I remember eons ago when file formats were a huge issue. A .doc file couldn’t be opened on a mac. A later version of something couldn’t be opened in earlier programs. This is less of an issue now, but it’s still worth remembering that proprietary formats are more limiting than open ones.
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My employer just recently upgraded us to Windows XP. Yeah, we’re dinosaurs. It’s pretty embarrassing when customers send me files and I have to ask them to reconfigure them in an older format.
You can always upload to Google docs and then download. But then, see, “Google is taking over the world” above.
Yes, I get students who’re running Macs and save in one of their proprietary formats without knowing what’s going on. Then I have to work really hard to explain to them “save as” options and even the concept of file types. I can’t get .rtf or Open Office files from them if they literally don’t know that their computer is encoding information in some way or another and they don’t. This goes for the Windows users, too, but at least I have tools to open their various proprietary formats. . . .