On Aug 31, 2007, at 1:43, M. Fioretti wrote:
File formats are the only real reason why the Microsoft monopoly still
exists. Closed or not documented file formats are a terribly stupid
and dangerous idea no matter who creates them.
There is another reason. Most users are lazy and do not want to learn a
new program or interface. No matter if the other program is better,
free, or
whatever advantage it has. They will spend a lot of money not to have to
change.
I have managed to convert a couple of people where I work to using OOo
instead of MS Office, but it is a constant battle for some.
Example, the 'creative' person we have to do web site maintenance and
update and promotional literature. She spent the entire morning trying
to convert a scientific paper from MS doc format into a pdf file that
was
under 1 meg to put on the web site. Photoshop and other tools were used.
At lunch, I asked her how her day was going and she told me of her
Herculean efforts to do the conversion. I then showed her several ways
to handle portions of the job more efficiently. I topped it off by
showing
her that she could simply open the document in OOo and then export
to pdf and in a few moments have complete control over the JPEG
compression and text resolution and then save as pdf. The file went
from several Megs to under 600K. She then got all the rest of the
documents converted and up on the web site in only a couple of hours.
Score one for OOo!
The 'creative' person should supposedly be more open to change and
exploration. She was not. Typical user. "Fear change!"
I agree with the rest of your argument and would point out that the MS
file
requirement means that people learn MS programs and then do not want
to change, thus reenforcing their monopoly.
Ross
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