[H-GEN] OpenOffice being pushed in the sub-$1000 PC market

[Sarah Walters]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

On 10 Sep 2003 Trent WADDINGTON <s337240 at student.uq.edu.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Sep 2003, Andrew Duncan wrote:
> 
> > Also, in composition openoffice is lacking.  When MSoffice is only $250,
> > why bother with openoffice at all?
> 
> You must be on a great scholarship.
> 
> Trent

<insert no-offense-meant disclaimer here>

Trent, that piece of sarcasem didn't actually add anything to the 
conversation. Different people have different priorities. Please think
about how people might take it before you send the email. Particularly
think if the entire list needs to read it. I for one didn't.

Of course, MS Office is actually over $1000 unless you have an 
academic license, but you can get the Works Suite, which includes MS Word, 
for about $200 at retail price. I don't like using it for the reasons
mentioned by someone else - it's proprietary nature. Given the amount of
development that goes into software like this, I'm quite happy to pay a
reasonable amount for it if need be.

At the moment I don't need much in the way of word processing at home,
and am quite content with AbiWord when I do (vi character bindings!
Joy!), or I boot into Windows and use MS Word. I think it's good to 
see the way OpenOffice is going, since I believe that there should 
be a free alternative for the person who doesn't need the more 
advanced features of Word, but if you need an advanced word processor
you can probably afford it so just fork over the money and deal with it.
I'm sure Microsoft employees like eating as much as I do. OpenOffice is
nearly at the stage where I would recommend it to my grandparents. My
biggest complaint is that it is too slow on startup, and that's just
painful.

Of course, Word should use a non-proprietary format so that everyone can
interoperate, but that's not how Microsoft does business. Maybe one day
things will change.

-- 
Mrs Sarah Walters
Systems Group
Information Technology Services
University of Wollongong
Phone: +61 2 4221 3775


--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.  See http://www.humbug.org.au/