 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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Our theme this month is Applications. What are applications? By one measure,
applications are big programs that cost a lot of money. Or are they? Microsoft Office is the best
known application suite. More than 90 percent of business users use it and it is probable that most home
users do likewise.
What isn't an application? I imagine that any program that runs on its own with no ongoing human interaction
fits that description. They tend to be known as "utilities" but sometimes they have a special name. On
my PC, I have utilities such as Norton Antivirus and Norton Utilities, a ZoneAlarm firewall, and so
on.
Then there are tiny applications that come packaged with another program or with the operating system: they
are called "applets". Internet Explorer, Internet Connection Sharing and Notepad are some examples.
Arguably, the most popular component of Microsoft Office is Word, its word processor. You could be forgiven
if you are not aware of its competitors, Corel WordPerfect
http://www.corel.com or Star Office http://www.openoffice.org,
which is available as a free download
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/5.2/. Most Word users can get most of the features they need
from Wordpad, which comes free with Windows, but many people have never heard of it. Wordpad also reads Word
documents.
Could Star Office displace Office? Not until Microsoft tightens up its anti-piracy measures globally. We are
now familiar with Office 2000 and its requirement for the user to register ("activate") it before the
software has been opened 50 times. I recall that only five countries were selected for that experiment. Now,
with Office XP, the requirement to activate is near-global. It does not stop piracy, as corporate site
licences and special distributions are exempt from this requirement.
Microsoft's activation scheme is a nuisance for legal users. Although I had installed Office 2000 only once
on my previous PC, it refused to install on the new PC that replaced it, displaying a blunt message that the
copy appeared to have been installed "too many times". You are allowed to install it once on a second machine
but I had not done that.
I don't know if Star Office or WordPerfect will displace Word. Many businesses continue to use Office 97 and
have shown no sign of upgrading to Office 2000 or Office XP. Often, an upgrade of software requires a new PC,
even though the accountants tell you that your old PC has many years of depreciation to run. At one-off
prices (from the Harris Technology catalogue), Office XP will set you back $465 as an upgrade or $959
for the full version. Add a new PC and you could spend over $2000 per staff member.
Perhaps the next popular application in Microsoft Office is Outlook, its personal information manager, which
is mainly used for its e-mail capability in most medium and large enterprises. I expect that a spreadsheet is
another popular application and Microsoft Excel is the main contender. I notice that many primary and
secondary school children use Microsoft PowerPoint; I have not seen anyone use another product in standard
business presentations for some time.
What other applications are in use? There must be thousands of them, covering the numerous occupations that
we ply. Microsoft does not dominate in many of those areas, e.g. Web design tools and server applications are
mainly covered by Macromedia; Adobe features heavily in the publishing field; Borland in programming; Oracle
is widespread in the database world; Quicken in personal finance; and so on.
Many companies that once played this game have disappeared or were absorbed by others. That leads me to my
next topic.
AN Absolutely Close Shave
I have a soft spot for "AN" (Ansett Mk I) as it was my preferred local carrier for many years. A particularly
memorable flight to Hong Kong last year was in the plane with the historic callsign VH-ANA. My then-coworker
and former Melb PC President Morris Tobias and I spent nearly an hour in the cockpit chatting with the
pilots.
Through our employment situation we came to know one part of Ansett's business rather well. When it
advertised vacancies earlier this year, I was disappointed that I could not get past their recruitment
agency. A direct approach to the hiring Ansett manager went unanswered.
Foolishly, or because I thought I had a specific solution, I offered my services for free (for a limited
period) to Gary Toomey, its former CEO. His secretary said she had forwarded my resume to Melbourne. While I
am thankful that I found my current position elsewhere, my heart goes out to Ansett staff, particularly our
members who worked there.
Our Job Network is an online forum for all our members and your identity need not be revealed to others.
Check it out at
http://communities.msn.com/melbpcnet/.
Reprinted from the November 2001 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
