7 Best Alternatives To Microsoft Office Suite — 2019 Edition

"Frank Slootweg" wrote

| You refer to your 'machine' and your 'files', but what about your
| *communication*?
|
It's mostly about my files. The people I email or
write letters to are almost exclusively English speaking.
The issue just doesn't come up very often. Paul was
talking about words like jalapeno. I spell it without the
tilde. People know. If, for some reason, I really needed
to enter a tilde I can. It's an ANSI file, after all. But
I don't think I've ever been in a situation where it seemed
worth the trouble to get out a program that can enter
a special character for me.

| And what about people's names, places, etc., etc. whose spelling
| contains local language characters? Do you refuse to spell those names
| correctly, just because you're "on my own machine"?
|

I don't know what names you're talking about. I don't
know anyone who has an accent or umlaut in their name.
You're making up problems that don't exist.

The problem with switching to UTF-8 is that while it's
a better solution than unicode-16, it's still a problem.
It's not easy to sniff a file to tell UTF-8 from ANSI, yet
headers or BOMs are discouraged. So if I open a UTF-8
webpage in Notepad I see corrupted characters. If I
add a BOM for Notepad I have a corrupted ANSI file
in other programs. And since I'm not using unicode fonts,
I can't see the characters, anyway, except in a browser.

"XS11E" wrote

| I just go one step further and say Quicken and TurboTax are the only
| reasons I own a computer. Some years back I'd reached a point where my
| personal income taxes were costing me over $900/year to have them done
| by a good accounting firm, the next year I spent less than $100 on
| Quicken and TurboTax plus a few hundred on a used PC and did it myself.
| The PC and software were more than paid by the savings and I've treated
| myself to a newer, faster PC every couple of years, again, all paid by
| the savings from using Quicken and TurboTax.
|

I also do my own taxes and always have. But I do
most of it with pencil and paper. I fill out the forms
on my computer. No need for Quicken, TurboTax,
etc.
Even with an accountant you still have to gather
together your records and receipts. That's most
of the work. And if you're not used to doing your
own taxes then you need to study the tax code.
But if you've done it once then you should be pretty
much set for the next year.

On 12/10/2019 12:39 PM, XS11E wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:

As far as I'm concerned, personal financial software is wonderful.
I use Quicken, not Money, and it saves me an enormous amount of
time and trouble. It's also a wonderful resource for searching for
past expenses--where did I buy something, who provided the
service, when was it, how much did it cost, etc.

Agreed. while keeping track of multiple brokerage accounts, credit card
accounts, etc.

I just go one step further and say Quicken and TurboTax are the only
reasons I own a computer.


I wouldn't say they were the only reason I owned a computer, but they
were certainly important reasons.

But starting three or four years ago, I stopped using Turbo Tax.
Although using it was still much easier than doing it manually, my
returns got more and more complicated and I switched to an accountant.
That's certainly more expensive than Turbo Tax, but not as expensive as
your accountant was.


Some years back I'd reached a point where my
personal income taxes were costing me over $900/year to have them done
by a good accounting firm, the next year I spent less than $100 on
Quicken and TurboTax plus a few hundred on a used PC and did it myself.
The PC and software were more than paid by the savings and I've treated
myself to a newer, faster PC every couple of years, again, all paid by
the savings from using Quicken and TurboTax.



--
Ken

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Mayayana wrote:
"Dan Purgert" wrote

| I'm not sure what you mean with adware - Ubuntu gave up on that AMZN
| integration about as fast as they recanted on killing 32-bit after Valve
| told them off.
|

I've heard that. Yet the fact that they had the means to
do it, and thought of trying, is a very bad sign. It shouldn't
be possible for them to have that access.

Access to ... what, exactly?


| I often think of Window/Mac/Linux as a decent car,
| a sportscar with the hood welded shut, and a car kit.
| There's no sense moving from a decent sedan to a sedan
| with the hood welded shut. It would only make sense
| if the new sedan had better/more features.
|
| Of course; but then I didn't say to get a mac, did I?
|
The point of that analogy is that Linux isn't much
use to me as a car kit. But if they go to the other
extreme it's also not much use. For many Linux fans
there are only two categories of people: Those whho
compile their software and Grandma.

I haven't had that experience. Maybe those types are in my killfile.

| How does your "standalone computer" get online? Internal modem directly
| to your ISP?

Router to cable connection. But all computers in
the house are set up with networking services
disabled and no file sharing, etc. Obviously I have
network capacity in the sense of getting online,
but it's standalone. I have no network neighborhood.
No LAN. No computer can see me and I can't see
any others. I have a handful of programs that are
allowed outbound via the ports they need. That's
it.

So you have a LAN, and a network and ... whatever else. You just choose
to avoid using services (file sharing, etc.). That's entirely fine if
that's the way you want to do things.

Would drive me up a wall needing to configure more than 2 separate
machines the same way, rather than making a centralized config on my
router; but since your way works for you ...


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--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5 4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

On 12/10/2019 2:50 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"XS11E" wrote

| I just go one step further and say Quicken and TurboTax are the only
| reasons I own a computer. Some years back I'd reached a point where my
| personal income taxes were costing me over $900/year to have them done
| by a good accounting firm, the next year I spent less than $100 on
| Quicken and TurboTax plus a few hundred on a used PC and did it myself.
| The PC and software were more than paid by the savings and I've treated
| myself to a newer, faster PC every couple of years, again, all paid by
| the savings from using Quicken and TurboTax.
|

I also do my own taxes and always have. But I do
most of it with pencil and paper. I fill out the forms
on my computer. No need for Quicken, TurboTax,
etc.


Agreed. There's no *need* for them. But as far as I'm concerned, there's
an enormous benefit to using them. I won't repeat myself as to what the
benefits are to me.



Even with an accountant you still have to gather
together your records and receipts. That's most
of the work.


No, it's a very small part of the work *if* you use Quicken, which can
easily gather everything for. It can even have almost all the numbers
transferred directly to Turbo Tax if you want it to.


And if you're not used to doing your
own taxes then you need to study the tax code.
But if you've done it once then you should be pretty
much set for the next year.


Your choice, of course.

--
Ken

David wrote:
On 10/12/2019 18:05, Paul wrote:
Dan Purgert wrote:
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Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 10/12/2019 12.25, Dan Purgert wrote:
I'm not 100% sure if the error is in your reader (for showing the
enveloping), or mine (for making it look like part of the message).
Though with the way my luck's gone over the past week ...
It is not an error, it is intentional.

What I meant by "error" was that it isn't displaying as an "obvious
envelope" to another participant in Usenet.

Here is what Thunderbird looks like, with and without Enigmail
to verify the signing. These are two very different versions
of Thunderbird, and the comparison is merely to compare
what is removed from the display, and what it is replaced with.

https://i.postimg.cc/HLTC4Cw9/Enigmail-In-TBird.gif

If the picture is too fuzzy to view, use "Download Original" button.

Paul

Hmm.

Why are you using such an out-of-date version of Thunderbird?

It's only recently been updated again - I'm now on 68.3.0

That's good :-)

New and shiny, I would guess.

Soon, your .xpi plugins will stop working.
(Don't know the exact release number for that.)

Also, when that happens, the code base will have taken a
major change. The ride could be bumpy for a while (a
few releases). That's how new and shiny works.

It's like when the bus company, puts square wheels on the bus.
A bit bumpy.

Paul

"Mayayana" wrote:

I also do my own taxes and always have. But I do
most of it with pencil and paper. I fill out the forms
on my computer. No need for Quicken, TurboTax,
etc.

Impractical when your return exceeds 90 pages.

Even with an accountant you still have to gather
together your records and receipts.

Quicken does that for me and transfers most of the information into
TurboTax. Mostly I just click the mouse and hang on! G


--
XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

On 10/12/2019 22:54, Paul wrote:
David wrote:
On 10/12/2019 18:05, Paul wrote:
Dan Purgert wrote:
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Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 10/12/2019 12.25, Dan Purgert wrote:
I'm not 100% sure if the error is in your reader (for showing the
enveloping), or mine (for making it look like part of the message).
Though with the way my luck's gone over the past week ...
It is not an error, it is intentional.

What I meant by "error" was that it isn't displaying as an "obvious
envelope" to another participant in Usenet.

Here is what Thunderbird looks like, with and without Enigmail
to verify the signing. These are two very different versions
of Thunderbird, and the comparison is merely to compare
what is removed from the display, and what it is replaced with.

https://i.postimg.cc/HLTC4Cw9/Enigmail-In-TBird.gif

If the picture is too fuzzy to view, use "Download Original" button.

Â*Â*Â* Paul

Hmm.

Why are you using such an out-of-date version of Thunderbird?

It's only recently been updated again - I'm now on 68.3.0

That's good :-)

New and shiny, I would guess.

Soon, your .xpi plugins will stop working.
(Don't know the exact release number for that.)

Also, when that happens, the code base will have taken a
major change. The ride could be bumpy for a while (a
few releases). That's how new and shiny works.

It's like when the bus company, puts square wheels on the bus.
A bit bumpy.

I don't feel the bumps riding my iMac! ;-)

So, why ARE you using such an out-of-date version of Thunderbird?

Chicken? You? I can't believe that. No sir!

On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 00:11:02 +0000, David wrote:

On 10/12/2019 22:54, Paul wrote:
David wrote:

Why are you using such an out-of-date version of Thunderbird?

Paul rightfully ignores the obvious stalk/troll

So, why ARE you using such an out-of-date version of Thunderbird?

Does it bother you when people ignore your feeble stalking attempts?

Are you going to ask a third time? Would that tip your hand?

On 12/10/19 11:14 AM, nospam wrote:
In article , Ken Springer
wrote:

There are a lot of writing skills we no longer teach, and it's to our
detriment. Over the years, I've read this has happened because the
early typewriters could not do things like things like this. That's
true. And early computers, when it came to these skills, are little
more than fancy typewriters.

early typewriters didn't even have a full character set.

There wasn't even a standard keyboard layont.

yes there was, known as qwerty.

however, the position of a couple of the ancillary characters sometimes
varied, as they do today, but that's minor.

this keyboard has a key for 1/2 and 1/4, which was not on all keyboards:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/46/ff...8712e0a3dee659
1.jpg

Where's thje qwerty keyboard layout here?
https://clipground.com/images/antiqu...-clipart-7.jpg

Or he http://www.mrmartinweb.com/type.htm

Qwerty was introdiuced in 1873. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY
Typewriters of different designs go as far back as 1575.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter

A number of typewriters shown here,
http://www.typewritermuseum.org/coll...actyle1&cat=ks,
do not not have the QWERTY layout, even thought they were made after
1873. Obviously, there was no agreed upon layout.

Given that even now, with the optional keyboard layouts like DVORAK,
there is no "standard", just the most common.




--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 12/10/19 2:43 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Frank Slootweg" wrote

| You refer to your 'machine' and your 'files', but what about your
| *communication*?
|
It's mostly about my files. The people I email or
write letters to are almost exclusively English speaking.
The issue just doesn't come up very often. Paul was
talking about words like jalapeno.

And millions of people would call your ignorant. (Or worse, in today's
world.) Which I know you aren't. But, maybe a bit stubborn? VBG
Which I've been accused of being now and again. LOL


I spell it without the
tilde. People know. If, for some reason, I really needed
to enter a tilde I can. It's an ANSI file, after all. But
I don't think I've ever been in a situation where it seemed
worth the trouble to get out a program that can enter
a special character for me.

| And what about people's names, places, etc., etc. whose spelling
| contains local language characters? Do you refuse to spell those names
| correctly, just because you're "on my own machine"?
|

I don't know what names you're talking about. I don't
know anyone who has an accent or umlaut in their name.
You're making up problems that don't exist.

I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë. Born in the USA. :-)

The problem with switching to UTF-8 is that while it's
a better solution than unicode-16, it's still a problem.
It's not easy to sniff a file to tell UTF-8 from ANSI, yet
headers or BOMs are discouraged. So if I open a UTF-8
webpage in Notepad I see corrupted characters. If I
add a BOM for Notepad I have a corrupted ANSI file
in other programs. And since I'm not using unicode fonts,
I can't see the characters, anyway, except in a browser.

--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

"Ken Springer" wrote

| I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë. Born in the USA. :-)
|

I don't even know how to enter that. If Risë wrote to me
I'd do what I just did: Copy and paste her name. What do you
do? Use Charmap.exe? On XP that doesn't even include UTF-8.
I've wondered how people use curly quotes and long dashes.
I don't know of any easy way to do it.

But I also don't know anyone named Risë. My disregard
for foreign languages is only a theoretical slight in the minds
of the non-English speakers here. Fortunately, no one Chinese
or Japanese is filing a complaint with the PC police. Then
we'd all be in big trouble.

On 2019-12-10 9:01 p.m., Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë. Born in the USA. :-)
|

I don't even know how to enter that. If Risë wrote to me
I'd do what I just did: Copy and paste her name. What do you
do? Use Charmap.exe? On XP that doesn't even include UTF-8.
I've wondered how people use curly quotes and long dashes.
I don't know of any easy way to do it.

But I also don't know anyone named Risë. My disregard
for foreign languages is only a theoretical slight in the minds
of the non-English speakers here. Fortunately, no one Chinese
or Japanese is filing a complaint with the PC police. Then
we'd all be in big trouble.



Does the Emoji map in windows 10 work in text only newsgroups?
That's the Windows key plus the dot key, I will try it.

🚑{}®℃℉â�‚$$à¸¿à¸¿â‚¤â‚¤à¯¹à¯¹â‚¬â‚¬Ê¤ÄŠÄ–Ä —ĚĚ↪↩⇈◉◒◶⨌⨶⪜⪙⪆🙂🙂🙂 .

Ok I typed in a random bunch, there are hundreds, Lets see what happens
when I send Them.

Rene

On 2019-12-10 10:02 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 9:01 p.m., Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë.Â* Born in the USA.Â* :-)
|

Â*Â* I don't even know how to enter that. If Risë wrote to me
I'd do what I just did: Copy and paste her name. What do you
do? Use Charmap.exe? On XP that doesn't even include UTF-8.
I've wondered how people use curly quotes and long dashes.
I don't know of any easy way to do it.

Â*Â* But I also don't know anyone named Risë. My disregard
for foreign languages is only a theoretical slight in the minds
of the non-English speakers here. Fortunately, no one Chinese
or Japanese is filing a complaint with the PC police. Then
we'd all be in big trouble.



Does the Emoji map in windows 10 work in text only newsgroups?
That's the Windows key plus the dot key, I will try it.

🚑{}®℃℉â�‚$$à¸¿à¸¿â‚¤â‚¤à¯¹à¯¹â‚¬â‚¬Ê¤ÄŠÄ–Ä —ĚĚ↪↩⇈◉◒◶⨌⨶⪜⪙⪆🙂🙂🙂 .

Ok I typed in a random bunch, there are hundreds, Lets see what happens
when I send Them.

Rene



Well Glory Be, It does work OK :-)

Rene

On 2019-12-10 10:05 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 10:02 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 9:01 p.m., Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë.Â* Born in the USA.
:-)
|

Â*Â* I don't even know how to enter that. If Risë wrote to me
I'd do what I just did: Copy and paste her name. What do you
do? Use Charmap.exe? On XP that doesn't even include UTF-8.
I've wondered how people use curly quotes and long dashes.
I don't know of any easy way to do it.

Â*Â* But I also don't know anyone named Risë. My disregard
for foreign languages is only a theoretical slight in the minds
of the non-English speakers here. Fortunately, no one Chinese
or Japanese is filing a complaint with the PC police. Then
we'd all be in big trouble.



Does the Emoji map in windows 10 work in text only newsgroups?
That's the Windows key plus the dot key, I will try it.

🚑{}®℃℉â�‚$$à¸¿à¸¿â‚¤â‚¤à¯¹à¯¹â‚¬â‚¬Ê¤ÄŠÄ–Ä —ĚĚ↪↩⇈◉◒◶⨌⨶⪜⪙⪆🙂🙂🙂 .

Ok I typed in a random bunch, there are hundreds, Lets see what
happens when I send Them.

Rene



Well Glory Be, It does work OK :-)

Rene


Oh, Oh, I hope I haven't opened up Pandoras box!

Rene