[mdlug] IBM plants Linux on the desktop

[Robert Adkins]

Michael Corral wrote:
> Ingles, Raymond a ecrit:
>   
>> Well, my wife is tired of OpenOffice and wants to go back to MS Office.
>> She uses office stuff a lot more than me and has been doing it for a few
>> months now, but she's done with the learning curve.
>>
>> Any advice?
>>     
>
> Clearly you need to upgrade to Wife 2.0. ;)
>
> Is she using OpenOffice at work, or just at home?
> If it's at home, then obviously there is no *requirement* to use it,
> which makes it easier for her to demand to go back to MS Office.
> And she's right; this is just for home use and in her home she should
> be able to use whatever she feels the most comfortable with. If that
> happens to be MS Office then fine. Nothing wrong with that, it's her
> preference.
>
> If this is at work, then that's a different matter. At work you have to
> use what you're supposed to use, period. I'm forced to use Windows at
> work, which is clearly not my preference. But I value my job and my
> livelihood so I use it. I don't whine about it (while I'm at work:),
> that's just a waste of time. I just accept it and get on with what I
> have to do. But I do push Linux when the situation is appropriate.
>
> Michael
>   
    At work you have a large number of users who will balk, whine, 
complain and slowdown if not outright stop being productive while they 
"fight" to return to the "old way".

    In an effort to cut costs, I have always had a policy of only 
buying/installing software that is required to do the job. On a handful 
of workstations I have installed OpenOffice.org 2.0. At one time, there 
was an employee who raised an endless shit storm over having to use 
OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Excel to open and view (Not edit or 
create, that wasn't something he ever did) Excel documents. He was in an 
"important" position so, the boss told me to buy and install MS Office 
onto that PC.

    He rarely ever used it, his bitching stopped.

    This is what cost savings can and will do to a company. You will 
have some people go with the flow and others bitch up a storm hoping to 
get their way.

    Rob