It seems that you have been using Outlook in a corporate environment and with added requirements. I only set it up in small offices with maybe fifty users and there never had any issues with it. Others did complain about .PST files going corrupt, but that immense pleasure gladly escaped me, so perhaps I was just luck?

MS Word is smooth, yes, but it lagged behind Lotus Wordpro back in the days that I had been using both. MS Word is much better than the quirky OpenOffice stuff we have now. In fact, I am on Libre and Kingsoft now, even though I have an old MS Office 2007 somewhere, that could run well in Wine.

OneNote is a really amazing organizer and knowledge database. I never even get to use it fully as my final switch to Linux came unexpected, via Apple. (Let's not go there.............)

you should really start creating a linux distro that brings back all those beautiful microsoft classics!

but, why don't you actually use windows then?

Oprah won't know me and I don't think she ever comes here. I do not live in the same complex and I am at the other end of the economy from her. Luckily my son was dressed for the occasion: he was setting up a stage for an international R&B artist. In plain sight of Table Mountain yet no signal at ground level. I wonder how a Parisian or Londoner would see this?

Hi there,

well, "corporate environment" sounds exaggerated. It was a medium-sized company, about 400 people, about 40 of them in R&D. I was one of four guys in electrical and EMC testing. Outlook was the company-given standard (as was the whole Office suite), and I endured it some years, sometimes complaining, sometimes annoying helpdesk, sometimes on the verge of revolting, but most of the time silently - until one day I decided for me that I'd had enough and switched to T-Bird. My boss noticed this solo action of mine with a frown, but since he was pissed about Outlook himself, he kept this knowledge to himself and didn't object.

I don't understand, however, what you're referring to by "added requirements". I didn't mention anything unusual, did I? What I enumerated were simply some basic every-day matters I'm assuming.

Maybe. Fact is, I also heard that quite often, but I wasn't blessed with that kind of fun, either.

Never used any Lotus product, but I've known Word since its babyhood: I first used Word for Windows 1.0 with Windows 3.1 - it wasn't really mature yet, but worked for what I used it. The best that MS Office ever got (in my opinion) was Office 97, with Office 2003 still acceptable (and 2000 in between was a disaster). The new GUI from 2007 onward, though, is awful. Dismissing the classical menu bar was a very bad move. Now it takes me ages to find the functions I need among the various bands.

Where I can help it, I'm using LibreOffice. As with Outlook Express vs. T-Bird, it's not as comfortable to work with as Office 97/2003, but technically more advanced, I think. The thing I like most is that exchanging documents among different versions of MS Office causes more trouble than exchanging between any MS Office Version and Libre Office.

I've never tried; actually, I've never used WINE as such. When I think I want to use some Windows-based software (which I sometimes do), I fire up a VM with Windows.

[X] Doc CPU

http://www.informationisbeautiful.ne...ize-of-africa/

Internet footprint http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm

Note that the world is only 34% served by Internet, so how do they think other users can sync through a cloud that mostly does not even exist?

In the end the world is driven by money a majority of the world will be under-served until they can afford it. Until people start judging neighborhood all the way through to the largest sections of society by the strength of the weakest among us we (humans) will advance no further.