[ale] SO vs OO

[Marvin Dickens]

On Tuesday 06 April 2004 20:32, Geoffrey wrote:

>
> Yes, but that consists of about .1 % of M$ Office users.  In my 26 years
> with AT&T, 99% of M$ Office documents were either PP, Word or Excel,
> with no interaction between any two.  The few times I found people doing
> such document interaction, it was because they didn't have the right
> tool or the right knowledge...

Hello Geoffrey,

Well, I can't speak for your experience at AT%T. I can only speak regarding
my experience(s). I interact on a frequent basis with quite a few users who 
are in management positions who's positions are pivotal. By pivotal, I mean 
their job requires them to interact and share meaningful data with multiple 
managers/decision makers in different departments. Admitidly, the companies I 
am thinking about do not employ the thousands of people that AT&T employs. 
These companies employ between several hundred to *maybe* a thousand people.

These users use office suites on a regular basis and do so solely for the 
interaction between the different applications in the suite. If MS Office did 
not have the ability to embed spreadsheets into word processing docs and 
later produce a presentation based on the two (If needed...), most of these 
users would jump ship away from MS products totally. It's the only MS owned 
and written app that they use. They use it because it works and they can 
share data. 

These people have already heard about Linux or else have experience with it 
and like what they see. But, until the office suite thing is ironed out they 
are stuck. How can they justify asking for SO or OO if it does not work as 
advertised? Also, I am a die hard Linux advocate. Period. But, the fact is in 
IMHO, SO and OO do not compare to the MS Office Suite of products. 

Good God. That made my hair hurt when I typed that last sentence. I don't 
think I'll do ever do that again................


Regards

Marvin Dickens