On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 22:54 +0800, Wilfred Walsh wrote: > 1. How have others solved this problem? Is anyone out there running a > small (5-50) person company working exclusively or almost > exclusively in a linux environment? If so, how do you deal with > exchanging files with customers/clients/partners/suppliers?
having used a linux environment since late 2004, i would say that openoffice still gets the work done for me and my colleagues. yes, like you, we do have a windows machine that is shared among all of us using RDP to access when we need to use that windows only app but overall the openoffice experience has been very encouraging. all said, we don't really exchange editable files with our partners/suppliers/clients. most (60-70%) of our exchanges are in PDF and the rest are in a combination of openoffice files or DOC / XLS as required. we haven't had a sticky situation that we couldn't get out of, as yet :) it was initially tough to get these MS driven staff to change over to to using linux and openoffice. they didn't have the skill sets and had the usual complains. but having the users realize the "cost-savings" in terms of using such a solution versus and a M$ solution works for me. it helps that we are open with our overheads and we are all very cost-weary. linux and openoffice has been a solution that we are happy with and it works for us. ps - i note that you are looking at contract staff i.e. 6 months - that could a challenge. you won't want these to spend unnecessary time retooling themselves with an unfamiliar system. mmm, that's a cause of consideration ... > 2. Does anyone use a paid-for open source system (RHEL/Novell etc) in > this situation? If so, how well does it work? If the paid-for system > lags OpenOffice, what are the issues with just updating OpenOffice? > > 3. Of the many bulletin boards and usenet-type forums out there, which > is considered the best for users ranging from newbies to sysadmins > to ask questions of? ie which are the most comprehensive and > fastest to reply? > > 4. How would you sync the computer+phone calendars of 10 people using > the same linux software and the same mobile phone? > > 5. I use claws-mail and am tempted to force this upon all my users. Can > anyone suggest anything better? (I want my outlook users to go "oh, > that's nice, I'm going to switch over...") _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
