Re: [seul-edu] M$ Audits (shortened)

[Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>]

On Tuesday 23 April 2002 21:16, Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
> I'm talking about a solution that is useable by those who are not rabid
> members of a LUG, or Sys Admins in their day job, or past High-tech
> professionals that have become educators. I'm talking about productivity
> software that will read and write M$ file formats (Excel, Word, etc.)
> without a user even realizing it.  (I don't know, for example, if Star
> Office is a real alternative because I don't know how well it interoperates
> with those who use Word, for example, on a daily basis.)

I'd recommend the latest Mandrake or SuSE offerings without hesitation. 
OpenOffice will read ordinary MS-Office docs no problems (macros are not so 
good) and write them if told. It may not be such a bad thing to have .sxw 
files floating around instead of .doc. The main missing pieces are 
replacements for Access and Publisher, and there are contenders arising. Even 
KWord will do a lot of the stuff that Publisher does.

The showstopper is the zillion different educational and quasi-educational 
apps that only have Windows (and soemtimes Mac) versions. WINE is coming 
along nicely, but it has to be said that it is not yet useful enough to do 
the job. However, if/when CodeWeavers and TransGaming contribute back all of 
their patches, it will be very close.

Cheers; Leon