Open source is developing, and offering many things not possible in MS Office and other such tools. I definitely encourage you give it another try!

yes indeed……

I think the biggest difference between users of Windows and users of Linux is that users of Linux continue to grow and become more and more computer savvy as long as they are willing to advance. This doesn’t mean you memorize all sorts of useless stuff, but rather whatever comfortable amount fits your lifestyle. Windows users have many artificial ceilings because of all the hush hush surrounding Microsoft’s closed source products. Some of these ceilings can get very inconvenient and have no way around them. It’s only a matter of time before you outgrow Windows in some important capacity. Adapting to these Windows limitations psychologically means growing to believe that you can never master computers or do anything that really stands out (like remastering a very cool Linux LiveCD/DVD with your favorite games and settings all set up to show off to your friends or associates).

And the best of all in Linux’ favor is that you don’t have to worry about what you learned in the past becoming obsolete after a round of just-about-forced upgrades. All is not rosy for Linux users as new things do appear to come too fast sometimes, but it’s nice to know that once you reach the third grade and start cruising just a bit, you will not be forced to learn any more than you want to learn while still having access to the latest and greatest with a few mouse clicks once you are ready. [Some distros are getting quite good at realizing this somewhat ideal smooth transitioning.]

And of course, Linux and open source does improve at a faster rate than Microsoft’s products. It’s a matter of time before Linux will generally be considered to be ahead in virtually all categories (for noobs and for more advanced users). At that time, I wonder how many will be able to safely and easily migrate to Advanced Cool Linux the part of their lives that will be stuck inside Vista somewhere.

Linux is not perfect by any means, but it’s getting there

Not everyone runs a serious business, however, so ymmv.

With that said, I’ve learned some things with regards to dealing with MS Office vs. open (OpenOffice) products. People usually get disenchanted with MS stuff when things go really bad… and they usually do… so no surprise. It gets frustrating the 3rd time your .pst file gets corrupted due to no fault of your own. You lose data, you lose patience and lose some valuable time. There doesn’t appear to be a fix, but you ARE in a boat with a lot of other castaways… and misery loves company!!

However, if/when a similar occurence happens with the “open” product, often times there is a “solution”… but sometimes the solution is complicated and sometimes you just can’t figure it out. And THAT, is even more frustrating than being in the same boat with the castaways trapped in the sea of MS.

Open products are by nature more flexible and infinitely more fixable… but sometimes people prefer a sympathetic (normal) life boat over patching holes (and the resulting learning curve) in the ocean liner.

So VAR picked the closest thing that he had on the shelf. In a general sense this is a solution that costs several hundred dollars–extremely impractical on a large scale. So what and who cares. He could have bought another ->entire computer system<- for how he chose to solve the problem. Grabbing a $500 office package is not an option for most people. A foolish choice indeed.

I don’t know, I don’t use a Mac But using Thunderbird is great. You could have tried a Thunderbird add-on to access Google Calendar on Thunderbird. Also, there is a Mac OS X build of Evolution, the defacto groupware on Linux. I wished you searched for other possibilities…

Enjoy your proprietary office program.