Excel 2003

asbokid

!!!!!! wrote: »

Don't think so somehow since the majority of the solutions they sell as part of multi-million pound/dollar contracts are MS based.

So your company is a little parasite of the Great Parasite of Redmond VA?

Or as that poem goes...

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

DCodd

asbokid wrote: »

So your company is a little parasite of the Great Parasite of Redmond VA?

Or as that poem goes...

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

Never as simple as that asbokid. If the company sells MS based products to companies that use MS based solutions then that is the core of their business. strange that you would see that as being a parasite?

OpenOffice is a great program but does have compatability issues with MS products, so if your main clients are using MS Office, you would be silly to use OpenOffice, an example is when I sent a large spreadsheet from home to the office, I ceated it in OpenOffice in MS compatablity but when I opened it in Excel 2003 (yes we too still use 2003) it corrupted the protected cells and effectrively wiped £250k off our projected profit. If that had been a tender then it could have actually cost us £250k, really not worth it.

BackOnTrack

asbokid wrote: »

Your company could save on paying any more upgrade bills to the Great Parasite of Redmond simply by moving to the free OpenOffice suite.

No really most companies couldn't.

The amount of business logic that is coded into excel worksheets using VBA is huge, VBA is actually the most widely used programming language in the world that should give you an idea of exactly how difficult moving away from microsoft office would be.

There would also be a significant training cost for companies to move from MS office to openoffice.

Open office might be a better option for new companies but even then thats far from clear.

Open office is great for home users and is what I use at home but I wouldn't touch it at work.

victor2

BackOnTrack wrote: »

No really most companies couldn't.

The amount of business logic that is coded into excel worksheets using VBA is huge, VBA is actually the most widely used programming language in the world that should give you an idea of exactly how difficult moving away from microsoft office would be.

There would also be a significant training cost for companies to move from MS office to openoffice.

Open office might be a better option for new companies but even then thats far from clear.

Open office is great for home users and is what I use at home but I wouldn't touch it at work.

Couldn't agree more. Love 'em or hate 'em, MS have got us where they want us. Just waiting to see how they incorporate the Skype technology they now own into Office!

asbokid

DCodd wrote: »

OpenOffice is a great program but does have compatability issues with MS products

No! It's the other way around. Microsoft has compatibility problems with OpenOffice!

so if your main clients are using MS Office, you would be silly to use OpenOffice, an example is when I sent a large spreadsheet from home to the office, I ceated it in OpenOffice in MS compatablity but when I opened it in Excel 2003 (yes we too still use 2003) it corrupted the protected cells and effectrively wiped £250k off our projected profit. If that had been a tender then it could have actually cost us £250k, really not worth it.

I've heard the exact opposite stories. Here's one..

An important Microsoft Office document of several hundred pages had become completely corrupted by Microsoft Office, and was no longer readable by Microsoft Office. In despair, the owner tried loading it in OpenOffice, and voila, it was recovered!

I've come to think of Microsoft as being like the Mafia or the Kray Gang. Microsoft runs a protection racket. You can try and fight them, but it's probably easier just to pay up. Saves a lot of spilt blood. Cough up the cash to upgrade to Windows 2012, or else we gives yer a Chelsea Smile

I'm just reading a book about the History of Operating Systems (good bedtime read).

You would scarcely believe the allegations surrounding Microsoft's past behaviour. Unexplained deaths of Microsoft business rivals.. Salt of the earth that Gates boy. Like the Kray Boys, keeps us safe from criminals, he does.

asbokid

BackOnTrack wrote: »

No really most companies couldn't.

The amount of business logic that is coded into excel worksheets using VBA is huge, VBA is actually the most widely used programming language in the world that should give you an idea of exactly how difficult moving away from microsoft office would be.

There would also be a significant training cost for companies to move from MS office to openoffice.

Open office might be a better option for new companies but even then thats far from clear.

Open office is great for home users and is what I use at home but I wouldn't touch it at work.

Much of the overhead in building open source software is caused by the lack of documentation of Microsoft standards. It has taken experts many man hours to reverse engineer secret Microsoft protocols such as SMB (samba).

Even the ubiquitous NTFS file system format which was first developed in 1993 was not fully understood outside of Microsoft until recent years.

To aid software compatibility, it would be useful if Microsoft was obliged to make timely disclosures of the file and document standards and formats used in all of its products.

That obligation to disclose would require the assistance of governments in forcing Microsoft's hand. Granted, that's not a very likely scenario. Microsoft generally just bribes its way through the corridors of power to maintain its hegemonic grip on the domestic software industry. It's astonishing that people don't rebel, considering the garbage quality of most of Microsoft's software.