The other day I was in the library at the university here in Germany and I used one of the university computers. I haven’t really used the computers at the university all that much, but when I have, I’ve always used Firefox since they have it installed on all of their computers and I prefer Firefox. Since I use a PowerPC-based Mac, I don’t have access to any version of Internet Explorer except for the woefully outdated version for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9. I therefore thought that while I was at the university, it would be a good time to check compatibility in Internet Explorer for several of my websites. I clicked on the dreadful little blue e in the quick launch bar and to my surprise, Internet Explorer opened and then immediately closed. I was quite confused for a second and decided to try again. I tried again and got the same result. That was certainly strange I thought, so I logged out and tried at a different computer — same result.

I was able to guess that the university had probably blocked the use of Internet Explorer on its computers, but I suppose I couldn’t really believe it. After all, it is a Microsoft product (there is supposed to be a hint of sarcasm there). So, I went and asked the guy working at the tech desk in the library if they had actually blocked it and to my pleasant surprise, he said they indeed had blocked it for safety purposes.

At my university in the United States, I don’t think this would happen — or at least I have never seen it happen. American universities seem to have a fixation for Microsoft products, whether it be Internet Explorer, Office or Outlook. The on-campus computers at my American university do not even have Firefox installed, much less block access to Internet Explorer.

Something else I have noticed about the computers at my German university is that they also use OpenOffice.org as their default office suite. While they do also have Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word is not the default application to open when you open a .doc file; Microsoft Excel is not the first to open when you click on a .xls; and Microsoft PowerPoint is not the first to open when you click on a .ppt file. Instead, they always open in OpenOffice.org by default. I find this to be quite comforting.

Using open source software seems to be an overall trend that is incredibly common here in Europe. In lectures, for example, you see students with their laptops and more often than not, they are browsing the web with Firefox and taking notes with OpenOffice.org. That applies to both Windows and Mac users. I have also noticed a lot more Linux users here than back home in the United States. A lot of the Linux users I have seen and talked to are not even the geeky, computer-whiz type (such as I) that Linux is generally associated with. They are just average users who might not even be able to distinguish the operating system from an application.

The popularity of open source software is a trend I hope will eventually carry over to the United States, although, realistically, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Unlike Europe, everything is far more commercialized in the United States and with that commercialization comes proprietary software that consumers will be willing to buy versus download their free, open source counterparts.

[digg=http://digg.com/apple/iWork_08_and_Microsoft]I’m sure by now everyone who pays any attention to anything Apple-related or even computer-related has heard about (and even had enough of) Apple’s new iLife ’08 and iWork ’08. Well, to add insult to injury, here’s my two cents worth.

After having read quite a bit about the new software suites from Apple, I decided I would go out on a limb and try them myself. Keep in mind, I had iLife ’04 (the first version with GarageBand) and iWork ’06. I rushed out to the local Apple Retail Store (I was too impatient to order it online) and purchased both iLife ’08 and iWork ’08, even sacrificing my university student discount for time saved in getting a chance to play with them. It wasn’t until after the fact that I realized I had hurried to the store to purchase an office suite…

Anyway, what I really wanted to discuss here was the new version of iWork. To sum things up before I even get started, Microsoft should be embarrassed. For most users, the first thing they will notice is the price. At $79 for the entire suite (which includes Pages for word processing, the new Numbers application for spreadsheets and Keynote for slide shows and presentations), it’s much cheaper than the Standard Edition for Microsoft Office, which costs a whopping $399! The next thing users will notice is how beautiful the applications are. They, as would be expected from Apple, seamlessly fit Mac OS X’s Aqua look and feel. It also is noticeably more streamlined with all of the common features being only one or two clicks away than Microsoft’s clunky, outdated Office suite. For those of you who are more familiar with the technical aspects, Apple has beat Microsoft to the punch by supporting the new Open XML format. The Open XML format is used in Microsoft’s own Office 2007 for Windows. That means that iWork ’08 can read and write the default format for Microsoft Office 2007, but Office for Mac can’t. How embarrassing for Microsoft.

That’s about all I have to say about it. On a last note, if you haven’t tried it, but are interested in trying it, Apple has a free 30-day trial available for Mac users. You can find that here: http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial.

There is also more information about iWork ’08 (including screenshots, etc) here: http://www.apple.com/iwork.

[digg=http://www.digg.com/microsoft/Vista_IE7_Banned]This is interesting:

The U.S. Department of Transportation has banned any upgrades to Microsoft Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and even Office 2007. The DOT’s CIO, Daniel Mintz, says he has placed “an indefinite moratorium” on the upgrades. In the memo he wrote to his staff, he stated the reason as being that “there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade.” The ban applies to about 15,000 computers.

In the same memo, a ban on upgrading to the same products is also in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration. This ban applies to about 45,000 computers.

In an interview given on Friday, March 2, the chief technology officer at DOT, Tim Schmidt, said, “We’re analyzing different client software options and also integration issues.” He also mentioned possible alternatives to Windows Vista being Novell’s Suse Linux and Apple’s Macintosh computers.

I read about this in an article on http://www.informationweek.com.

I also found this to be quite funny. According to the article, this could affect several million dollars of software sales of Microsoft software; especially if other federal organizations follow suite. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for Microsoft. While Vista might sport some cool features, Microsoft really didn’t appear to do much to it to motivate corporations (or in this case federal entities) to upgrade to Vista.

We’ll see how this turns out I suppose. What’s your opinion of it?