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It is with a sad heart that we say goodbye to Bill Gates. It’s been an affair that stretched twenty seven years. But like all good things it finally had to come to an end. I’m not shedding any tears though as Microsoft has cost me dearly in the past three decades. With license structures the way they are I will continue to have to spend more money to keep up with my competitors, to keep a high web presence and of course stay legal.To that end, last year I started looking to replace Microsoft software from our premises without losing functionality or losing twenty seven years worth of old files. I must admit it was more difficult than I thought it would be! When I first started looking in shops for laptops and desktops with non-Microsoft operating system I found that it was Windows, Apple or nothing. I would be loading the OS by myself. Of course I would have to pay for the computer pre-loaded with the Microsoft software only to throw it away and then load something else like Linux. I decided to step back a bit and start with a smaller chunk allowing me and my staff to get used to things slowly.
So I started by replacing the MS-Office products. After some research I found the Sun Systems Open Office would be a good replacement. After downloading and setting up the software, which was a non-issue, I ran the two Office products in parallel for a few weeks. In that time I opened up old documents of all types, re-saved some in the new format, some in the old and generally tried to check all possible scenarios. No problems were found so we removed all Microsoft Office products from all of our machines. Bye-bye Billie. A painless and cost effective project.
We also decided to remove Internet Explorer in favour of Firefox. As with Office we experienced no issues to date. The one small exception is being nagged now and then by Windows asking us if we want MS products to be the default products on the system.
We have three issues left to resolve. The first major issue is how to replace our Exchange server with another package that also has a desktop application much like Outlook. The second big issue will be to move to a Linux Desktop environment and the third issue bringing Linux to our Server. On that day we finish the world will still be turning, Bill Gates will still be rich and in business, but we will have saved a lot of money and still be in business also.
So in short, it would seem that you can run a business without using Microsoft. There is other software which functions as well as their software does but without the fees. Business is tough enough these days without the extra and excessive licensing costs.
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