[geeks] And The Linux Weenies Wonder Why They Aren't Mainstream...

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 @ 15:30 -0500, der Mouse said:

> > For years we've been forced to run Windows to trade a common document
> > type.
> 
> And this points us in the direction of another group at whose feet at
> least some of the blame has to be laid: end users.  The end users who
> chose to make Word "a common document type" *despite* its being
> undocumented and incompatible even between versions of Word.

Oh, that's certainly true.

Of course, the average Joe really doesn't know any better.

The real problem to me is IT managers (and others) that *DO* know better, or
should given their job description, and keep buying doing it anyway.

> > Bank of America stayed at Word97 for a long time, because the new
> > versions couldn't read a large percentage of their existing
> > documentation.
> 
> And that's a good example: when they saw the incompatibility they
> should have bit the bullet and switched over to something open, so
> they'd never have that issue again.

What would they have moved to? OO was not ready at the time, and most of the
alternatives had already been killed off by Microsoft and WordPerfect's suite
wars.

One thing they said, and a lot of companies say, is that training costs
are too high to justify a move.

I don't think the pain is as bad as people think.

For one thing, the vast majority of users don't even know Word beyond a
beginner's level. They are so unskilled, all they do is type and use basic and
easily learned functions anyway.

The people who do really know the product, are generally capable of learning
other software too.

Every time I've been part of a move away from a suite like Office, it
generally wasn't that painful. The primary pain is document conversion, and
the loss of things like macros and other proprietary bits.

Another huge problem (sometimes) is the amount of work done in an office suite
that really should have been done by some other software or personnel.

People use office suites to do tons of things manually that used to be part of
a company's services, both computer and secretarial.




-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- [There is a limit to how stupid people really
are -- just as there's a limit to the amount of hydrogen in the Universe. 
There's a lot, but there's a limit.  -- Dave C. Barber on a.f.c.  ]