[Wolves] OSS evangelism

[Philip Moore]

I was very interested in the observations and feel optimistic for the long
term prospects of Open Office but would observe (from my experience using
both Open Office and MS Office 2000 - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher,
Outlook, Access, Front Page) that Open Office is not yet a MS Office 2000
replacement - for many operations Open Office has adequate applications and
functionality within applications but in many cases it regrettably lags
behind MS Office.  It all depends on what is demanded from the software.

The existence and popularity of CodeWeavers CrossOffice (which I am
currently trying) is evidence that the de facto office software is MS Office
and surely if Open Office was the equal of MS Office many more would adopt
it.

On an entirely separate note I was surprised to se on the web a promotion
for MS Linux - has anyone any experience of this product? - I did note that
it costs $249!

Philip Moore
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Ellse" <me at chaseacademy.com>
To: "Wolverhampton Linux User Group" <wolves at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 12:50 PM
Subject: [Wolves] OSS evangelism


> As many of you know, we have swapped completely to OpenOffice here at
> school.
>
> There are three key reasons why we did it:
>
> 1.   Philosophical: Not Microsoft and therefore not part of the monopoly.
> 2.   Financial: saved us a few pennies, but the cost for schools of MS
> software is not huge and the transition costs in time are significant.
> 3.   Cross-platform: can be used on Linux: see 1.
> 4.   Can give it away to the students.
>
> The last one is the clincher. We can now require students to have the
> same software at home as school, unlike with MS software where there are
> many different versions about and the transition costs from an old to a
> new version in terms of both hardware and software are too.
>
> Parents have been informed that students will be required to have OOo at
> home. We will give them a disk that they can use to install the
> software, and off they go. But it will be a big plug for OOo if a large
> number of schools followed this.
>
> Mark Ellse
>
>
>
>
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