[luau] CodeWeavers' M$Office - My Thoughts

[Cyberclops]

I purchased the complete CodeWeaver's bundle only to learn that at least for me, it was difficult to install and in the end, none of the applications actually worked without problems.  M$Office crashed immediately upon opening a new document. the Flash player totally locked up my machine, and Quick Time didn't play anything but error messages.

I really don't know why I had so much problem with the
CodeWeaver program, but as I have slept on it, I feel that the
CodeWeaver effort may actually have the long term effect of turning
Linux into a genuinely second class operating system.  What is actually
needed is native applications.  Running WindO$  applications in emulation
doesn't seem to be a very easy or transparent solution.  Worst of all, as I mentioned before, none of the applications seemed to work on my particular machine.  I
find it strange in the sense that Mandrake 8.2 itself has manifested no
problems at all up until my attempt to install CodeWeaver.
I feel it would be best if CodeWeaver worked with the major distributors rather
than individual customers until such time as their products are entirely
transparent and much easier to use.

Here are some of my major criticisms:

First, I was really put off by the fact that the CodeWeaver M$ office
had to be installed as a user, not by "root."  I was installing it on a
single machine which is primarily used by me, but CodeWeaver's policy seems to
have taken the concept of "open source" to an all time low.  Now not
only do we have to have a license for every machine, but every user of
the machine too.  It totally negates any slight advantage Linux might
have.  Assuming CodeWeaver would work, am I to buy and install it
separately for every member of my immediate family?  It seems the
license should apply to a single household or an individual machine.
 Installing separately for each user is taking it just too far.  Secondly, there were no instructions on how to install or launch the
program.  Your application is hardly point and click.  The first order
of business would be to develop an installer that would launch with the
click of a mouse.  I know Star Office 5.2 has achieved that.  Even the
Netscape installer seems better than the highly cryptic CodeWeaver install.

Thirdly, CodeWeaver requires too much knowledge of the end user.  How are end users
to know all the file associations when they aren't even familiar with
the applications.  I happen to use ICEwm, not KDE or Gnome.  I don't
even use M$ Office.  I much prefer WordPerfect.  So even if M$ Office
would have not crashed immediately after start up it's not something I
would enjoy using.  It seems in many respects that CodeWeaver has
brought all the past nightmares of Windows to Linux.  To use CodeWeaver
forces users back into all the horrible bugs associated with M$ itself.

Finally, my opinion might have been different if any of the applications
had worked and I could perceive some benefit.  But to expect consumers
to spend $82.00 for a bunch of cryptic software that doesn't even work
will not be a self sustaining long term policy for any company.

Perhaps as I said before, the CodeWeaver programers efforts would be better spent
developing native applications for Linux.

On the positive side, they did refund my money.