Open Source applications are even better in many ways, but that is another story ….

We started using an online web site chat service a while back, as it’s an invaluable sales and support tool for us. When we did a quick reckon of the market we quickly came across a problem. It was that old chestnut platform compatibility, we use a mixture of Macs, Linux (mainly Ubuntu) & a few sales guys on Windows.

It was a struggle to find anyone supporting all three platforms, so in the end we chose www.providesupport.com they had Mac and Windows agents and we could use the simple web interface for Ubuntu.

But the reason for this quick blog is that I’ve just installed the Ubuntu 64bit (beta) client and it’s awesome! Complete desktop integration, geographic mapping, country and reference URLs… Most of our Linux guys couldn’t be bothered with the clunky web version so this will definitely increase our productivity:

Why am I blogging about it?

Because the more commercial applications we get on Linux the more viable a platform it becomes for ‘Joe blogs’. For software developers this is a rapidly growing market so get coding… What killer application can you write for a billion future Asus Eee PC type portable computers?

One can only dream .