Linux Is Ready to Roll, With or Without Office

If ever there were a case of the tail wagging the dog, this is an example.

When I construct a spreadsheet in Microsofts Excel, I typically use only one layer of formulas and data. When I save the result, I often "Save As" an Excel 2.1 Worksheet, rather than take the default of saving a more complex Workbook of multiple Worksheets (all but one of which would be empty). In a typical case that I just tested, the difference is a 3KB Worksheet compared with a 14KB Workbook containing exactly the same stuff.

Multiply that difference by the number of spreadsheets stored on your companys PCs, and you wont wonder why disk space grows more quickly than any other dimension or capacity of desktop computing.

This comes to mind whenever someone tells me that its not practical to move corporate PC users to Linux-based desktop machines; not until there are feature-for-feature competitors for the Microsoft Office applications that dominate most office settings. If ever there were a case of the tail wagging the dog, this is an example.

Im not dismissing the benefits of a suite as capable as Office. I wrote my first book with my highly customized copy of Mansfield Software Groups KEdit; I wrote my second with Microsoft Word. The outline mode in Word made it wonderfully easy to reorganize chapters by moving paragraphs, or subsections, while using a high-level structural view.