Plea for help: The detriment of using Microsoft products

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

Jeff remarked:
	 On a related note, when we ran the LBS, I was amazed at the number
	 of people who wanted to see how to do stuff on Linux, as in editing
	 Word Documents, Excel Documents, etc, but didn't seem to care about
	 interoperability with Windows.  In fact, it was more on the order of 
	 "how do I do this without Microsoft?"  Admittedly, anyone at the
	 Linux Business Show probably was looking for alternatives anyway,
	 but the clear message I got was that whatever replaced current
	 Microsoft stuff, they didn't want it from Microsoft.  

Yeah; that's understandable, considering the problems that  MS  users
have  even  doing  something  like  reading a Word doc on a different
version of Word than it came from.  I've  occasionally  responded  to
complaints  like  this  by  saying  something  like  "Hey,  y'know, I
routinely see files that originated on Unix systems 10, 15,  or  even
20  years  ago,  and  I never seem to have any trouble reading them."
This sometimes produces some thoughtful looks.  With enough  of  this
sort  of subversion, we might eventually educate at least some people
to the idea that quality software is a remote possibility.

Which reminds me:  I just got a significant doc in Word  format,  and
when  I  printed  it on my wife's W98 machine, parts came out garbled
and funny looking.  I've heard a rumor that there was a Word that ran
on linux, or maybe that there would be Real Soon Now.  Is this just a
rumor, or is it available somewhere? It might be fun if we could tell
people  "Well,  Microsoft's Word can't handle documents from 6 months
ago, but linux's version of Word can."



	Thought for today:  There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know w
	hat you're talking
	about.
			-- John von Neumann
	 
Great quote.  Where'd you find it?

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