This discussion on the origins of operating systems and office suites is interesting for exactly the reasons you stated, being that understanding where we came from we can better decide where we can and want to go.
It is also interesting that where I work we have just over 400 users spread over five countries in two hemispheres, not a big company but not exactly a small business either. I have been handing out dvd's of libre office (and previously OOo) to many of our senior users, branch managers, office managers etc. to install on their home machines instead of paying for MS office upgrades as most still have older versions on their home machines. They have been taking work home that was created in MS office at work and then working with LO at home and bringing it back to work and back to MSO and after a few initial hick-ups, we are now running smoothly. I found that even though most of our execs have laptops and other portable devices they all still have desktop machines at home that their whole family use. The good news is that now many of these execs are requesting that we install LO or OOo on their work machines. Out of our 400 users, we now have over 150 using either OOo or LO on both their home and office machines. The idea of targeting senior users is obvious. I now have senior support when I try to convince the run-of-the-mill users to try LO or OOo. Once users are fully educated in using LO or OOo they very soon realise the benefits. The most important thing is to give as much support as possible when users first start using these products and not allow frustration to take over. Forums like this are a big help. And as for compatibility, a document created in MSO 2010 and saved in the OOXML format can not be opened by MSO 2002 but can be opened by OOo3.2 and LO so even MSO is not compatible with MSO. Get over it and get LO. Get with the future Cheers, Bruce Carlson -----Original Message----- From: Wayne Borean [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, 21 April 2011 7:31 AM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] LibO Impress and Audio.... Is XP the culprit? It's rather hilarious actually. Berkeley Softwarks had a better GUI running on the Commodore C64 computer in 1990/91 than Microsoft had on the X86 platform up until they released Windows 98. Yeah, it had limits because of the hardware, but when you consider what they made that hardware do using only a 160K floppy disk... It was completely amazing. Wayne On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Joep L. Blom <[email protected]> wrote: > On 20/04/11 17:16, Wayne Borean wrote: > >> I'll disagree with that. Windows didn't open the World. Unix did. >> Windows just imitated what Unix did, ten years later. >> >> Wayne >> >> >> I second that. Moreover, Bill Gates wrenched DOS from a few nerds >> in, I > thought 1981 and sold it to IBM. The only reason IBM went for Bill > Gates was the fact that the company who had developed CP/M ( then one > of the most versatile OSes implemented on various computers from > Osborne to Amstrad and many others) refused IBM exclusivity. > Microsoft developed Windows much later - in 1983 if I remember > correctly -The Windows GUI was not invented by Microsoft but was > originally developed in a XEROX laboratory in I thought Palo Alto. It > was first kidnapped by Apple and claimed as their own and later by > Microsoft (American lawyers have had field years on the lawsuits by MS against Apple and vice versa. > Unix on the other hand came into in existence in 1979 in the Bell > Laboratories by Kernigan and Richie (Yes, the ones who also developed C). > So only due to not-so-nice marketing tricks most computer-illiterates > nowadays think that Microsoft invented all the things that let > computers run, but that's completely untrue. > Joep > > > -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
