OO yes

The problem with the mail merge in Open Office is now solved... and the best bet was not to use that feature as such, but to develop the form "by hand".

OO

Gorse Fox has frequently extolled the virtues of Open Office - but has again found that its mail merge is not quite as intuitive as it should be.

Windows tax

Thinking about tax, and remembering the historical "window tax" (brought in by William III in 1696 and lasting until 1851) got the Gorse Fox wondering about stealth tax.

Given that most Government departments eschew open source, and have fallen hook, line and sinker for anything that comes out of Microsoft Gorse Fox would assert that we are, once more, paying a Windows tax.

As Taxpayers we are funding the expensive, resource-hungry software, and lining the pockest of the richest man in the world. The upshot of this Windows tax is:

• HMG uses a resource hungry, buggy, operating system,
• Requiring ever higher specification computers
• In order to run an inflated browser full of security flaws
• A word processor
• A spreadsheet, and
• A presentation generator

GF trusts that you are proud of this selection (though admits he does use the resource-hungry, buggy operating himself - at least on this machine).

BUT if GF was spending other peoples' money he would be less profligate, and be looking at flavours of LINUX as an operating system supporting thin clients and providing predominantly open source software (like Open Office, or MySQL).