Re: Hello?
Hello
Darryl Barlow wrote to <ooo@mechtilde.de>:
Hi, I am a lawyer with a small practice in Sydney, Australia. Even in
our firm which has three lawyers, a conveyancer and two support staff I
still can't get Windows off the desktop. I also use Linux by choice and
Windows by necessity, and get the pleasure of administering our network
of 9 machines. In addition to workstations, we have a Linux server
running smeserver, a second server running Windows 2000 for some
specialist applications, and a further Linux box running Debian which
provides groupware (Open Exchange) and whatever software I wish to trial
from time to time. I am the only one running a Linux desktop.
I evaluated a trial version of VMWare at one stage, and it is excellent
software. However, I did not proceed to purchase it. I am currently
playing with Qemu which is excellent and completely open source (though
with a free as in beer but proprietary accelarator module).
We use a proprietary practice management package known as Leap which is
based on 4D Server and provides client database and document generation,
though of course works with various versions of Word but not with Open
Office. We use ancient versions of Word 97 for this purpose as we just
do not see the value in upgrading.
I have been looking at open practice management alternatives bt must
admit I am more attracted to a client on each workstation rather than a
lamp type framework, though my mind is not completely closed on this. I
am currently looking at Knomos and also plan to have a look at elawoffice.
I'm a lawyer (Rechtsanwalt) working alone. Mechtilde, my wife, supports
me as in my daily work as running the computers.
We are migrating the office from Windows and MS-Office (including
access) to GNU/linux and Openoffice.org 2.0 connected with MySQL-databases.
The migration of the accounting (Aufzeichnungen) is nearly finished. The
migration of the lawyers-office-software (based on MS-Office including
access) is still in progress.
Other task like mail an editing of our www-page are done by using Debian
software since more than two years.
I don't think it's possible to use the results of our work in other
countries, but I believe the methods of the migration and the developing
of special software like forms etc. can be usefull anywhere.
Mechtilde is documenting such material for the moment in german language.
Dr. Michael Stehmann, Langenfeld (Rhine area), Germany (old europe)
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