🚀 go-pugleaf

Robert Hartley (rh@mblab.gla.ac.uk) wrote:
: > It's quite depressing the way Microsoft runs its business.  Quite often
: > you can feel yourself being shoe-horned into using their products
: > because there is simply no alternative; the Internet Explorer Windows
: > integratrion issue was just the half of it. Office 2000 and
: > Internet Information Server are prime examples of how business
: > engineering can corner a market.
: 
: There are alternatives. You can use WINE for Linux and run MS apps as if
: you had Windows.

<snip>

: Excel is nice though. Probably the best spreadsheet about. Credit where it
: is due.

The trouble is, practically everyone in the company, the company's
clients, and their business partners all use Microsoft Office. Building
something like a KnowledgeBase (yes, I know it's just a fancy database
but that's buzzwords for you) involves the ability to search these
documents etc etc. 

Knowing Office's habit of changing its file formats on a regular basis,
meant I knew that the final system would have to use (spit) Bill Gates
software - and low and behold the only thing I could find to do the job
was Microsoft Internet Information Server.

-- 

Angus