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Is StarOffice Ready To Take On Office?
A reader writes "CNET has an article about: Is StarOffice ready to take on MS Office? A quote: "Bottom line for Sun and StarOffice: If you keep aiming where Microsoft has already been, then your opportunities will be in China. A better tactic is to take aim at where the IT market is going to be and your opportunities will be much wider.""
Do you see a parallel to windows vs. linux?
The biggest point he's made is the user familiarity. Something difficult to overcome. Something that Linux has been working on to try and grab the Windows population.
Say what you must, but everytime I show KDE to Windows only users, they look puzzled. The minute I pop up a terminal, they're gone. Its the familiarity that's the hardest wall to scale. People don't like change.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Before Star Office talks about taking on Microsoft Office, they should get the spreadsheet to give correct results. As it is now, I'd rather use Visicalc with an Apple ][ emulator.
A group of developers at my company has tried converting to StarOffice. That attempt has lasted for a couple of weeks, when people were trying to get the needed functionality out of the SO (something to do with spreadsheets). Bottom line is: we are still using MS Office, and no matter which way you look at it, it's simply allowing better functionality. Office 2000 may not be the best app bundle in the world, but it certainly does the job better than SO.
Is StatOffice Ready To Take On Office?
Note that you don't have to state MS Office, because everyone already knows what you mean. No, StarOffice is not ready to take on Office.
Cunning linguists
I'm sorry to say, I actually like it. I have even encouraged people to install it.
Yes, it may not have all of Office 2000's functionality, but it is close, and there are several benefits.
1. It's free(as in beer, but not as in speech (read on, however).
2. It's cross-platform. There are linux binaries (and solaris, I believe) on sun's website. This may just be the office suite of choice for linux (at least beginning linux users) users, as it does not require much to get it working.
3. 6.0 looks really sweet.
Plus, come one, people. It has 98% the functionality of office 2000. That is good enough for at least 75% of people out there, because most people don't use the bloated features avaliable in office. Yes, you have to do things slightly differently. But generally, whatever you wanted to do in office, can be done in staroffice.
While my third point is kind of irrelevant (it makes me hopeful, though), I think the first two are serious advantages that IBM/Lotus/Corel don't have. Sure, you could get Corel's Java Wordperfect, but it kind of sucked, and it didn't have all the features of star office, and the full version cost money.
Finally, StarOffice is forming the core of OpenOffice, which has (IMHO) the potential to become fantastic. In fact, the first full featured beta is avaliable, I may just switch.
As it is, however, even if StarOffice falls off the face of the earth, methink the project is a success. There are a substantial number of users (maybe not compared to Office 2000, but a fair number nevertheless), it's free as in beer, it forms the core of an office suite that is free as in speech, and is cross-platform.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
> Many rank and file clerical type employees do > not want to learn some new software.
Just curious, how often do you use Office applications? How advanced of a user are you? Is it possible that those "rank and file" clerical workers are actually right? That switching to a new office suite will cost them many hours of productivity?
It is for programmers to talk about switching office suites, because most of us don't use them very often. I use office for maybe 2 or 3 hours per week. But if you spend eight hours a day in Word and Excel, those small differences matter a lot.
Think of it this way: Say I decided to take away your vi and replace it with emacs (or vice versa). Simple enough, right? They are both text editors and you will figure out the differences, quickly enough. Besides, you're probably already marginally familiar with the other one anyway.
The reality is, that if you're a veteran programmer, you are probably intimately familiar with your text editor, and replacing it with a new one would cost you many hours. If you are a veteran "rank and file" clerical worker, you are probably intimately familiar with Word or Excel and changing office suites would cost you a lot of lost hours.
Switching Office suites in a corporation is an extremely expensive proposition. Even if the software is free (hell, even if Sun paid you), for most companies it is a bad deal.
People always scream about change. But it happens anyway. Otherwise Microsoft would never have become a monopoly.
I remember when a million secretaries were dragged kicking and screaming from WordPerfect to MS Word.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
StarOffice definitely has an in-your-face kind of design. It just wants to be your everything, including your browser, mailer and desktop. It is awkward if you aren't working exclusively within its confines and doesn't offer any particularly wonderful benefits if you do.
I suspect that's why people who've tried it don't like it, it's too restrictive. If I offered you free shoes which hurt, would that be a good bargain? I know I prefer simpler, less "integrated" and more deferential kinds of programs like Abiword. I've used the OpenOffice versions of the StarOffice programs and liked them much better for being shorn of the irritating attempt to take over your screen with a duplicate desktop. It isn't very polished yet, but I could very well live with it. In fact, I've stopped using Office except when I need to exchange files or use MS Access.
There's lots of good stuff in there, it just needs time and reorganization.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You forgot
5) Convince MS to enforce a method of stoping piracy of Office letting only people that *gasp* pay use it. Also convince MS to include advanced phone home features, complicated authentication / license rules, etc. Surely this would be the best thing for a free-beer alternative.
FREEDOM.
Freedom is the reason you should check out OpenOffice, K Office, Evolution, Gnumeric etc.. Remember: Sun has GPL'd Star Office's source code. That means that everyone can peek at it and change it -- that means you don't have to worry that the next version of the product will fuck with you because if it will, enough developers will be pissed off enough to fork and fix it. You don't have to worry about Passport, .NET, talking paperclips, proprietary file formats or "Smart Tags", or whatever Microsoft's current strategy of becoming Big Brother is.
This is relevant not only for individuals and for corporations. Choosing OpenOffice now is reasonable long term thinking, something most individuals seem incapable of. Yes, Sun would behave just as badly as Microsoft in Microsoft's shoes, but with OpenOffice under the GPL, there's not really much that can go wrong. The file format is also open, XML-based and documented and can be legally implemented by anyone.
Freedom is not just an ideological point. If you trust all your critical documents to a closed source software corporation, you are dependent on them and on their decisions, which will hurt your bottom line -- and, in the long term, hurt you much more than training your personnel to use an alternative.
The bottom line is that if you care about freedom, you shouldn't have to go to China -- you have to look at the alternatives. If you don't do that, you have no right whatsoever to complain that you have none later.