[TriLUG] Re: Frustrated MS users turn to Linux, Apple

Matt Matthews jvmatthe at math.duke.edu
Tue Aug 13 08:33:27 EDT 2002


On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 08:13:30AM -0400, Mike Helms wrote:
> I have also yet to find a suitable replacement for Microsoft Office.  I know
> there was a lengthy thread about this earlier - but love it or hate it, Word
> and Excel are the standards of the world, and for a lot of what I do, I need
> to submit reports (fairly complcated ones at that, with embedded tables and
> graphics and advanced formatting).

I too am trying to replace Windows software, bit by bit. My plan is to use
free as in freedom replacements in Windows until such time as we can move to a
free OS as well.

I replaced MS Word and Excel with OpenOffice 1.0 on my Windows machine, used
almost exclusively by my wife. She's fairly savvy using a computer and has had
some difficulties. She made a very precise grid for a form she created and the
printed version was smaller. Somehow, the printout was scaled to 97% (or so)
of the original size by a setting in a dialog box somewhere. Since I wasn't
around, I don't know if this was her mistake or the software's, but she blames
the software. Further, she's had OpenOffice crash at least once and refuse to
open again. When this has happened I've come home to find two OpenOffice icons
in the tray. Closing one seemed to fix the problem, but I have no idea how two
of them got there in the first place.

I've also tried to get her to use Mozilla, an experiment which has been mostly
successful. So far have had only one angry AIM session from her while I was at
work and her browser started acting up. It wouldn't print preview and closing
and starting Mozilla didn't help. I wasn't quick enough to think to have her
close the icon in the tray (the quickstart feature) but that turned out to be
the fix. (That is, closing Mozilla doesn't shut the program down completely.
Close it in the tray does, an forces a clean start the next time you fire it
up.) It made me cringe to read her IM saying "So I just opened IE and that
worked perfectly."

Free software replacements for apps are getting to the point that we can
safely replace them and have people move on without pain. But so far I've been
cut by a couple of their rough edges. I was pleased, however, that my wife
said the other day "You know, as long as the only arguments we have are over
software on the computer, I think we'll do ok." :^)

Regards,
matt

-- 
Matt Matthews     \ ph: 919.660.2811        \ Use GNU/Linux  _o) w00t
Duke Univ., Postdoc\ jvmatthe at math.duke.edu  \____________   /\\
Dept. of Mathematics\ http://www.math.duke.edu/~jvmatthe/ \ _\_V



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