Mozilla (Re: [H-GEN] What can i use instead of SSHD?)

[Anthony Towns]

On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 11:56:55AM +1000, Raymond Smith wrote:
> Me too! Do you have a good come-back to the 'desktop support' issue? 

Have you had a look at the differences between Office 97 and Office
XP (and the corresponding differences between Windows 98 and Windows
XP)? They're pretty significant, and if you want to use Office effectively
you really do need some training.

> see that for a large company with relatively-less-skilled workers there
> would be savings to be made by standardising applications in training and
> help-desk costs.

So I wouldn't consider this a major stumbling block: instead of paying
to train everyone on the latest Office release, pay to get them trained
in OpenOffice, or similar. Heck, if you're not getting bulk discounts on
licenses you can probably use your licensing budget ($500 ea for Office
XP OEM) for this, and consider it a 100% saving on training costs.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Personally, I don't think
OpenOffice is a mature enough piece of software to recommend it, and
getting training for OpenOffice probably isn't trivial. On the gripping
hand, Harvey Norman is advertising and presumably selling reasonably
expensive machines with StarOffice installed, so this mightn't be such
an issue. Tuesday's FinReview had a lawyer character singing OpenOffice's
praises too.

Of course, where you lose out is all the places that specifically cater
to the Microsoft majority: Internet banking, the ATO, online movie
previews... Paying (usually in US dollars...) for all the proprietry
i386-only tools to let you emulate all that nonsense seems to go a fair
way towards using up your licensing savings.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

 ``If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.''
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