Comment by greyman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by greyman | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, you are right, and it is good that they though about that and tried the alternative. But I still think the issue of LO not able to read MS documents is a real problem.

Like for example my sister. Her husband works for Redhat so he enthusiastically installed Linux on her notebook, LO and everything. She worked as a professional writer, and it was a real struggle... some documents she received wasn't readable, then they couldn't read some document she sent them... then spell-checker wasn't as good as in MS Word (non-English language), etc. The cost of this solution was quite high, and she eventually gave up and installed Windows.

I am not trying to trash Linux or LO, it would be great to have open-source alternatives to everything, but in certain areas (Office, Adobe products, etc), such alternative doesn't exists and fighting against reality doesn't make it.

> some documents she received wasn't readable, then they couldn't read some document she sent them...

I like that! I send you a document you can't open: your fault. You send me a document I can't open: your fault too.

That's inevitable when you're going against standard practice in the industry, and refusing to fit in with everybody else.

Try the same thing in any other industry and you'll get the same result. "You created the problem: you deal with it."

> some documents she received wasn't readable, then they couldn't read some document she sent them

Which is survivable if your time has no value. If you're paying people serious wages to do this stuff, the costs are dramatically higher than just buying Windows and Office.

When I was in the full-time editing business, sending me unreadable documents more than once would not be a good way to get further commissions.

Specifically, someone on $50,000 a year is earning roughly $25 per hour. Putting them through the painful time-wasting problems of dangerously semi-compatible software is a huge waste of money.

Office 365 easily pays for itself in saving a few minutes per day.

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