Hugene - 6:26 pm on Apr 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

This is a funny thread. I think the message that is not getting trough is: yes MS Office is the better product, and few will dispute that, but the reality is that you can easily, very easily live without MS Office. That is because most documentation needs do not require all the power of Word and Excel. Now, if you want to build complicated graphs and models, do use MS Office. I personally try to avoid it as much as I can, and so far it's been OK. Why? Because I don't want to pay (or steal) for the software, but most importantly because having all your eggs in one basket (MS's basket) makes them vulnerable to all sorts of attacks/viruses ect. And most importantly, my Ubuntu does not run MS Office (that I know of).

Also, for sure Adobe products kick ass and are the absolute best. But again, for all my webmaster needs, GIMP is more than enough, so why should I pay for a proprietary tool? Even their PDF files use proprietary protocols. It's unacceptable.

But I always keep a copy of Win XP on a separate partition, with all Office and Adobe tools in there, in the case there is something I can not do on Ubuntu. I personally believe this to be the safer solution.

The reality is, MS/Adobe are professional and better features-products, but 99% of the people (including me) don't really need all these features, and they are very vulnerable and bloated.