OOo's put the willies up Microsoft Microsoft is trying to convince customers who have fled the company’s Office software in favour of an open source alternative to return to the proprietary flock by publicly dissing its rival. But the rival in question, as you might expect, isn’t internet kingpin Google. Instead, Redmond has splashed out on an ad that warns …
"I am certain that you can find some users who need to use MS Office because of certain features (eg some macros). But for the vast majority of people who want to knock up simple letter, reports & the such OoO is plenty good enough."
I agree, that in the case of documents and spreadsheets with macros porting them is definately an issue that needs to be considered.
I just wanted to speak up for OOs Writer software. I am currently in the middle of writing a techinical book. I thought about using Word, but after all these years, Word still does "stuff" with the formatting that I don't understand.
I decided that since this was a new, from-scratch project, I might as well look at OO. I installed it, and also found a good document on the web specifically about writing large documents (thesis, books etc) with OO. I followed the advice given, learned how to set up the document the way it needed to be set (e.g. offset margins on left and right pages), set up all my fonts/typefaces etc and... 242 pages into the book (all 242 pages in the same file! (there's a navigator that lets you jump around your document easily)) I've had no problems whatsoever. In fact, it's been a pleasure.
I've found that generally, OO Writer is 'transparent' - it doesn't seem to place any barriers between me and the work I am concentrating on. I don't have to shift my concentration from being an author and writing, and wrestling with the features of the software. It 'just works'. It's very easy to write and format as you go, and hence your mind is not distracted - the writing can flow naturally. Nice.
The klunky interface is fine by me. It means it looks the same on my Windows PC, or on my Linux netbook! Yay! I can write on the train, or in the house. Bonus. The MS 'fisher-price' interface looks like it was designed for babies and was an instant turn-off for me when I first saw it. Why should I have to learn to use a peice of software all over again?
I'm very happy with OO. $0 is a great price. But even if i'd paid, say, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 pounds for it, I would consider it to be very good value for money!
Basic business types who just need to be able to type up letters and so on will probably have no trouble with OO since all they want are the basics. Once your template files are converted over and they understand where the Print and Save icons are located, you can probably just let them have at it.
Where the trouble arises are with the power users. THEY are the ones who actually get into the nitty gritty and script like mad and use those complex spreadsheet formulae. For people like them, OK, they're probably set in their ways; leave them with Office. But what percentage of the average workforce actually comprises that level of sophistication?
Obviously, this is going to vary a lot from industry to industry and shop to shop, depending on what the staff actually do each day, but it has been my experience that after a while everyone develops their own unique set of tricks, key shortcuts, macros, etc that become as natural to them as breathing.
And they don't like it when you change them, because they've got jobs to be getting on with.*
This is not to bash OOo, the same would apply switching the other way.
*I realise that I am in a minority of commentards when it comes to this, but I personally do give a shit what users think, and if they're unhappy, you're probably doing it wrong.
...I think they're pretty much equal. Indeed, OOo may take the KISS prize over Office07. I found a lot of what most users will need can be contextually located with a highlight and/or a right-click. It makes for a rather simple mechanism for making those little changes. Now, I will admit that Your Mileage May Vary, but unless they have intricate setups, script a lot, or use obscure tools like Equation Editors, most user tweaks can probably be duplicated in OOo without much trouble. I know that toolbars and hotkeys can be customized and template files can still be used. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to do a little asking to see just how much users use Office beyond the basics.
Were actually the ones who had least issue, because they got on and figured it out or were quick to ask the "how do I" questions. The only people who needed to be left with MS Office was the finance team because of the old accounting package they use. Once that gets ripped and replaced with OpenBravo or similar, game over. The only copies of MS Office left will be 5 on a terminal server for use with clients that insist on collaborating on docx...
Leni Riefenstahl would have been proud to produce this piece of propaganda for the M$ party in the 1930's.
I almost fell off my chair laughing when the advert mentioned the excessive costs of FOSS - have M$ forgotten how much their software and support contracts eat into IT budgets?
In 2003 we ordered 3 new server licences, 1 Exchange licence, 75 cals for both and 75 copies of Office 2003
Over the last 12 months we've transitioned to Open Office. We have 3 simple rules
All internal documents are to be done in Open Office format
All external documents are to be saved as a PDF only
All machines have MS Office viewers installed
We have had no problems with this.
A few months ago we ordered, 3 new 2008 server licences, 1 new Exchange 2010 licence, 75 cals for both, but this time, no Office, just 20 copies of Outlook for the laptops that need to work offline. Everyone else gets OWA.
Guess what, last week I received a call from MS, they've noticed a discrepancy in our number of licences and they want to do an audit.
Outlook is the only thing we havent been able to suitably replace so far, but it's not for lack of trying. It's just soo bloody good at what it does
"All external documents are to be saved as a PDF only"
Excellent, well said.
That should be mandatory IT policy everywhere , if you don't need to edit the document, you need the .doc (or whatever). If you do, you can all agree a format to use that enables collaboration.
The whole 'interoperability' thing has always been a massive red herring.
Distasteful.. Arrogant is more the term I have in mind.
A few weeks ago I went through a kids machine for a fellow inmate who was concerned about what sons best friend had been doing on sons machine (one of those kids who "knows" all about computers).. Removed all the "cracked" software and put in FOSS alternatives.
The machine now runs faster and malwarebytes no longer has an orgasm of terror when it is run.
There are upsides beyond price to OOo and all the Foss alternatives
We were visited by FAST once, coincidentally (?) just after ordering enough parts to build two dozen PCs ..... and one copy of Windows XP Home Edition.
They were most put out that we were unable to accept their offer of reduced price licence compliance checking software as (1) it would not run on any of our (all Linux) machines and (2) for us, "licence compliance" invariably means handing over the Source Code when asked politely.
LOL, Audits are purely voluntary! Tell them to go [insert insult here] and see if they get the message.
NEVER let software auditors into your organization, unless they are PART of your organization. They are ruthless leeches who are just as likely to plant 'unlicensed software' as they are to find it. Then they charge astronomical fees/fines while STILL not getting you any type of licenses for anything they find. Also they look for the SLIGHTEST discrepancy, including any shareware.
>I received a call from MS, they've noticed a discrepancy in our number of
>licences and they want to do an audit.
I should tell them to P*ss R*ght Orf.
If I go into the co-op and buy 3 pairs of shoes they don't accuse me of shoplifting 3 pairs of socks.
Tell them that for security reasons they have to be accompanied at all times by someone who will cost them £45 per hour.
Time to install a linux server and some samba goodness, I feel.
In either case, tell 'em to sod off.
They like to pretend they've a legal right to come stomping in and check up. They haven't, even if you're doing nothing wrong I'd tell them to shove it.
Perhaps is everyone was as difficult as me MS and the BSA would stop acting like they are a legal authority!
... In the UK MS and the BSA use Trading Standards for their enforcement. Trading Standards do have right of entry into any business premises within the UK to perform an inspection of any of the many things they are chartered to do. They have also been chartered with the task of Software Licence Compliance funnily enough.
MS and the BSA use TS as free labour. If an investigation goes nowhere, Trading Standards foots the bill, not MS or BSA
That is a nice video for sure.
The effects were well-presented adding increased emphasis in a way that did emphasise the points being made without obfuscating/swamping/drowning stuff behind presentation techniques.
As for Office, well I thought life would never be the same without it but Pages, Numbers, Excel and maybe (when I get round to it?) Bento along with Comic Life and a lot of Adobe stuff more than makes up for a loss of Office.
On the other hand Office with Publisher is a great combination.
Part of me wonders if this is not an indicator that office type apps have evolved to the point of not being special but being required on a daily (hourly) basis having evolved so highly over time that the shortfalls are difficult to find.
So, maybe there are two themes to consider?
1 - Office as part of market share
2 - how to augment/supplement office apps fearing the relative decline of "stunning" office apps and making it relevent to 21st century
but it stopped 15 years ago, with my first ever pc. I simply switched it on, booted into windows 95 and fired up wordpad.
It might not be very fancy, but it is a basic word processor, than can easily be used to write a formatted letter. I never owned a windows 3.1 machine, but i assume it had a similar application with it. mac's too.
A full office suite is not really about writing basic letters, in IT they get used to produce highly technical documents, where tables, images, objects, etc all have to be exact. There is also the sharepoint, outlook, OCS, collaboration angle for MS office, which doesn't really have an alternative in OO. We've never actually used it for anything, but apparently it's one of the major reasons MS office was chosen for us by the architects.
Also, these decisions are made by management in the end, just try prying PowerPoint away from them and giving them impress instead!
WordPad is *not* a "basic word processor". It is a *fake* *prop* word processor -- a text editor that has grown in the wrong direction. You can apply bold, underlining and italics, change the font even; but there is no spelling checker!
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, preferring what's on the inside over how it's presented; but I'd sooner have a correctly-spelt document in a single, fixed-spacing font with no emphasis than a badly-spelt document with bold, underline, italics and proper proportional spacing and kerning anyday.
Then again, if WordPad was good enough for serious use, they wouldn't sell so many copies of Office.
are you one of those duffers who still types two space chars after a period, too?
fully justified text is for the clueless, only; it markedly and obviously diminishes legibility.
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mac-Not-Typewriter-Robin-Williams/dp/0201782634">Here's a book</a> you might benefit from reading.
(despite the title, the typographical content thereof isn't platform-specific; the Mac was simply the first platform to deliver routine, consistent access to sophisticated typesetting concepts previously the sole domain of graphic design and print production professionals.)
Been using OpenOffice since it was known as StarOffice 3.x - and prefer it above bloaty Office2007.
That danged ribbon waste my time every time I have to find a function.
Besides, OpenOffice can open the same set of doccies on both Linux and Windows, no need to run Wine on Linux just to read a M$-formatted document.
At HumanRightsTV we changed to Open Office years ago now and have never had a problem. We installed Ubuntu as the OS a long time back and we have all but left Microsoft behind. Whenever I see colleagues or clients they are usually amazed at the abilities I can demonstrate in their office with my Ubuntu laptop.
Then I watch them try to handle Microsoft products generally and I weep with laughter as I watch their struggles; "And you paid for this did you?" I always ask. very often I get the question, "Why can't I do what you have just done on your laptop?" and the answer is always, "Because you pay for something that just is not that good."
That is *pure* gold :)
<rant>
Anyone else think "Microsoft Works" is an oxymoron? MS Office 2007 is pure torture, I get support calls for it on a daily basis, and it has been here for YEARS. And *why* did they take features out of Excel, unless anyone has found where you can still sort several columns of data by the column of your choice .. go try and see the error message for yourself.
And who thought it was a good idea to nix the older MS Orifice formats since Office 2003 sp3?! What about mandated archived documents?! Open Office to the rescue and don't look back!
Speaking of idiotic software design, has anyone else noticed that wordpad in Windows 7 has been ruined by that damned ribbon?!
There is also the MS spyware issues, go look in the Scheduled tasks in Vista or 7 and see how many times a day the MS Office version of WGA (OGA) runs!! Its right in there with the Google updater, notifier et all... big brother indeed!
Seriously how many times does a SINGLE license of the worlds most bloated word processor need to be checked?!
</rant>
----
Speaking of idiotic software design, has anyone else noticed that wordpad in Windows 7 has been ruined by that damned ribbon?!
----
Really? I've had a Win 7 desktop for best part of a year now and it's never occurred to me to actually even load up WordPad (been using OOo at home since forever - long before Win7) ... I might load it up for the first time tonight to have a looksee :)
That is assuming it appears in search - I soooooooo hate the Win7 start menu and the way you can't organise the damned thing yourself.
-- and yes, the only reason I have a Windows PC at all is because it's my gaming box.
OOo has had a major effect already - the price of buying Office for home users has come down hugely - and this is almost certainly due to the competition from OOo. When Office was north of £200, the argument for using a free version that is "good enough" was much more pressing.
Mind you, I'm still using Office X for Mac from nigh on 10 years ago.... good enough for me....
This has been a consistent result of the Microsoft marketing strategy: every release of Orifice has differed sufficiently from the previous, in terms of both function and interface, that users had to be retrained.
The switch from Orifice to Open Orifice[*] is no more costly in these terms than going to the next release of Orifice.
[*] Yes, the pun, dreadful as it is, is fully intentional. Suck it up, dudes!
"Microsoft is trying to convince customers who have fled the company’s Office software in favour of an open source alternative to return to the proprietary flock by publicly dissing its rival."
Typical MS tactics. Why not just make a better product and let it speak for itself? Oh, that's right, they *can't* make a better product.
People leave MS and try OOo then go back because they can't be bothered learning a very slight change to the way they do things. And they need familiarity.
I have never met anyone that went to office 2007 from office 2003 and thought, "wow this ribbon makes it easier to work."
A change takes time, and OOo is just as good as Office if you give it a little work and learn the changes, which took about half an hour for me of lazy messing about.
But OOo getting grief from MS, you know you have arrived.
One thing I've found with sending docs external using OOo, is the simple act of exporting to PDF (one button) removes formatting worries and ensures the content is safe too!
If you really need editing too, just save as doc/xls or whatever. the only problems you get sometimes is around font sizes from Impress, but that seems to be because of different versions of PPT and not an OOo problem at all!
Who makes better sublime use of hosted documents and shared ideas? Who provides the best succour for Beta Manna from the Deep C Trawls and AICapture?
Provide that Win Win Special Service to IntelAIgents and you Driver Active Reality Environments.
Who has Servers aplenty for that AIdDynamic Energy Current Supply and Innovative Novel Generation?
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