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Re: [PLUG] More critique of Linux desktop
Tobias DiPasquale wrote:
On Sep 12, 2004, at 9:11 PM, Art Alexion wrote:
>> Article from The Register. This one says Linux ready for the
desktop in two years...
>> http://www.theregister.com/2004/09/10/butler_on_enterprise_linux/
print.html
I don't use OOo that much (only for reading Word and Excel files I am
sent) and for me it works just fine, but for power users it has a way
to go. Fortunately, Sun and the rest of the OOo crew seem hellbent on
getting OOo prime-time, so I don't think we'll have to wait too long
a time before it's viable competition for the desktops of even the
most finicky power users.
An often ignored point about OOo vs. MS Office is resource use. I know
Office 2003/XP is the current flavor, but Office 2000 is still a bit
more mature than OOo 1.9 (preview of 2.0). On a dual boot machine --
meaning same hardware specs -- the MS suite runs circles around OOo in
1) startup time. 2) macro execution, 3) dialog rendering, 4) autotext
functions, 5) document loading, 6) document saving ... I could go on...
So a suite with less power uses more machine resources... why? In the
rush to cram in all of the MS features and more, the OOo developers seem
to have ignored performance.
As for spreadsheets, you get used to what you have been using. I've
been using Quattro Pro since the 1992 DOS version and I can't get used
to Excel for the life of me. I have found switching to gnumeric
easier. Unlike Wordstar, WordPerfect, Word and OOo's swriter -- which
function very similarly -- Lotus 1-2-3, Excel and Quattro Pro are very
different. So switching from Excel to scalc may have little to do with
the functionality of the latter so much as just what you are used to
using. I find that what takes me 10 minutes in Quattro Pro can take
hours in Excel (but if it can be done, not much more than 10 minutes in
gnumeric).
--
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