Jeremy White, CEO of CodeWeavers Inc., wants to take away that excuse.

The latest version of his company's flagship software, CrossOver Office 5.0, now lets Linux users run Microsoft Office 2003, as well as earlier versions of Office and other popular productivity software such as Microsoft Visio and Internet Explorer, Intuit Inc.'s Quicken, Lotus Notes, Adobe Systems Inc.'s Photoshop and others.

Announced on Tuesday, CrossOver 5.0 also includes a new feature called "bottles" that creates virtualized, separate instances of Windows. That way, for instance, an IT manager can run something certified for CrossOver such as Office 2000 and something that is not, such as Adobe InDesign, without fear of the latter causing the former application to crash.

The standard version of CrossOver 5.0 costs US$39.95 per user, while a corporate, networkable version costs $69.95 per user.

Introduced three years ago, CrossOver has 200,000 users. Many are individual users or small firms, although White said enterprise customers include Cisco Systems Inc., The Walt Disney Co., DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., Pixar Animation Studios, the state government of Indiana -- and even a blanket license for the entire student body at the California Institute of Technology.