basic - continued

[Chris Jones]

Hi,

>> Nothing is stopping you buying a newer version of MS office...
> 
> Yes, something is: The ICT administration.

Thats a company discussion, nothing to do with MS per se. So as such it is not fair to factor it into such a purely technical feature-set comparison of two products.

> In my case, as in many others, that was the only comparison possible.
> The admin will either give me a laptop with WinXP and Office 2003, or
> one with Ubuntu. So, how is this comparison unfair? Office 2003 is not
> obsolete. It is supported by MS (though I do not know for how long
> still). The last SP for it was released in 2007. Unlike home users,
> enterprises do not upgrade Office every year.

As I tried to explain, it depends on what sort of comparison you wish to make. If you want to make a purely technical comparison on the feature sets of MS office and OO, it is only fair to compare comparable vintage products, like take the most recent of each.

I don't know why your company admin force office 2003 on you. Maybe its because you company doesn't wish to pay for the upgrade to a new one, since 2003 doesn't everything you want. In which case I go back to my original point which is you are making a cost based comparison, and not a technical one.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that OO beats MS in many ways, but if you are going to make comparisons that convince people, they have to be fair, and IMO the comparison made that started this discussion is not the right one to make.

cheers Chris