Why Use Windows?

[vodhner at cox.net]

(Was:  Re: Update on VMs under Linux?)

Bill Lindley <wlindley at wlindley.com> wrote: 
> Why run MS Word97 when you can run OpenOffice?

I don't run MS Word97 when I can run OpenOffice.

OpenOffice is not a replacement for MS Word.  They are two
different applications with limited compatibility.  I use
OpenOffice when I can, and Word when I have to:  mainly,
when I am involved in an exchange of Word documents that
won't render in OOo.

It will be nice when ODF becomes commonly used.  I'm trying
to promote it, but sometimes it's like trying to pay for things
in pa'angas instead of dollars.

For example, one of my sons is a student in ASU's BS in Nursing
program.  One of his courses provides Word templates for
submission of work; and requires totally rigorously precise
formatting in electronically submitted coursework.  OOo (or
Word97 for that matter) is not an option here:  no WYSIWTG
(What You See Is What Teacher Gets).  He found Office 2007
for Home and Student at CompUSA for $140, that's three
licenses.  Not bad as a Cost of Not Flunking [TM].  Mom will
use the other two licenses, so the cost is about $50 per.

This is equivalent to the strangle-hold that big textbook
publishers have on schools, but less expensive.

If someone gives you a document with all sorts of graphics
interleaved with text, and MS-specific fonts laid out to fill pages
but not overflow, there's no way FOSS can fully break the MS
encryption and render that document accurately -- as illustrated
by the "behave like Word" sections of Microsoft's Office Open
(sic!) XML definition.

Meanwhile, my wife is a Microsoft customer, pure and simple.
She works with it at work, she wants it on her desktop.  She has
bigger fish to fry than trying to straddle two sets of applications.

I am currently struggling with her new Vista laptop.  Microsoft has
done it again:  a Vista PC apparently won't share files with an XP
PC without installing special software on XP.  This is apparently
just a trojan horse -- to install that software on XP, you have to
do the whole "genuine" thing first, which I'd managed to avoid
on the XP box to date.  But she wants to share between her
desktop and her laptop, so fine, I'll risk a false-negative and cave
in to the "genuine" requirement.

In the real world, Word is still Coin of the Realm.  Hopefully the
hold will be loosened over the next 10 years, but don't count on
people who work *with* other people to give up Word very soon.

And why else am I using Windows?  Because I switched from
CentOS to Ubuntu, and my Cisco VPN client that I need for work
does not install on Ubuntu -- some header discrepancy that I can
probably fix with a little hacking, but haven't yet.  Other VPN
solutions would be even more work to install.  So I have to boot
over to Windows for VPN access.  Just like many other apps,
this is something that works great *when* it works under Linux,
but Just Works [TM] under Windows.

The old wide-eyed question, "why use Windows", gets a little
old for people who have to deal with other people and the
requirements of organizations whose primary focus does not
happen to be breaking the Microsoft monopoly.  We should
promote open standards and products wherever possible, but
if someone is taking the trouble to dual-boot or use virtual
Windows under Linux, we should probably give their
intelligence the benefit of the doubt.

Vic