Say goodbye to Office 2003, Microsoft tells PC builders

The Register ^ | 06/19/07 | Gavin Clarke

[Hemingway's Ghost]

I think Office is the one great thing MS does. And it’s even better on a mac.

There's where I disagree with you. I generally like MS Office, but I think it sucks on my Mac.

[chilepepper]

produced the best programming editor in the world: Emacs

LOL (emacs/vi flamewar thread highjacking warning)

hogwash! vi is the best editor in the world!

[Northern Alliance]

All posts by known troll Golden Eagle have been Blocked, to view posts by this person you must edit the FRTrollBlocker.user.js file.

I think I need one of those myself. Trolling is bad enough, but the guy's overuse of metaphors is downright painful.

[TChris]

Who buys this stuff? Open Office is free folks. Does the same thing.

It does the same thing... until you need to program it. For most uses, OOo will work great. But more specialized tricks use VBA to combine Office's tools in unique ways.

And OOo doesn't have anything compatible with Access.

If the OpenOffice.org folks can create an Access-compatible DB and a universal, VisualBasic compatible scripting engine for OOo, Microsoft will be in very deep doo doo.

As it is, Office can do things others just can't.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Who buys this stuff? Open Office is free folks. Does the same thing.

For the average user, yes.  But, OOo Basic is not as feature-rich, cross application compatible, and easy to use as VBA.  Unfortunately, VBA is very easy to exploit as compared to OOo Basic.

If you want to pour the power on - easily - you need MS Office.  Annoying flaws and all.

[Psycho_Bunny]

lol....Just a few seconds off with the same post.

[ShadowAce]

I'd like any real, experience-driven opinions about migrating from the M$ platform to either Mac or Linux.

I'd suggest Linux--you keep your existing hardware, and you can still run your Adobe and Macromedia products in a windows VM when you need it.

[TChris]

lol....Just a few seconds off with the same post.

Great minds, and all that. :-)

[Psycho_Bunny]

Well....”Geek” minds, anyway. You flippin’ nerd. >:)

[TChris]

You flippin’ nerd. >:)

:-)

What languages do you speak?

I'm pretty fluent in BASIC, C/C++, SQL and HTML... (and bit of Pascal)

[Centurion2000]

Thank God I still have the disks laying around.

No Office 2007 or Vista for me.

[shorty_harris]

You should try MEPIS, which is a KDE build of UBUNTU.

MEPIS is really good. I've been using it off and on for years (using it right now on my Dell Latitude laptop). But it's not a build of Ubuntu; it was around long before Ubuntu ever showed up.

[DreamsofPolycarp]

I don't think I could go Linux due to the need for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and Macromedia DreamWeaver - is that correct? Using Mepis Linux here, and running vmware player with a windows xp virtual session for photoshop, internet explorer (some vendor sites for me are IE specific), quickbooks, and paperport. It runs spotlessly, smoothly and without a problem. You will need to learn how to "share" a folder between the two systems to swap data (cut and paste also works for tiny bits of stuff).

I prefer it.

[DreamsofPolycarp]

But it's not a build of Ubuntu; it was around long before Ubuntu ever showed up.

Actually, up to 4.3 was a debian etch build. Warren began using UBUNTU on version 6.0. It is an EXELLENT distro. I am always the evangelist for it, and am thrilled you like it too!

[Salo]

The God’s honest truth is you can get by with Windows XP - you should not be having any BSODs with it. I honestly can’t remember the last time I had one of my PCs trip off the line.

Run a firewall (hardware), a virus scanner made by anyone other than Symantec - in fact, do not run anything made by Symantec, stay patched and you should be fine. Depending on what condition your machine has gotten into, you might wish to consider backing up your data and reinstalling everything - format the hard drive and go to town.

If you want to upgrade to linux or Apple, either system should work well for you. As Shadow Ace mentioned, you can run your windows in an VM, or you can run linux equivalents of what you use in Windows. Slowly, but surely, companies are making native linux versions of Windows software, but it’s coming slowly.

I have a mac that runs OSX and it’s a great machine/OS. The software designed for it runs well. I have heard over and over, once you go Mac, you never go back. :-) Any chance you can get upgrade pricing on your software since you already own Windows versions, or, OMG, is that upgrade pricing you are referring to? BTW, Apple isn’t perfect, but they are a lot better to deal with than PC companies when it comes to tech support.

[shorty_harris]

Heh...I think the first version I tried was 2004.04 or something like that. I left Libranet for it.

[Golden Eagle]

Apple OSX is an American product and a far better alternative than the foreign clone Linux, and supports virtualizing Windows as well, including easily running your physical Windows partition virtually or natively. There’s just not much reason to use Linux on a desktop unless you need free software from “the community”.

[newguy357]

Let me get this straight: open source software is evil because it is predominantly made by leftists...so instead a person should obtain software from a different set of leftists who they must pay?

[Golden Eagle]

Apple is a better product and Jobs isn’t near as far left as that whacko Stallman, who goes from communist country to communist country trying to drum up support for Linux. Use Sun Solaris, it runs on Intel too and is free, if you want another option. Personally I usually stick with Windows, and laugh off most of the jealous haters of Gates.

[martin_fierro]

Office 2000 does more than what I need.

Hear, hear.