ordinary computer user

[Tony Pursell]

On 27 Feb 2005 at 17:15, Eric Dunbar wrote:

> On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 21:03:31 +0000, Neil Woolford <neil at neilwoolford>
> wrote: > >I had a discussion like this in my local LUG.  I pointed out
> that I was not > >averse to paying for good value software.  Two
> things I use are Money > >2004 and Taxcalc.  The latter is a UK tax
> calculating and online filing > >program.  (Tax was one of the
> requirement highlighted in the wiki > >article).  Both are very good
> value for money (about £25/$48/€33), > > I hate to be the bringer
> of bad news, but TaxCalc has been abandoned by > Intuit.  Another
> reason to be irked by closed source, perhaps? > > If someone produces
> an open source uk tax return program for Linux I'll > be there like a
> shot.  I'd even pay a support fee!
> 
Apparently Intuit have sold the Taxcalc business to another firm.  It 
remains to be see what will happen in terms of price, reliability, etc.
> 
> On a different note, one thing Ubuntu needs is a *clean* way to shut
> down/restart/sleep a computer. My partner has a strong dislike (dare I
> say hatred) for Ubuntu & FireFox and couldn't figure out where the
> restart command was today (much to her chagrin).
> 

I find that Ubuntu has an almost Windows compatible shutdown from 
GNOME.  

> slowly) computers (30,000 users)... the head aches and time lost due
> to having to recover word processor documents lost in OO.org or
> AbiWord crashes would far outweigh _any_ dollar savings achieved by
> avoiding licencing costs).

I have never lost a document in OO.org.  One of the best things is the 
way I can pick up my Word/OO docs from my Windows partition and 
work with them without re-booting.  I HAVE lost docs in Word due to 
Windows locking up.

Perhaps the biggest problem I can see is that Linux and its apps are 
obscure to the Windows user.  They have strange names (like Ubuntu - 
dare I say) which don't tell you what they are.  And some times there is 
too much choice.  Not that Windows is any different when it comes to it.  
Its a matter of familiarity.  That's where Windows has the lead.  What 
I'm getting at is that Linux developers should bear this in mind when 
they put distros together and create and name new products.  

I can see lots of circumstances where boxes running 
Ubuntu/OO.org/Firefox/Nautilus/Evolution/etc would do everything the 
user would want, and for free.  Take me, for instance.  I have a very 
flaky Win98 system, but the 5yr old 450Mhz Dell box runs this 
environment beautifully.  I was made redundant six months ago so any 
idea of ugrading was put on hold.  I think many offices using a limited 
set of apps could use this set up too.  

What's the way forward, I ask?  Perhaps Firefox and OO.org should be 
seen as a model for getting people over to Open source first on their 
Windows boxes as a stepping stone to Linux.  There are lots of 
organisations going over to OO.org and Star Office now.  

I could go on and on.  But I'll leave it at that for now...

Tony Pursell