feeling smug

[Brunellus]

I was at work the other day. One of my co-workers gets on the elevator with me and says "I just found out something really neat. Did you know we could print directly to pdf!?"

Our firm uses a commercial program (http://www.jawspdf.com/) to convert regular microsoft word documents to pdf.

"Yeah," I say. "I've also been able to do that at home for ages...for free."

She'd never heard of OpenOffice before.

I ended up feeling smug, but also started thinking--just how few people are even aware of alternatives to their present software?

[mstlyevil]

More and more people are becoming aware of the alternatives. Most of those people just have a hard time breaking the Windows addiction.

[Sutekh]

I ended up feeling smug, but also started thinking--just how few people are even aware of alternatives to their present software?
Lots, no wait very few! My parents computer bought it the other day during an electrical storm (still can't believe that happened)

Anyway, they wanted me to install Office again for them, but this time were a bit squeamish that it's no longer licensed. Put them onto OpenOffice, and they love it.

They couldn't believe that they could write to .pdf. They thought that Adobe owned .pdf and that buying Adobe was the only way you could make pdfs.

[aysiu]

I don't think I would, but if I ever went back to Windows, I would be grateful to Linux for exposing me to open source alternatives to proprietary (and often costly) commercial programs.

Once you're aware of open source, you soon realize you can use OpenOffice, GIMP, and a whole host of other "Linux" programs natively in Windows, too.

[BWF89]

I realized what a waste alot of commercial software is when I walked into OfficeMax and saw that they were selling Microsoft Office for $500 (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=8031).

[macewan]

All the Production Department Job Layouts for the nonprofit I work with were created in OpenOffice.org2 & exported to pdf for use as the master control documents.

[briancurtin]

i noticed this as well in the lab that i work in. i went to print from Word once and noticed an option to print as PDF and i was kind of stunned. i didnt know it could do that.

im an OO user, and obviously knew about its capabilities, but as of now my lab has OO installed so i dont even have to bother with Word anymore

[Brunellus]

i noticed this as well in the lab that i work in. i went to print from Word once and noticed an option to print as PDF and i was kind of stunned. i didnt know it could do that.

im an OO user, and obviously knew about its capabilities, but as of now my lab has OO installed so i dont even have to bother with Word anymore
the difference, of course, is that to extend word, you need to pay money. OOo does it for free and for Free.