[mdlug] IBM plants Linux on the desktop

[Clinton V. Weiss]

Where I work we recently phased out MS Office for the majority of the
computers.  As an employee who works quite a bit with creating .xls
spreadsheets using java libraries, I requested that the copy of Excel
be left on my machine to help iron out the bumps as they come.  Sure
enough, we hit a few bumps, all of them minor, but having Excel still
installed was very beneficial in working out the bumps.

FYI - defaults in OOo do not match defaults in Excel.  Standards in
Excel ARE NOT always standards in OOo.  You might argue this is to be
expected - I argue back that if OOo wants to be the equivalent
alternative, then they should be the equivalent alternative.

One example: Characters that are legal in sheet names in Excel, and
are defined to be legal in OOo's documentation, are not legal and will
cause the name of the sheet to be ignored.  Little things like this
are just annoying.  When I discussed the matter with a couple of OOo
devels, they told me "that's the way it is".  The characters in
question?  Less than (<) and greater than (>).

Overall, however, I'm greatly pleased with our transition.

-- 
Clinton V. Weiss
cvweiss at gmail.com
http://www.clintonweiss.com  // killed for now - will revive later