Something I miss very much after coming to IIML is opportunity to work in Linux. After all what do you use more on your computer than powerpoint, word and excel while doing your MBA. And as somebody had rightly said about Linux that with all it excellent advantage "only if it could get the copy-paste of a word processor right."

I know its not a justice to Linux, but the fact is that any office-suite for Linux will not only have to be at least as feature rich as MSOffice, but it must be compatible and thoroughly so with MS Office. Simply because, more often that not, I have to share my reports and presentations with the world and they would be using MS Office. Though things like Openoffice.org take care of compatibility, but the look and feel compatibility is not good enough. I can not be sure that a presentation I have made using Openoffice.org would look exactly the same when I open it on the powerpoint. And its important lest you should not have to face embarrassment when you suddenly open your presentation before your audience on a windows machine. Same with the word-processor. Besides Openoffice.org (I am not sure of StarOffice) is extremely slow despite all the claims of speed having improved in latest versions.

I know the Linux supported techies would cry you can not expect all the things - if you have to import and export file formats, it got to take time. I can sympathize, but I can not help my need to sharing my presentations and reports with my group members.

And hence, I am booted in windows most of time, unless I decide strongly to spend some time with Linux like in those IITK days. This is exactly what I am doing right now.

Categories: Cribbings