basic - continued

[Rafiq Hajat]

> Actually it's not so silly because I was attempted to emphasise the
lack
> of backward compatibility that Microsoft seems to delight in.

You have it the wrong way around. Backwards compatibility would mean the
latest MS office can open older word formats, which it can. What you are
calling wrongly backwards compatibility is actually forwards
compatibility, or future proofing - Asking that a 6 year old application
can open a format only released in recent years. Not the same thing.

> In
> addition, I also wanted to point out that Open Office is much more
> flexible and accommodating than its MS counterpart 

Yeah, a 6 year old application isn't as good as an up to date one. No
surprise there ...

I concede the point - perhaps I have allowed my anti MS prejudices to
taint my suppositions. I started with Word perfect on DOs, then went on
to Lotus AMIPRO (remember Lotus 123?)  in Win3.11 and Lotus Wordpro on
subsequent windows releases. Indeed many of my best DTP designs were
done on Wordpro and I found these programs incredibly powerful but user
friendly. I was saddened when they were withdrawn and I hear they've re
emerged under Corel. Maybe that's why I enjoy Open Office so much. In my
humble opinion, Word sucks, but Excel is a superb program.
But I'm glad we had this debate - it has provided considerable food for
thought and demolished many misconceptions.

Rafiq Hajat
Executive Director,
The Institute for Policy Interaction
P. O. Box E14, Post Dot Net ,
Blantyre - Malawi.
Cell: +265 999 968800
www.ipimalawi.org