-compatible files to such people. It will not work. They will not install Open Office because of you (at least in most cases, if they are not geeks). You can keep saying there is no solution (because it's not 100% perfect) and stay with your current options (which are far from perfect) or switch once and for all (like most people here have done long ago). Staying with MS products while whining about being locked to their solutions is (i'll let you choose your own term for this). I have to stay compatible with the people I communicate with. Currently the most convenient way is by using MS Office. I also have Open Office on my computer, but I hardly use it at all. Open Office is far from perfect. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Aaron wrote: The answer from a technical writer is no, not with MS office, not with OO, not with anything other than pdf. I had a client that no matter what I did if I sent an office 2000 document to them it never looked right. (we were both using office 2000) That is why pdf is the only or one of the only sure ways of making sure that what you did will look right on someone elses computer. But you can't edit a PDF file with MS Office. Is there any Free software which can edit PDF files and convert them to other formats? Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/6/05, Marc A. Volovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quoth Erez D: what mailer are you using (what is 'Quoth' ? ) 1. firefox (even on windows) does not support a lot of israely sites: my nephue can't play at fun.walla.com http://fun.walla.com, i can't reach yes's program guide, etcTrue. Absolutely true. Linux is - alas - not yet for children. that is not linux, that was imcopatibility between firefox and walla (i used firefox over XP ) 2. OO: even with OO 2.0 beta, i tried reading a word document - it worked, but when i saved it back, parts of it were net readble by word (which the targets of this doc use) also, the default format that OO 2.0 saves is not compatible by OO 1.0 , so saving it in oo 1.0's format is similiar to saving word in word97 format or rtf i just wanted to state that OO is the same as word in 'changing the defualt format' in word 2003 i can save also in RTF, but if i get a doc in word2003, i need someone to do that for me. same with getting OO 2.0 format when i only have OO 1.1 Disagree - as gilf so adroitly pointed out - send RTF and the problems willbe blamed on Microsoft anyway ;-). Or - educate or coerce your correspondents. 3. things like GIMP: at my mother's house, i installed GIMP. but my sister is used to working with photoshop, and took her long time to find the functions she needed, and she said some are missing (or maybe they had different names, and she didn't find them). in short, most people are used to windows.Agree completely and absolutely. GIMP (no matter which version) is a pileof tripe. It is not ready for work with digital photography. It _can_ and is being used to produce reasonable web-sites graphics, but no more. 4. at my work place, we use exchange server. as i do not have a good open replacement, i had to leave it that way. i tried to set evolution to work with it, but after spending two days on it, i gave up as it didn't work.True and no good solution. Life sucks. Some people make money on it ;-).M-MAVMarc A. Volovic [EMAIL PROTECTED]Swiftouch, LTD +972-544-676764
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/6/05, Uri Even-Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, but we can't actually use the standard as long as the majority of people can't read it. And they can't read it because they use MS Office. You can't send a non-MS-Office-compatible files to such people. It will not work. They will not install Open Office because of you (at least in most cases, if they are not geeks). Which just gave me an idea for the OO people - taking a page out of Firefox' book - provide an MS Office plugin which can read OO (or OpenDocument?) files so people can read it easely using their existing MS office. It has the advantage that it should be smaller (hopefully) and will be considered by most people as just another plugin to our o-so-beloved-MS-office package, same as existing PDF writers. Another idea - provide a lightweight reader version of OpenOffice which will (also hopefully) be much lighter than the full-fledged package. MS used to provide FREE office readers (maybe they still do). --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Thursday, 6 בOctober 2005 12:50, Uri Even-Chen wrote: But you can't edit a PDF file with MS Office. Is there any Free software which can edit PDF files and convert them to other formats? As previously stated, KWord from the KDE Office suite can open and edit PDF documents, and then save them to any other supported format (OpenDocument, for example). Granted, you lose a lot of formating - it doesn't convert the graphics and you lose all non-trivial styling, but its understandable as its a word processor, not a desktop publishing tool. Also, ghostscript packages a pdf2ps tool, and from PS you can convert to almost anything else. -- Oded ::.. Do you dream in colors or do you discriminate ? To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Aaron wrote: The answer from a technical writer is no, not with MS office, not with OO, not with anything other than pdf. I had a client that no matter what I did if I sent an office 2000 document to them it never looked right. (we were both using office 2000) That is why pdf is the only or one of the only sure ways of making sure that what you did will look right on someone elses computer. But you can't edit a PDF file with MS Office. Is there any Free software which can edit PDF files and convert them to other formats? http://www.google.co.il/search?q=convert+pdf+to+html+free The problem will be, as usual, Hebrew. Israel is a very small market. I heard that Amber is good (2nd page of results with the key above). Meanwhile you can use Adobe's free service: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html send the file to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and you will get it back as html. Or put the document on the web and click on the link 'convert' on the adobe page shown above. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Quoth Erez D: what mailer are you using (what is 'Quoth' ? ) mutt and thunderbird. quoth from mutt. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 01:41:54PM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: And recently Massachusetts declared it to be the official documents format for all govrement workers as of 2007. Which probably means MS-Office will be forced to support it as well by then. And what happens until 2007? They will keep using Word Document formats? Why wait 2 years? It's a free market. Then can either support the new standard and still keep that client or not support it and force the every civil servant to have OpenOffice (or a different conforming word processor) installed on his/her desktop. I agree. It's good to have a standard. But why only in Massachusetts? And why only in government offices? Why not include lawyers business offices too? [lawyers use almost 100% MS Office formats. Believe me, I know]. And what are you going to do about it? -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 12:52:31PM +0200, Erez D wrote:
On 10/6/05, Marc A. Volovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Quoth Erez D:
what mailer are you using (what is 'Quoth' ? )
OT: some useful tools:
'dict quoth' gives me:
Quoth \Quoth\ (kw[=o]th or kw[u^]th), v. t. [AS. cwe[eth]an, imp
cw[ae][eth], pl. cw[=ae]don; akin to OS. que[eth]an, OHG.
quethan, quedan, Icel. kve[eth]a, Goth. qi[thorn]an.
[root]22. Cf. {Bequeath}.]
Said; spoke; uttered; -- used only in the first and third
persons in the past tenses, and always followed by its
nominative, the word or words said being the object; as,
quoth I, quoth he. Let me not live, quoth he. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
KDE users have kdict. GNOME users have gdict.
As for the eternal question what mailer are you using?, here's a
little tip for thunderbird users:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=thunderbirdnumpg=10id=562
--
Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is
http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best
ICQ# 16849755 | | friend
=
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 06/10/2005, at 13:52, Erez D wrote: i just wanted to state that OO is the same as word in 'changing the defualt format' in word 2003 i can save also in RTF, but if i get a doc in word2003, i need someone to do that for me. same with getting OO 2.0 format when i only have OO 1.1 OpenOffice 1.1.5 can open OpenDocument files without a problem. This change in OpenOffice 2 was done to make sure that the default document format is a standard one (OpenDocument) and not a non- standard one (SXW). Can you see another way they could have moved to a standard document format without changing the default (and adding support for in 1.1.5)? --- Shoshannah Forbes http://www.xslf.com = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Tzafrir Cohen wrote: It's a free market. Then can either support the new standard and still keep that client or not support it and force the every civil servant to have OpenOffice (or a different conforming word processor) installed on his/her desktop. I agree. It's good to have a standard. But why only in Massachusetts? And why only in government offices? Why not include lawyers business offices too? [lawyers use almost 100% MS Office formats. Believe me, I know]. And what are you going to do about it? What can I do? Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Oded Arbel wrote: As previously stated, KWord from the KDE Office suite can open and edit PDF documents, and then save them to any other supported format (OpenDocument, for example). Granted, you lose a lot of formating - it doesn't convert the graphics and you lose all non-trivial styling, but its understandable as its a word processor, not a desktop publishing tool. Thanks. It is available for Windows? Also, ghostscript packages a pdf2ps tool, and from PS you can convert to almost anything else. Converting twice is too complicated. I prefer to convert directly to the desired format. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Peter wrote: Is there any Free software which can edit PDF files and convert them to other formats? http://www.google.co.il/search?q=convert+pdf+to+html+free A link to Google doesn't help much. There are many non-free applications out there. If you check the websites on the Google page you sent me you will find many non-free applications. The problem will be, as usual, Hebrew. Israel is a very small market. I heard that Amber is good (2nd page of results with the key above). Meanwhile you can use Adobe's free service: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html send the file to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and you will get it back as html. Or put the document on the web and click on the link 'convert' on the adobe page shown above. I'm looking for a Free software, as in Capital F. With source code and everything. Search for The Free Software Definition or look at this page: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Fwd: Re: Why most people prefer Windows]
I'm sending again - without the file. Why Linux-IL doesn't receive files? Uri. Original Message Subject: Re: Why most people prefer Windows Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 13:27:43 +0300 From: Uri Even-Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: Speedy Net To: Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Linux-IL linux-il@linux.org.il Peter wrote: Knowing that OO can send RTF and plain text and other formats, such as html, WHY would you want to send a Word format document to someone whose Word version you do not know, since you are a computer geek and aware of potential problems ? I mean, I would understand if you would only have a 'recent' version of O, and not be a computer geek. Then, you would have no choice, but would be sure to do 'the right thing'. No ? After all, you can always use the fax if it does not work out ... But just in case you want to try out OO with rtf, see attached. Peter OK, I opened your file with both MS Office and Open Office. The content is the same but the file doesn't look completely identical. But I tried something else: I saved it as a different file with MS-Word and then opened it with Open Office. There are bugs with the Hebrew and you can see for yourself (I'm attaching the file). That's what I meant when I said Open Office and MS Office are not 100% compatible. If you save files with one version they are not completely readable with the other. By the way, I always send files to people in RTF format. Unless they created the original file in another format. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: Re: Why most people prefer Windows]
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I'm trying to send this message again, it didn't work the first time. Uri. Dear Uri, since you sent the message to the list and to me by cc for the second time, I got the message with the attachment and the list got the message without the attachment, because it strips them (the list server). Since I already have 2 copies of what you sent as an attachment, please do not cc to me any more copies of this message to the list ;-) Should you have the deathwish to send the attachment to the list anyway, uuencode the file and send it inline (not as attachment). good luck, Peter -- Binary/unsupported file stripped by Listar -- -- Type: APPLICATION/MSWORD -- File: usr-table.rtf = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/6/05, Amos Shapira [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 10/6/05, Gil Freund [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PDF is the same as a printed document. It's a one way street. That's the common wizdom but I was surprised to learn that KOffice can actually open and edit PDF files. I haven't played with it a lot but it looked useable with the one or two documents I tried this on. If memory serves, PDF uses blocks for text and graphics. You can edit only withing the given block. --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Peter wrote: Is there any Free software which can edit PDF files and convert them to other formats? http://www.google.co.il/search?q=convert+pdf+to+html+free A link to Google doesn't help much. There are many non-free applications out there. If you check the websites on the Google page you sent me you will find many non-free applications. Yes, but among them are those which are free, or almost free (shareware for example). Usually when someone sends you a link that partly answers the question you asked you try to thank for that part, and ignore the other. Of course the local custom for computer geeks may be different. I wouldn't know. The problem will be, as usual, Hebrew. Israel is a very small market. I heard that Amber is good (2nd page of results with the key above). Meanwhile you can use Adobe's free service: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html send the file to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and you will get it back as html. Or put the document on the web and click on the link 'convert' on the adobe page shown above. I'm looking for a Free software, as in Capital F. With source code and everything. Search for The Free Software Definition or look at this page: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. Well, how about writing one ? You could start with the sources of xpdf which already does more than half the job, and just add a little glue code to generate html. I am sure that you can make it work. Or hack KOffice so it works as you like it. KOffice is free enough imho. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: Re: Why most people prefer Windows]
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I'm sending again - without the file. Why Linux-IL doesn't receive files? Because we prefer to receive VBA macro viruses via regular email. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: Re: Why most people prefer Windows]
Hi Peter, I was not aware that the list doesn't receive files. However, I didn't receive this message from the list at all (I do receive other messages I send). So I got the impression that the list didn't receive my message at all. That's why I sent it again (and then again, without the file). Sorry if you received my message more than once. Uri. Peter wrote: On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I'm trying to send this message again, it didn't work the first time. Uri. Dear Uri, since you sent the message to the list and to me by cc for the second time, I got the message with the attachment and the list got the message without the attachment, because it strips them (the list server). Since I already have 2 copies of what you sent as an attachment, please do not cc to me any more copies of this message to the list ;-) Should you have the deathwish to send the attachment to the list anyway, uuencode the file and send it inline (not as attachment). good luck, Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Thursday, 6 בOctober 2005 21:22, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Thanks. It is available for Windows? On Thursday, 6 בOctober 2005 21:31, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I'm looking for a Free software, as in Capital F. With source code and everything. Hmmm... 9 minutes passed and I-Must-Have-a-Windows-Solution turned into Free-Software-in-Capital-F-is-Essential. What a waste, I'd better get some real work done... off we go... -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 The use of Windoze cripples the mind; its use should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence. (With apologies to Edsger W. Dijkstra) = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Oron Peled wrote: On Thursday, 6 בOctober 2005 21:22, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Thanks. It is available for Windows? On Thursday, 6 בOctober 2005 21:31, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I'm looking for a Free software, as in Capital F. With source code and everything. Hmmm... 9 minutes passed and I-Must-Have-a-Windows-Solution turned into Free-Software-in-Capital-F-is-Essential. What's the problem? A Free software can work with Windows. I installed Thunderbird, Firefox and Open Office on Windows. It's not that you have to use either only Free software, or only non-Free software. I wish all of us used only Free software, but we can't. Only few people (very few) use only Free software. The rest of us use whatever we can - whatever works best for us. And remember, ordinary people (not geeks) don't even know what a Free software is! Even if you explain it to them they will not understand (believe me, I tried). They will use whatever works best for them, is easier to use and is cheaper. Freedom is only for geeks! Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Peter wrote: Assume you have Office 2000. You compose a Word document using the super duper templates and one teensy VBA stub you don't even notice or know about, and which uses a feature not present in W97. You send it to someone who uses O97. Is it compatible ? Is that what you are saying ? Word 97 is obsolete. Don't use it. Same goes for Windows 98. Any MS software which is not at least 2000 version is obsolete. Even MS don't want you to use it. They want you to upgrade. Pay more money. And Imho you are on the wrong mailling list for this flamefest ;-) Command line programs are also obsolete but my screen is smaller than a football field so I have no place to put the ~30,000 buttons I would need to represent the command line programs I need on a gui. So I use a command line. People don't use W97 because they *like* it but because they have no choice. Upgrading, which requires a new computer, new windows installation, time, costs money and is likely not what a person who sent you a letter about your house, your car, or a job prospect would like to do. And you would very likely not want to tell them what to do ... then upgrade again and pay more money again. And again. If you use MS software, you have to upgrade every 3 or 4 years. But even if not, you have to upgrade once in a while to be compatible with other people and for security reasons. But it's not only with software - even with cars you have to upgrade once in a while. But there is no issue of I know people who own drive 60+ year old cars. They are worth A LOT of money. They are legal to drive when taken care of. compatibility here. The issue is about new developments, technology- and security-related. And in other industries too. MS didn't invent upgrading, but they pushed it to its limit... M$ is afaik the first software firm that has succeeded to move upgrading from a bugfix and feature enhancement move to a consumer move. An optional way to overcome this is to come up with a standard for Office files, such as RTF. But companies like MS don't want a standard - they want to own their formats. The only way to overcome it is That's why a third party, like Sun, or OpenOffice.org who makes a product that addresses precisely this problem should not be played down. write WHICH Word Document version the file is saved in. It's a part of their strategy to confuse conquer. But OO *DOES* so you can *CHOOSE*. *NOW*. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
After sifting through this thread, and the the one that followed (firefox, etc) it, I'm forced to ask the obvious: Why did you post this message in the first place? * You like Windows. * You rather no spend the time require to learn (?) Firefox (!!!) and/or OpenOffice. * You find it acceptable that MS will force upgrade you every year or two. Even if you don't, you are unwilling to do anything about it. * In short. You rather use Windows/Office/IE combo. So again I ask. Why did you bother this list with this senseless argument? Gilboa On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 22:05 +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Hi people, I hope I'm not stepping on open wounds here, but I want to raise this discussion. My father has a computer with Windows 98, and he asked me to check it for technical problems. I told him that Windows 98 is old and obsolete, so he should either upgrade to Windows XP or start using Linux. My father instantly replied that he wants to have Windows. Also at the office of his company, there are about 12 computers - all of them using some version of Windows. I wonder how come most people companies prefer Windows - is it because they're already used to it, or because they're afraid of changing, or because they want to use a specific software which is not available on Linux, or because they want to be like everyone else? Because most people I know, if they're not computer geeks - use Windows. And most companies too. People even got used to send documents in Microsoft Office format - even in business related documents, legal documents etc. Windows Microsoft Office have become a de-facto standard. What do you think? Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Oron Peled wrote: No. Instead of waiting for some magical law to solve your problem, you can use free software. This is what we all do, so we don't have to dance to the tune of companies (MS or others). Most people use non-free software. Even FireFox has plugins which are not free. Most people who are not computer geeks use MS platforms: Windows, MS Office etc. We all have to communicate with each other. Which means, I have to be able to read MS Office documents from these non-geeks who don't even know what Free Software is. Business offices, law offices, private people - they all send each other files in MS Office format. Word, Excel, Powerpoint - you name it. I can't and don't want to ignore them. DID you EVER try OO or are you too scared because it might work for you ? Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Quoth Peter: On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Most people use non-free software. Even FireFox has plugins which are [snip] Office format. Word, Excel, Powerpoint - you name it. I can't and don't want to ignore them. DID you EVER try OO or are you too scared because it might work for you ? There are two arguments here - a legitimate (if, in my opinion, misguided) concern by Uri Even-Chen and an ad-hominem by Peter. Let's address the ad-hominem first. It is a fine tactic, one I personally am very fond of. In the case of Israelis, it is often the best and - alas - the only tactic. So - good job, Peter. As to Uri's concern - yes, you are right - you need to interoperate. Your only modus operandi is education - educate your correspondents about using what can be described as a RCD (Reasonable Common Denominator). OpenOffice can and does interoperate with MS Office to a reasonable degree. Or - rather - vice versa. We are promised a much better level of interoperability once OO2 hits the streets in earnest (though I am not too optimistic). So - OO and OO2 work, sometimes (often) with quirks. Grin and buffulo it. Marc -- ---MAV Marc A. Volovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] Swiftouch, LTD +972-544-676764 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: It's not just a perception. I checked. And I'm a computer geek, A computer geek on this list is an OO user ;-) When I upgraded from Word 97 to Office 2000 I also had some problems of incompatibility. Some old documents looked differently with Office 2000. But once you upgrade a document, you don't use it with the old Office version. So you need to upgrade each document only once. And For each of the about 100 documents/day produced in a small office, over the last cca. 3-4 years, including those on backup disks from the previous 3-4 years, and the Einstein documents since before that ? Dear Uri, how many mice would you have to click to death to achieve that ? Who would pay you ? Oh, wait, there are commercial solutions for that. You could *gasp* buy a document converter that would upgrade your documents to go with your system upgrade. What a nice menagerie. the changes are minor (mainly in Hebrew documents). Do you have to find them visually ? Is the remedial action different for each file ? Do you think that Massachusetts decided to switch to a non-Word format by accident ? If you want to migrate a file from one office software to another - you have to be a computer geek. Ordinary people just can't handle it. And MS knows it. Right. And public libraries, county registrars, notaries, lawyers, the courts, the police, the government standards office and three dozen other categories of people who keep records for slightly longer than 2-3 years (not to say more than 2000 years in certain cases) should use Word formats because they are 'compatible'. This year. What about next year ? We upgrade ? On taxpayer's money ? Suuure we do. How many times do you think this trick is going to work ? A visit from a nouveau riche 'illustrious' person and we give it another go ? Maybe not. I am surprised that no opposition politicians have taken this small matter of squandering public funds on a pyramid scheme of 'upgrading' and done something about it in their political campaign. After all, there is a lot of money to be saved. Just think about how many licenses it costs to keep the .gov.il computers upgraded and 'compatible'. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Quoth Peter: I do not agree here. You do not 'educate' correspondents. imho you have to match them as a client and/or service provider or peer as much as possible. Well - it pretty much depends on relationship with the correspondent. If the correspondent is either your client or supplier - often you can educate (the voice of experience) or coerce (the voice of reason). Wrt O/OO, OO is a viable option now and it causes *less* incompatibility than O/O between versions, in my experience. Ymmv. Not in Hebrew - and I am quoting my most exacting critic re OpenOffice - my daughter. OO is substandard in Hebrew to the extreme (especially in tables) and OO2beta is not there yet, either. -- ---MAV Marc A. Volovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] Swiftouch, LTD +972-544-676764 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 01:42:48AM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: When I upgraded from Word 97 to Office 2000 I also had some problems of incompatibility. Some old documents looked differently with Office 2000. But once you upgrade a document, you don't use it with the old Office version. So you need to upgrade each document only once. And the changes are minor (mainly in Hebrew documents). Paraphrasing on that: When I upgraded from MS-Word to OOo I also had some problems of incompatibility. Some old documents looked differently with OOo. But once you upgrade a document, you don't use it with the old MS-Office version. So you need to upgrade each document only once. And the changes are minor (mainly in Hebrew documents). -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Marc A. Volovic wrote: Quoth Peter: I do not agree here. You do not 'educate' correspondents. imho you have to match them as a client and/or service provider or peer as much as possible. Well - it pretty much depends on relationship with the correspondent. If the correspondent is either your client or supplier - often you can educate (the voice of experience) or coerce (the voice of reason). Wrt O/OO, OO is a viable option now and it causes *less* incompatibility than O/O between versions, in my experience. Ymmv. Not in Hebrew - and I am quoting my most exacting critic re OpenOffice - my daughter. OO is substandard in Hebrew to the extreme (especially in tables) and OO2beta is not there yet, either. I agree that there is room for improvement. But tables are the stumbling block of O. Always were. That and bidi. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Gilboa Davara wrote: After sifting through this thread, and the the one that followed (firefox, etc) it, I'm forced to ask the obvious: Why did you post this message in the first place? * You like Windows. * You rather no spend the time require to learn (?) Firefox (!!!) and/or OpenOffice. * You find it acceptable that MS will force upgrade you every year or two. Even if you don't, you are unwilling to do anything about it. * In short. You rather use Windows/Office/IE combo. So again I ask. Why did you bother this list with this senseless argument? Gilboa I think many people on this mailing list are interested in this subject. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 11:29:33AM +0300, Peter wrote: For each of the about 100 documents/day produced in a small office, over the last cca. 3-4 years, including those on backup disks from the previous 3-4 years, and the Einstein documents since before that ? About once a month, I see requests on other lists from people who need to convert 5 1/4 disks with Einstein documents on them, to 3 1/2 disks with Word documents on them. I can do the media conversion, but no one I know of can convert the documents themselves. It seems that Einstein had some advanced features that are now in Word and OO, that never made it to anything that read Einstein documents. :-( No, Dagesh/Accent will import Einstein files, but not these. :-( I believe that Einstein had output filters (save as) that worked, but I also know of no one that has a running copy of it. That's why I keep a copy of WordStar 3.3. This the original MS/DOS version that for you trivia fans was created by running the CPM 8080 ASM files through a 8080 to 8088 assembly language covertor provided by Intel. To keep this part relevant to Linux, I think it will run under freedos using DOSEMU. What is missing however, probably due to lack of demand, is a program to read CP/M diskettes under Linux. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 Support the growing boycott of Google by radio users and hobbyists. It's starting to work, Yahoo has surpassed Google. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Peter wrote: Right. And public libraries, county registrars, notaries, lawyers, the courts, the police, the government standards office and three dozen other categories of people who keep records for slightly longer than 2-3 years (not to say more than 2000 years in certain cases) should use Word formats because they are 'compatible'. This year. What about next year ? We upgrade ? On taxpayer's money ? Suuure we do. How many times do you think this trick is going to work ? A visit from a nouveau riche 'illustrious' person and we give it another go ? Maybe not. I am surprised that no opposition politicians have taken this small matter of squandering public funds on a pyramid scheme of 'upgrading' and done something about it in their political campaign. After all, there is a lot of money to be saved. Just think about how many licenses it costs to keep the .gov.il computers upgraded and 'compatible'. I think there should be a standard for office file formats, and the standard should not be owned by MS. MS don't want a standard, they don't want to be compatible with other softwares. They own the market. I think there should be a standard so people will choose their office software for features and not for compatibility. It's not good to the market to have a monopoly. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Tzafrir Cohen wrote: Paraphrasing on that: When I upgraded from MS-Word to OOo I also had some problems of incompatibility. Some old documents looked differently with OOo. But once you upgrade a document, you don't use it with the old MS-Office version. So you need to upgrade each document only once. And the changes are minor (mainly in Hebrew documents). It seems as you never have to communicate with people who are not computer geeks. You know there are people who don't use OO out there. If you send them an OO document, they will try to open it with (god forbid) MS office! And if it doesn't work for them, you will have to send it by fax! And they will have to type it all over again! (that is, if they have to make changes). Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I think many people on this mailing list are interested in this subject. Yes, they are. Look at the pretty flames ... Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Peter wrote: Right. And public libraries, county registrars, notaries, lawyers, the courts, the police, the government standards office and three dozen other categories of people who keep records for slightly longer than 2-3 years (not to say more than 2000 years in certain cases) should use Word formats because they are 'compatible'. This year. What about next year ? We upgrade ? On taxpayer's money ? Suuure we do. How many times do you think this trick is going to work ? A visit from a nouveau riche 'illustrious' person and we give it another go ? Maybe not. I am surprised that no opposition politicians have taken this small matter of squandering public funds on a pyramid scheme of 'upgrading' and done something about it in their political campaign. After all, there is a lot of money to be saved. Just think about how many licenses it costs to keep the .gov.il computers upgraded and 'compatible'. I think there should be a standard for office file formats, and the standard should not be owned by MS. MS don't want a standard, they Agree. don't want to be compatible with other softwares. They own the market. I think there should be a standard so people will choose their office software for features and not for compatibility. It's not good to the market to have a monopoly. Agree. But unless you want a committee to elaborate a standard (shudder) like H323 (re-shudder) then you need to pick the best solution that exists at the moment and standardize it. That is the proven way. That's the way it was done with C for example. And the standard has to be open, as in free beer. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Peter wrote: ... And the standard has to be open, as in free beer. I agree. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Tzafrir Cohen wrote: Paraphrasing on that: When I upgraded from MS-Word to OOo I also had some problems of incompatibility. Some old documents looked differently with OOo. But once you upgrade a document, you don't use it with the old MS-Office version. So you need to upgrade each document only once. And the changes are minor (mainly in Hebrew documents). It seems as you never have to communicate with people who are not computer geeks. You know there are people who don't use OO out there. If you send them an OO document, they will try to open it with (god forbid) MS office! And if it doesn't work for them, you will have to send it by fax! And they will have to type it all over again! (that is, if they have to make changes). Knowing that OO can send RTF and plain text and other formats, such as html, WHY would you want to send a Word format document to someone whose Word version you do not know, since you are a computer geek and aware of potential problems ? I mean, I would understand if you would only have a 'recent' version of O, and not be a computer geek. Then, you would have no choice, but would be sure to do 'the right thing'. No ? After all, you can always use the fax if it does not work out ... But just in case you want to try out OO with rtf, see attached. Peter -- Binary/unsupported file stripped by Listar -- -- Type: APPLICATION/rtf -- File: usr-table.rtf = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 01:01:48PM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Tzafrir Cohen wrote: Paraphrasing on that: When I upgraded from MS-Word to OOo I also had some problems of incompatibility. Some old documents looked differently with OOo. But once you upgrade a document, you don't use it with the old MS-Office version. So you need to upgrade each document only once. And the changes are minor (mainly in Hebrew documents). It seems as you never have to communicate with people who are not computer geeks. My mother? You know there are people who don't use OO out there. If you send them an OO document, they will try to open it with (god forbid) MS office! OOo can be installed alongside a different version of MS-Office. The newer version of Office can't. This means that the upgrade of MS-Office is a more painful action than installing OpenOffice. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 12:54:07PM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I think there should be a standard for office file formats, and the standard should not be owned by MS. MS don't want a standard, they don't want to be compatible with other softwares. They own the market. I think there should be a standard so people will choose their office software for features and not for compatibility. It's not good to the market to have a monopoly. /me reminds Uri and Peter of an enlightened decision of some people in Massachusetts, that was already linked to in this thread. Yes, there is such a standard: Sun has submitted OpenOffice 1's document format to OASIS as a standard candidate. After some ammendements it was recieved as a document format. It has already been proven to be portable, as there are a number of independent implementations (OpenOffice 2, KOffice, Abiword (currently only import, hopefully soon also export), and hopefully soon also TextMaker). And recently Massachusetts declared it to be the official documents format for all govrement workers as of 2007. Which probably means MS-Office will be forced to support it as well by then. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
And recently Massachusetts declared it to be the official documents format for all govrement workers as of 2007. Which probably means MS-Office will be forced to support it as well by then. The man in charge paid no attention to the judgement of a US federal judge in a US federal court and got his way with it. What makes you think he will listen to a state ? Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 06:18:56PM +0300, Peter wrote: And recently Massachusetts declared it to be the official documents format for all govrement workers as of 2007. Which probably means MS-Office will be forced to support it as well by then. The man in charge paid no attention to the judgement of a US federal judge in a US federal court and got his way with it. What makes you think he will listen to a state ? It's a free market. Then can either support the new standard and still keep that client or not support it and force the every civil servant to have OpenOffice (or a different conforming word processor) installed on his/her desktop. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wednesday, 5 בOctober 2005 12:54, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I think there should be a standard for office file formats, and the standard should not be owned by MS. There is. It is called OpenDocument (by OASIS). Tzafrir already pointed you to the Massachusetts decision to use it. It is supported by OpenOffice (2.0 and 1.1.5), Koffice and is making its way into Abiword and Gnumeric. You can keep saying there is no solution (because it's not 100% perfect) and stay with your current options (which are far from perfect) or switch once and for all (like most people here have done long ago). Staying with MS products while whining about being locked to their solutions is (i'll let you choose your own term for this). -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 באנו ווינדוס לגרש, בידינו פנגווין יש! = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
even if the formatting is d. The document I receive is only one part. The bigger part is the document I need to send back to the client. Will it look the same on the client's machine? The answer from a technical writer is no, not with MS office, not with OO, not with anything other than pdf. I had a client that no matter what I did if I sent an office 2000 document to them it never looked right. (we were both using office 2000) That is why pdf is the only or one of the only sure ways of making sure that what you did will look right on someone elses computer. Aaron Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Well, I worked as a tecwriter, and there were two shows MS Word and FrameMaker, The first is not really a techwriting tool but is used as such, and it is buggy, and I mean buggy. The second is a real tool, but a pain to learn and a pain to use. I personally hate word processors and avoid them if at all possible they are all bloatware. That said I use Oo when I need to open and save MS word docs. For profesional use I use DocBook, from docbook I can make html, pdf, rtf svg to name a few output formats. I don't tell clients what I use I just ask them what format they want the results in. For the final version I send a pdf, so they shouldn't mess up my hard work. docbook is a standard, a language MS Word and and Oo are applications bound to a file format. What do you do with a MS word document that is corrupted? Cry. With xml (including Oo) just open the file in a text editor and laugh. If you are using tables to format with or aligning text with spaces, then you are inviting trouble. Aaron On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 13:46 +0300, Peter wrote: On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I think many people on this mailing list are interested in this subject. Yes, they are. Look at the pretty flames ... Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/6/05, Aaron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For profesional use I use DocBook, from docbook I can make html, pdf, rtf svg to name a few output formats. How is Hebrew support with DocBook? If there is any - how do you edit Hebrew DocBook? --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/5/05, Aaron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: even if the formatting is d. The document I receive is only one part. The bigger part is the document I need to send back to the client. Will it look the same on the client's machine? The answer from a technical writer is no, not with MS office, not with OO, not with anything other than pdf. Lyx :) I had a client that no matter what I did if I sent an office 2000 document to them it never looked right. (we were both using office 2000) That is why pdf is the only or one of the only sure ways of making sure that what you did will look right on someone elses computer. PDF is the same as a printed document. It's a one way street. Word 2 had an ASCII like display that did not use printable formats (so did NotaBene and WP 6). The crowds, let by PC Magazine, wanted their bells, whistles and WYSIWYG. Aaron Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/6/05, Gil Freund [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PDF is the same as a printed document. It's a one way street. That's the common wizdom but I was surprised to learn that KOffice can actually open and edit PDF files. I haven't played with it a lot but it looked useable with the one or two documents I tried this on. --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
There is supposed to be hebrew support but as far as I know it hasn't materialized :( but many xml formats do support hebrew. Aaron On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 06:49 +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: On 10/6/05, Aaron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For profesional use I use DocBook, from docbook I can make html, pdf, rtf svg to name a few output formats. How is Hebrew support with DocBook? If there is any - how do you edit Hebrew DocBook? --Amos = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
So adding one more program to the mix adds that many more things that can be incompatible. I am no longer following you here: What do you propose ? Knowing that OO has the option to save in W97 or W2k format (besides other formats): Assume you have Office 2000. You compose a Word document using the super duper templates and one teensy VBA stub you don't even notice or know about, and which uses a feature not present in W97. You send it to someone who uses O97. Is it compatible ? Is that what you are saying ? Next you will tell me that No, I will not tell you that, and I don't play with other people's straw men :) Ok. In the more common case the client wants a file that can be read by MS-Word. They may want to mark it up. If it's a go-between (like an agency) they may want their editor to go over it. PDF is often not an option. Yes, but, lacking a crystal ball, how can you tell what type of Word they use ? Because if they use W97 and you use W2k then they will likely lose if you send them a message. Or rather, someone else will win, because they will draw the conclusion that they need to upgrade. Latest example: a few months ago I was sent a form as a word document by actcom staff wrt. upgrade of service. I filled it out in OO and saved it as W2k I think. Then I got a phonecall about their not understanding which mishbetzet in the table I had ticked. Hmm, deja vu ? Other examples: Different versions of NetMeeting do not work together. Most versions of NetMeeting use an invalid INVITE sequence at the beginning of a transaction so they do not work with other SIP clients, such as older versions of NetMeeting. Excel spreadheets work fine until you have an embedded object that belongs to the newer widget set. Embedded VBA which cannot be controlled by the average user almost always causes problems. Web pages made with certain versions of front page will not render in either ff, opera or anything else excepting ie. Embedded objects which use the Windows-only CLSID hash as the id of the application id for the plugin are not portable. m$ flavor floaties cause page content with crazy font sizes to float over pictures and everything else and be impossible to read. Running the w3c validator over such pages lights up just about every error I can think of. So with what, exactly, do you have to be compatible ? With the latest version ? (O2003 ?). With O2k which is common ? With O97 which is the lowest common denominator ? Did you know that there are 96000 hits on google for the search: convert pdf to html on Google, the first of which is the Adobe converter (online, free) ? And that his Billness will likely ship O12 with 'native pdf support' ? I wonder how native (and I wonder what kind of noise Adobe is going to make when m$ extensions will embrace and extend the pdf standard that was, so far, portable - apropos has anyone else noticed the annoyscreen in Acrobat Reader 7 on Linux which says that any document (even ones I made) contains JavaScripts and would I like to enable them ?) Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Peter wrote: So adding one more program to the mix adds that many more things that can be incompatible. I am no longer following you here: What do you propose ? I wasn't proposing anything. I wrote: Compatibilty with the clients' documents is a one of the major issues. For people who are painfully aware of compatibility problems between different versions of MS-Word, OpenOffice may not seem very attractive. At best, it appears to be one more version and possiblty one more format to mess with. If you believe that OpenOffice somehow solves all compatibility problems, many examples of which you appear to be able to detail, please let me know how. -- Thanks, Uri http://translation.israel.net = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Peter wrote: Assume you have Office 2000. You compose a Word document using the super duper templates and one teensy VBA stub you don't even notice or know about, and which uses a feature not present in W97. You send it to someone who uses O97. Is it compatible ? Is that what you are saying ? Word 97 is obsolete. Don't use it. Same goes for Windows 98. Any MS software which is not at least 2000 version is obsolete. Even MS don't want you to use it. They want you to upgrade. Pay more money. And then upgrade again and pay more money again. And again. If you use MS software, you have to upgrade every 3 or 4 years. But even if not, you have to upgrade once in a while to be compatible with other people and for security reasons. But it's not only with software - even with cars you have to upgrade once in a while. But there is no issue of compatibility here. The issue is about new developments, technology- and security-related. And in other industries too. MS didn't invent upgrading, but they pushed it to its limit... An optional way to overcome this is to come up with a standard for Office files, such as RTF. But companies like MS don't want a standard - they want to own their formats. The only way to overcome it is forcing it by law. Otherwise there will never be a standard, and we will always have to upgrade even if we don't want any new features. The ideal is that only people who want new features will upgrade, and people will not be forced to upgrade for compatibility reasons. When you save files with MS-Word you can select many formats, including RTF and others. But the default format is Word Document. I guess at least 95% of the users don't bother to change it. And MS don't even write WHICH Word Document version the file is saved in. It's a part of their strategy to confuse conquer. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Tuesday, 4 בOctober 2005 21:59, Uri Even-Chen wrote: [... long explanation about how MS pushes for upgrade ...] The only way to overcome it is forcing it by law. No. Instead of waiting for some magical law to solve your problem, you can use free software. This is what we all do, so we don't have to dance to the tune of companies (MS or others). Since you demonstrated that you understand well MS strategy and its bad impact on compatibility among MS products, you are fully equipped to guide other people about the correct way to solve these problems: 1. Decide to use standard protocols/formats. 2. Choose software that implements them (e.g OOo). 3. Use filters as an interim solution. Yes, filters won't be perfect, but MS office itself is far from perfect converting its own format among versions (as you pointed out) -- do you want to have this plague for life or only as an interim solution to communicate with uneducated clients? -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them. -- A. Einstein = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 01:30:46AM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Tzafrir Cohen wrote: /me reminds everybody of an enlightened decision of some people in Massachusetts. You wrote this sentence twice. What do you mean? Sorry for not understanding. I forgot to delete it once. Anyway, I meant http://lwn.net/Articles/152924/ Firefox on windows? Do you honestly say that you have problems installing flash on it? What version do you use? Mind providing more details? Though you should really install add-blocker first ;-) . OK, I tried now and installed the Flash plug-in, but it should come with it pre-installed like in MS IE. I also had to agree to some legal BS which I didn't even bother reading. It's even worse: if you bothered reading the text of the license you'd notice that it imposes no limitations on usage. Distribution does require accepting the terms of the agreement. Hence there is really no sound reason for that click-through license, IMHO. I hate having to agree to legal terms when installing software. A true Free Software should not come with terms. It should be free as breathing air, drinking water and watching TV (I don't have to agree to anything when I watch TV). That's an interesting definitions of your basic needs. I would have put there internet connection instead of TV ;-) . But you confuse a bunch of terms here: * Free software is still licensed (unless in the public domain). though with a rather permissive license. * You must still respect that license when distributing it * It should not impose usage limitations * nobody said it should not nag. However you're free to remove nags. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/4/05, Tzafrir Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are you the only one providing support? What about the rest of the family? Unfortunatly I'm not in a position to provide her all the support by myself so I have to rely on other's help sometimes, and they don't know anything about Linux (hardly much about windows). My feeling is that the main reason people prefer Windows is first and foremost because this is what they get with their computer and 99.999% of the time it's also the only system they ever heard of, let alone saw or (gasp) used. The original poster's situation falls under that explenation because his father saw Windows (and ONLY windows) in his office and wanted the same thing. You don't get Windows automatically with your computer. You buy it. You buy it automatically with your computer. You could get a computer without Windows (and pay about 500 NIS less) in clubmarket. But that's besides the point. Compatibility is a big issue. At the end of the day we're communicating with people, not with computers. And don't tell me Open Office is compatible with MS Office - it isn't. At least not 100% compatible. I checked. OO is good enough to open virtually any MS document I get sent (most of them in Hebrew) and to create MS documents when such a format is required by organizations. Right. And MS is about to move to a different format once again soon. Yet another reason not to take MS's arguments seriously. Another one - they have just admitted to ignoring user's requests for PDF support for years until the competition overtook them. --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/4/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quoting Uri Even-Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The same problem is with FireFox - it doesn't come with Windows, you have to install it. I know of quite a few people who switched to FireFox but wouldn't switch from MS-Office to OpenOffice. I also tried Open Office and went back to MS Office. It's just not as easy to use, and not compatible with the rest of the world... Compatibility is a big issue. Compatibilty with the clients' documents is a one of the major issues. For people who are painfully aware of compatibility problems between different versions of MS-Word, OpenOffice may not seem very attractive. This isn't just a matter of cost, it's also a matter of the time spent to give it a proper test. But are they willing to sit down and test all their documents with the new MS office version? My take from your statement is that people just PRECIEVE that OO is less compatible just because it comes from a different source while in practice it might have better support for legacy MS documents than MS Office itself. --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/4/05, Uri Bruck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The document I receive is only one part. The bigger part is the document I need to send back to the client. Will it look the same on the client's machine? Have you tried or are you falling to the same preceived trap these people tell you about? My personal experience so far (over the last 2-3 year by now) is that OO both opens *and creates* MS Office documents without a problem. The only problems I sometimes see are with some embedded objects, but they are few and get fewer with time. I personally use OO to create MS Office versions of my resume when I look for a job and never got a complaint about this (from people who got back to me, so I didn't just miss opportunities because people couldn't open my resume). --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/4/05, Uri Bruck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you believe that OpenOffice somehow solves all compatibility problems, many examples of which you appear to be able to detail, please let me know how. It was explained in this thread numerous times: OpenOffice supports all MS Office format versions since Office 95 and onward - if you use it you can save documents in any format you like. If you save a document in Office 95 format then you should be able to read it with any MS Office version used today. Kapish? --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Oron Peled wrote: No. Instead of waiting for some magical law to solve your problem, you can use free software. This is what we all do, so we don't have to dance to the tune of companies (MS or others). Most people use non-free software. Even FireFox has plugins which are not free. Most people who are not computer geeks use MS platforms: Windows, MS Office etc. We all have to communicate with each other. Which means, I have to be able to read MS Office documents from these non-geeks who don't even know what Free Software is. Business offices, law offices, private people - they all send each other files in MS Office format. Word, Excel, Powerpoint - you name it. I can't and don't want to ignore them. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Amos Shapira wrote: On 10/4/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quoting Uri Even-Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The same problem is with FireFox - it doesn't come with Windows, you have to install it. I know of quite a few people who switched to FireFox but wouldn't switch from MS-Office to OpenOffice. I also tried Open Office and went back to MS Office. It's just not as easy to use, and not compatible with the rest of the world... Compatibility is a big issue. Compatibilty with the clients' documents is a one of the major issues. For people who are painfully aware of compatibility problems between different versions of MS-Word, OpenOffice may not seem very attractive. This isn't just a matter of cost, it's also a matter of the time spent to give it a proper test. But are they willing to sit down and test all their documents with the new MS office version? Past documents are not an issue. My take from your statement is that people just PRECIEVE that OO Obviously willingness to switch has something to do with perception. is less compatible just because it comes from a different source while in practice it might have better support for legacy MS documents than MS Office itself. It does. [and continuing to your other letter] Have you tried or are you falling to the same preceived trap these people tell you about? Of course I've tried. My personal experience so far (over the last 2-3 year by now) is that OO both opens *and creates* MS Office documents without a problem. Usually. The only problems I sometimes see are with some embedded objects, but they are few and get fewer with time. Can you predict with certainty which document will present problems? I personally use OO to create MS Office versions of my resume when I look for a job and never got a complaint about this (from people who got back to me, so I didn't just miss opportunities because people couldn't open my resume). Resumes are trivial documents. The issue is not whether the document will open. It was explained in this thread numerous times: OpenOffice supports all MS Office format versions since Office 95 and onward - if you use it you can save documents in any format you like. If you save a document in Office 95 format then you should be able to read it with any MS Office version used today. should be able - I guess if I pitch back the have you tried it? question the answer will be no. Kapish? I kapish that I probably handle a lot more documents than you do. I also kapish that this is no worse what you've got now is not a compelling reason to switch an office suite. I also kapish that features like document annotations and tracking changes are not as easy to use, not even that easy to find, on OpenOffice. They're there all-right, they're not just not very friendly. --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Thanks, Uri http://translation.israel.net = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Wednesday, 5 בOctober 2005 00:16, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Which means, I have to be able to read MS Office documents from these ... I can't and don't want to ignore them. But you seem to ignore the fact that you *can* do this using free software. You keep repeating that the conversion is not perfect, while you know that the same problems exist between MS-Office (versions, languages, countries, what's not). Since, as you pointed yourself, conversion problems are *inherent* in the MS solution -- you'll suffer migration pains either way: - To the next MS-Office (and the next, and the next...) - To OpenOffice.org and stay with standard formats. The choice looks pretty trivial to me. -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 I just found out that the brain is like a computer. If that's true, then there really aren't any stupid people. Just people running Windows. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Amos Shapira wrote: My take from your statement is that people just PRECIEVE that OO is less compatible just because it comes from a different source while in practice it might have better support for legacy MS documents than MS Office itself. It's not just a perception. I checked. And I'm a computer geek, remember? I checked and if you create a file in MS Office (such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint), then send it to someone who opens it with Open Office and makes some changes, then saves it and sends it back to you - it will not be the same document you originally sent (even without making changes). You lose many features, many things will look different on the screen (and in print) - it's complicated. If both sides use MS Office it's not an issue (of course, it has to be version 2000 and above). When I upgraded from Word 97 to Office 2000 I also had some problems of incompatibility. Some old documents looked differently with Office 2000. But once you upgrade a document, you don't use it with the old Office version. So you need to upgrade each document only once. And the changes are minor (mainly in Hebrew documents). If you want to migrate a file from one office software to another - you have to be a computer geek. Ordinary people just can't handle it. And MS knows it. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Peter's comments are correct. However, the average low-end - not power MS Office / XP user - relates to Windows in a generic way. In other words, Windows in KDE is still Windows and OO is still Office. danny Peter wrote: On Sun, 2 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Hi people, I hope I'm not stepping on open wounds here, but I want to raise this discussion. My father has a computer with Windows 98, and he asked me to check it for technical problems. I told him that Windows 98 is old and obsolete, so he should either upgrade to Windows XP or start using Linux. My father instantly replied that he wants to have Windows. Also at the office of his company, there are about 12 computers - all of them using some version of Windows. I wonder how come most people companies prefer Windows - is it because they're already used to it, or because they're afraid of changing, or because they want to use a specific software which is not available on Linux, or because they want to be like everyone else? Because most people I know, if they're not computer geeks - use Windows. And most companies too. People even got used to send documents in Microsoft Office format - even in business related documents, legal documents etc. Windows Microsoft Office have become a de-facto standard. What do you think? Windows is first and foremost a great advertising success. All the 'relevant' parts of windows are those which are visible and interactive and all the efforts of the company that makes it are concentrated in the direction of *perceived* features. Not quality, not stability, but chrome, 'ease of use' (as perceived by uneducated users who are clueless as to what is needed to make a stable and reliable system!!!) and features that were determined to be desirable by users from a panel and from statistics. Since the resources of the company are limited, they put them where the dollars are, and everything that is behind the scenes, such as the important operating system principles and mechanisms required to sustain this colored frontispice comes second. The people who find this out the hard way are the administrators and system operators who need to set up larger collections of windows machines. And imho they did not even use their money so well. OS X, SGI and BeOS flew hoops around the graphical aspects of the current offering from m$ imho. All the hardware and software manufacturers who make products for the 'windows platform' ride this horse. Nice looks, features that are 'in', and no or relatively little money for QA and interoperability testing. This is the way money is made now in IT for the masses. To understand why people prefer a brand over another you have to study some marketing and advertising as well as marketing psychology. In short, most people prefer to stay with what they already know best or are used to. Computer geeks are not discussed here. To make people change over and try something else, they have to either have some trauma due to damage caused by or connected with the previous product or be attracted to something new and different. Most people who change over are of the first kind, only very few have the spirit of adventure to try something new. One way to move the majority is to make them feel or believe that they are using something obsolete or outdated and that they are no longer a part of the majority because of that. This is a carefully nurtured feeling, built up by advertising and feature 'scaling' (in software, older versions don't look as cool, have fewer buttons, do not operate well with new file formats, etc). It causes people who would not change otherwise to feel apart from the flock and to wish to join the safety of the flock, and this is done by upgrading the computer software. Since this aspect of marketing addresses the vast majority of the users, upgrade-pushing is the most successful marketing strategy in software in societies where people are not geeky and interpid enough to seek out new challenges (and products) so often (or often enough for the taste of moneycounting capitalists). Also proprietary file formats and network protocols are usually introduced as a 'foot in the door' movement, as an extension or 'improvement' to an existing protocol, distributed for free, and in the hope that users will prefer to use default settings (always true), and establish it as a de facto standard. This is the case with Java, m$ flavor dhtml, m$ flavor media files, office file formats and many other things. It was also the case for the LZW algorythm unfortunately, and there will be many more like this if developers will keep jumping into the newest super-duper development environment on an as-they-come base. So 'modified' 'improved' and so forth proprietary protocols and formats are in fact trojan horses which attack the existing set of protocols and formats with the purpose of imposing other, different standards. They are
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Sun, Oct 02, 2005 at 10:05:56PM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: using some version of Windows. I wonder how come most people companies prefer Windows - is it because they're already used to it, or because they're afraid of changing, or because they want to use a specific software which is not available on Linux, or because they want to be like everyone else? It's because Windows is easier for them to learn and use than the alternatives. -- avva There's nothing simply good, nor ill alone -- John Donne = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/3/05, Anatoly Vorobey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's because Windows is easier for them to learn and use than the alternatives. That's the exact misconcept the open source community (or actually, almost any MS rival) has to fight. My mom just got her first computer a year ago and until today she has no clue as to what she sees on the screen, even though she somehow manages to achieve some very basic goals with it. I bet I could have helped her a lot more remotely if she had a Linux on her desktop but everyone else in the family who were in the business of helping her veto'ed against it (and even against Firefox and Thunderbird). A properly setup Linux desktop from, let's say, last 18 months or so, shouldn't be harder to computer users to use than the equivalent Windows XP system. My feeling is that the main reason people prefer Windows is first and foremost because this is what they get with their computer and 99.999% of the time it's also the only system they ever heard of, let alone saw or (gasp) used. The original poster's situation falls under that explenation because his father saw Windows (and ONLY windows) in his office and wanted the same thing. On a second though - were you trolling when you wrote this? :^) --Amos To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 07:36:38PM +1000, Amos Shapira wrote: On 10/3/05, Anatoly Vorobey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's because Windows is easier for them to learn and use than the alternatives. That's the exact misconcept the open source community (or actually, almost any MS rival) has to fight. I'd say it's the *reality* which the open source community should fight. And it does so rather well, to an extent. My mom just got her first computer a year ago and until today she has no clue as to what she sees on the screen, even though she somehow manages to achieve some very basic goals with it. I bet I could have helped her a lot more remotely Use VNC to help her remotely. if she had a Linux on her desktop but everyone else in the family who were in the business of helping her veto'ed against it (and even against Firefox and Thunderbird). Firefox on Windows is by now probably more user-friendly than IE on Windows, especially if you take care to install things like Flash and Real Audio plugins before turning it over to the user. On a second though - were you trolling when you wrote this? :^) No. I use a Linux desktop at home and prefer it to Windows. However, I see no shame in admitting the reality as to which system is still more friendly to users which are totally or almost totally computer-ignorant. You can get a recent Linux distribution, setup a nice desktop environment on it, install and configure Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office. You can *maybe* configure printing to be as painless and seamless as it is on Windows. It will all be rather good, but still not as intuitive to your average computer-illiterate user as Windows. Do you know how computer-illiterate users operate? They put *all* their documents and other files on the desktop until they can no longer get away with it. They click Yes on *every* dialog box they encounter without reading it. If they screw up somewhere, they panic and press the reset button. They *will* be misled by any UI button that's located in a less-than-perfectly-obvious location. The environment and the UI that Linux offers are just not good enough for this. No, let me rephrase: they're good enough, but Windows is better. It's both more intuitive in its interface, and more robust to user mistakes (by robust here I mean that mistakes can be blundered away from by moving a mouse and clicking some buttons; anything you might need to so much as fire up Control Panel for, let alone the registry editor - forget it; similarly on Linux, anything you need to run a shell for - forget it). And why shouldn't it be? The company poured untold millions into researching UI, stole all the good ideas from Mac and NeXT, hired really good people and paid them really good money. They did it for years. All this effort has got to show somewhere, even if MS corporate culture sucks, as does their software engineering in general. Forget Linux for a second; recall in your mind's eye the interfaces of Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98/NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP. A marked improvement at every step. And yet they had a boatload of money and good monitors in '95; why couldn't they bring out the eye-candy and the easier interface/file search/whatever of Windows XP? Because it took a bunch of years and a bunch of millions to research and refine, that's why. Linux is doing pretty well, actually. Desktops are getting better every day (though by now they're hogging way more RAM and CPU than Windows GUI ever does, go figure). Open Office is great. Firefox is a blast (don't know about Thunderbird, it'd take a damn miracle of a MUA to make me move away from my mutt). I'm just not going to mistake PR efforts for reality, that's all. -- avva There's nothing simply good, nor ill alone -- John Donne = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On 10/2/05, Uri Even-Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hope I'm not stepping on open wounds here, but I want to raise this discussion. My father has a computer with Windows 98, and he asked me to check it for technical problems. I told him that Windows 98 is old and obsolete, so he should either upgrade to Windows XP or start using Linux. My father instantly replied that he wants to have Windows. Also Well, if we talk about windows 98 being old, my father has an 386 computer (bought in '91) with windows 3.0 installed on it (from the 3 original 1.2 diskettes). The singlest thing he needs from it is solitaire. It runs nice, it fulfills his computing needs, so why he would upgrade, not to mention that you can't upgrade to anything from microsmock on a 20M (Megabytes!!) hard disk. -- Robert Wallner To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Can we please recall that Linux-IL is supposed to be a *technical* Linux list? Thanks. Now, on a more positive note - Shana Tova to everybody, whether you run Red Hat, Gentoo, KDE, GNOME, Emacs, or vi! -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.org = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Amos Shapira wrote: My mom just got her first computer a year ago and until today she has no clue as to what she sees on the screen, even though she somehow manages to achieve some very basic goals with it. I bet I could have helped her a lot more remotely if she had a Linux on her desktop but everyone else in the family who were in the business of helping her veto'ed against it (and even against Firefox and Thunderbird). A properly setup Linux desktop from, let's say, last 18 months or so, shouldn't be harder to computer users to use than the equivalent Windows XP system. My feeling is that the main reason people prefer Windows is first and foremost because this is what they get with their computer and 99.999% of the time it's also the only system they ever heard of, let alone saw or (gasp) used. The original poster's situation falls under that explenation because his father saw Windows (and ONLY windows) in his office and wanted the same thing. You don't get Windows automatically with your computer. You buy it. But the default operating system is Windows (the latest version, depends when you buy). I mean, most people just don't think about any alternative. Your mother, my father, my brothers, any office - they just don't know anything else. Windows is not perfect, but it's the best thing they know. Most people never used anything else. And not only Windows, but the whole MS suite - Office, Outlook, IE, Media Player - you name it. People just use whatever default software which comes with their computer. I have been to Australia and Thailand and used Internet at public places (such as Cafes). They all use Windows! All with IE. It seems like EVERYBODY is using Windows. It's much easier to be like everybody, use whatever they use. It's like with communication - how many people you know that don't have a regular phone number, but instead use something like Skype? I'm referring to the main phone, not alternative. It's much easier to do what everyone else does. And everyone use Windows. Except some computer geeks... The same problem is with FireFox - it doesn't come with Windows, you have to install it. It doesn't support Flash (not the default installation as far as I know). Many websites will not work with it properly. Then most people prefer not to use it. Most people use IE. I used Netscape once, moved to IE a few years ago when I had problems with Netscape. I tried FireFox but I couldn't see Flash, so I'm not using it (I only use it occasionally as an alternative browser). I'm using IE. It's not easy to change habits - but I'm a computer geek. It's much more difficult for ordinary people... (but there is another reason - as a webmaster I want to use whatever my users are using, at least most of them. You have to keep up with your customers). I also tried Open Office and went back to MS Office. It's just not as easy to use, and not compatible with the rest of the world... Compatibility is a big issue. At the end of the day we're communicating with people, not with computers. And don't tell me Open Office is compatible with MS Office - it isn't. At least not 100% compatible. I checked. Uri. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 03:54:41PM +0300, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Amos Shapira wrote: My mom just got her first computer a year ago and until today she has no clue as to what she sees on the screen, even though she somehow manages to achieve some very basic goals with it. I bet I could have helped her a lot more remotely if she had a Linux on her desktop but everyone else in the family who were in the business of helping her veto'ed against it (and even against Firefox and Thunderbird). A properly setup Linux desktop from, let's say, last 18 months or so, shouldn't be harder to computer users to use than the equivalent Windows XP system. Are you the only one providing support? What about the rest of the family? My feeling is that the main reason people prefer Windows is first and foremost because this is what they get with their computer and 99.999% of the time it's also the only system they ever heard of, let alone saw or (gasp) used. The original poster's situation falls under that explenation because his father saw Windows (and ONLY windows) in his office and wanted the same thing. You don't get Windows automatically with your computer. You buy it. You buy it automatically with your computer. And I repeat my earlier question: is there anywhere I can buy a desktop computer in Israel with Linux pre-installed? Is there a simple (does not ask questions) for open-office, firefox, thunderbird, 7-zip, gimp and other good free programs for windows? But the default operating system is Windows (the latest version, depends when you buy). I mean, most people just don't think about any alternative. Your mother, my father, my brothers, any office - they just don't know anything else. Windows is not perfect, but it's the best thing they know. Most people never used anything else. And not only Windows, but the whole MS suite - Office, Outlook, IE, Media Player - you name it. People just use whatever default software which comes with their computer. /me reminds everybody of an enlightened decision of some people in Massachusses. I have been to Australia and Thailand and used Internet at public places (such as Cafes). They all use Windows! All with IE. It seems like EVERYBODY is using Windows. It's much easier to be like everybody, use whatever they use. It's like with communication - how many people you know that don't have a regular phone number, but instead use something like Skype? I'm referring to the main phone, not alternative. It's much easier to do what everyone else does. And everyone use Windows. Except some computer geeks... The same problem is with FireFox - it doesn't come with Windows, you have to install it. It doesn't support Flash (not the default installation as far as I know). Many websites will not work with it properly. Then most people prefer not to use it. Most people use IE. I used Netscape once, moved to IE a few years ago when I had problems with Netscape. I tried FireFox but I couldn't see Flash, so I'm not using it (I only use it occasionally as an alternative browser). Firefox on windows? Do you honestly say that you have problems installing flash on it? What version do you use? Mind providing more details? Though you should really install add-blocker first ;-) . I'm using IE. It's not easy to change habits - but I'm a computer geek. It's much more difficult for ordinary people... (but there is another reason - as a webmaster I want to use whatever my users are using, at least most of them. You have to keep up with your customers). I also tried Open Office and went back to MS Office. It's just not as easy to use, and not compatible with the rest of the world... /me reminds everybody of an enlightened decision of some people in Massachusses. Compatibility is a big issue. At the end of the day we're communicating with people, not with computers. And don't tell me Open Office is compatible with MS Office - it isn't. At least not 100% compatible. I checked. Right. And MS is about to move to a different format once again soon. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Mon, 3 Oct 2005, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: And I repeat my earlier question: is there anywhere I can buy a desktop computer in Israel with Linux pre-installed? Is there a simple (does not ask questions) for open-office, firefox, thunderbird, 7-zip, gimp and other good free programs for windows? You can buy laptops that come with Lindows (?) preinstalled. Idiot users have the shop delete that and install borgware instead. If you want to I will get you the exact type and address after the holidays. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Quoting Oron Peled [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Sunday, 2 áOctober 2005 22:05, Uri Even-Chen wrote: ... I wonder how come most people companies prefer Windows - is it, ... or because, ... or because, ... or because To save all of us time, I suggest you start by reading: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm It will answer most of your questions and then some... It's U.S. vs. Microsoft and the very first sentence on screen is : This document is available in three formats: this web page (for browsing content), PDF (comparable to original document formatting), and WordPerfect 5.1. No MS format? -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 If a Microsoft product fails, who do you sue? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Quoting Uri Even-Chen [EMAIL PROTECTED]: The same problem is with FireFox - it doesn't come with Windows, you have to install it. I know of quite a few people who switched to FireFox but wouldn't switch from MS-Office to OpenOffice. I also tried Open Office and went back to MS Office. It's just not as easy to use, and not compatible with the rest of the world... Compatibility is a big issue. Compatibilty with the clients' documents is a one of the major issues. For people who are painfully aware of compatibility problems between different versions of MS-Word, OpenOffice may not seem very attractive. This isn't just a matter of cost, it's also a matter of the time spent to give it a proper test. At the end of the day we're communicating with people, not with computers. And don't tell me Open Office is compatible with MS Office - it isn't. At least not 100% compatible. I checked. Uri. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Tzafrir Cohen wrote: /me reminds everybody of an enlightened decision of some people in Massachusses. You wrote this sentence twice. What do you mean? Sorry for not understanding. Firefox on windows? Do you honestly say that you have problems installing flash on it? What version do you use? Mind providing more details? Though you should really install add-blocker first ;-) . OK, I tried now and installed the Flash plug-in, but it should come with it pre-installed like in MS IE. I also had to agree to some legal BS which I didn't even bother reading. I hate having to agree to legal terms when installing software. A true Free Software should not come with terms. It should be free as breathing air, drinking water and watching TV (I don't have to agree to anything when I watch TV). My Firefox version is 1.0. I think I installed it last year. Right. And MS is about to move to a different format once again soon. Actually it's a very good tactics on their side, to make us dependent on MS Office. Every few years they come up with a new version of Office, which saves files in a new format which can't be read by old versions (usually, the one or two previous versions can read new version files, but not versions before it). Then, users with old versions (such as Word 97) receive files from people with new versions which they can't read. It annoys them and eventually they have to upgrade. I know because when I used Word 97 (until about 2 years ago), I had a problem reading files of new versions. Each time I had to ask people to send me files in RTF format. Eventually I upgraded and the problem was solved. Bill Gates has more money and I have less. MS also does everything they can to prevent non-MS software (such as Open Office) from reading MS files. They don't want Open Office to be compatible with MS Office. And they don't want MS Office to work on a non-MS platform (such as Linux). Peter wrote: You can buy laptops that come with Lindows (?) preinstalled. Idiot users have the shop delete that and install borgware instead. Lindows changed their name after they were approached by Microsoft. I don't know the whole story, but I think they are now called Linspire. Too bad, because Lindows was a very good name to market. And after all, it's all about marketing. Microsoft Settles Lawsuit Against Lindows: [Jul. 19, 2004] http://www.crn.com/nl/crndirect/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=23902233 Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's U.S. vs. Microsoft and the very first sentence on screen is : This document is available in three formats: this web page (for browsing content), PDF (comparable to original document formatting), and WordPerfect 5.1. No MS format? Of course not! LOL! Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Compatibilty with the clients' documents is a one of the major issues. For people who are painfully aware of compatibility problems between different versions of MS-Word, OpenOffice may not seem very attractive. This isn't just a matter of cost, it's also a matter of the time spent to give it a proper test. Imho you got this wrong: People who are aware of the incompatibility between MS Office document versions are more likely to try something else in the hope the document will open somehow. And with OO, it does, even if the formatting is d. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Peter wrote: Compatibilty with the clients' documents is a one of the major issues. For people who are painfully aware of compatibility problems between different versions of MS-Word, OpenOffice may not seem very attractive. This isn't just a matter of cost, it's also a matter of the time spent to give it a proper test. Imho you got this wrong: I'm telling it as they tell me. People who are aware of the incompatibility between MS Office document versions are more likely to try something else in the hope the document will open somehow. And with OO, it does, even if the formatting is d. The document I receive is only one part. The bigger part is the document I need to send back to the client. Will it look the same on the client's machine? Peter -- Thanks, Uri http://translation.israel.net = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
I'm telling it as they tell me. People who are aware of the incompatibility between MS Office document versions are more likely to try something else in the hope the document will open somehow. And with OO, it does, even if the formatting is d. The document I receive is only one part. The bigger part is the document I need to send back to the client. Will it look the same on the client's machine? Ask this in a different way: If you send an advanced (with advanced features) document made with Office 2000 and they receive it with Office 97, will it look the same ? (answer: like [EMAIL PROTECTED] it will, even if it does not freeze their system or crash Office by throwing a VBA exception). Next you will tell me that you have to stay compatible with your clients and so you need to maintain all necessary Office versions active on your system. That is one [EMAIL PROTECTED] of an answer for someone who could use OO and simply click 'save/send as Office 97 document' or straight PDF, since you care so much about how it looks. These guys are in the upgrade-or-die business. This is their bread and butter. They are not even compatible with themselves given a 3-4 year span between the generating and the reading software versions. If they would be, then the users would have no incentive to upgrade. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Tuesday, 4 בOctober 2005 00:30, Uri Even-Chen wrote: OK, I tried now and installed the Flash plug-in, but it should come with it pre-installed like in MS IE. Last time I had a new windows(XP) 'puter to play with it didn't come with flash installed. When I got to a flash web site it downloaded and installed flash almost automatically, I just had to click one ok button to do that so its understandable if you missed that (with all the next,next,finish you do when installing Windows, whats one more dialog?) I also had to agree to some legal BS which I didn't even bother reading. I also saw an EULA in the flash install dialog IE brought up. It was just one of dozens of other EULAs I had to read and agree to when installing windows, so I thought nothing more of it. I hate having to agree to legal terms when installing software. A true Free Software should not come with terms. Only one problem with that argument - Flash isn't free. Flash is a proprietary piece of software (much like windows or IE for that matter) and carries legal terms with it. Don't like it? you can stop clicking on the this site requires plugins icons, as unlike with IE you have a choice here. -- Oded ::.. A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
Peter wrote: I'm telling it as they tell me. People who are aware of the incompatibility between MS Office document versions are more likely to try something else in the hope the document will open somehow. And with OO, it does, even if the formatting is d. The document I receive is only one part. The bigger part is the document I need to send back to the client. Will it look the same on the client's machine? Ask this in a different way: If you send an advanced (with advanced features) document made with Office 2000 and they receive it with Office 97, will it look the same ? (answer: like [EMAIL PROTECTED] it will, even if it does not freeze their system or crash Office by throwing a VBA exception). So adding one more program to the mix adds that many more things that can be incompatible. Next you will tell me that No, I will not tell you that, and I don't play with other people's straw men :) you have to stay compatible with your clients and so you need to maintain all necessary Office versions active on your system. That is one [EMAIL PROTECTED] of an answer for someone who could use OO and simply click 'save/send as Office 97 document' or straight PDF, since you care so much about how it looks. In the more common case the client wants a file that can be read by MS-Word. They may want to mark it up. If it's a go-between (like an agency) they may want their editor to go over it. PDF is often not an option. -- Thanks, Uri http://translation.israel.net = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Sunday, 2 בOctober 2005 22:05, Uri Even-Chen wrote: ... I wonder how come most people companies prefer Windows - is it, ... or because, ... or because, ... or because To save all of us time, I suggest you start by reading: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm It will answer most of your questions and then some... -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 If a Microsoft product fails, who do you sue? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Sun, 2 Oct 2005, Uri Even-Chen wrote: Hi people, I hope I'm not stepping on open wounds here, but I want to raise this discussion. My father has a computer with Windows 98, and he asked me to check it for technical problems. I told him that Windows 98 is old and obsolete, so he should either upgrade to Windows XP or start using Linux. My father instantly replied that he wants to have Windows. Also at the office of his company, there are about 12 computers - all of them using some version of Windows. I wonder how come most people companies prefer Windows - is it because they're already used to it, or because they're afraid of changing, or because they want to use a specific software which is not available on Linux, or because they want to be like everyone else? Because most people I know, if they're not computer geeks - use Windows. And most companies too. People even got used to send documents in Microsoft Office format - even in business related documents, legal documents etc. Windows Microsoft Office have become a de-facto standard. What do you think? Windows is first and foremost a great advertising success. All the 'relevant' parts of windows are those which are visible and interactive and all the efforts of the company that makes it are concentrated in the direction of *perceived* features. Not quality, not stability, but chrome, 'ease of use' (as perceived by uneducated users who are clueless as to what is needed to make a stable and reliable system!!!) and features that were determined to be desirable by users from a panel and from statistics. Since the resources of the company are limited, they put them where the dollars are, and everything that is behind the scenes, such as the important operating system principles and mechanisms required to sustain this colored frontispice comes second. The people who find this out the hard way are the administrators and system operators who need to set up larger collections of windows machines. And imho they did not even use their money so well. OS X, SGI and BeOS flew hoops around the graphical aspects of the current offering from m$ imho. All the hardware and software manufacturers who make products for the 'windows platform' ride this horse. Nice looks, features that are 'in', and no or relatively little money for QA and interoperability testing. This is the way money is made now in IT for the masses. To understand why people prefer a brand over another you have to study some marketing and advertising as well as marketing psychology. In short, most people prefer to stay with what they already know best or are used to. Computer geeks are not discussed here. To make people change over and try something else, they have to either have some trauma due to damage caused by or connected with the previous product or be attracted to something new and different. Most people who change over are of the first kind, only very few have the spirit of adventure to try something new. One way to move the majority is to make them feel or believe that they are using something obsolete or outdated and that they are no longer a part of the majority because of that. This is a carefully nurtured feeling, built up by advertising and feature 'scaling' (in software, older versions don't look as cool, have fewer buttons, do not operate well with new file formats, etc). It causes people who would not change otherwise to feel apart from the flock and to wish to join the safety of the flock, and this is done by upgrading the computer software. Since this aspect of marketing addresses the vast majority of the users, upgrade-pushing is the most successful marketing strategy in software in societies where people are not geeky and interpid enough to seek out new challenges (and products) so often (or often enough for the taste of moneycounting capitalists). Also proprietary file formats and network protocols are usually introduced as a 'foot in the door' movement, as an extension or 'improvement' to an existing protocol, distributed for free, and in the hope that users will prefer to use default settings (always true), and establish it as a de facto standard. This is the case with Java, m$ flavor dhtml, m$ flavor media files, office file formats and many other things. It was also the case for the LZW algorythm unfortunately, and there will be many more like this if developers will keep jumping into the newest super-duper development environment on an as-they-come base. So 'modified' 'improved' and so forth proprietary protocols and formats are in fact trojan horses which attack the existing set of protocols and formats with the purpose of imposing other, different standards. They are very often disseminated for free, and have no immediate perceived cost. It only appears later, when one is forced to upgrade every year or two just to be able to open the documents sent by clueless business partners by email. I
Re: Why most people prefer Windows
On Sunday October 2 2005 22:05, Uri Even-Chen wrote: I hope I'm not stepping on open wounds here, but I want to raise this Ouch! Oi! Aiieee! -- Sincerely Yours, Michael Vasiliev If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
