[P1] OT: Keep Internet Explorer or MS products?

[Paul Bernhardt]

good-dog at northshore.net said on 1/25/03 6:00 AM:

>Folks;
>
>Is there any reason to keep hold of Internet Explorer after using and 
>loving Safari? I understand Safari's a beta, but so far it's much 
>easier to use than Explorer.  I did find I couldn't access a secure 
>site with Safari, but then I can use Netscape or OmniWeb until Apple 
>gets it together with Safari.
>
>As it stands, I only have Word 97 as a Microsoft product. It's not yet 
>installed after I went over to OS X, so I haven't had a need for it. 
>AppleWorks looks pretty tempting. I had it before, but the newer 
>version might be better.  Any recommendations here?  I have Z-Write, a 
>lovely word processing program created by a writer for writers.  I 
>don't have the need for a super powerhouse word processing application. 
>  From comments I've seen in the past, moving away from MS products is 
>beneficial to your machines memory, among other things.
>
>Your comments will be welcome.

Lots of questions in your basic question.

I keep IE on my iBook, even though most of my browsing is with Safari, 
because some sites won't work with Safari, yet.

As to other MS products.... Appleworks is fine for what 95% of home/small 
business users need out of an office package... except for one important 
thing: its Spreadsheet. The AW spreadsheet is a joke usable only for the 
most simple spreadsheet functions. It has nowhere near the built in math 
functions, etc. that Excel does and it can matter for a fair number of 
people. 

With that said, recently a new product has come out that can emulate most 
everything you might want to do with Office, but is lots cheaper and is 
not MS and is completely file compatible with Office. ThinkOffice is 
written in Java and really rocks! If ThinkOffice had been available when 
I was buying Office, I might not of gone with MS.

Paul