[ale] [OT] Microsoft Office 13 license

[George Allen]

> Let me echo Jim's experience.  I haven't had Windows or MS-Office at
> home in over six years...

Editing documents in MS was what switched me to Linux!
I had a GPF on MS Write on Win 3.1 that wiped out a whole paper near
completion, so I re-wrote the paper in html on the campus Solaris
server just to get it done, then installed Slackware, played with an
awkward version of wordperfect for a few days, then started learning
LaTeX and never looked back.

My .tex files are ASCII and make pdf, so I can still read them all
anywhere I want.
At least ODF is sane too - since you can still get to the xml.

Markdown seems pretty cool too with less overhead and learning curve...

I've heard that some schools demand word documents using their
templates, so they can submit the files to anti-plagiarism database
sites. ... I've been planning to start on an online masters soon, and
hope I never have to submit anything but PDF...