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Small Business ComputingFrom security concerns to software selection, this is the place to ask your fellow small-business owners how to approach and improve your small-business computing.
Ten Things Small Businesses Need To Know About Linux article
There is a huge error in this article that needs to be resolved immediately before lots of people get the wrong idea about openoffice.
The sub paragraph in section 7 that talks about a friend who installed openoffice and it 'converted' all of his files to openoffice format is blatently wrong.
I suggest 'your friend' have a look at the file extension on those files that were 'converted' and he will find that they are still '.doc' files (the proprietary file format of Microsoft Word) and not '.sxw' (the open file format of Open Office).
When installing Open Office it prompts you to decide whether you would like Open Office to be the default application for 'opening' files with the extensions .doc, .xls and .ppt. Your friend obviously said yes to this question (not heeding your advice to advance defensively ...) and so therefore his default application (and therefore default icon for these types of files) is that of Open Office.
Please fix this error in the article a.s.a.p because it is doing nothing but spreading FUD for the great project that Open Office is.
p.s. - your friend can remove open office and he will get back his Microsoft Office 'icons' and his files will still be in .doc, .xls and .ppt format.
Thanks for the post. We'll check in with the writer ASAP and ask him to review his article in light of your comments. We certainly don't want to provide misinformation.
One little comment, you say that a $100 copy of the software can be bought that is very simple to install. Most of those packages do *NOT* have a CAL or machine license. With many (most?) distributions, you can install that single $100 package across the whole business (and your home, and your friend's business, and copy the CD then give it away) with no legal questions.
Also, you should take a look at KDE 3.2 and KOffice. While not quite as mature as StarOffice 7, it is faster and has some nice features - particularly Kontact which is a groupware manager with tasks, calendar, notes, etc.
Oh, and after rereading a couple points, I must point out:
StarOffice and KOffice both have presentation managers that are on par with Microsoft's package. Not only that, but they read and write each other's files because they use an open standard, freely available XML format to save.
KOffice is more complete in some ways than Word, and far better in terms of some features, such as the ability to use screen sharing invitations, fish:// protocol, etc. Also, Quanta Plus web development system supports PHP development with on-the-fly rendering and other features that follow standards. Koffice has a dedicated print Chart program, and a mathematical formulas editor, structured drawing editor based on SVG, flowcharting and a report generator - all of which either doesn't exist or exists in poor form in Office. Like StarOffice, scripting can be done very simply and powerfully but can also drop to Rexx, Python, Perl, etc.
In other words, for every feature (useful or not) that MS Office has, there is a counterfeature not available for it in the Linux versions. There are no losers in this equation, you can choose what you want to do... and Crossover Office lets you choose both!
I would like to point out a point or so that are incorrect in this article concerning Microsoft licensing. there is no recurring fee for any Microsoft license. As long as you are content with whichever version of a Microsoft product is current at the time that you purchase your license, you own that license forever, no more fees beyond that initial cost. In addition, you have the right to use older versions of the software in most cases. There is a program called Software Assurance, which gives you the rights to newer versions of the software, as well as many other benefits, as long as you keep purchasing it, but this is not a requirement, and it's not pushed down anybody's throat. If you have questions on the particulars of any Microsoft license, just ask, I believe I can help you out.
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