Additionally, no-one in our church office seemed to blink an eye when we moved from Lotus WordPro to MS Office a few years ago. Either the “learning curve” is a convenient excuse, or we’ve created a culture in the workplace that ties people into a single set of applications with no chance of learning and developing. I hope the former; I fear the latter. Both can be resolved.

As for church management software, there are a couple of projects out there – from memory they are mostly designed as web-based applications, and thus cross-platform. A brief search for “linux church management software” brought up enough hits to keep you busy for a lazy afternoon

Ubuntu, though… so attractive, as are the open-source office applications like Open Office. Difficulties, though, are in the learning and compatibility curves. There aren’t a lot of (any?) church-specific applications (for instance, contact/membership managers) for *nix. And yes, you can use WINE to run Windows apps in Ubuntu, but then you’re back to the learning curve.

I’m planning on sticking with Win XP for as long as I can. And let’s face it: those volunteers doing work at home most likely have Win XP on their PCs already. If (when) it comes down to VISTA or nothin’, well, then the pain of moving to Ubuntu starts to look worth it.

* Risk of losing the Internet connection – because of a down ISP, down server on the service’s side, or flying in a plane – and suddenly I have zero access to my data.
* Lack of control over the workspace – with desktop apps, I can help configure the app to work best for the office’s needs just by showing and hiding the right toolbars. Once that’s done, I know exactly what the are seeing day-in and day-out. Wereas with web apps, those service providers are (for better and for worse) updating their web app very regularly. This means some small amount of retraining the office staff, etc., when the change affects their workflow.
* Lack of persistence – this is somewhat of an extension of both of the above two points. Once the office has purchased MS Office 2003, I know it’s pretty-much going to work the same for the next umpteen years. I don’t have to worry about company X buying-out company Y which develops and hosts this online app I’m dependent upon and then company X shuts it down because it duplicates a service company X already has.

All that said, I’m eagerly hoping someone out there can help move me over these hurdles, as that’s the direction I’d like to go, but I lack the ammunition to combat these issues in the minds of the staff. I know with Google (and others) /slowly/ adding off-line capabilities to their apps, that’s helping address some of the issues, but not all apps are “enhanced” in this way yet.