It would be completely trivial on Windows since mdb files are accessed with the Jet database engine, one would set up a database connection string just like whe

It would be completely trivial on Windows since mdb files are accessed with the Jet database engine, one would set up a database connection string just like when accessing an Oracle or SQL Server database through ODBC and then use whatever database api is available in one's language of choice (vbscript, javascript (both of them available as 'standard' cscript engines on any installation of Windows since 2001), powershell, visual basic, C++, ...) to extract the data. Or, one would google for 10 seconds like I just did and find for example http://timothychenallen.blogspot.com/2007/08/vb-convert-any-access-table-to-csv.html http://timothychenallen.blogspot.com/2007/08/vb-convert-any-... which does that for you and converts the file into a csv file, and then process it like other csv files. No Office or Visual Basic required. So his claim 'this would have taken a couple of hours' (about converting the mdb to csv on Windows) is a load of bollocks and FUD. He didn't even search for it I'd wager, and let his ideologically myopic view cloud his pragmatic judgement. I'm not sure why people are defending this sort of juvenile fanboyism, it's drivel like this that makes the rest of us serious users who propose Linux in situations where it actually is better than the alternatives look like nutcases.