[dba-Tech] Linux equivalent of Office 2013?

Ahh Arthur don't get despondent and morose. 

There are lots of delightful applications and opportunities out there but in
truth they are mostly web based. That means all you need is browser and you
are away. It is amazing how cheaply you can set up for your own designing.

The PC market is never going away. Even though the tablet/Smartphone market
is growing spectacularly, the existing PC market, though growing much slower
still has, by far, the largest market share. The one thing to note is that
the new tablets and Smartphones are only for the consumer market. The actual
market we are in is the production market, we produce the consumables and
that for the most part requires PCs and servers.

Jim
  
-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 4:20 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Linux equivalent of Office 2013?

Your question reminds me of the old joke about the optimist and the
pessimist. The optimist greets the sunrise with a smile and says, "This is
the best of all possible worlds."
The pessimist smiles and agrees.

I think that what you and I (and possibly others here) are feeling is our
collective obsolescence. I began to learn programming on a shared computer
somewhere around 1979. The first program I wrote was a simulation of the
casino game craps. I wrote it in BASIC on a Commodore with cassette drives.
I bought my first computer on March 15, 1983, an Apple II clone with a CP/M
card. It came with WordStar, SuperCalc and dBASE II. I learned WordStar in
and SuperCalc in a couple of days each, and dBASE II in about a month.

Since then, I've spent my entire career in a world where PC applications
for business dominated the computing landscape. You could throw a stick and
it would hit nine new clients.

That world is gone -- or rather, like Santa Claus, dying a little more each
year but  never quite dead. The computing world has moved on: business apps
are no longer the epicentre of computing, just as the internet ate the
world of newspapers, just as physical books and the brick-and-mortar
bookstores are no longer the epicentre of book publishing, just as the
gaming world has far outstripped the Movie industry in terms of revenues.
And currently, just as smart phones, tablets and smart TVs now occupy
centre stage.

Microsoft is very aware of this, and that is the whole point behind Windows
8, which is targeted much more at tablets and smart phones than it is at
the (yawn) business world. There will always be a requirement for
traditional, dare I say tired, old, and unexciting, PC apps. But they're
not where the action is, and I think we all know it.

Most of all, I think Microsoft knows it, too. Windows and Office have
always been the twin pillars of MS's dominance of the PC world. One never
shoots a cash cow, and one's nostalgic fondness for her never quite goes
away. But her welfare becomes secondary to that of the young, healthy cows
in the pasture.

Look around this group. How many young Turks are here, as compared with old
farts (like me)? This is not likely to change -- not unless we morphed our
site into a centre for developers of phone apps, games, and so on.

That's how I see it, anyway. But why listen to just another old fart?

On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 4:19 AM, Mark Breen <marklbreen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I know that I am not alone, but does anyone here think that the market are
> not going to want to switch to Win8 / Off 13?
>
> I mean, could this release be the worst every for MS?
>
> It is the first ever OS and Off release that I dread.
>
> Finally, did you all see the financial results for MS today?, Imagine what
> we will be reading in a years time.
>
> Or am I being too pessimistic?
>
> Mark
>
> --
>
Arthur
Cell: 647.710.1314

Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
  -- Niels Bohr
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