[Glastonbury] meeting tomorrow (fwd) RANT

[Sean Miller]

Right, now... let's discuss something a little different, but on the 
same theme.

What is the list's opinion on Crossover Office?!? For those that do not 
know, it is a product that retails at $55 or thereabouts which allows 
you to install Micro$oft products on Linux (eg. Micro$oft Word, Access, 
Powerpoint etc. etc. )

It's an evolution of wine, but is far more user-friendly and allows the 
end user to have a pretty much complete Micro$oft experience on their 
desktop... from a corporate point of view, it saves the operating system 
licence costs but would still require the actual product licences to be 
aquired... hence it brings the TCO of the desktops down, but not as far 
as migrating to something such as Staroffice would.

Now, the merits of migrating to Staroffice at St. D's... well, I think 
one thing that should not be forgotten in our evangelising about Linux 
(which I have always pronounced "lee-nooks", as that is what all the 
people I deal with in business appear to do) is that Steve is trying to 
educate people to go out into the world and find jobs and 
(unfortunately) at this point in time business is asking for skills in 
proprietary Micro$oft products still... I see adverts in the gazette, 
and "Computer Weekly", saying "experience with Microsoft word essential" 
or the like... would teaching the children something else help them when 
they have to go into the world?? I would suggest not... but with 
something like Crossover it may be possible to bring the educational 
spend down, introduce children to an alternative (better) operating 
system but still provide them with the experience in the tools that 
potential employers are like to - for a while at least - be expecting 
them to be familiar with.

Discuss.

Sean