So, what operating systems are you using?

Powerpoints a pretty decent program. Decent enough that I can manage to make presentations without having used it more than a few times in my lifetime. I just absolutely refuse to buy the program or any other MS office program because theyre so expensive. Even with the student discount its $200. They have XP and the new 07' or 08' office at school with the new powerpoint. So its just easier to go there and make the presentation.

 

Apple Keynote is an awesome presentation program!

 

EEeee.... Oooo.... nope. cant endorse that one

 

Yes, great program.

 

To make things even worse, teachers get all the brand new Microsoft and Apple products for free and the students dont. So despite backwards compatability there are problems with them making presentations on new software and us not being able to DL them as well us having new software and them not being able to accept our work. Than theres the apple vs pc users and forwards and backwards conversions and its basicly a huge mess. I think PDFs are the greatest thing in the world at this point. Thank you Adobe.

 

90% of my computer time is spent with Firefox and OpenOffice.org

I use Firefox for my email (Gmail), calendar (Google), todo list (Remember the Milk), and more. OpenOffice does almost everything else.

If I need really good quality publishing I use Kile (editor for Latex).

I write most of my articles in a text editor (usually KWrite) before transferring the to OpenOffice.org Writer. I also use the KWrite editor for any coding I do.

 

I like firefox and I can deal with open office, but They take a bit longer than Microsoft stuff to load on winxp. Is this problem solved with ubuntu, or another open source?

 

MS provides hooks in its OS for its apps to load faster.

 

My laptop dual boots the XP image required by work and Fedora 9. I only use Fedora, but work assets are required, for some reason, to have XP installed on them.

I never boot into the XP side - but I do have a virtual XP machine running under VMware on the Linux side. Anything I need to do that requires interacting with my windows colleagues can be done in that.

I do not use word processing packages if I can help it - I typeset my documents using TeX. But since very few of the people I deal with even know what TeX or LaTeX is, I do play with Open Office or Word or whatever other stuff is necessary.

My work uses Lotus Notes, so I run that under Wine. That is only recent actually: I used to have to use the web interface to access my mail on Linux.

James.

 

Yeah. OpenOffice loads a lot more quickly than any MS program on my Mac . . .

 

Yeah, and they also create back doors for the government to easily spy on you... :rofl

 

ive been thinking about using Ubuntu on my laptop but have been hesitant to do so.

 

Using Linux is one of those things you really have to want to do, similiar to wet shaving with a DE or Straight. If you put the time in and have the patience to learn the OS you'll be rewared the opportunity to use a free OS for the rest of your life. At the same time you could end up with a lot of wasted time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears at the end...

Go download a Ubuntu live CD and see how it boots up on your laptop. Check it out for a while and see how you like it. Those live cd's are one cool way to check out linux without having to format drives or dual boot. They save a lot of the things I mentioned in my sentance above..

 

Some of the stuff that I play with is not listed, such as Oracle and Novell Netware. But those are beyond simple user OS's, they are designed for business and enterprise use.

 

Yeah, I know, including _all_ the OS out there would not have been possible so I added the "other" options.

 

Windows XP and I love it. I mainly use Word, Excel and Outlook 2003 (can’t stand Office 2007), Photoshop and Firefox. Also, I have accepted the idea I’m uncool and I have made peace with my mind.

 

XP Pro - When Vista was released, I purchased a laptop with Vista Home pre-installed. Although I admit that there's probably a good dose of the problems related to teaching this old dog new tricks involved in my discomfort, I never got up to speed with Vista. The laptop is now exclusively reserved for my grandkids' use.

I'm eagerly awaiting Windows 7.0.

Ken

 

Great advice. And your comparison of wanting to use linux with wetshaving is dead on!

 

Very well said! You don't even have to boot the Ubuntu live-cd, you can even try it from within windows. Just burn the cd, pop it into your drive and do what the autorun tells you