Free Linux and OpenOffice - even if your email address doesn't

-----Original Message----- The whole debate started, when I simply notified the list, that anyone who ran Windows, and was in school, or knew someone in school, and had an .edu email address, could get an academic copy of Office 2007 Ultimate for $60. After that, all the Linux/Open-Source bigots came out decrying it. OpenOffice was menetioned as being the be-all end-all and being free, and I promptly downloaded it, installed it, and it wouldn't even open 1/3 of the work my wife did last semester. Now, does that mean it sucks? No. Did I say it sucked? No. But the Zealots took it as such, and kept going from there. I never said you couldn't use Linux+OO in school - I am sure MILLIONS already do. I just made the point that it was NOT the right solution for my wife. She is not exactly, um, computer saavy, and has no desire to be, so for my situation, I saw it best to give here Windows+Office, because working 10-12 hours at the office, and then 4 more VPN'd from home, I REALLY didn't want to add to my load... But the bigots INSISTED... I am in TOTAL agreement with what you say - we run many environments at work, and there are MANY instances where Linux is the ideal solution. We currently have about, oh, let's say 12-18 Linux servers at work, (2) of which are hosting semi-large Oracle databases, on the order of about 40GB, and running on HP Proliant DL380 G3's or G4's (depending on age) and either (6) 72GB or 146GB drives in RAID5, again depending on age. They run fine, work fine, kick the SNOT out of equivalent Windows boxes hosting Oracle, and as you pointed out,I have NEVER had a virus/malware/trojan issue to speak of. And we all know that is NOT the case with Windows boxen! As to TCO, well I don't know what you're getting at, as I just pay yearly fees for the M$ True-Up, and the eTrust AV. Comes up to about $785/year for both. Now, workstations are a bit more, and btw, all ours are NOT the same, depending on age, and the property they are at. I still have Compaq Deskpro EN (P3/800-1000) in the enterprise, HP Workstations, multiple versions of Dell SX and GX-series machines, And Dell/IBM Laptops (mostly Dell Latitudes now, D600/D610/D620/D630, as most TPads have been retired). And most times, I don't get a parts-swapping droid when we call HP/IBM/DELL - we usually get overnighted the bad part, so it's back up and running the next day, assuming next day service on that machine, and assuming not the weekend. The only exceptions are the servers, which come with a 3YR warranty, and we pick up the next day, 24x7 support on those. As I said...my first introduction to free *nix was 386BSD in about '94 or so, followed by Linux, although it was still 2 floppies, and then to FreeBSD, which was the next progression of 386BSD - played a little with Minix, but it was a bit closed-in for me - Linux was gathering steam, and developers were getting strongly behind it, which is when I switched over from *BSD to Linux. Things were happening REALLY fast in the Linux world, and were slowing down in *BSD. And then they started the whole *BSD split-offs I figured it was time to switch over for real. Heck, I think I still have quite a few of the older media around, back when Linux was the "In thing" and was being sold retail in Best Buy / Circuit City / etc.. I CLEARLY remember, before affordable WiFi days, the copy of Corel Linux I bought retail, was about the ONLY operating system, that out-of-the-box, would properly run with those RayCom 2MBit wireless cards. Not Windows, and not other Linux distros - I'm talking OOB, here. And I remember loading that on an HP OmniBook of some sort, Pentium 200 or so, as I recall... ps - forgive the formatting, as this is through my Webmail because my work XP laptop is, surprise, running malware / trojan cleaning apps. Tony