"including the ability to directly cut and paste document items directly into emails and have it fully handled and look and behave perfectly".

Sorry, but I can't stop laughing at this to post long enough to post a real reply. Let's just say that hasn't been my experience. Especially when you remeber microsoft's definition of cross platform is it works on both Vista AND win7. Maybe if 100% of all servers, clients and OS were all the same versions? I guess that rules out macs, iphones, androids, etc. PLEASE. The larger the enterprise the worse the fragmentation gets.

In my situation I used visio diagrammes in jpg with a client side image map. This did multiple things simultaneously: grouping and hierarchy. Geolocation and service clusters. Plus the CFIO could even drill down for her research! All the while retaining the full text search, etc., that the wiki provides. Good luck!

But for now... If I were a Samurai, I would not start newbies with a live sharp sword. And Modern Perl is so, so very sharp...

I keep reading the full paper (+points for publishing the whole thing!) and have yet to hit upon the definition of the word "accurate" they are using to measure the results. Apparently that is contained inside their previous paper with no direct link. On page 3 though, Perl is described as "A well-known commercial programming language". Really? C# is a commercial language, Perl is an Open Source language with wide commercial adoption that has evolved or the years into several distinct beasts.

I took a $10K(USD) cut: $5K for cutting a 25 minute drive down a tollway that costs me $600/yr to a 2.1mile door to door "commute". Bicycling to work ROCKS. And another $5K discount to work with under a particular manager that I had worked with before. That was 3 yrs ago when the company was starting off, now we are peers, and the company just got acquired by the largest competitor in the field. I have no complaints.

So - his loyalty (to his workers) engendered similar loyalty in turn (to him). I wouldn't have sacrificed the pay cut for just anyone. Everyone benefited from it. And oh yes, I got that $10K added back to my salary within 2 yrs. I would do that again.

But despite the fact loyalty does work... that doesn't seem to be the position you are in. Right? If you can leave cleanly, do it. They will survive just fine and you will be remembered as the miracle worker that built it from scratch.

I 3rd the vote for YaST! THE easiest way to transition from windows to Linux is through a menu driven configuration utility, and YaST runs in ncurses too so you can run your server without loading a GUI (and it's security issues). That aside, don't deploy to 2500 users an unfamiliar tech you can't fix...

But seriously... We just wrote an enterprise, line of business application in Perl using Catalyst, Moose, DBIx, Template Toolkit, etc. After that experience this 44 year old programmer says "You can pry Perl from my cold dead fingers". In just over a year, my small team of two accomplished what takes competitors 2+ years with actual staff of 5+. Additionally I am not even sure we could have met the performance requirements with .Net or Java. Writing large apps in Modern Perl has been frigging wonderful, people. I like going to work again. That is why Perl isn't "dead". I am looking forward to Perl6, because I am all about leaving on time. Every day. Which Perl enabled me to do now. Congrats Rakudo Star team!

Did anyone else notice that "Complete Edition" is listed under the "Operating Systems" category, but if you go up into that category it disappears?

In the left hand helper column it even lists BOTH OSes: Mac and Windows

The only ways I could get to that item was:
a) the direct link
b) searching for linux on the site

Invisible = under the radar. Just saying...