Web Kracked wrote: ... >> Colleges require Word/office when the students need only a >> word processor to do the work. That is the real joke.
Yeah, actually, you're right. With me, it's the stranglehold Microsoft tries to place on its users that puts me off. When you use their applications, you're just plain old stuck if/when they decide to obsolete it on you, and now their latest versions of Office don't play nicely with older versions of Office. To me that's totally unacceptable, regardless of the fact there are workarounds. MS has also stranded and forced upgrades on millions of developers using their development applications too. They are a single-source, pretty much a monopoly once you are invested in their products. With the days of open source and the likes of OOo, those days be be put behind us. Now, if a program should go belly up, there are other resources to replace it, unlike MS, plus the information is public, sitting there waiting for someone else to come along and pick it up is need be. With one minor issue left, I have now successfully weaned myself of Microsoft Office. Everything else I need/have is either open source or reasonably priced, and there are alternatives available should I need them. I'm no longer locked into Office like Microsoft did to me. Literally, the only strong tie I still have to Microsoft is the operating system. I'm running windows XP Pro and see no reason to even consider upgrading it, ever, to Vista or win7 or whatever because XP has several years of life left yet, is very stable now, and by the time they can force the issue and think they'll force me to upgrade to a new version, I'll have learned Linux well enough to just give them the finger. I could actually do that today, but not without some growing pains and the loss of a couple pieces of equipment for which there aren't functional drivers yet. Either those drivers will eventually appear or the equipment will die and I'll replace it with something that does have drivers; but I am no longer worried about being captive to Microsoft. As soon as it's a reasonable switch, I have drivers for everything, and can confidently choose a flavor of Linux, I'll no longer have dual boot setup. Won't need it because I'll just remove that last piece of improsinment software called XP, good as it is finally, in favor of Linux. >> >> Well, enough of that. >> >> As I said, OOo makes labels easy. Then Avery makes templates >> for all their labels that I have ever used or seen. So either >> way, OOo can do the work easier, for me, than Word ever did. Yeah, depending on what you need to do, OO.o is a very, very capable application suite. It still has a few quirks and bugs with only one exception, I have work-arounds for all the ones I've come up against. Ones I haven't come up against I don't care much about; yet<g>. But I am proud of the fact that the only remaining vestage of Microsoft left on my machine right now is the OS. Oops: I Lied! I still have VB6 loaded, but haven't needed it in a couple years so I'd probably never miss it if I took it off. Everything I developed with it has been replaced using other languages. >> >> >> Tim L. >> retire, and tired of MS >> and missing my wife, now that she is in a nursing facility. ... I can empathize on the nursing facility business; patience and perseverence will win out though. Don't know what else to say there, so I'll just close now. Regards, Twayne --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
