Try StarOffice's Presentation and Drawing programs. I'm a consultant who deals primarily with financial and legal companies. I've pitched a lot of systems, both Microsoft and Linux, won some lost some, and this is what worked for me. A pitch to end-users is typically more difficult than a pitch to system admins and management because many of the strengths of Linux, like stability and security and price, don't carry the same impact as usabilty. For most users in most business environments, it will come down to StarOffice versus MS Office. And MS Office is better than StarOffice for all but the lightest tasks. To make sure, reproduce some of your company's templates, spreadsheet's and databases in Star Office. If it was a comparable experience, you can possibly make some converts. If you want to put the accounting office on StarCalc, make sure all of the macros will convert. If your company has in-house VB developers who have worked with making customized Office applications, these will not convert. You may find more success by trying to integrate rather than migrate. I have found the argument for running a mixed environment using a variety of tools works out better. In the server room, making the web server migration argument is fairly simple (depending on exisiting ASP and ActiveX investment. Go to www.php.net for the ASP-PHP argument). There's also a strong argument to be made for the database server as MySQL and PostGRES are both excellent database alternatives. Print and File Services, handled through samba, provide a viable alternative for Linux. Toss a little netatalk into the mix and welcome your Macs. There are some really cool Mac programs available. I installed SuSE 7.1 PPC on an RS6K and I noticed a lot of prentation, graphics, movie making, photgraphics, etc software. I recently integrated Windows, Linux and Macs together very simply in an enterprise with a home office, a warehouse and multiple call centers. The home office got new XP P4s with 256MB for $550 a piece preloaded with Office XP. It only took about 2 days to connect the XP network, set up the X-Drives for Internet file-sharing and online backup (75MB for $3/m per license), create Office XP intranets for each department for sharing and publishing documents, and setup the MacAfee to try and stem the flow of viruses. The Macs had MS Office by necessity because Sun cut off the development of Mac versions early this year and will leave this up to the openoffice people. It should be easier to talk Mac people into Linux because of the great open software for imaging, publishing and video, but I have never successfully done this. Mac people have heavier resistence to OS-switching arguments. In the warehouse and the field offices, I'm using IBM NetVista thin clients ($800) that boot from a SuSE 7.3 acting as boot server. Thin Clients run PHP/MySQL application on the server based on the open ebXML standards for business transactions, which is analogous to a BizTalk project. Some regional managers use thin clients that run StarOffice as well and can read static spreadsheets and documents sent to them from the home office. The servers are 2 IBM RS6Ks running SuSE PPC and AIX 5.1 loaded with apache, qmail, mysql, php, samba and amanda (tape backup). The Windows PCs use ODBC to connect to the MySQL database to populate Office documents and link tables to Access databases. They use IE to connect to the corporate Apache-driven intranet and save their files to a samba directory for backup. The printers are acually not accessible by the Linux servers (Canon again!), but samba came in handy from the other direction. Find out what your company needs to maintain and what they might need to grow and adapt your presentation to them. And serve donuts. Seriously.

staroffice works pretty well, it is very similar to powerpoint

On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Bartydeux wrote:

Le Jeudi 20 Décembre 2001 19:26, vous avez écrit :

...

On Wednesday 19 December 2001 20:05, Curtis wrote:

...

Port it and they will come.

I think there is too much obsession with porting MS apps. Let's show the world we don't need MS by developing high-quality open-source native Linux apps. This is already happening, of course. I barely use Windows/MS any more. That trend will only grow stronger as more and more developers and users join the swelling tide.

Personaly I am not a great specialist in computer science. Just an end-user but I am using Linux about at 100% (99.8% because Canoscan 650U does not like Linux, shame to Canon. As soon as a competitor makes a portable scanner Linux-friendly I throw my Canoscan in the trash-can. I do genealogical work and I need a light and carryable scanner).

I did many thinks though with Linux: Mysql/Perl/Tk, Postfix mail servor working but still at test-stage, I am trying now Cyrus-Imap but still have problems, sound capture with ecasound or gramofile and I would like to do video capture => divx compression but failed to install VCR but I don't despair, etc

At the end of january I'll do a seminar about Linux where I work. It won't be easy because I am the only one who knows some little thing on the matter and I'll face a front of Windows or Apple users (already facing them). I hesitate how I'll present it (excuse my bad english). Powerpoint is not available yet on Linux. I just have my two laptops (one PC and one iBook both with SuSE 7.x). Is there something equivalent to Powerpoint?

Does anybody has suggestions and url's with interesting matters to show in a seminar?

Thanks -- Alain Barthélemy

bartydeux@gminformatique.com http://bartydeux.gminformatique.com