Re: [tlug] [OT] Say _no_ to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

[steven smith <sjs@example.com>]

Josh Glover wrote:
> I don't see this happening, mate. I dropped Microsoft like a bad habit
> years ago, and I see their influence fading, not growing.
I agree.  I think Microsoft's latest OS may hurt 'em.  I 
recently bought a new laptop -- nice little Acer -- dual 
core AMD 64, gig of ram, nice display, dual layer DVD -- 
only $500.  I bought it for the price and the compute power 
-- as a replacement for my workstation.  My 14 year old 
niece said "oh -- you're going to regret that..."  She was 
right.  I ended up taking it back to the dealer and paying 
about $800 for the same hardware but from Gateway because it 
still had XP and it looks like I may be able to get it to 
dual boot Linux (if I can just get the time...)

The open-source apps I use most (cygwin, audacity mostly)
don't run on it yet and may never.  The new features weren't 
that useful to me, the main feature they are pushing -- 
security -- is just the ability to run as admin.

I've talked to a few others since.  The funny part is that 
some of the people I talked were clueless about Linux, but 
no one was really that enamored with Vista.

At a recent reunion, one of my cousins (young, buying first 
computer -- just graduated from high school) was asking 
about what she should get.  I keep my mouth shut at these 
events.  I have a reputation -- you know what I mean :) 
Anyway, the advice from almost everyone there was Apple. 
Almost everyone there who had a computer was an XP user.

It was an interesting reunion...

Steve S.