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General Software Discussion / Why upgrade to MS Office 2010?

« on: February 19, 2010, 11:20 AM »

Some background. I've used MS Office for years, starting with Word 2.0 for Windows in the early 1990s -- before that, I'd used DOS Wordperfect. Moving to the 32 bit world, I used Office 97 then Office 2000. I never saw much need to upgrade beyond that as Office 2000 seemed pretty feature-complete for my needs in the programs I use most (Word, Excel, and to a lesser extent, Access). However, in 2004 I had a chance to pick up the 3-license Home/Student edition for half price ($80 or so) and did. I've used Word 2003 and Excel 2003 since then -- although I can't see that they are much better than their 2000 editions. As I don't use Access much, I just use Access 2000 when I need it.

I decided that I really should think about upgrading as my current versions are 6 to 10 years old. I noticed that the Office 2010 beta version was available for free, so downloaded and installed the Professional edition beta early in the week. It looks nice, functions well, and the ribbon is okay -- I have other programs that use it and it doesn't bother me as it does some, but it doesn't strike me as a must have improvement either.  However, it doesn't seem to offer me much more than my 2003 edition functionality-wise.

Hence, this thread. I don't live in Office like some people do, so I'd like to hear from those who do what is new and truly useful in Office 2010. What should I look at over the next 6 or 7 months before I have to decide to spend money on Office 2010 or just stay with Office 2003? (I'm in a SOHO environment so corporate/enterprise improvements are not compelling reasons to fork over a few hundred dollars.)

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General Software Discussion / "XPLinux" Running Windows XP and Kubuntu on one joint desktop

« on: June 19, 2007, 05:48 PM »

I've decided not to upgrade to Vista. I would need a new computer and really have no need for one, other than to run Vista. I have, however, upgraded to 1 gig of RAM recently and this has finally allowed me to run Windows and Linux together on one desktop -- all the time. With only 768K to was too painful to run all the time. I call this joint desktop "XPLinux" and it is fairly powerful -- and very slick.

It's all running on an older Compaq with 2.5ghz P4 cpu, 1 gig of RAM, and a 64 meg GeForce 4 video card. I'm running Windows XP SP2 heavily modified with third party desktop enhancements and I'm running Linux (Kubuntu Feisty Fawn) in a VMWare virtual machine (set to have only 384 megs of RAM). I am runing an X-server on Windows (Xming) with allows me to display linux programs running in the VM on my Windows desktop where they look and mostly act like native windows programs. To do this, I use plink (from PuTTY) to connect to the VMWare virtual machine over my home network and display Linux programs on the XMing X-Server I have running on Windows. I run the KDE Kicker panel which lets me start any other Linux program I want to run.

Here's a basic picture of my desktop displaying the Windows start menu and the KDE menu from Kicker. (Note: clicking on the screenshots will take you to a full-sized version)

You may think it looks a lot like Vista with the transparent taskbar and window borders. This is because I am running Windowblinds 5.5 with a transparent theme. It looks spiffy and runs without all the overhead and high end graphics card Vista requires. The tiny icons on the right side of the screen are a Windows Powerpro bar. Clicking on an icon starts a program or brings up a menu. Right clicking on most starts a different program. Middle-clicking on some starts yet a different program. Windows Powerpro is a freeware program I can't live without. The Events list at the top right is from Rainlendar, a freeware calander program. The tiny text at the bottom right above the system tray is another Windows PowerPro bar. While the start menu is displaying for this screen shot, I don't use it much. the start button isn't even on the task bar. Instead of use True Launch Bar (there an almost as powerful freeware version called Free Launch Bar).

The next screenshot shows a few Windows and Linux programs running.

At the top left, the Linux Konsole program is running a terminal session on the VM. Next is Krusader, a "Norton Commander" style Linux file manager displaying a directory from my real D drive (my data drive shared with Feisty via VMWare Tools) on the left and my home directory on the Linux VM's virtual drive on the right. XYWrite4 is an ancient DOS program running in a modern windowed mode thanks the wonderful shareware program TameDOS which not only displays DOS programs in a modern Window (instead of the limited "dosbox" provided by Microsoft) but prevents them from hogging 100% of the cpu as most DOS program want to do under Windows. Finally, the Windows Task Manager proves this really in Windows XP and shows there is still a lot of memory available. (Note that I have VMWare set up to share memory instead of its default "hog the memory" setting.)

The final screenshot shows a few different programs running:

At the top, the new object-oriented command shell, Windows PowerShell running in a Console box. Console is for Windows what Konsole is for KDE on Linux. The large window is KDE's browser (Linux), Konqueror, displaying the Donationcoder forum. Finally, the Konsole window is displaying a Linux terminal running the TinyFugue MU* client connected to LambdaMOO.

As you can see, my setup looks nice and lets me run both Windows XP and Linux programs at the same time. The X-forwarding via PuTTY is a bit slow for running graphics programs -- but Windows has the best graphics programs around, so this is not a major loss. Other Linux programs display more than fast enough for regular use. I have the best of both Windows and Linux worlds and they all work together almost seemlessly -- even my Windows clipboard manager (Clipmate) and hotkey manager (AutoHotKey) work in most Linux programs just as well as they do in most Windows programs.

If you are interested in Linux, but need the access to Windows software. An "XPLinux" set up like this will allow you to have the best of both XP and Linux together on one machine. As you can see you can get a powerful, nice-looking "XPLinux" system without upgrading an old system nearly as much as you'd have to do to get it to run Vista's DRM well.