Empiric knowledge..not Windows, but "Windwoes"!

Yesterday, during their presentations, my students experienced (for the second time) the frustration of computers that are supposed to work but they don't.

Mishap #1

On Tuesday, since my netbook runs Mandriva Linux, not to use it, a group brought their own laptop running Windows. I think that their idea was that Windows is better because they can run MS Office PowerPoint and they ignore that Open Office can actually display PowerPoint files (.ppt) as well as Open Presentation (.odp) ones. To their distress, the computer refused to send the video signal to the multimedia projector.

Luckily for them, I had brought my old Asus Eee PC 900 along. So, I hooked it to the rebellious projector and, without any key pressing, Mandriva One sent video signal. Next, Open Office read and imported the PowerPoint presentation and they could work normally... Linux doesn't bite, you know? Actually, Linux saved their...day ;-)

Mishap #2

Yesterday, since nobody requested my netbook, I left it home. One student in group, who gets along with me pretty well, was telling me that she had gotten the equipment from the Centro de Recursos not to have any problem. Those are new notebooks running Windows 7, so, teasingly, I said to her "No problems? That remains to be seen".

And they did have a ++*SMALL*++ problem: The frustrating incompatibility among Microsoft products! They could not open the presentation because Windows 7 refused to read the file made by its own brother! (Vista or XP, I don't know)

So, this group ended up working without a presentation because, ironically, not to have "incompatibility" issues with Linux, they smashed their heads on the wall of reality: incompatibility is Microsoft's greatest market scam. While Linux tries to read most formats (and some peripherals even without the drivers), Microsoft continues to make incompatible file formats among ITS OWN products and sends the message that Linux is "incompatible" and that Open Office is "unproductive". Hard way to learn, I think.