ordinary computer user

Eric Dunbar eric.dunbar at gmail.com
Sun Feb 27 22:15:19 UTC 2005


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!

& that's probably exactly why tax software is close source... the
rules change year to year depending on the political tilt of the
party(ies) in power and the formulae which implement these rules will
have to adjusted AND tested. This takes time and money each and every
year...

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).

Having observed a few (six and counting, one Mac-only, two Mac
(90%)-Windows (10%), one-Windows95, two Win 98/XP) people using the
default Ubuntu account (I created a generic one for guests to play
with) and by-and-large they were underwhelmed, if not entirely turned
off by Ubuntu. The interface just isn't up to the standards they're
used to (especially the Mac users found the interface to be
sub-standard) and none of them were impressed by the GUI behaviour of
switching apps, etc.

It seems my own assessment of Linux is not too far from the current
state of affairs -- Linux has *A LOT* of potential (IMNSHO) but it has
yet to be realised. GNOME & KDE have come far in the last two years
but they still have a long way to go before they're viable Windows,
and Mac OS replacements (the former will be easier than the latter).

There's a neat series of articles on OSDir (Enterprise section) on how
Linux fares in the business environment in a (crude) cost-benefit
analysis. The writing could be tighter, and the CBA could be a tad
more rigorous (he gives a lot of "freebies" to Linux and gives the
cost of retraining employees on Linux less air time than it warrants)
but the issues raised are relevant and show a less-than-perfect OS.

Some of the points raised seem to elict some rather childish responses
from some of the Linux fan(atics) that spread their rather boring
propaganda on the (fictional) merits of Linux (let's just say that
I've never seen -- let alone HEARD rumours of -- a virus or spyware
affecting our corporate network of Win NT (with XP being rolled out
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).

Anyway, I'm digressing a lot.

Eric.




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