[ale] Taking the plunge

[Chuck Huber]

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> 
> Message: 7
> Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:16:12 -0400
> From: "Greg Freemyer" <greg.freemyer at gmail.com>
> Subject: [ale] Taking the plunge
...
> My first basic question.  Should I go ahead and throw in the towel and
> install a Xen VM with XP on it just so I know I have a fallback for a
> couple Windows only apps I run?  (The new machine is a core DUO.
> Should have VT to allow Xen to run Windows.)

I haven't tried Xen VM.  Win4Lin (a commercial product) was good for
Win98 running on 2.4 kernels.  The new release supporting XP is ...
well... let's just say it's not on my computer any more.  Instead I've
been using VMPlayer for XP.  With VMWare Tools, you get a nice
mouse-over-focus.  VMPlayer and VMWare Tools are free.  The only app I
regularly used under Winbloze is QuickBooks and there's talk at Intuit
about supporting linux in the future.

> My second basic question is which office solution to use since I have
> to be compatible with the rest of the company/clients.  ie.
> Interoperability is key.
> 
> 1) Open Office 2.2 from the suse build service
> 2) Sun Office (from ??)

I haven't tried Sun's version.  OpenOffice has done everything I've
needed to do including import/export MS Office documents.  As a matter
of fact, I've recommended it to friends who use Windoze as a replacement
for MS Office.

It still has a few problems when importing Word docs that contain
WordArt objects but the problems deal with the placement of the objects
- - not whether or not it imports.  OO 2.0 and later support objects like
WordArt and do very well when exporting.  Publishing to PDF is easy.

With the WordArt exception, I've never had any problem exchanging Word
Document files with customers and vendors.  Imports and exports are smooth.

> 3) MS Office via wine (does it work?)
> 4) MS Office in a Xen VM.

I'd avoid MS Office products simply due to security problems with
embedded macros - (VB Script and such).

> Question 3:
> I need to make a Viseo type drawing today.  I can deliver it to others
> as a PDF.  What tool should I use?

It's been a while - if I recall correctly Visio is a flowcharting
program.  Take a look at Kivio.  Under Suse 10.2, it installs by default.


Enjoy,
    - Chuck
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