[ale] SO vs OO

[Walter Sams]

My 1.5 cents on this subject:

You are on the right track here (total conversion),  the issue is not how well 
you can convert but how you can use the opensource product to do your new 
work. As projects are completed the need for MS will fade.

My analogy is the fuss about converting to the metric system. People are 
always complaining of the difficulty of converting measurements from English 
to Metric.  My answer is dont convert, just use metric measurements and soon 
you will get a feel for how much is a liter, a meter etc.

In my office, I just dumped MS all together and we learn how to make OO do 
what we need. We have not had to deal with presentations and very complex 
spreadsheets from other offices and have not had to maintain 2 office suites. 
(which would be my approach)

Walter Sams
Samsco Htg. & Air

On Wednesday 07 April 2004 07:22 am, Geoffrey wrote:
> Jim Popovitch wrote:
> > On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 20:17, Geoffrey wrote:
> >> To me, this is such a cop out.  Very few people reuse word
> >> documents.
> >
> > Word docs probably aren't as good an issue as Excel spreadsheets.  I
> > know my company emails them left and right like bandwidth was free.
> >
> > :)
>
> Still, the same applies.  In general there are two wide spread uses of
> spreadsheets.  People use them as either databases or tables.  It's a
> rare occasion to find someone who actually uses a spreadsheet as it was
> originally intended (mathematically calculations on large amounts of
> data).  That being said, the general cases are typical uses of the wrong
> tool.  Spreadsheets used in place of a database should be replaced with
> a database.  Spread sheets used as a table are easily converted to a
> spreadsheet from another Office suite.
>
> > Cross compatibility is key to getting organizations to move to OO/SO.
> >  HOWEVER, the first "gaim/AIM/jabber/Y!" style war and those
> > companies will move right back to MS.
>
> I don't think the solution is cross compatibility.  I think the proper
> approach is total conversion.  You don't want to be living with two
> Office suites forever.