On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 11:02, Collins Richey wrote: > > > > I still have the Star Office box on my shelf. A pity. > > > > Not being a business user, I may not know what I am talking about, but > the only approach that works with open/closed software is the following: > > 1. Note the documents that don't work. > 2. Supply copies to the developers. > 3. Ride their ass until it does work. > > Saying "this fscking thing doesn't work" and setting the box on the > shelf may let off a little steam, but it accomplishes nothing > worthwhile. > > The only thing I've noted that doesn't work very well with OpenOffice is > word documents that use fonts that aren't available to OpenOffice. The > only thing that OpenOffice can do is "best guess," so it is not > surprising when things work differently.
The compatibility problems with both Open Office or Star Office and M$ Word go far deeper than that. Nearly all of the VBS stuff failed for us one way or another. I do understand that the more politically correct portion of Linux world finds this stuff distasteful, and I don't agree, but when a customer sends you a document full of it, it's not a money making proposition to tell them 'Fix your document so I can do business with you'. That leads them to another vendor and you're at a disadvantage. As for 'riding the developers' what purpose does that serve the business user? Answer - none. In business, we just look for a solution that works, pay for it as part of the expense of running the business, and move forward trying to do business. If one of my requirements is 100% seamless integration with other businesses, or even other portions of my larger business, then my earlier point was, and remains, that I HAVE to choose M$ until someone else PROVES that there is a 100% Seamless Linux solution. Nothing else matters or the business suffers. In this case we often say 'I want to be the second person trying this.' Many casual Linux users don't often seem to consider the business issues as much as they like to consider the political or technical issue. What's the hidden cost of having my employees on the net riding the developers to get this done? What's the chance that it will get done immediately? What's the chance that the 'fix' will create other bugs in the Open Source solution? And, as a business person, why do I even care if I'm using M$ vs. Linux? Again, I write this from home, using Gentoo for email, some browsing, and a lot of Alsa audio apps, I am a Linux user. It works pretty well for me in these certain areas. It works badly in others. Many or even most of those bad areas are probably caused by my lack of intellect and experience in configuring Linux. I'm sure they are. However, it's not worth it to me to get beyond them. Life is too short. (This will be my last response on this thread. Thanks.) Cheers, Mark -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
