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The "future-proof" part means that there will always be a way to access docs in the OpenDocument format in the future, because the spec is 100% open. Compare this with, say, a Word 97 docs: already, recent versions of MSOffice are less likely to open them faithfully, and in the future compatibility with such old versions will be broken completely. Sooner or later you'll be required to use those newer versions: Office 97 does not even install properly on XP, so your OS upgrade will see to that, if the necessity to read the Word 2007 docs your business contacts are sending you doesn't. At that point, if you've not found a way to export them safely, your documents are now as much use as a chocolate teapot. If you'd bought an intermediate version (say, Office XP) you could probably transition the docs up to 2007+ supported format, but if you haven't, then you've a problem because Microsoft won't sell it to you anymore.

Or (less likely, perhaps) MS goes titsup after one too many antitrust shaftings and there is no new version, and they're too busy in bankruptcy court to do anything about your now-obsolete documents, as if they cared anyway. A competitor with their own format gradually rises to fill the vacuum, but they can't help you with your old'n'busted docs either because MS never revealed how.

Back to OpenDocument. As an open specification, it will always be possible for software to be made that can render its documents with 100% fidelity. Its future is not tied to the fortunes or whims of a single vendor. I'd like to say it's as simple as that, but of course it's not; OpenDocument could become obsolete too, for various reasons (the main one being loss of interest by its group of corporate backers). If that happens, it's all very well the docs being theoretically 100% readable, but that's f-all use to the masses if nobody writes the software to do it any more.

But I'm not that pessimistic. OpenDocument right now is a young beast, still lacking in many features and an implementation that really gives MSOffice a run for its money. It will get better, though - it's in a better position than MSOffice to respond to the desires of the market, and MS despite their best efforts have actually helped it in some ways. Even if another format pops up in the future that eclipses both ODF and whatever format MSOffice is using that week, as long as it too is open, some talented and motivated coders out there will do that work and make conversion possible - from ODF, at least.

The comparison is like the last 2 on your list, CDs and DVDs. CDs are a fully open format (AFAIK), so anyone can keep making CD players forever if they have a market for it. The CSS encryption and region-coding on DVDs, however, are proprietary (again, AFAIK), so you can only keep making DVD players as long as the IP-holder licenses those technologies to you.

Evolution sucks period. It crashes constantly even on Linux

Why not use Mozilla's Thunderbird. This might be unrelated but it does work very well.

Thunderbird doesn't support OWA or Exchange.

Bull hockey.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/03/30/ho...xchange-server/

If you bothered reading the article you linked, it describes how to set Thunderbird up to work with IMAP.

IMAP isn't the same as Exchange or OWA, especially if your Exchange server isn't configured to even allow IMAP connections.

I know IMAP isn't the same as Exchange or OWA, but you were claiming that Thunderbird doesn't support Exchange when in actuality, it's the other way around: Exhange has to be configured for IMAP before it can support Thunderbird. Remember, servers support clients, not the other way around! So, I'm still calling bullhockey on your comment.

Evolution can connect to Outlook Web Access. IMAP doesn't need to be configured at all to "support" anything. You don't have to configure Exchange to support Evolution (or Entourage). Exchange uses its special moon format, and Thunderbird doesn't support it (but Evolution does, but that sucks on Windows).

True. I still tend to use AbiWord for basic word processing needs though. It's as fully featured as 90% of the people need 99% of the time.

Does anyone have any screenshots of this version? I want to see if they've modernized the interface at all and I'm not about to install it right now just to see. I'll just wait for the final version to hit the repos.

lol what they mean is:

"OpenOffice.org is an open-source, multiplatform and multilingual office suite comparable with MS Office 97"