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Is The Microsoft-Free Office Possible?
One Clan Anonymous Coward member asks this question regarding viable alternatives to the entire suite: "The company for which I work is presently deciding on software and hardware standards for employee desktops. A couple of days ago a radical thought occurred to me: could the company use Sun's StarOffice suite in place of Microsoft Office? If so, it might save the company a lot of money! So I cadged some free copies from the local Sun sales office and spread 'em around. For an integrated office suite, it doesn't look half bad. And it may allow some of us to keep our 'nix desktops :-). The question is: can StarOffice really be used in place of Microsoft Office? The big concern is, of course, exchanging MS-Word and MS-Excel files with customers and vendors. Does anybody out there have any experience with deploying StarOffice in place of MS-Office on a company-wide scale?"
TigerPlish asks: "[I wish to] find or develop a cost-effective e-mail solution that'll support Microsoft Outlook. All the functions MS-Exchange provides must be supported, in particular, the ability to migrate an ACT2000 database into an Outlook contact list..complete with searches, etc. So far, the other geeks at work are pushing for MS Exchange, and Lotus Notes, both running on NT. My suggestion is HP's OpenMail, which I'm now starting to play and get familiar with - and it's turning to be quite a bear to configre. At least it sends and gets mail from the internet - tho the x.400 to internet name mappings are truly hideous. Other than HP's OpenMail..are there any other Outlook-compatible server solutions for linux? They can be either payware or open-source..."
Compatibility with Office's contact management features has been a big issue with many of the submissions I get regarding Office replacements, unfortunately I didn't get much information in this regard from the last time this question was raised. It would be interesting to see how much has changed in this area over the past 18+ months.
Lumpy asks: "Is there a program that I can use from Perl (or as a daemon/ etc..) that will converse with an Exchange server for sending and receiving email? Our corporate servers are only Exchange based, and will not open up a POP3/SMTP server for use by non-MS systems."
Which is, as most of us know, another way Microsoft locks offices into their infrastructure. Has there been any progress made on solutions to this problem? I ask this primarily for cases where where administrators are unwilling to go through the trouble of enabling POP3 and SMTP services for their all-Microsoft networks.
Here's a similar question from OldGrover: "Does anyone know any information on the format Outlook uses to talk to Exchange? Where can I find this info? I'd love to have a perl module that talks to an Exchange server and I see no such beast on CPAN, so I'm perfectly willing to write one, but obviously I need the data. If the data isn't available, what are my potential liabilities if I just figure this out myself? (Watching packets, or whatever). Where are the Evolution guys getting their info? If I could, I'd use something else, but there are an awful lot of companies out there using Exchange. My biggest beef with it is its lack of scriptability and transparency and a Perl module with all the power of Outlook (mailing list updates, querying, mailbox manipulation) would go a long way towards helping me resolve that. I'm willing to put in the time on this, but I have to know the lay of the land first. Comments?"
Decyphering the Outlook<->Exchange dialect would go a long way into opening up the office to other systems. A Perl module implementing such a thing could almost directly plug into CSCMail, for example. However, reverse engineering the protocol might prove problematic, even if it was done in countries where reverse engineering is legal, since Microsoft can still put heavy pressure on anyone choosing to use that information. What legalities would be involved here? Could such a feat be performed legally?
What about Calendar sharing? I know Outlook has functionality for scheduling meetings and appointments via e-mail. Are there any Open Sourced applications that perform something like this? Would such a thing be difficult to implement?
So there are still a few issues that need to be addressed before a Microsoft Office-free environment is practical, but it's currently possible with varying degrees of success. Now that the itch is being felt, even among the average user, getting it scratched is a matter of "when", not "if".
You mean there is an office suit from Microsoft?
The only problem I have with WP6, is that I can't read files that people send in Word97 format.
I also am not worried about any type of word/excel macro virus. And I don't use outlook!
Fight Spammers!
I've been using Star Office at home for most of a year. I can say that I have yet to have a problem opening ANY Microsoft Office 97 (or older) document, be it Word or Excel. The calendar portion of Star seems to have the same functionality as Outlook, except for the Virus-friendly scripting. There is some scripting support, but I've never investigated it. Who needs it, really?
Sun is getting ready to release Star Office 5.2, from the preview pages it looks good. They claim the M$ Office filters are much improved, and will support Office 2000. I am looking forward to checking it out. If it's as good as they say, I am going to try to convert our office at work to Star Office. We are currently a M$-Only workplace, including Outlook and Exchange, and it really sucks. The "ILOVEYOU" script brought our Exchange server to it's knees for days.
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
I do web development for mid-sized businesses. I have a customer who wants to ftp his Excel spreadsheets to our webserver, then have them displayed/searchable online. We use Linux for our web, and DB servers, and we run Postgres. Without Microsoft monopolizing the desktop market, my company would be out the several hundred/thousand dollars for the time it takes to write a customized program to convert the Excel strings into Postgres strings...
:-) Thanks Bill!
So I want to know who thinks Microsoft is bad?
regards,
Benjamin Carlson
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
I use StarOffice 5.1 for school work on my Libretto 100CT. One of my friends was away from class one day and wanted the notes. I did the Word97 export, and we opened up the file on his Sharp Mebius (running Office 2000).
When we opened the file, what we found was that the line drawings I did (for some small diagrams) were not exported at all. Of course, that kind of thing is not really used by most users anyway, but this is something to keep in mind.
I also can't figure out how to make only *PART* of a page columnized in StarOffice - I have to resort to using tables.
With regards to export to Power Point, here is what I have found in my experience:
When exporting from a presentation which links to images, all the links are converted to embeds, and the end result is one monster file (in comparison to the original file size).
It also doesn't like to export the bullets properly, and fonts are kind of shaky.
Import works a LOT better than export, though.
That said, its only a matter of time before M$ changes file formats to force everyone onto the vicious upgrade cycle of death ("Uh oh, my client just sent me an attchment in MSOffice 2001 format - must pay M$ tax now!") and the current release of StarOffice becomes useless.
Though I heard some rumblings (here on /. - so it must be true) that the new format might be HTML (or XML) based? If so, expect strange new tags to appear in an undocumented way...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Yes, it's official: The average user doesn't know how to use linux. This is your single, biggest challenge. People do not like change. They have used Windows "for X goddamn years, and goddamnit, I'm not going to switch!" I worked tech support for three years. I dealt with thousands upon thousands of callers. I can safely say that less than 1% of them are currently capable of doing anything much beyond logging in. Most would even protest that.
Yes, linux has many alternatives to MS products available but, like most linux offerings, comes up short on UI. Oh, and for those who are already hammering in their replies - I'd like to remind you I've used linux for the past four years, as well as NT, W2K, Windows 98, hell, I've been on computers since the DOS 3.3. So yes, I do know what I'm talking about here. Your average desktop user has the IQ of a lobotomized flatworm.
If you want corporate acceptance of linux, I have two pieces of advice for you: Don't force it, and don't evangelize it. There are alot of reasons for this, but the simplest one is that if you can't show your boss how to use it, you're not going to get it deployed. The other reason is that despite what people say about this industry moving at warp speed, corporations move about as fast as dark molasses in the dead of a minnesota winter. Most corporations don't upgrade until they have to - they have no time for training, IT is usually busy resetting passwords and deleting that #$@! office assistant from the desktop.
You want linux in the workplace? Code it. Use it. Debug it. Repeat. Linux will not get in the door by simply mentioning it... it must win by proving itself superior. We have no marketing department, our sales department is an FTP server in North Carolina and our programming department spans seven continents. Am I getting through?
OK, here's my $0.02....
1. Mail: Exchange servers will generally talk IMAP. I can read my mail from an Exchange server just fine using any IMAP reader. Of course if your company doesn't do it this way you're hosed. A lot of places shut down POP support since it's "insecure" or something...(no more than anything else....)
2. Documents: For 90% of the documents that most people in an office environment use/create/read, etc., they're probably not using any of the 'advanced' features that would normally break compatibility. It's the other 10% who've got all the macros, templates, graphs, OLE links, and undocumented file format features that will have trouble.
3. Presentations: Unfortunately a big hurdle is all the PHB's whose time is spent created powerpoint slide shows to yammer on about at meeting after meeting. Until we get a powerpoint clone that can 100% handle powerpoint files (these are probably the MOST incompatible between versions) then forget it.
Any spreadsheet will work fine for simply formatting data columns and doing simple charting. Any word processor will work fine for the simple letters, memos, etc. etc. But the above issues are where the problem lies.
This is a slight side track to the original question but recently I have started to feel strongly that a small alteration to current monopoly law could allow everyone to compete on a level playing field. I have found their to be some misunderstanding as to the purpose of monopoly law, it is not illegal to hold a monopoly but it is illegal to abuse one. I would propose that once a monopoly in an area such as software/operating systems had been established (such as in the current Microsoft case) the company in question should be forced to open it's specifications to file formats, protocols and other proprietary systems that limit interoperability.
If Microsoft were forced to open all it's specifications it be far easier to build an office environment in which other systems played a more crucial role. I personally feel that options currently on the table to deal with Microsoft's abuse of power could adversely affect the software industry in ways that will harm everyone. If instead the kind of forced sharing of information I propose was in place the balance of power would change gradually. Software would appear that could talk to an exchange server alongside server software that outlook is happy communicating with.
I don't want to see MS free offices in favor of some other emerging stronghold of power, instead a rich environment where software from many different sources can be used without serious compatibility issues would be infinitely preferable. For the time being this is just pipe dream I know, but that is no reason not to try.
I've been playing with StarOffice (both 5.1 and 5.2 preview) recently, and it looks to be a good, functional office suite, that converts Word and Excel documents fairly well (still some bugs here). Still, I think that Sun (or anyone else for that matter) has a long way to go before they can unseat Microsoft Office from the workplace.
Asking geeks and the computer savvy to switch office suites is no big deal. We've all had experience learning new software, and are not afraid to have our productivity suffer in the short term, if it means benefits in the long term. The real challenge will be getting everyone else (Mary in HR, Bob the CEO) convinced that switching office suites is a Good Thing.
Most users have a hard enough time switching between different versions of Office, let alone Office to StarOffice (or other). True, the up-and-coming office suites are designed to look and feel like Microsoft Office, but it's the little differences that matter. You can type a regular letter in anything without much trouble: but it's the way things like tables, columns, and other page setups are implemented that tend to confuse the common user. If your average user can't figure out how to perform their important tasks in a new office suite, they'll start crying for the old Office.
How many millions of dollars have been spent training the rank-and-file of businesses around the world to use Microsoft Office products? How many training classes have secretaries been sent to? How many Word for Dummy books placed on their desks? The point is that businesses have invested a lot of time and money to train their people to use Microsoft Office: the decision to switch shouldn't be taken lightly.
But Microsoft has embeded codes, but you just don't see it.
Styles are a start, but sometimes, some people need finer control.
Fight Spammers!
Since most people don't use all of the features of any word processor, i suggest saving every document in an open format, ie RTF. If they need the formatting they can save it in Postscript(pdf).
The makers of OSS office software (ie the gnome and kde desktops and their respective applications) should develop open file formats and pressure other companies to support them.
If people start saving their documents in open file formats _now_ then in perhaps 3 months they can move seamlessly over to another office suite/os.
Personally I always save in open formats, it lets me open my files on my 486 with wordperfect, my m68k mac with Claris Works, my mom's win98 machine, and any other computer I can come across.
Well, right now, I'm using StarOffice and ApplixWare, both running in emulation on NetBSD. Both work well. I have WP8, but it's a little clunky.
WP9/WP2000 *IS NOT LINUX NATIVE*. One person contacted me saying he had a native WP2000, as opposed to WP Office, but Corel denies all knowledge of such a thing, and claims to have no intention of doing Linux-native ports ever again, now that they've got WINE running their software.
I don't really like this. WINE is a cool idea, but shouldn't be replacing real native software.
Anyway, the biggest problem I had was handling change-bars/revisions; no program I tried was able to "correctly" handle MS's change bars. Applix came the closest, but it still wasn't exceptionally usable.
My mom's laptop is using StarOffice now, and has done pretty well at importing whatever files need to be read.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
One of the biggest problems, however, is the fact that learning a computer takes a lot more time and is done at an older age than learning to walk or potty training. Driving is also pretty much a neural activity.
In other words, nothing you stated requires a college course.
Computers have yet to become that good. I mean, a lot of people get confused with a VCR, much less a computer.
I have experienced this rather sad elitism myself, on a different level. I occupy what I call a "middle tier" of programmer--one who has a good working knowledge of high-level languages such as CFML, VBScript, and SQL, but has a lot of trouble dealing with lower level ones like C+ and Java.
Another big problem is that the higher up on the "elite knowledge food chain" you are, the harder it seems to be to communicate with those in need of training. I have found that the commercial products like Microsoft and Allaire have better documentation and teaching tools than anything from the open source movement.
Thus, I think there is merit in comments about usability and seeing the corporate view as a whole before undertaking a quest to remove Office from the workplace.
Ultimately, the goal of computers are to be used as tools for the masses to business, entertainment, education, and research. Our ultimate goal is for them to be used by as many people as possible. That involves making them easy to use, and not just reserved for a select few members of a cyber-intellegensia.
We should never forget that.
Our biggest hurdle is compatibility. We need to be able to use PowerPoint files, etc. But where are we going to be in 6 months from now?
- Gnumeric has support for loading Excel files.
- Evolution will support calendar collaboration. This way a whole group of people can share a calendar. What would make it even better? If Evolution would read Outlook calendars and share those too.
- I think that StarOffice has some support for the Word format, but I am not too sure.
- Powerpoint competitor? How does KPresenter sound? KPresenter is the KOffice's presentation application...and it isn't half bad actually!
That's just the beginning. I think that in a year from now, we'll be much closer to the Microsoft-free Office.
It's not so much a training issue as a file format issue. Any MS Office user can use StarOffice with almost no learning curve for most of the doucuments that are produced. Some advanced features may be missing or implemented differently, but people who just need to create memos, spreadsheets, or basic presentations will be more upset by the fact that it's different than they'll be appeased by the fact that those differences are minor.
We evaluated StarOffice a few months ago and found that the UI similarities to MSOffice were a major plus. The import/export limitations and Sun's lack of marketing and support were the show-stoppers. You can't even get documentation for the StarBasic scripting language.
Yes, most users do things by rote and have a limited understanding about what they're doing, But the UI is so similar that this is not the real problem.
As far as logging in, if you use NT on your clients, then there is no essential difference. We mostly use Win9x, but network resources are unavailable unless the user logs in. So requiring a login is not too big a step. We will eventually move to NT/W2K clients anyway, so we'll have to handle this sooner or later.
Every organization is different, but most of our users spend all day using Office apps to do things that StarOffice could do, on any platform. We have Exchange, but we barely use its workgroup features. If StarOffice can share calenders and contact databases, we could do without MSOffice. YMMV.
AFAIK Corel Word Perfect Office 2000 is
in fact "native".
Wine has two ways of operating:
1. The way most people know of, running as an emulator.
2. Operating as a library for native compilation
of programs originally written for the win32 api.
The whole point of wine, isn't point 1. That
is just sort of a side effect.
Wine is written as an API to act as a drop
in replacement for MS's closed source win32-api.
Corel has modified their officesuite to allow
for native compilation with the wine libraries.
If someone creates a program for the wine-api
instead of the original win32-api, the application
should work on windows, and all platforms with
the winelib available.
It will be Linuxnative, and Wine will be more
like GTK and QT, than an emulator.
The reason is the software budget could have a ROI=0. Imagine, if you will, completly eliminating every single dollar a company spends on software and spending 1/2 of that dollar amount on retraining. In the end, you'll have a network that employs open tools, has data stored in well documented formats, and a network more in tune with the rest of the internet. All this, while spending less money on software.
I know that many micros~1 drones may have trouble wrapping their heads around this one thinking "there must be a catch!" and they're right. There is a catch.
The catch is, you won't get to look at the wonderful windows logo while waiting for your 'pooter to reboot after a crash.
___
To whit: documents generated using Word 2000 and saved in MS Word 95/6.0 RTF may not be useable with Word 95/6.0 because of add-ons to the RTF "language"... I hesitate to call it a language, really because it's just one big ugly spec that keeps getting added to (e.g., Word 2000 prints out table definitions at both the beginning and the end of a row "to maintain compatibility" with readers that expect it at one end or the other - all the while breaking readers that don't expect it at the end).
Sorry, I'm writing a document conversion/creation app right now that is due in one week and is just a tad frustrating because of this very reason. To the point...
What we need are open source document formats that can be implemented relatively easily (look at XML, it's the way to go) and will not allow companies like MS to bastardize them with implementation-specific "features". (again, look at what MS is doing with their Word2000-generated "HTML" docs. If they're displayable in anything other than IE5, I'll be highly surprised)
Calendar and task sharing is not difficult when you have your organizer built-in to your email client. This isn't an ideal solution though, because your organizer and email client should be separate, IMHO. Why not have a centralized organizer/planner running that other applications can communicate with via CORBA or some other communications scheme? Hell, you could bundle it into the OS and beat MS at their own game.
Now I must play Unreal Tournament and cleanse my mind of these foibles.
"He treats objects like women, man!"
- The Dude, The Big Lebowski
- Completely GUI configuration, no scripts or text files to edit
- Use ISP/hosting service mail servers simply by entering POP and SMTP servers in the preferences
- critically importanthandle multiple email accounts from multiple servers and domains
- Be able to switch email accounts without quitting the program. Eudora for windows or mac can use multiple accounts but you have to quit and start it up with a different config file
- Able to select the "From:" address with a popup menu (and have the right SMTP server used)? This is particularly important to be able to do in replies when I want to reply from a different address than it was sent to
- No configuration of sendmail or any other mail software on my linux box required.
- Arbitrary and unlimited numbers of mail filters, that sort into:
- Unlimited numbers of mailboxes
- Scales to handle tens of thousand of letters in a mailbox, with the ability to search various ways (both in headers and body text) and to sort by header fields
Both Mail-It and Postmaster for the BeOS can do this, and for that reason I use the BeOS when I do my full mail download; most of the time when I read my mail I use elm on linux at my web hosting service Seagull Networks (one of the few web hosts which doesn't just allow shell accounts, but ssh - secure shell access).KMail with KDE lets you use POP and SMTP providers but only works with one account.
If anyone knows of a good mail client that will serve my needs as described on Linux I will gladly switch.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
The question isn't can it be done but how to do it.
In that reguard you must accept that in some areas Linux will not be welcomed.
Moving from Windows to Linux means trainning every single user in an advanced system and this may not be a good idea. On the other hand it may also be an exelent idea. It depends on the office.
Linux won't give a cooshy move.
On the other hand can it be done? Quite simply yes it can...
In complexity (and in many cases unwarented complexity) Windows 3.11 at times is more complex than Linux. Unless a program contains it's own install pacage the user is left with installing software by hand.. or just running it by hand.
Yet it was Windows 3.11 not the later (and far easyer) 95 that took over the office. In many cases giving way to Dos and Unix only for Networking. Thus Windows for workgroups closed this problem.
Becouse Win 3.11 required significent skill Mac was where Linux is.. feeding the market an alternitive holding ground where Microsoft fails.
A better solution might be a mix of systems rather than just one system....
Linux boxes for the advanced functions and Macs as data entry points. Mac unlike Windows talks to Unix with no effort. Allways has. Linux suports AppleTalk just to make things easyer.
Thies two platforms do not present anywhere near the problems issued by trying to make Linux or Mac talk with Windows.
Now for the fun part. Mac allready runs Microsoft office and Linux would be in areas where Microsoft compatability isn't an issue.
There should be no reason to use an all Linux system other than fears over mixing platforms.
Mac dosn't go out of it's way to create problems. Nither dose Linux.
You can also safely thrown in some BSD and Solarus boxes and not be affrade.
Each has it's technical issues it's technical ups and technical downs...
Mix and match...
There is no real need for a totally Linux solution...
It can be done but it's the hard answer...
I don't actually exist.
wolruf@gmail.com
I agree wholeheartedly. I have an old IBM 4019 printer which I cannot get to print properly in Linux, but it works out of the box perfectly in Win2000. I run VMWare and print from the virtual machine to /dev/lpt0 whenver I need to print a web page or document. I think it is ridiculous that there are only about 30 different drivers for printers when I use the control panel. Hopefully, I will learn to do a bit of programming some day to help fix this.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
- "I feel like using program X for a change"
- Thou Shalt Use No Other Program But Me
I mean, come _on_... can we have a little perspective here? We are talking about lock-in and single-sourcedness so intense that most people will say making choice is IMPOSSIBLE, if not MORALLY wrong even- and people are using "religion" to describe the _alternative_?What is so hard about establishing relationships with people and negotiating this sort of thing to establish means of doing business that are not so single-sourced?
\begin{slashdot_reply}
\include{positive_karma}
I don't think that your office printer will have any problems if you use a \{em post-script} printer and force the whole office to use VI and \LaTeX. \\
Believe it or not, 99\% of the people who call tech support {\df ARE} capable of understanding the innerworkings of both VI and \LaTeX. They will also enjoy the {\em simpler, non-graphical} interface by running these on machines without X installed. \\
Finally, in the last 10 years of computing, I don't think that VI or \LaTeX have crashed a single computer. \\
So again, here's the reasons for switching to \LaTeX...
\begin{itemize}
\item Easier to use then cake!
\item Employees will find it fun, and will love it
\item Employees aren't locked into VI for all of their text editing needs. Other solutions such as VIM, emacs, or xemacs exist.
\item Printing the resulting postscript file will solve your printing problems and provide elegant printouts
\item It won't crash computers.
\end{itemize}
\end{slashdot_reply}
%% Just for the sake of people about
%% flame me, this was intended as
%% sarcasm. I love VI and LaTeX, but
%% I also worked in an office environment
%% and fully understand that Hell would
%% freeze over before even 1% of them
%% attempted to learn LaTeX!
Microsoft did not become big because they were compatible with the rest out there. They got big because at some point they had a critical mass of software which integrated nicely. After that it became the default choice of software.
To achieve something similar on linux it is not enough to be compatible. Compatibility is of course important but I think it is more important to offer users a consistent environment to do their work in. Linux is just too customizable. It looks and feels different on nearly each desktop. That's not good if you have an office full of non techie people who need to work with the software.
The nice thing about operating systems like mac OS and windows is that after installation, both operating systems look fairly similar from machine to machine. That makes it easy to administer and use them.
It's not good enough to just copy the features available. Arguably most mac/windows features are already available on linux. They're just not organized enough.
Jilles
My wife has been used to using Word/Publisher for a while now. I finally found drivers for linux for my printer (damn HP PPA printers, I knew I should never have bought one), which is the only reason we run Windows in our home. Now that I can print from Linux, I officially wiped Microsoft products from our home. And my wife HATED me for about a week. But, as I taught her the right way, about how the user interface of a linux-based desktop system FAR outpowers the limited Windows UI, and how it's fully modular and customizable per-user (I had her use FVWM95 for a while, while slowly 'tweaking' behind the scenes to wean her off that UI), she began to 'see the light'. Now she will not use Windows, and is even trying to get her shackled office-mates to switch, bragging about her home computing platform. And the sex is way better now, save for a few 'oh, LINUS' screams every once in a while :) j/k And we saved several thousand dollars in counseling!
The headline seems to be misleading, taking the stance that no MS in the office includes removing Windows. Most of the quotes seemed to focus on just being able to exist without MS-Office (presumably to cut down on security hazards or vicoious upgrade cycles). NO big surprise, really.
There are windows-based non-MS solutions. Howabout Lotus for crissakes? We're stuck with Windows on the desktop at work, but we use a Notes - Smartsuite solution for work, and we seem able to get by just fine. No e-mail viruses, no major compatibility problems. No need for MS Office. The only concession is the (free) MS Word viewer that I keep for those occasional documents that don't come through. That, or a polite phone-call to the document creator to send in RTF or something if there is a problem.
No MS-Office, and work seems to get done just fine. It's important to remeber that Windows != MS-Office, and that there are other solutions out there. Also !(MS-Office) <> Linux. Think outside the box, kids.
--sugarman--
Well, if you want to avoid an MS-based office, you basically have a handful of options.
Option one: Set up Linux workstations (or Solaris, or whatever). Install StarOffice, Applixware, or WordPerfect (if you're using Linux). Teach your users the basics of operating in a Unix environment, and build their login environment to be as simple as possible. Then accept the limitations you'll face on peripheral usage, software, compatibility, etc. There are workarounds for a lot of it.
Option two: Buy a whole load of Macs. Use AppleWorks, Netscape, and Eudora as your operating environment. Apple's stopped including Office translators, though, so you'll have to buy them from Dataviz. There used to be other options on the Mac, but Office steamrolled Lotus and Corel right out of the ballgame. Office has a higher competitive marketshare on the Mac than it has on Windows even - because there's no high-end competition. StarOffice is supposed to be on the way now, though.
That all said, it's not necessarily practical to go MS-free. For the most part, Office on Windows is the easiest, most practical way for the average office drone to get things done. It's bloated, granted, and it comes from Shub-Redmond, but it still works quite well for what it is. If you also put your users on NT (not servers, mind you, but users), you have enough tools to lock the systems down sufficiently to keep the users out of trouble and still let them think they control their systems.
Where it is easy and practical to go MS-free is in the back end. NetWare is still the slickest file & print server out there, and their directory services work real well and give you nice admin tools that can control systems across platforms. Linux, xBSD, or Solaris all also run well on the back end, and are tremendously robust and flexible. Not as easy to administer as NetWare, and without the cross-platform (Windows included) directory tools, but a viable option. Exchange is easy to replace - you can use Notes, GroupWise, or a Unix-based system like OpenMail. Presto. Eliminating Exchange/Outlook has just rendered you significantly less vulnerable to nasty virii and worms that plague Windows users. Besides that, you can easily avoid running Microsoft databases - Oracle, Sybase, Informix, or a host of others run very well, cross-platform, and have all sorts of development tools available.
Basically, it's easy to ditch MS for a lot of applications, but Windows probably makes more sense today for the average office worker. Ask this question again in a year, and there's a real good chance my answer will be different.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Bullshit. Do you even know what ROI means or are you trying to karma whore? ROI=Return On Investment. A ROI of zero is not a good thing. Another acronym that you should perhaps learn is TCO: Total Cost of Ownership. StarOffice and their ilk are free (as in beer), but the cost of actually training users, the cost of converting documents, dealing with support issues, compatibility problems, and other costs that are not immediately apparent will quickly drive the cost far above the actual price of the software. When purchased in bulk (ie. fulfillment/licensing), Office 2000 costs far less than the boxed version. Moreover, there are no good office suites for Linux that are open (StarOffice certainly isn't, nor is WordPerfect). They do not have well documented formats and I have no idea what their use has to do with "a network more in tune with the rest of the internet." The vast majority of a company's customers are likely to be using Office 2000 file formats: that is the de facto standard of the office enviroment. Your entire post seems like a quickly thrown together, illogical open-source party line post. I appreciate free software as much as the next person (I've used LaTeX for over a two decades), but there is a place for commercial software when no free software can fill its niche.
Management sees a few strong reasons for remaining a Microsoft based office, among which are:
Here's the rub: It's an endless cycle. If you count on the fact that you've already trained your employees, it makes little sense EVER to change to a new platform, even if it's very similar to what they're using now. If you rely on the fact that you don't want to destroy your investment in MS products by switching already, you'll never make that switch either. If you count on the fact that new employees are MS Office savvy, then you have to wait for the majority of other companies to make the switch before it makes sense for you. Sadly, many other companies are waiting based on the same skewed premise. If everyone waits for the "other guys" to change, can it ever change?
That's the single biggest hurdle I see for a non-MS office to overcome, and why MS will remain a strong part of American business for a good few years yet.
-Jer
StarOffice Windows
Desktop changed, start menu whacked
App? No, new OS.
Did you have a look at the recent KDE 2.0 beta or a recent KDE 2.0 CVS snapshot? [If you haven't, download from kde.org or get Red Hat Linux binaries here]
Anyone who looks at it anywhere near objectively will notice that anyone who has used Windows can deal with it - the interfaces are similar, and as far as differences are concerned, KDE 2.0 wins in usability.
Something similar can be said about GNOME 1.2, which just needs some more time to get all the functionality implemented.
Red Hat Linux 7.0 will (probably) have an autologin feature for people who don't want to get used to the login process, and other distributions will probably follow.
KOffice (obviously) integrates perfectly with KDE - even StarOffice adds itself to the KDE menus so even the most stupid user can find it. Both of them can read M$-Office files, so converting old documents shouldn't be much of a problem.
I doubt a stupid user could tell the difference between a Windows system and a KDE 2 system that has been configured to look like Windows.
I agree about the "Code it. Use it. Debug it." part though - we need to demonstrate that we are not just a viable alternative, but the better one - if people don't care about reliablity, efficiency and speed, it's not as easy on the desktop as on servers...
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Mounting is built in to most Linux desktop environments. Works pretty much like the Macintosh, BTW, which is geared to ease of use, and, also BTW, is based on the basic premise of "mounting" removable media.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
We are visual beings and that means the GUI's are the rule and while I know that there are many who drool over the command line (and maybe some who are truly bent and dream of the return of that retarded Edlin) the truth is that for many using the computer is not so involved with the SYSTEM as it is with using Excel/Word/Outlook and going home to have a LIFE outside of computers. Scary, ain't it, that some people want to do something other than 'hack the kernel' or play Quake till they drop?
I bet users (and I.Q. has nothing to do with it) will learn more about computers about the same time that geeks learn social skills and the joy of interacting with live people rather than trying to look up Lara Croft's undies.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Consider this simple principle of UI design I try to use: when a window or dialog opens, the user should be able to just start typing without having to click anywhere. This is for the case where there is some normal common choice for the normal place you'd want to start typing - but in many linux apps, there is no text entry selected anywhere when a window opens.
If you want to see nice UI look and feel, don't look to windows, don't look to mac, look to the BeOS. If Linux had the integration and ease of installation of the BeOS it would crush Microsoft and Bill Gates would be licking the penguin poo from Linus' bootheels.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Domino for Linux does exist!
This leaves us with TCO and it's roll in attaining productivity numbers. While It's true that the out of box cost of open source software is zero, all users will need help in training. I would put forth that at least half the training of a user base is on your particular business data and general computer training. That is to say, you've already payed for (while using the closed source solution), most of the training for the user base. As anyone who's worked a help desk will tell you, many users startout with a computer IQ of a warmed piece of spam and work their way up to being experts at performing their task in the business.
This investment will not be lost, in fact it will be complimented as users learn to migrate their skills set to the new platform (something that any HR director will apreciate when trying to hang on to people in a tight labor market). Happy employees are always looking to add to their resume.
The other thing most often overlooked is the effect of the internet on the user base. Back in the dark days (80's) every time a piece of software changed the bitmap on an icon, people would freak out because it's the only interface they knew. They didn't know any differant because it's the only interface they've been exposed to. The internet has changed all that because, on a daily basis, users are exposed to differant interfaces on web pages and are forced to adapt their preconceptions on where things should be to get what they need (think of this as internet=migration training).
If you couple the above with a long view on TCO and all the licencing fees saved as a business scales larger and larger, you can look forward to the day when 10 years from now, when the business has grown to thousands of people, you'll be deploying thousands of licences for free instead of taking a meeting with a microsoft rep to negotiate yet another overpriced licence.
___
"there is always a default setup for a linux system."
That's the whole point: there is no such thing as a default setup for linux. First of all there are numerous different distributions who each are different (though compatible). Then it also matters how these distributions are installed (gnome/kde, etc.). The differences between for example Gnome and KDE are comparable to the differences between a mac and windows if you take a users perspective. Having local standards does not really help because that will cause you to invest in training cost each time you hire a new employee or decide to change/upgrade the local standard.
"He just made it clear that anyone who chose to use something else as their setup had to be able to admin their own boxes."
You unix/linux people simply don't get it. You take the administrator point of view that a system should be easy to administer. While that is useful for reducing cost, it is actually much more important that you have a system that is easy to use for the users.
In any case, from your comments I gather that you are not working in an ordinary office since you are all running linux. This thread is about how to use stuff like linux in a common office situation.
Jilles
IBM's workgroup printers have a wide array of UNIX support, including a driver for Linux. The Linux driver currently reqires you to install lpr:ng, gtk, and a few perl modules. IBM also has automated set up programs and drivers for HP/UX, SCO, Solaris and (of course) AIX. Their web page is at http://www.printers.ibm.com.
Of course, all the drivers there, like most UNIX drivers, meerly munge a datastream to take advantage of specific printer features. The state of UNIX printing still requires a considerable amount of work before it is on par with more modern operating systems which render to a graphics language through a specific printer API. Linux will eventually need something like that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The total cost of ownership includes these things and more:
- Original purchase price
- Price of upgrades
- Price of original installation
- Price of installing upgrades - including labor and document conversion
- Cost of training users
- Cost of training users to use upgrades
- Cost of downtime due to bugs
- Cost of technical support
- Cost of lost business due to bugs (can run into millions of $)
The total cost of ownership is where Microsoft has the greatest strength. There may be cases where Linux and free software has an advantage, but I'm pretty sure the perception is that Microsoft software is actually cheaper than free software and I think that may actually be the reality when the whole integrated system is taken into account.After all, if the cost of retail purchase is an issue the business owner can easily download the software from one of the many warez sites on the web, and many use pirated Microsoft software rather than use Linux and GPL'ed software legitimately.
Look at what the other side provides:
- A large pool of already-trained users (many trained in our public educational system)
- Certified engineers
- Easy-to-find solutions (retail stores, ecommerce, vars, consultants)
- Low-cost and free technical support for many items
- "For Dummies" books
What I would suggest any free software author do when they're getting a release ready is to contact each of the many free software support businesses and ask them to support your package as part of their business - so they can provide bug fixes, user training and assistance. Don't skimp on the documentation and also take the time to write a training manual, or get someone to write one for you.I also suggest including a list of consultants who will provide support for your program, either for free or for pay, along with your distribution and on your website.
Don't make the assumption that someone using your product can build it from source, read a man page, write a shell script or memorize command line options. If you write a command line program and you don't like GUI, find someone who does to write a GUI interface for your command line tool - and make sure they work well together
Remember that the words "free software" do not send the message "inexpensive" to a businessman; more like "cheap" and "low quality", like that Matisse you passed up at the garage sale because it was priced at a buck fifty.
Rather than emphasizing that linux and its applications are free, emphasize that they come with source code that may be freely modified so that technical support and bug fixes may be readily obtained from anyone.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Personally, I think you can fit a Linux desktop into the average packer's head space. It would require a good system administrator, setting up a gnome or KDE environment, setting all the dot files read-only, removing any way to get a shell from the user account, and not giving the users the root password.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have one guy that every time I go into his office I can explain to him (sometimes for the 3rd or 4th time) how to do something in plain english when our support and trainer can't teach the guy. OH BTW, he usually gets it eventually. I know, he drives me up a wall, but this is the kind of thing we need to do, more often. Then we get the general idea of what needs fixin. Only thing I can't figure out how to do is to explain to him why the CAPS LOCK keed should be normally off. EVERY E-MAIL I GET FROM HIM LOOKS LIKE THIS!
But we must learn patience. Personally, from personal experience, I have been in #linuxhelp on IRC and see someone asking well how do I do this, how do I do that in Linux. I usually HELP! I am not the guy who says just search Google or just got to and find it. I tell him EXACTLY where to find it. If that means I open up another browser and do the search for him, well, that's what I do. THEN if he asks you where you found it, that's when to reveal your source. When he find it, maybe he can look new questions up himself if they have time. I think users SHOULD know what a defrag is and a scandisk in windows. They should know these things even if computers are not their job but using one is because it's one of the things on how to take care of your tool. People wouldn't dream of not refilling a stapler and stuff liek that. I think automagic are great because it does simplify that job of using a computer, even for someone who knows what they are doing.
Gorkman
I was also not impressed with Word Perfect when I installed and played with it. It was faster, but would invariably crash when I tried to make tables. I think it was a libc-related problem.
The Helix desktop installer installed Abiword on my system, and I thought I'd give it a try. It's blazingly fast and seems to handle the MS Word documents I've given it better than Star Office does.
Personally I'd prefer to use LaTeX and crank out PDF files but most of our API documentation is currently in Word format, so I still need something capable of reading word files.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sun Microsystems doesn't use MS Office internally. The standard office suite is StarOffice. (Though it used to be Applixware)
That's a pretty good example if you ask me. There are more than 10,000 employees at Sun worldwide (I think close to 30,000 really but I'm not positive), and use of Microsoft products is strongly discouraged. You might want to present that to your superiors as evidence that a company doesn't need MS to survive.
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
> %% I also worked in an office environment
> %% and fully understand that Hell would
> %% freeze over before even 1% of them
> %% attempted to learn LaTeX!
Of course, Hell wouldn't even need air conditioning before you could get people to learn to use LyX.
And BTW, you don't need a PostScript printer.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ziff-Davis loves Microsoft because all the little changes, upgrades, inconsistencies, etc. have given them a grand opportunity to do lots of reviews, articles, recommendations, etc. MS is a wet dream for the circulation department at ZD. With minimal to no research they can make important and official-sounding reports on the marketplace.
At every turn, they judge a product's quality in light of the existing Microsoft product. For instance, in the article currently in question, which I read last week in "eWeek", they review various Non-MS Office scenarios. One was particularly telling. A company had chosen to go with Macs and use the AppleWorks (nee ClarisWorks) programs that were bundled with the machines, because they suited their needs and were free (bundled). The ZD writer sadly recounted how their untenable position faltered when they began having to cope with Microsoft documents, and that they ended up relenting somewhat and buying a single copy of office with which to do format conversions. The ZD writer remarked on how that was still a bad idea, the implication being that they wouldn't have gotten with it until they went for an all MS-Office installation.
The assumption ZD made throughout the whole article is that is reasonable that everyone should have to use proprietary, undocumented file formats simply because they are prevelant in the market. The correct response when someone delivers a document in a proprietary format, excpecting you to just cope with it, is to mail back your own favorite proprietary document format. And then ask the sender to use a standard format, like RTF, the next time.
If we can, through simple peer pressure, encourage everyone to use standard, open formats, then it will not matter what word processors and other programs people use. The whole reason MS started using "OLE Structured Storage" for its file formats is not that it's a good format, but rather that it implies Windows, or at least MS office products (MS ported COM to the Mac in order to support office).
Encourage open formats, and everyone will have choice!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
If you use StarOffice with files, produced by anything from Microsoft, get TrueType fonts that Microsoft uses (btw, most of them aren't from Microsoft -- they are licensed from Monotype). I was always surprised by poor formatting that StarOffice produced until I have realized that Word and PowerPoint files depend on precise size of the characters to be displayed correctly, and StarOffice will demand X to scale the unscaleable instead of re-formatting the text for available fonts. Most likely it's not StarOffice's fault but a design flaw in the formatting procedures.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well, you've now officially proven that you've never been solely responsible for any major IT purchases for a company larger than about 10 people; otherwise you'd understand what ROI and TCO actually include, by definition.
If the initial investment to atain the licence to use the software (and deploy it accross [sic] as many desktops as you please) is zero, how can you track a return?
Well, you seem to understand the most obvious part of the initial investment, but how about the cost of going out and deploying the software? The training? The lost productivity while the user base learns new software? The annoyed customers that aren't recieving files in the same format? Amazingly, all of the above have cost...hence the investment part. Try again.
I would put forth that at least half the training of a user base is on your particular business data and general computer training. That is to say, you've already payed for (while using the closed source solution), most of the training for the user base.
Huh??? I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds alot like you're discounting user training because they've had computer training before or because it's in the budget? Let me tell you, it will require more than the average annual training budget to instruct users in a completely new OS and Office suite. That's going to be a part of both the "I" in ROI and the TCO itself. Let us not forget real loss in productivity while users rebel, learn, and generally can't do business quite as usual for a while.
This investment will not be lost, in fact it will be complimented as users learn to migrate their skills set to the new platform (something that any HR director will apreciate when trying to hang on to people in a tight labor market).
No, the investment put into training users on both Windows and MS Office will be essentially forsaken when you take away the programs on which this training is useful in order to give them something cheaper. Adding to an employee's resume doesn't exactly add value to their current job, it just adds value to their job hunting efforts.
The other thing most often overlooked is the effect of the internet on the user base.
Given, of course, the assumption that a great many of your employees are A) Internet users and B) relatively heavy Internet users. If the above aren't true, then the Internet has little effect on their ability/willingness to learn new things as related to computers. That's a relatively hefty assumption considering the low percentage of employed people who use the Internet more than infrequently.
If you couple the above with a long view on TCO and all the licencing fees saved as a business scales larger and larger, you can look forward to the day when 10 years from now, when the business has grown to thousands of people, you'll be deploying thousands of licences for free instead of taking a meeting with a microsoft rep to negotiate yet another overpriced licence.
Again, if you're willing to make a great number of assumptions and overlook a great many truths, your synopsis is fairly accurate. In reality, although in the long term benefits could be very great, you can't overlook short-term losses, which could include an alienated user base, loss of productivity, loss of customers, expenditures in the realms of training and employee retention, and finally the loss of cash in roll-out and deployment costs. These are very real, and make the first 2-3 years very unlikely to produce much of an ROI, if any, and make the first 2-3 years' TCO fairly high.
Please, don't take away from this that I prefer MS products (untrue), that I don't think this can be done (untrue), but that we need to have a realistic view of the situation to start with.
Let the -1 moderation begin! :P
-Jer
Of course the Microsoft-Free office is possible! The only reason you don't see many of them is that a lot of office workers want Microsoft.
Where I work, the engineering department is almost completely Microsoft free. The only exceptions are for *customer* compatibility (some DICOM applications work under Windows only), and some newbie upper management. All of our day to day office type stuff are be done using Unix applications, primarily FrameMaker, WingZ, and Netscape. And I'm not just talking about software engineers. I'm also talking about hardware hackers, chip cowboys, UI interface design, and product development. It takes no great stretch of the imagination to imagine the department completely MS free.
Our business department, on the other hand, seem totally Microsoft dependant. They are incapable of converting Word documents to plain text before broadcasting them to the whole company. It thus becomes the self-imposed responsibility of certain engineers to convert these docs to Frame or text. I have a very strong suspicion that the front office dependance on Microsoft lies not because Microsoft demands they use their products, but because they are computer illiterate. No matter how much we scream, beg and threaten, HR just cannot grasp the concept of sending out email text only. If even the simple concept of ascii format is beyond them, trying to use a non-MS product would probably send them over the edge into shivering incoherence.
It wasn't that long ago when a nation of secretaries said "give me WordPerfect 5.1 or give me death". I know several that quit and started their own businesses rather than use the fledgling Word their bosses wanted. Nowadays, even typing the name of an application on a command line is a lost skill. But since it's been done before, it can be done again. All we have to do is demand that business schools teach general computing instead of offering certificates in specific applications. A friend of mine is majoring in computer science at a junior college. I asked him what he was taking. He replied, Windows 95/98, Autocad, and HTML. His utter sincerity open my eyes to the fact that they problem isn't Microsoft, it's illiteracy.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
And if what you say is correct, they
haven't done it the "proper" way.
I still think they will..
if it runs through emulation right now,
it's just normal (bad) corporate policy
to get something out the door.
Where was ms advising you of the total cost of ownership when it was stealing the Data Base market from Borland?
Where was ms advising you about TCO when it was stealing the word processor market away from word perfect?
Where was ms advising you about the TCO when stealing the browser market away from Netscape?
___
You make an interesting point, but I strongly disagree with your conclusion. Why is it bad to make cross platform compatible software if Corel's ultimate goal is to lessen MS monopoly on the desktop?
To me it is a "good thing"(tm) to have multiple applications developers pursuing multi-ways of developing applications. To say that one particular method is "Bad" because it doesn't adhere to your purist vision vision is being an OSS elitist.
You seem to think we live in a world where software developers are free to choose not to develop software for Windows, well for the most part that isn't true. Once a company reaches a given size, it needs to maximize its revenue, and minimize costs. Corel has chosen to do this by developing to a common interface. They tried to develop WP2k both ways, and found that running under WINE, rather than compiling the binaries natively was the most efficient way to meet their goals of cost effectiveness and cross-platform compatibility. As it is they can barely keep enough cash coming in to stay afloat, if they had to devote more resources (and likely postpone the release date several months) just to be able to meet your standards, they likely would be bankrupt now and MS would have claimed another victim and Linux users would have one less company contributing resources & applications to the open source movement.
If anyone is "Bad" then it would have to be IBM and MS who have chosen not to even attempt to release their office suites on an open source platform.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Unfortunately, it seems that StarOffice is the best currently available office suite for Linux. However, it is a Windows/MSOffice rip-off, minus some of the MSOffice functionality. Furthermore, it's not even open source--it's released under a one-user-only, you-have-no-right-to-distribute-reverse-engineer-o r-modify-this-software license comparable to that of most commercial software products. Other than making it possible to spend more time in Linux, what's the point? Also, given that Sun has a snowball's chance in hell of getting StarOffice to compete in any meaningful way with MSOffice in the current situation (they can't even give it away), why not release StarOffice under an open source license? Maybe that would get it somewhere. Hopefully AbiWord & pals will develop successfully.
For a small office, the possibility to go without MS right now is real, but most large companies would be crazy to attempt it.
Reading the oodles of noodles of comments everyone here seems to think that an MS-free office absolutely needs to be Linux. Right now Linux is too immature for professional desktops for the most part. Theres too much interaction between the user and the system for it to be terribly productive. Low level interaction is great when you're running a server or are tinkering about on your home system but in a corporate environment you need things that save you time. You may remember back to the days of OS/2 which was designed by IBM to be a strictly business environment, you turned it on and got to work. An MS-free office means alot more than just open sourced apps. A good choice as of late is Apple, once again have good productivity suites and a usable OS. What Linux needs right now is someone to put together a good set of tools for use in offices. Word processing is pointless if you can't print out your work with whatever printer your office has available. Generally open source development is done because said programmer has hardware X and needs to make it work with their system. If businesses have to wait around for device drivers and software for barcode readers and printers Linux will never make any headway in the corporate environment.
Besides the Linux centric attitude, everyone seems to be StarOffice centric. Are all Linux users this cheap? Unless your business gives away its source code for free and tries to profit off "support" you're going to make some money. With said money you can afford to pay for things. A good suite that hardly ever gets any attention is Applix. Not only is it supported on several operating systems (BSD, Solaris, Linux) it is also available for Alpha and PPC architectures. Another caveat of Applix is the Anyware Office suite. Anyware is a Java implimentation of the Applixware suite which can be run from any Java capable browser or Java-savy OS. Wow, that means you can set up an office on thin clients which is going to get you five thin clients for the price of a new workstation. Applix is a really nice suite of software. I suppose the qualm Linux fanatics have is you don't get to see the source code and actually have to pay for it. Thats just the client side stuff the users see, making an office MS-free on the backend gets even more difficult but it is possible, there WAS a time before MS Exchange and such things. Way back when documents were entirely ASCII typed on a terminal hooked up to a mainframe.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
If you want MS Office compatibility, use MS products. And, be sure to use the exact same version of MS Office and Windows. You will pay, and pay and keep paying with each forced upgrade, but you will have compatiblitiy. Nothing else will give you this.
Chasing after MS "standards" is your choice. There are a number of open source and other products ranging from word processors to email routers that can handle MS only extensions somewhat, but none can handle the whole gamut perfectly enough for those ninnies that just have to have the latest MS gimmick or bastardization of open protocols they have corrupted to only work with a total MS shop, from the server down to the files you put on a laptop and take home.
Really, if is shamefull for you to come to this forum for advice on how to integrate open source and other solutions with MS ones. MS has made the decision to break every open standard it can to enforce MS only solutions across the board. This is incompatible with interoperability. Catering to the whimpering needs of people and companies which are afraid to break free of the MS trap only hurts open source and competition. Why? Because every effort to integrate MS with the rest of the world makes it that much easier for MS to corrupt the very tools used to integrate with = look what they did to Kerebos.
It is getting worse with Windows 2000. You haven't seen anything yet because large parts of Win 2k cannot be fully implemented without MS at all levels of the enterprise - server, middleware, and workstations. Total. There is no room for compromise because MS has allowed no room for interoperability in its design, inentionally.
OK. This approach means loss of contracts for some IT consultants and perhaps getting fired when you suggest a Microsoft free solution. You said MS free office, and I take that literatlly. But later you take that back - what you really want is non-MS products that act like MS. If you still don't understand why this cannot be then you have learned nothing about how MS works even after two years of this trial about bundling and intentional sabatoge of efforts to "integrate" in a nice way with MS. MS does not want non-MS apps to integrate, really.
You cannot have it both ways. Neither can open source, generally. Neither can non MS commercial companies which want to be competetive. Action by the courts to remedy Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly position on the desktop may help and prevent extension of that monopoly to even more areas of computing like servers and the internet, which is already happening.
Utimately, it is up to each IT professional to make his choice for either a total MS solution or for competition and for open standards and protocols. You can't have it both ways. Integration with MS (unless they are severely penalized and forced to use open protocols) inevitably leads to corruption of those protocols into MS ones. If recommending a total non-MS solution costs you job offers and contracts, consider that the alternative leads to total control of software and internet stanedards and protocols by MS, and you will work as an IT professional only at the plesure of the boys in Redmond. In other words, you will be less than a peon, not an independent contactor, business owner, or professional - if you have any work at all. Look at what MS did to its own MSCE's recently by invalidating their certificates so they have to pay even more money to requality.
That switches SO from making a huge window that takes over the whole monitor, to making one which at least has a title bar for you grab and minimize/move. It doesn't change the basic suckage: StarOffice puts everything as windows within a big window, instead of using the window manager I picked and configured to my tastes.
The whole idea of having one window and then implementing your own window manager with in it is broken. StarOffice should really use X, instead of just poping up an xwindow and then re-implementing X and a window manager within it.
It has the feel of being designed by people who thought windows was great, or those who used Sun's CDE. Unless they hire some smart people who cultivate a sophisticated sense of annoyance at the condescending UI stupidities common today, the most they can ever hope to do is be equivalent to MS Office, which means that they are doomed.
I've been thinking of moving a company away from ms office. Risky move... especially since they are already using it. SO.. I haven't done it yet... but I've put a lot of thought into it. One thing I've noticed is that, although everyone tends to say that they need office so they can read documents from 'other' people.... 99% of those documents originate within the company. Exchange with outside companies can be handled by some kind of conversion process if necessary. Really.. the one big thing that keeps me from using staroffice is the fact that it's email package does not support imap. If it only did this, I would be oh so happy..... I could offer a really cool desktop.
Because.... to most companies that use it, outlook is about a lot more than just email.
Believe me... if it were only about email, it would be easy to switch away.
Mailing appointments to each other, public folders... things like this.
IT's typical MS.
They write apps to give users a bit more flexibility to design their own solutions to their IT problems, which sort of routes things away from the concept of a central IT dept designing proper, custom solutions.
I'm sure most of us know that 4 or 5 of us linux/unix types could revolutionize a company in terms of productivity.
Seriously. A company should use web based, or java based mail... X based solutions. MOst employees, though they like all the 'neat' things they can do with windows, do not need to do any of those 'neat' things to do their jobs.
X desktops would make it much easier to keep everyone on the same path.
Users don't *have* to understand linux.. not one little bit, to do this right. Workstations can sijmply act as extensions of a single, unified system, with the IT Dept. experts and servers at the center. The users simply use the machines in the manner they are supposed to.
THanks for listening.
Microsoft says it encourages competition.. yet is accused, and has been proven gulity of locking out competition in the market. They say they give their customers CHOICE.. yet how many people HONESTLY are choosing to use MS Windows and MS Word because they WANT TO? How many customers WISH there was another Office Suite they could try.. or another Operating System or Web Browser?
:)
If Microsoft says they are the LEADING innovators.. and they ENCOURAGE competition.. and they LISTEN to their customers and provide them CHOICE in this INNOVATIVE MARKET.. Then punish Microsoft by making them live up to their words. Its that simple. Making all the promises
in their marketing come true..
Take away Microsoft's LOCKS...
#1 - Allow the clonablity of MS Windows. Just like Compaq did to IBM PCs.. Just like Novell, Caldara, and IBM did to MS-DOS... just as
IBM also did to Windows with OS/2 Win 3.1 support... Just like Microsoft did to Apple.. just like Microsoft and Apple did to Xerox.. They
stole or used or copied or whatever'd someone elses work to get a leg up in the computing world.
#2 - Open up MS Office and other MS file formats... The BIGGEST reason why MS Office is the leading Office Suite should be because people LIKE to use it.. not because they are worried about compatiablity. People shouldn't be FORCED to pay the Microsoft TAX (Upgrades) everytime Microsoft figures its time to force users to upgrade again.. And it is a forcing.. because if you recieve MS Office 2000 files and your using MS Office 97.. you HAVE to upgrade in order to read them.. or expect the person on the other side to create the files in the older format. And its not realistic to expect someone to downgrade their features simply to be backwards compatible with YOU.. and so everyone has to upgrade. Wouldn't it be nice if people bought software just like they buy everything else.. By price comparison.. Performance, Reliablity, Support, etc. Why BUY something because the company has you LOCKED into them. If MS says they support competition and innovation.. freeing their customers to make a choice is the BEST way to support those ideals.
#3 - If two software companies are programming for the same plateform.. they should both have the same knowledge for that platform, no? If Microsoft has better knowledge of Windows Operating Systems then their competitiors.. then it stands to reason, that as long as the Windows operating system is dominatant.. Any software that MS releases for that operating system.. would stand a good chance of dominating.. both because the operating system is so wide spread and used.. and because MS can better intergrate their competiting software into their own Operating System.. And have very strong packaging deals with PC Vendors, thereby taking advantage of the lazy american way... Buy things in PACKAGES rather then put it together yourself with the software YOU WANT.. even if it means ordering the software seperating from somewhere else. And so the solution should either be breaking up the Operating system part of the company away from everything else (There is no reason why the IE
and MS Office portions of the company should be split from each other.. err no wait.. they might intergrate the two together.. Nevermind, split them too)... That way there is no longer any advantage in knowledge of the platform for the other parts of MS verses other competitiors out there. Either that or open up MS Windows. Microsoft can't have their cake and eat it too. If they don't want to be split up.. they have to open up the source for Windows so as to level the playing field. They can prevent commerical clones of Windows using the source if they want... but at least competiting software companies that make software like Office Suite's, email, browsers, etc.. can all program with the same knowledge about the plateform as everyones biggest competitor.. MS.
So basicly.. the answer is simple... DEFINITELY open up the popular MS file formats so that customers can CHOOSE their Office Suites. In the end, MS Office is a pretty damn good office suite out there on its own merits.. so MS should just chill out and realize that. And either open
up MS Windows or break up the company. One of those two HAS to happen in order to successfully undo the damage that was caused in the Personal Computing sector.
And if someone agrees with this enough to clean up my comment, and forward it to the DOJ.. I'll give them a cookie.
-Matthew
Technetos, Inc.
It's a bit difficult for faculty and staff to exchange files, but I'm willing to blame that on an education issue--the later versions of WP do a fine job reading and writing MS Office documents (test is that I know Microsoft employees read my online resume in Word format!)
Except for specialized applications (our library web catalog is the biggie at this point) our back-end infrastructure is NetWare, Linux, Solaris, Digital Unix, and AIX. Email is IMAP on a Solaris box, all Web services are Linux serving files off of NetWare, etc.
With WP 2000 for Linux, and a few weeks of hard effort, I could probably make a Linux-based config to replace the Windows config, that would work for all but the academic software that doesn't have a Linux version. This also precludes licensing issues being resolved for the commercial software (WP, whatever else.)
I figure in general, it's not a bad thing for students to learn the Windows operating system, it will probably be something they see again...
-- Of course I'm paranoid. I'm a sysadmin.
There's a growing amount of concern that Microsoft will attempt to corrupt XML when they adopt it as a file format. It's entirely possible that they'll find some way to do this, claiming to use the "XML Standard" and still managing to make their files impossible to read by any other application.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah, but I don't *want* a WINE binary - partially because I'm running all the other Linux programs I use on non-Linux platforms. :)
Applix works on my box; WP2K doesn't. That's all I see.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I tried XFMail and Post Office today and couldn't get either of them to build.
I spent about an hour with each of them. Post Office required a bunch of undocumented environment variables to be set in order to get it to build.
I think it's critically important that no software require an environment variable to get it to basically function. If it does, you can be sure the user will select a product from Microsoft or Apple instead.
This is with a Slackware 7 system.
XFMail hasn't been maintained in a year, and although it's taken new life as Archimedes it hasn't been released yet.
It is possible to retrieve it from CVS and build it that way. I'll give it a try
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
While I can appreciate where you are coming from with this statement, most moderate to large sized businesses would havily use macros, template, and graphs. All those standard document templates customised for the business, those graphs portraying SLAs and metrics etc. This would be one of the key issues for compatability.
Someone I trust said that he looked at one of the XML-formatted documents produced by Office 2000... 'and when the people in the building held up the sign saying "you are in a helicopter" the pilot said "aha, we're over the Microsoft campus - only they give you an answer which is technically correct while providing absolutely no information" and safely landed the helicopter in the fog.'
The Bad Old Format was [unintelligable garbage].
The New, Improved XML Format is <ms-office>[unitelligable garbage]</ms-office>.
Strictly speaking, and you can be damn sure that the Microsoft lawyers will insist you acknowledge it, this is valid XML since the DTD for the ms-office element is CDATA. However it provides absolutely no additional information of any value to anyone.
(P.S., the full joke I paraphrased to summarize my friend's comments is that a helicopter pilot is lost in a fog over Seattle. He carefully descends until he can see an office building, then holds up a sign saying he is lost and could they tell him where he is...)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Actually, you *could* work 20 hours a week right now and be able to support a family of four...
... provided you're willing to accept a 1960's lifestyle. A small house in a cookie cutter neighborhood far from anything interesting, perhaps 1200 sq ft, two bedrooms, 1 bathroom. No central air. No laundry facilities. A carport, or maybe a single-car garage. Your only car will have no ABS or CD player.
Your entertainment? A (as in *one*) TV, with only broadcast stations. No VCR, no rented movies, no cable. No video games. No personal computers.
Want to talk to friends and family? One telephone, no fancy features (caller ID, call waiting), no answering machine. No long distance calls.
Your diet? No soft drinks, or maybe a few cans per week. No frozen meals popped into a microwave, and few restaurant meals. Don't plan on eating meat with every meal either.
I was a kid in the 60's, but I don't want to trust my memory when comparing the two eras. But I also set up a post-college household a mere 15 years ago and recall spending more on a small color TV and a microwave oven, each, than I did on my monthly rent. Today I could buy a microwave, a midsize TV, a good VCR, and a mini-fridge for one month's rent for the same unit.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
All it does is start the text processor, or spreadsheet, or whatever, automatically within StarOffice, but it's no different from starting StarOffice and then opening a text document. I.e. if you then do the same thing for the spreadsheet, it opens up within the large MDI-type StarOffice window, not in a separate X window.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
> it sure seems like it leaves you completely out in the cold when it comes to making new document classes
Yeah, I've done some customization, and I had to learn some LaTeX to do it (as well as a bit about the LyX format).
How-to-customize is becoming an increasingly frequent question on the LyX mailing list, so there is definitely some broad interest there. Perhaps things will soon reach a critical mass that results in the establishment of an archive of document classes, along with samples that will let you preview them before downloading and installing.
For a business environment, I don't think it would be as much of a problem. Just sit down with your secretaries, managers, engineers, etc., and try to come up with a list of standard document types, e.g. {BusinessLetter, InternalMemo, DepartmentalNewsletter, WhitePaper [, etc.]}, and then get your IT staff to implement them to your satisfaction. Perhaps I'm naive, but it seems to me like the list would be finite, and not particularly large. Once you had things set up, the benefits would be a look of professionalism (since all your documents would be standardized) and reduced labor costs (since the one-time cost of creating a document class would be far cheaper than the incessant "feature fiddling" that now goes into business document creation in the real world).
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Like it or not the computer is an essential tool for the performance of many jobs. If you are a secretary and you can not use your computer to a minimum standard then you ought to be fired. Same as any accountant, doctor, lawyer etc. No matter what your job is you will be expected to be proficient in the effective use of ALL the tools of your trade. A doctor does not get to say "well I can use the scalpel just fine but I don't have time to learn how to use clamp" or "this blood respirator is just too complex and I am not going to learn it because I have a life".
If in the course of your job you are required to use a computer and you don't learn how to make efficient use of it then you deserve to get fired.
War is necrophilia.
As a polish Linux user who is studying in Germany I think that the largest problem with SO and other MS-Office replacements is the native language support. Germans and other West-European languages are here in a slightly better situation than the East-European languages and languages using a kyryllic font, because of the different encoding and fonts. Polish version of MS office is badly polonized, with a bed spellchecker and poor translation; however, this is still better then zero. You have to hack SO to actually make it accept keyboard shortcuts for polish characters, and I never got WordPerfect to display all polish characters correctly for more then one single font face. There is only one and quite poor polish ispell dictionary --- it is not easy to create a dictionary for a language which has seven cases (nominativus, genitivus etc.), a complicated ortography and a lot of different verb, noun and adjective forms.
There is no fully polonized version of SO, Applixware, WordPerfect or any other of the proposed MS Office substitutions, and the same holds for a myriad of other languages. You have to speak german, english or maybe french to use them, and even then you don't have always the possibility to even spell your name correctly. The only alternative for Word is LaTeX, and though this is my primary publishing tool it is still sometimes very painfull to use, and it gives none at all compatibility with MS Office.
Compatibility
Solutions which can be acceptable when converting to and from english Word documents fail pathetically if you try to convert a document with native language characters, especially from a non-ISO-8859-1 language. Sometimes you just see strange characters, and you have to find-and-replace manually or with a macro. However, with Unicode this became impossible in many instances. Even Word for Macintosh 98 is not capable of importing a Word for Windows documents written in polish language. All polish characters become "_", which clearly makes any search-and-replace impossible. This is similar when using Star Office or Word Perfect.
Coherence
Everybody seems to play his own game. There is not a single commercial application capable of using ispell; none of them use locales or any other mechanisms provided by the system. Linux is especially popular among scientists -- why is that only Lyx tries to use BibTeX, the citation manager for LaTeX? (and, except in the easiest cases, tries and fails). Instead of a coordinated effort which would be able to bring a spectrum of reasonable MS Office alternatives, we have a spectrum of handicapped beta-versions which do not allow volunteers to participate and extend the existing programs.
Conclusions
Following is, in my humble opinion, necessary to create a working replacement for Word and associates:
-- good national translation or a mechanism allowing free (as in "freedom") translating effort leading to a such translation; using locales would be welcomed,
-- Unicode support, at least at the import/export stage,
-- common dictionary effort - all such programs should be able to use ispell,
-- most of all, realizing that there is a huge group of people who do not write their documents in English and who need national language support. Corel, Lotus and others where ignorant and arrogant in regard to this fact; this is why I doubt there is a single office in Poland using any of their tools. Even the most hardcore WordPerfect users had to switch to MS Word -- because old WP does not import new documents, and new WP does not handle national extensions, not even the minimum.
Hope this helps,
Regards,
January
The only thing I use MS Office for is to write my staff report...which can easily be done in Plain Old Text. Of course, executives up the food chain often send email with MS Word documents as attachments. Other people around here use PowerPoint for presentations. Other than that I don't see why we should be sinking so much money into the black hole of MS office. I don't know of any special features of MS office we actually USE, as opposed to some generic word processor. We could probably just switch to Wordpad or something at least. From the comments of my coworkers it seems that the consensus is that MS Office is just a necessary evil that we have to live with. Besides a staff report once every two weeks, the hundreds of dollars of MS Office software on this machine is totally wasted and useless.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
but they also have no clue how to use Windows!
Case in point - yesterday I went and got a new machine for my mom after her P100 I built for her finally gave up the ghost. We got it back to her house, I hooked it up, started it up. Everything was running great.
Then I needed to get her HP 722c printer running. Win98 has not a clue about that printer. Mom was really worried that it would not run. Then there was her scanner (also no Win98 support) and again she was worried it would not run.
Being the brilliant son I am, I simply went and got the drivers and everything worked slick.
I actually considered NOT putting Win98 on that machine and putting SuSE on instead. I may still do that - build a small machine with Linux only and see what happens when I give it to her.
The point of my story - had I not been there that computer would still be sitting in the box while she read over the instructions. Updating drivers is one of the easiest things to do - ya download it, run it, and wait - and if you are in Windows you get to reboot (hehe) - but it is still simple!
Want more proof? Go to your local bookstore and take a look at the books in the computer section. How many copies of things like "Windows Notepad for Dummies" do you see? I am willing to bet you are gonna find quite a few of those types of books. Okay, maybe not something for notepad.exe, but you are going to find lots of really big time "idiotic user" books. Why? Because they sell.
NOW tell me Windows is easier to use than Linux....
'and when the people in the building held up the sign saying "you are in a helicopter" the pilot said "aha, we're over the Microsoft campus - only they give you an answer which is technically correct while providing absolutely no information" and safely landed the helicopter in the fog.'
Agreed. The short-hand phrase I use to describe this is;
Technically accurate, Practically useless.
Right click on some entries in setting dialogs, and it too easy to find some real world examples of this.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Is there anyone out there know of a project underway (preferably opensource!) designing a powerpoint replacement (yes, I'm looking at the only thing mentioned here thus far (halfbrain?), and it does not look like it does what I want/need).
Here's what I want to do - at the church I go to we are going to switch to a powerpoint presentation of the songs, rather than overheads. But, I'd like to be able to jump ahead in case they decide to skip a song or a verse or whatever. Probably also need to jump back, in case they repeat something.
Anybody working on something like this? Or do I have to do it myself???
Anybody want to start such a project???