Vista

One of my neighbors is a fundie bible thumper. He was trying to sell me on the 'save myself before the Rapture'. His sect believes that it will happen within a decade.

So I asked him if he was participating in his companies 401K plan. Or saving for his children's college fund.

No answers. Now that was funny.

And then they'll pay for what I want. Not a bad deal.

Nope, nothing to do with money. I don't have to deal with Vista. It won't enter this here office ;-)

Amen.

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:

Joerg wrote:

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:

Joerg wrote:

It's simple really: "We retain the right to refuse correspondence in proprietary data formats. Please use an *open* document format. We prefer OpenDocument Format."

...and put a fork in M$. They're done.

My rule WRT text documents is Word-97 format. Can be read by all clients, and OpenOffice also handles it just fine. The OO format itself is not widely used in industry so I could not use it. Works for me.

"Winmail.dat" is a real pain though. No matter how often I teach people with Outlook how to avoid that pitfall they fall right back into it, time and again.

Received any specifications in "docx" format yet ?:-)

Fortunately there's a converter available for free.

...Jim Thompson

No. Guess I am lucky that so far my clients haven't jumped onto any of those "new and improved" bandwagons. Most of my correspondences is in

For most formats there is one, once they become widespread. Winmail.dat remains a pain though. Can't even read the newsletter from my attorney and CPA, but next time I am there I show the secretaries how to fix that.

Joerg wrote:

It's not OOo's format. It's ODF sponsored by these folks:

OOo simply does a grand job of implement>Received any specifications in "docx" format yet ?:-)

They say that the memory is the 2nd thing to go, Old Timer. 8-) You even posted to that thread.

No. Looks like Joerg (and perhaps you, as well :-) that have memory problems. I just asked Joerg if he HAD received such a file. I tracked down the converter after I got the "xlsx" file.

...Jim Thompson

I do remember that one. But I've been spared so far.

JeffM wrote:

Jim Thomps>No. Looks like Joerg (and perhaps you, as well :-)

I plead guilty to interpolating a bit. It's all a part of the same steaming pile. It's just M$'s (crap) attempt to derail ODF:

Obviously, his interpolater is properly calibrated ...or he doesn't recognize the 2 formats as siblings.

...or just refuse delivery of broken-by-design file formats.

Consultants can't do that. The client is king :-)

I don't have that privilege. You do what the client asks. I was "forced" to buy the whole Adobe Acrobat Suite _many_ years ago because that was all a Japanese client could read.

...Jim Thompson

Joerg wrote:

You are going to LOVE this: "Office 2003 Service Pack Disables Older File Formats"

Instead of fixing THEIR broken parser, they crippled backwards-compatibility with file formats. Get ready for lots of steaming piles coming your way.

So who has Office 2003 ?:-)

I'm like Joerg, I have Word 97.

...Jim Thompson

FWIW, I've found that in the event Word won't recognize a particular doc version, that the same file can be opened by the drag-and-drop method.

JeffM wrote:

Jim Thomps>So who has Office 2003 ?:-)

Clients.

...and will be using it to create documents which will be sent to clients who will want to open them. If your preferred format isn't already deprecated in M$ products, at this rate, it soon could be (in favor of this new OOXML crap??).

Notice that this was a SERVICE PACK to an *older* M$ product and there is **no advance warning** of what it will cripple.

Client: "Oh, there's a SP available for my M$ app. It says[1] that it's a SECURITY update. I should get that and install it."

...and, once the SP is installed, it's not a simple tweak to regain the backwards-compatibility that M$ just crippled. . . [1] As M$ typical does with such mendacity.

I've never encountered problems with companies using new Office versions. Then again it's usually me who writes reports, module specs and such. They could always read them. Much goes out in PDF format but when it's a collaboration we must all use Word.

Yep. I also got 2000 on one PC. Luckily one can buy older versions at liquidators and such. Comes at a nice discount so you can spend the cost savings on Syrah or Pinot Noir.