Stan Beer
Wednesday, 06 February 2008 16:40
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
My problem with Linux was that it would not run all the applications I
wanted to use and those that did run were not as advanced
implementations as the versions that ran on Windows.
For business, I could get away without using
Microsoft Word or Excel. The OpenOffice.org equivalents are fine.
However, I couldn't find anything running on Linux that matched
Outlook. Evolution is a fair attempt that falls short.
Office productivity suite aside, however, there are other applications
that I need to run for my business that don't work at all on Linux or
as well on Linux as on Windows. I was not really concerned that Firefox
runs noticeably slower on Linux than on Windows. However, what did
concern me was the relatively poor Linux implementation of Skype.
Skype is an application we use constantly for communications within our
organization. I have a Skype Dual Phone for which there is no Linux
software driver. There are newer Skype phones that plug directly into
routers or modems that negate the need for a driver on the computer.
However, the computer based Linux implementation of Skype for
messaging, including SMS, was well behind the Windows implementation
and that bugged me.
I also wanted the option of using Quickbooks and Quicken, which unfortunately were not available on Linux.
Faced with all of this, I decided that I would bite the bullet and give
the dreaded Vista a go. So I gave my machine and copy of Vista Ultimate
to my system builder and told them to replace Windows Home Server with
Vista in a dual boot configuration with Ubuntu.
