Comments on: Running a business without Microsoft

By: Margo

Margo — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:26:50 +0000

Liz, try PhotoPlus 6 from http://freeserifsoftware.com/, it’s free, and produces nice quality pics.
Margo

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:14:55 +0000

Open Office saved my life. There is nothing I can’t do with open office! You can find open source everything. I wish their was a better open source photoshop though. Gimp is OK.

By: Margo

Margo — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:58:36 +0000

Just wanted to add that OpenOffice is the best PDF converter I’ve found, having tested plenty, both online and via downloaded software. And it’s free! And very simple – just one click of a button. All hyperlinks and anchors are retained, unlike most of them.
Cheers, Margo
http://www.ebay-auction-secrets.com

By: Frontier Psychiatrist

Frontier Psychiatrist — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:35:53 +0000

Stephen Fry writes on his blog on this subject:

http://stephenfry.com/blog/?p=39

By: Sam Barton

Sam Barton — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:40:11 +0000

Don’t get me started!
I represent the peoples front of Linux lovers, a movement to avoid (where possible) lining the pockets of Mr Gates.

At ArenaFlowers.com we have a number of Linux servers for our website (built in Ruby on Rails – not .Net) but Linux for web is not new. As you point out there are many ways to take this concept into the office.

For example, rather than MS Exchange for our email we use SME (http://www.smeserver.org) which does the same thing (Imap mail, VPN user access to the network, intranet, Webmail access etc) but is FREE. The bottom end MS version cost the last company I worked at �5K to set up for a smaller solution than we have here. The big cost with MS is the user licenses at �50 a pop!! – No user licenses with Linux.

As for communication – our phone bill would be the four figure kind if we didn’t have Skype. Thanks to Skype our international calls cost as much as our Email

Have to mention Mantis the support ticket software and also an old fav of mine DotProject which is an online project management tool. DotProject is perhaps a bit dusty now compared to the shiny new MS Project but it does the same thing and again is tad cheaper.

And yes Gmail is the best, I have stopped using my Hotmail account as it takes too long to load in all the extra features.

I converted from a PC to a Mac for my home office and run XP in Bootcamp. Perhaps you should do the same for Ubuntu?

I am not normally this ranty but your post caught an open wound. Good job Trevor.