It's All Geek To Me - May 5th 2004

One of the things clients ask me about all the time is Linux – and they often want to know about all this other 'open source stuff' as well.

I have to grudgingly admit that pure open source for small and medium businesses is still not as smooth as I'd like it to be – even here at KISS we don't operate 100% on open source software. (But I do certainly encourage you to grab any Linux distribution and an old computer to give it a whirl.)

There is one glaring place in just about every small business though where you can participate in the open source revolution, save money, take no risks, and do something great for everyone you work with right away.

Of course I am talking about your office suite – pretty much everyone has a copy of microsucks word. Perhaps you are a financial type person so you spend your time with microsucks excel, or a marketing person, so you live with microsucks powerpoint. No argument that these programs do exactly what you need them to – very well, in fact.

Office suites have a tendency to cause problems, be unstable, and have all sorts of other nasty virus-related things but for the purposes of this article we will focus on a simple singular evil – the price.

Computers have gotten cheaper, monitors are peanuts compared to what they cost 4 years ago, color printers are so affordable pretty much everyone who wants one has one – but the price of office suite software has just gone up and up and up.

Imagine if you will a new entry level Dell Computer – say a Dimension 2400. Nice machine, solid Intel processor, big old hard drive, speedy everything else – selling today from Dell for $339. (No that's not a typo.)

But wait – this spiffy machine doesn't have office – so we click to our handy dandy customizer and find that to add it Dell wants only another $329! (No that's not a typo either.) Hey, another good deal from Dell, that's much less than what it would cost to buy the software at pure retail - $450-$500.

So we just basically doubled the price of our computer with one piece of software – youch!

I'd like to present you with my favorite open source application – OpenOffice.org. From their home page: "OpenOffice.org is both an open-source application and project. It is free. The product is a multi-platform office productivity suite compatible with all major file formats. "

The real joy of this piece of software – besides it being free – is that it will not only open all of your miscrosucks documents, it'll save in that format as well. This means that you can add it to your organization at any pace that you'd like (like maybe only on new computers) and you don't need to change another thing. Some people use OpenOffice some people use microsucks – no problem. You can try it by installing it on your computer and if you don't like just switch back to using the office suite that is already there. Risk free, problem free, and just plain old free – it is a big winner.

Click here to download the Windows version now. (Don't have a broadband connection for the 63.5 mb download? You can order CD's for the price of shipping or just ask the folks here at KISS – we'll be happy to burn you a copy)

You'll find the interface is stunningly familiar – especially since the vast majority of us just write a letter and hit print anyway.

We hope you'll enjoy great success with this slow open source concept – and you'll save thousands of dollars per year in software licensing fees.

Please send us your open source success story – we'll feature them in an upcoming edition of this newsletter.

Tech Tip

by Michael McGrath A “TWO-FOR” TECH TIP THIS WEEK: Email and Google Company names are usually considered nouns. Sometimes, though, company names enter the spoken word as a verb, and the companies always hope it is in a good way. Such is the case with Google. We've heard from a number of clients over the past few months complaining of email problems. When they've given us the error message appearing on their screen, we've asked if they had “googled” it. “What do you mean?” they ask. Well, read on. Google is a great research tool for anything, and we mean anything. Those clients with email problems have reported ERROR MESSAGE 0x800ccc19 to us, so we “googled” it and found a link to a Tech Support Page at Microsoft. That support page explained a conflict between Outlook Express and Norton Anti Virus, and described the corrective steps to cure that conflict. Problem solved. If you've had problems with Outlook Express, and you have an anti virus software installed, you might find your answer at that link. That's one. Additionally, now you know how and where we found the answer to that question. Whether it's an email issue or any other problem, and it generates an Error Message for you, “google” it. That's two.