It was on, or about, Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:17:49 +0200, that as I was
halfway through a large jam doughnut, David \(Normandy\) wrote:

"William Poaster" wrote in message
...
It was on, or about, Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:57:48 +0100, that as I was
halfway through a large jam doughnut, BAC wrote:

"Charlie Pridham" wrote in message
...
Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our
machines, the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!) The
point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of
my very expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to
know I have solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so
far seems completely compatible in both directions with ms office and
only costs £6 !!!


You'll be running it on Linux next ...

I've lurked in this ng for a while now, picking up some useful
gardening tips. :-)

I changed to using GNU/Linux 10 years ago. For me, it was best thing I
ever did. No viruses, not having to defrag etc.. And if I don't like
one distribution, I can change to another.

I think open source / Linux is definitely the future. Microsoft's
monopoly can only last so long. I've recently got a copy of Linux Ubuntu
and started playing with that. Unfortuately I've not got it to recognise
my modem yet, so can't use it to access the internet. Linux / open
source will definitely take off as it becomes easier for people to
install and get working. The number of free applications available is
also increasing. I plan to write a few myself, time permitting.

Just another point.
Under the GPL you can install a linux distribution *on as many machines
as you like*, no licence restrictions. I have Kubuntu installed on at
least two of my systems.