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gobeProductive 3.0 - Office XP killer?
Deffexor writes "It appears that gobe (that famous software company that made the invaluable "office suite" for BeOS) has unveiled their v3.0 release of gobeProductive for Windows and Linux. ArsTechnica has an excellent review of why this is such an important "office suite". While gobeProductive isn't as full-featured as OfficeXP, it certainly does garner a whole lot of Bang-for-the-Buck (especially with the FamilyLicense). The author does a great job of summarizing the superiority of gobeProductive in his conclusion when he says,"This review, which is fifteen pages of graphics and text (in the word processor), along with 5 separate sheets chock full of information, only uses 7MB of RAM while running. Microsoft Word XP (WINWORD.EXE), sitting idle with nothing open, uses 11MB of RAM."" Of course, RAM usage doesn't matter as much these days, with the standard RAM installed being above 128 megs, but still good to know. Update by RM, 8:58 US EST: Only the Windows version of gobeProductive v3.0 seems to be available at this time.
*The* most important thing with new Office suite, is compatibility. Near 100% compatibility.
;o)
Oh, 1st post too
In general a pretty good program, but a little crude when compared to MS Office. We will see if it can hold up to the onslaught.
I want to see this running on my boxen before making my own opinion. Linux to the desktop!
does anyone know how this compares to star office
gobe cant compare to office.
:)
it's not extortionately priced enough for corporations to bother with.
feature wise its excellent
GoBe Productive was a fantastic application when it sat (v2) on my BeOS desktop. Running it under Windows (with the promise of a free copy of the Linux version) has never made me so happy. At a fraction of the cost, using a fraction of the system resources, Productive is a tool anyone who uses Windows should invest in!
maybe i am an idiot, but i do not see anywhere on the gobe site where it mentions linux.
XP killer, eh? Just because it's a superior product? Well, if anything'll work against microsoft, that'd be it.
The design of the box alone makes it look like it is an 'MS Office Look-alike' and thus giving it status in corporate eyes.
All incompatible. I'm sick of it. I don't give a toss how good the software is.
I've switched to HTML for all documentation in the future and that's that.
Deleted
Speak for yourself buddy. Anybody running multiple applications knows how quick you can chew up 300MB. And I'm not talking about doing graphics work. I work in the financial industry and my basic daily setup eats up 270Mb to start. Open a pdf in your web browswer and tack on another 20+ until you manually kill the acrobat task.
Its a really bad attitude to have that ram use doesnt matter. Its just an invitation to more sloppy programing and feature bloat.
It might be a great product but when the average user still thinks Micros~1 makes the best/only product it will never catch on.
It's the same thing with StarOffice for Windows.(which even was free) A great product, a lot more userfriendly when compared to MS Office. But somehow I could convince anyone to even try it.
Standard reply: 'Office is all I need.'
Man, MicroSoft does knows how to do their marketing...
From the article about being the Office XP Killer:
"I'll address this issue right off the bat. This is great software, but it isn't an Office killer, nor is it designed to be."
I don't think you can kill Office. It's like the Tick - it may not be all that smart, but it's darn near indestructable! Just think of all the businesses and institutions using Access databases. In our small unit of about 30 people we have over 10 individual databases written in Microsoft Access. So if we need Access, we're getting the rest of Office anyway.
Look at the system requirements! This thing seems like it is the Opera of Office suites...
-Pentium MMX 200mhz processor
-20 MB HD space
-Windows 98/ME -- 48mb RAM, Windows 2000 -- 80mb RAM
-2X or faster CD for install
HTML 4.0 browser for reading the manual
-At least a Super VGA 256 color monitor
I hope companies realise that they can save money by (a) buying this and (b) not having to buy new machines so quickly because they can relegate old machines into word-processing-only designations and run this on it.
Only $75, and they actually give you the rights an ordinary person would expect when buying something. Look:
"You are allowed to install gobeProductive on each Windows and Linux computer in your own residence. You are also allowed to install gobeProductive on your computer where you work. A certificate is included in the gobeProductive package explaining to your employer that this is allowed."
I'm one of those XHTML-or-die people, but I may have to give this a look.
Ok, so it's slightly off-topic, but it follows discussion on recent posts. A lot of consumers beleive you get what you pay for. Most aren't going to spend $400 for a full copy of XP, but they see that in the store and when they buy a computer with OfficeXP SBE (a cheaper version) they think they really have something. "Why would anyone charge $400 for a product if it wasn't worth it?" Linux needs an office app that includes all the basics, but added database and other high level apps most people don't use. Then put it next to the "stripped down" version that has just the apps people want. RedHat knows this. Go to Best Buy, and you see the $200 pro version next to the $60 standard. I'll bet they sell more of the $60 version, but the $200 pro version boosts the percieved value of the $60 standard one.
Anyone know if this will work under the Linux emulation layer in the *BSD family? I'd love to give it a try, but my only x86 box is running OpenBSD and I doubt they'll release a LinuxPPC build so I can try it with the penguin.
--saint
The D compiler will take html and compile what is between the code tags. So you can put both documentation and code in the same file. You can literally use a WYSIWYG html editor to code with.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Some of which seems a bit odd.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Come on people..
1) drive space makes no difference in the corp world today
2) cpu power is not a concern
3) memory usage is not a concern
4) "runs on linux" is not a concern
What is:
1) compatible r/w file formats with what everyone else is using
2) cheaper
3) comes pre-installed with a new pc
"gee look, it only uses 7 MB where word uses 11!!! holly cow.. it's revolutionary!" DOH!
-- "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
While gobeProductive isn't as full-featured as OfficeXP
Then it's not an Office killer. Don't get your hopes up.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
DO they plan a port for Mac OS X? I'd love to get a good Word processor for Mac OS X. Unfortunately, I don't think AppleWorks is it, and I know MS Word isn't it.
mbbac
Gobe Productive was one of my favorites on BeOS. If this one is just as cool, I'm gonna buy it. I hope they have a special upgrade price for their old BeOS customers.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Alas, GobeProductive (like the name) is destined to be a niche product. I read the review and looked at the Web site - it looked good - nice design. However, Microsoft maintains it's lock on the (Office) market, not with it's UI, certainly not with it's licensing terms, but with it's file formats. You need to exchange a document, spreadsheet, etc. with another person. Odds are about 99%, that the other person uses MS Office. If an Office Suite doesn't offer 100% compatibilitity with Microsoft's formats (which is pretty difficult - since MS deliberately doesn't publish them) - then you're out of luck.
The review doesn't mention compatibility, but Gobe's Web site does - it has limited compatibility with Word and Excel. Unfortunately, that's really not sufficient. Sun (StarOffice) already figured this out. I hope Gobe realizes it too.
[Insert pithy quote here]
As a pimply smelly UNIX-hacker who has a wife that does not use MS Office (She has always preferred WordPerfect), I can say that the problem with all the OTHER office suites has not been about a lack of features.
_ __
The problem is the head-start that Mickeysoft got in the dark days when the idea of an office suite was quite novel. In fact, I would say that even more important than the MS monolopy on PC OSes the fact that Microsoft beat out every other player in the Office suite market.
Listen every other player got off to lame start. I have to give it to Micro$oft for putting together a very seamless suite of apps. WordPerfect fumbled all over itself getting together a suite of apps. Lotus did a better job putting Lotus 123 and AmiPro together but the Windoze version of Lotus 123 sucked for so long it gave Microsoft all the time in the world to make Excel a good product. By the way, I will venture to say that today Excel (for the common business user) is probably Microsoft most well put together apps minus all the bloat.
WordPerfect's office suite has a much better Word Processor. WordPerfect blows the socks off of Word IMHO. However, the spreadsheet program is forgettable Quattra Pro and the Presentation is ok if you do not need PPT compatibility (and you will).
My wife BTW was a paralegal which means that she was in essence a Office suite power user hitting almost every facet of suite's functionality. The whole idea that Office wins because of more features is a load of sh*t. At least her boss was smart and knew they would be using the word processing of their office app more than other function and choose a suite according to which one he thought had the best word processor.
_______________________________________________
ACK
Much more accurate.
So what's going on in Gobe these days anyways? I mean, MAN, I was down in their head office the other day when peter cotex (you know pete) came up to me and was like man, what are you DOING here? and I was like dude, just chill.. I came to check out your office suite and he was all like dude, it ain't that cool! I mean, Can you believe that he said that to me? And then, after all that happened, I was out in the gobe parking lot, and some dudes from the 125th floor starting throwing eggs at me and saying mean things like "a loser like you will never be able to use our office suite! go back to canada you clown!" and I mean, I'm not even from canada... I'm from new brunswick! Those idiots. So in conclusion I would just like to say that gobe software is nothing like a box of raisins. Thank you.
It's wrong, completely wrong. I use MS Word as my email editor in MS Outlook and on my win2000 box Word 2002 is using 14MB of RAM. So someone needs to get their facts straight.
This is nothing compared to our in house CRM app that is written in Java. PC's running it need 256MB of RAM. And I heard rumors that the next version is going to require 512MB RAM on the PC.
Is it an Office XP Killer?
I'll address this issue right off the bat. This is great software, but it isn't an Office killer, nor is it designed to be. gobeProductive is designed to be a lighter, faster office suite.
Lighter and faster is fine with me, I couldn't care less if it kills Office. I sometimes have to use sub-P200 computers with 64MB of ram, and overbloated aps are a huge irritation. It makes me sick how wasteful things like MS Office, Mozilla, IE, etc. are when other products prove it can be done so much more efficiently. An Opera install, for example, is a featherweight by comparison to other browsers (not to mention faster on slow computers and more memory efficient), but still has basically all the important features. Where is all that other memory, CPU time and hard drive space getting wasted in the bloat-browsers?
Even if it weren't for the anti-bloat factor, the "Family" license is enough to give this suite a big advantage over M$'s offering. Heck, even that more flexible license is probably cheaper than a single-cpu license for Office (which is also bloated in price).
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
I don't fault the author, either, but the fact is that the gobeProductive that is mentioned on that page is actually gobeProductive 2.0! You can see this for yourself, if you click on the link in the table: http://gobe.com/storegobeproductive.html
So, there is nothing odd, there is Productive for Windows, which is Productive 3.0, and there is also Productive for BeOS, which is Productive 3.0. Easy does it.
Sigged!
Not until you convince thousands of users that MS Office is a separate product from Windows.
Not until it is completely compatible with ALL other office suites.
Not until you get twice the marketing shmooze MS can throw and then some. (Until this article I did not even know it existed - and I am an admitted geek, what about the thousands of ppl who aren't?)
Not until you convince all those users that MS won't make things uncompatible in the next release leaving them high and dry with an abandoned office suite.
Not until you convince all those users that there are thousands of other users/companies using it.
Even the author admitted is was not an Office XP killer.
--Quote
I'll address this issue right off the bat. This is great software, but it isn't an Office killer, nor is it designed to be.
Sure wish it was.
Is it an Office XP Killer? I'll address this issue right off the bat. This is great software, but it isn't an Office killer, nor is it designed to be.
Even the makers admit it isn't an office killer.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Not to troll here, but all this talk about "killing" Microsoft Office is just wishful thinking. Until Microsoft's power over OEMs is reigned in, most consumers will continue to get Office through them. The fact that an alternative suite is better is irrelevant. The fact is that OEMs seem loathe to do anything that might jeopardize their Windows licenses.
I personally can't wait to see some of these alternatives mature and compete with Office. There's hope that maybe some large companies will start switching and get the ball rolling. But I am very skeptical if they'll do much more than ding Office's armor.
gobeProductive 3.0 - Office XP killer?
No, but it is a very likely StarOffice 6 killer...
It depends on promotion. There are a lot of windows users out there who are not enamoured of Office, but who feel that the alternative is WordPad. That's not really an altnernative. However, if they never hear about alternatives, that's where it sits: Word or WordPad - more than you need or less than you need. Most will choose more.
Unless Gobe has a big budget for advertising, it will require a lot of reviews, not only on the web but in mainstream computer publications, as well as a lot of word of mouth, starting with the winGurus who read the reviews and recommend stuff to others who don't, if it is to stand any chance of grabbing any remotely significant market share from MS.
pardon me. An office xp "killer" eh? That's rich. Here's how, in order of importance, one would start "killing" office of any flavor:
1. Reads and writes office format (FLAWLESSLY)by default. not export/import.
2. Cheaper than office
.....
99. Uses fewer resources.
"gobeProductive 3.0 - Office XP killer?" and "While gobeProductive isn't as full-featured as OfficeXP, it certainly does garner a whole lot of Bang-for-the-Buck (especially with the FamilyLicense). The author does a great job of summarizing the superiority of gobeProductive in his conclusion when he says,"
In my view, it is a bit too late to speak of "features" and "prices" as an MS Office killer (of any version). Why? For years, corporate office (average Joe/Jane employee/consumer) users have gotten used to the "look-and-feel" of MS Office -- it is a tool that they have become so familiar with for better or worse. Asking them to convert now based on price and feature set of a competing product is like asking them to re-learn walking all over again. Not an easy thing to sell.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Utterly essential that this works for communicating with the outside world.
Cheers,
Ian
Wouldn't it make sense for them to offer some kind of evaluation version? In a market as tough to penetrate as office suites, it would seem to make sense.
Not that they're asking a *lot* of money, but I'd like to at least be able to test drive the software before plunking down cash.
I'll address this issue right off the bat. This is great software, but it isn't an Office killer, nor is it designed to be
Quit it with the sensationalist headlines... this program is designed to be a smaller, faster office suite, not the XP killer everyone here would like to see (me included)
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
I remember back when LightWave first came out for Windows. Newtek thought they would crush 3dStudio becuase of its price/features. To their amazement, sales were low. When they researched to find out why it wasn't selling, they found many companies ignored it because it wa TOO CHEAP. The old saying, "You pay for what you get" made purchasers think that if Brand X is half the price of Brand Z, there must be a reason. What did Newtek do? They raised the price by $1000 and Lightwave sales took off!
The same thing is happening today with stuff like StarOffice, GoBe, and Linux in general. People that don't know better assume that if it is cheap or free, it must be something wrong with it. Maybe the solution is to charge outrageous prices (with deep discounts for personal uses).
Corporations that have invested millions into Microsoft products and compatibility will not switch over. If anyone has business experience, they'll understand this - that's the reason that most lawyers use WP instead of Office.
and (IMHO) what *initially* killed Wordperfect in the market at large was not the lack of an office suite but the lack of a timely, stable, windows-based version. The debate back then was whether to use best-of-breed software vs. integrated suite. Most agreed that WP DOS was a superior product but they (WP) stumbled badly with their Windows release and MS took over, with Word leading the way. The first versions of WP/Win sucked - it couldn't, for example, reliably cut and past from other apps but Word could. Now, whether Microsoft's more stable product was due to usage of "hidden" features, etc. is best dealt with somewhere else.
Why is everyone treating Office XP like it is the best thing that ever happened to office apps? It almost drove me insane. Little icons popping up all over the text - without clicking on anything, those docked dialogs appearing on both sides of the document when least needed, dynamic toolbars that never seem to stay docked... I was glad it was just a 30day trial and I re-installed Office 2000 a few days later.
:)
I really have to try some of the alternative office apps. Tried StarOffice beta on Linux. Liked it a lot.
There does not appear to be a demo version available on their website. At one level I understand that there are issues with demos that are difficult to get around. (I used WinZip and Paint Shop Pro for YEARS without registering them) But if they really want to make a dent in the Microsoft Office Monopoly they are going to have to earn the trust of the techs. There is simply no way that I will recommend to my boss that we switch away from the most popular piece of software ever without being able to play with it for at least a month. How am I going to justify buying another TOTALLY EXTRANEOUS office suite, just to test it out? Something for the Gobe guys, or any other MS competitor to ponder...
It doesn't matter if it's 10x better then XP office and only uses 2 Meg of disk space and 300 k RAM, if I can't read the data everyone else is sending me I have no other choice but XP office. To use any non/semi compliant office suite would require my entire company taking the plunge and corporations want solutions that are proven, they are not looking to beta test. I have enough trouble using a non-MS email client because outlook loves to package everything into a winmail.dat file that my or any other standards compliant email application is incapable of handling. Abi word does OK at reading some word files but does not even have an option to save a file as a .doc, therefore rendering any compatibility entirely useless.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
- By the way, I will venture to say that today Excel (for the common business user) is probably Microsoft most well put together apps minus all the bloat.
I tend to agree on the quality of Excel... But "minus all the bloat" is a bit problematic considering the fact that MS shipped a flight simulator in the product - and nobody noticed.Or at least this is what I heard:_ session_ id=3bEXT3pL&mv_pc=129&node=1822
http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/lookup?mv
This will be one hell of a killer app. Not that it will displace office. No it won't in terms of capabilities. But it can be a good and economical replacement for MS Office where cost is a factor. Let's face it, not many users create documents that integrate spreadsheet and graphics so for a typical home user, this is a very economical alternative.
The main issues now would be how to market this product so that there is awareness for a buyer of this software. If I were part of the company's marketing department, I would mail several thousand copies to non-profit organizations that can fully use it without fear of being sent an "invitation" by using pirated software. Then they can use those as success stories of how their software helps in their day-to-day business.
Return the bells of Balangiga.
gobeProductive is a single office application (i.e., integrated) that does the job of five standalones: word processing, spreadsheets, image manipulation (photo manipulation), graphics (image creation), and presentations
Corel Draw always got bashed for having more features than needed in one app. How come this is suddenly considered a good thing?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seems like everyone and his mother are creating Office Suites nowadays.
The thing I've been looking for is a replacement for VBA.
For a quick dirty hack to speed through and do a bunch of stuff against a spreadsheet, you can't beat it. Combine that with the cross-app integration of Office, and you can get some serious work done, without having to resort to "the big guns." Spend enough time in Excel and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Get me a spreadsheet with the functionality and simplicity (I don't want to have to write the equivalent of C based COM interop's just to change the formatting on some cells) of VBA behind it, and I'll come running.
It's the key thing that's keeping my Linux box as a "backup desktop" behind Win2k. Damn annoying.
I haven't heard of any future OS X port, but that doesn't mean that it can't happen.
I reccomend emailing gobe.
I know alot of people think that Office will be the standard for quite a while, but my personal opinion is that eventually a common open standard for document interchange will emerge, and Office's position will erode.
We can help speed this change by sending documents in well documented formats (XML,PDF,XHTML,DocBook, etc.) whenever possible. People will catch on eventually.
The formatting options may be a little limited currently, but they will improve.
-"The early bird catches the worm, but the late bird sleeps the most"
"Prior to the Linux version's availability, packaging will include a coupon redeemable for a Linux version CD."
For those of us who use multiple platforms, it would be nice if their license was for any version on any platform. Any one see anything about a Mac OS/X version? An office suite that is uniform an consistient across Linux, Windows, and Mac OS/X would be useful. (I know that an Open Office port to the Mac is underway, so perhaps OO will be the solution).
I should have mentioned that I work for one of the companies currently testifying against Microsoft. I swear the Dilbert principle is in full effect.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I'll tell you where it will make a difference...
In school districts, where they've got 2000+ workstations and they're all Pentiums and Pentium IIs. My company is converting a local school district over from Novell to linux this week.
The school has OLD machines. Pentium 90s with Win95b (16mb) are the oldest of them all. However, one or two 486sx33s were encountered as well.
Every mb counts...
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10016-100-853 9292.html?st.dl.10016-101-8539292.bc.10016-100-853 9292
1. Complete clone of office -- No extra features or interface inhancements, just a complete copy. Give the office clone a name that confuses user so that they think that they are using MS Office-- call it "This is Office for Windows"
3. OEM deals with everone (including the Devil)
4. Once Clone office is installed, it can't be uninstalled (breaks Windows)
5. Release This is office for Windows on same day that ms release thier version.
6. accuse Microsoft of cloning the clone.
7.Prepare an army of Lawyers or sharks
8. Confuse everyone, so that one day Billy Boy finds himself using clone office.
9. Rewrite Revelations to include verses that tie using MS office to eternal pain and suffering.
10. If all else fails convice Bush that using MS office helps terrorist orginations.
I compare MS Office to Adobe Photoshop whenever things like this come up: both applications are clearly the best at what they do, with the largest number of features and the greatest extensibility, and wherever they lead, other similar applications follow. They are easily twice as fully-featured as their nearest competitor, if not more. For all intents and purposes, they cannot be "killed" in the market.
But their prices reflect that. There is a simple reason for this (and it's not "monopoly power"): they're both targetted at professionals. Photoshop has print-editing features that no photographer or web developer will ever need; Office is powerful enough to create entire books collaboratively, but most office employees just want something to build good-looking newsletters. Too few consumers realize that they don't need half the features they're paying for, just to get the half that they want.
The trick for the competition, then, is to get that half non-professionals want, and then do them very, very well. Even Microsoft Works doesn't quite provide that. If gobeProductive (or StarOffice or any of the others) can, then it has a chance to be successful, even without scoring a "kill."
These guys really seem to be a rarity; a company focused on the consumer. Just check out the "FamilyLicense" you can buy:
You are allowed to install gobeProductive on each Windows and Linux computer in your own residence. You are also allowed to install gobeProductive on your computer where you work. A certificate is included in the gobeProductive package explaining to your employer that this is allowed.
So for $124.95 you get the Windows version, a certificate good for the Linux version when it comes out and a license to install it on every computer you use! No Product Activation telling you to plunk down another $450 because you have a second computer in your office.
I wonder if employers would give employees half of the cost back if they used it at work. Each side would benefit by saving close to $390! (Ok, employers might save less due to volume discounts.)
Still a good deal worth checking out.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Wow, it must be great to do tech support in an office full of geniuses! In the offices where I've worked, Word users used tabs and spacing to get their formatting. The finance folks knew only the most basic stuff about Excel, and were hampered by their lack of math knowledge as well. Powerpoint presentations were endless slides full of text bullet points or canned clip art.
Microsoft's own Office group has research that 70 percent of the documents created with Word are one page or less. (When they need this kind of info they recruit paid volunteers who run specially instrumented versions of Office that collect keystrokes.)
Anyway, my point is that the Pareto principle can work here. There's no reason for Gobe to build a product that meets the needs of 100 percent of the users. Let Microsoft try to do that, and Gobe can focus on the majority of the market that does simple word processing.
What is really remarkable here is how good the software is considering how large gobe is. Having worked for years in the same building as gobe (917 sw oak, pdx, or) I can attest to their very small size. If less than 10 people can put this together over a few years...
OfficeXP on Win2k on my machine (256MB machine) uses 9888K with nothing open. That's more than 10% less than 11MB's... not that much more than the quoted 7 of this "XP Killer"
Can anyone beat that?
I bought this about 3 weeks ago after seeing it posted on osnews.com, and so far I really like it. Keep in mind I am far from a Office suite power user. The things that attracted it me to were: the positive reviews, the ability to save as a pdf, the fact that I can get the linux version when it is finished, and the license which absolutely clinched it for me.
I think it is important to support companies that you feel are doing a good thing. I could have just used a copy of MS Office from the MSDN Subscription that my job provides, but I decided that I should buy this product to support the company. I am at a point in my life where I find it hard to justify pirating things anymore. I want the product, I have the money, I buy the product. I do understand pirating when you don't have the money to buy software you need learn a skill (some would argue if you can't afford it, you shouldn't use it), I wouldn't be where I am today if I was not able to do this in the past. But I don't know if most people are able to weene themselves.
Wondered a bit topic, oh well...
I'm not having much hope here, but is the file format sane, i.e. a plain-text one (read: XML)?
Every office suite has its own formats, so although I might like to I can't send in them. Where oh where is a modern word processor format that can cope with all the features of a modern powerful word processor, while remaining open?
I suppose ditto for spreadsheets too come to think of it...
The price of a bare stick from pricewatch is irrelevant. A much more useful benchmark is Dell's current upcharge of $160 to go from 256 to 512 Meg-- rounding down, this comes to ~$0.50 per additional Meg of RAM.
If some idiot codemonkey uses an extra 20Meg "because it doesn't matter", that effectively adds $10 dollars to the marginal cost of the PC necessary to run it.
Multiply that by a few million PC's (or few hundred million if we're talking Office or Acrobat) and you're starting to talk about real money....
Import of Excel said to be hindered by different naming conventions in the two programs, which sounds like something that should be addressed in the import mechanism.
These "naming conventions" are probably collisions in the function namespace. What if a user defines a function in one program that turns out to be a built-in function in the other? Even worse, imagine if one spreadsheet allowed Python programs in cells and another allowed Scheme programs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does it have the paperclip?
- Different width columns on the same page
- Wrapping text round irregular edges of imported pictures
- Different headers and footers for odd and even pages
Not only does it meant that those features aren't available for use, but if it doesn't have them it can't possibly do a decent job of importing Word documents that use them.99% of the world's office drones don't use operating systems, the use apps. In fact, they don't even use apps, they just need to manipulate existing data, and create new data that can be shared. OS & apps aren't important, data is. What is data? Data is the uncountable millions of existing word documents and excel spreadsheets that already exist, chock-full of proprietary M$ crap created by thousands upon thousands of office drones who have *real* problems (rent, divorce, etc.) and could give two shits about open standards and are employed by companies who value easy solutions above anything else and are willing to spend $500 per seat every two years just to keep most things working sorta OK. Is Office perfect? Not by a long shot. Does continuing to use Office guarantee flawless data integrity from one version to the next? Once again, no. Is it what companies are used to, delivered by a company that they're used to dealing with, regardless of the pain? Yes. Is it going anywhere? No. Would an office suite, written by the Pope and supported 24/7 by bishops at the Vatican, given away for free, that runs on an XT with 640k, have a chance of displacing Offfice in offices? Not without 110% document compatability.
20336K w/ 65MB swap file before
15144K w/ 68MB swap file after starting with new blank document.
Obviously a bunch of stuff already running on this Win95OSR2 machine.
Gobe totally fell down on importing a word doc with tables, didn't even get the data, just ignored the entire table.
Apparently a 14 day demo
Go to love that 'save as' 'pdf' capability.
Did anyone notice the spreadsheet screenshot?
The title is "Server Load".
Maybe next week they will change it to "The Slashdot Effect."
Looks like a nice product, though.
Well sort of
Both AppleWorks & Gobe evolved from ClarisWorks.
Added to which, the momentum of an installed base and brand name recognition. If a company with a little more visibility was behind this product it might have a chance, but as it stands, I give this product a five percent chance at best.
StarOffice lets me re-assign the Enter key to toggle edit mode in spreadsheets (instead of move to the next cell).
Can Gobe do that?
It has everthing it needs to become an Office substitute. Don't you realize? It comes with a blue & white packaging!!!
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
If you are pasting in pictures of the charts, you could try using gif or jpg format -- don't just shift-insert the picture into the document (the pictures are converted to plain bitmaps which gets big) -- insert then by MSWord--> (menubar)--> Insert-->Picture--> From Files -- the resulting saved .doc will be a reasonable size
Company's always like to spend less money, but they don't really like to gamble, so I see the incompatibility with file formats as a big strike against it (the review claims gobe has problems with tables, charts, and images in
Anyway, the real problem is that I haven't seen a good Access killer. Does anyone know a good competitor for it? I'm not trolling, I'm honestly just curious.
I'm a little confused. I've been using OpenOffice for a couple of months now, and it's all the "Office killer" that I need. Cross-OS, full Office compatability, and free.
Wasn't it in the movie "Boilerrrom" that the one salesman said, "And I am sorry, but we can only sell you 5 units." And "lets" the guy talk him into more units.
People like to get deals. If they are told something is a deal, they will pay money for it. My wife buys so much shit "it was on sale, just listen to how much money I saved..." when she never would have bought it in the first place.
*The* most important thing with new Office suite, is compatibility. Near 100% compatibility.
The most important thing? I'd say there are a significant nuber of computer users who don't share documents electronically.
I think CHOICES are the most important thing. There is no other product marketplace that only has one choice. People work in different ways and have different needs, and it is a gross distortion of the marketplace to only have one choice. One-size-fits-all is just WRONG!
Can you think of another area where people only have one choice? In fact, the legal profession still prefers Word Perfect over Word because it has features that fit the way THEY work.
I'll bet there are a significant number of people who work the way gobeProductive was designed for.
Given the degree of missing functionality, the RAM usage comparison of 7MB to 11MB sucks. They should be down at something more like 4MBs. If they implement what's missing and don't improve their design, they'll be using a lot more RAM than MS.
Why are people always jumping on Microsoft without thinking? What has really made Microsoft successful is that they try to give every user what they want. As programmers, we tend to cringe and call this bloatware. But the mass market users simply see that they are getting the features they want without excuses like "its too dangerous".
Of course, RAM usage doesn't matter as much these days, with the standard RAM installed being above 128 megs, but still good to know.
Less RAM used means less memory accesses, which means more free memory bandwidth, which means everything runs faster. RAM is still the bottleneck on 99% of systems, so the less you use the better. Oh. And Windows (I still run 98SE) itself takes up about 128mb of RAM with a few agents running. Stripped down to nothing running I can't get it below 75mb.
RAM still matters. Don't be bad programmers.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
I've seen this demoed at java one this week. Looks cool. Runs on java...
--pete
It really doesn't matter whether a non-Microsoft office suite is better than MS Office. I would argue that there are already plenty of such office suites. Most people who are forced to run MS Office need to do so in order to read the MS Word and MS PowerPoint files that people send them. And, unfortunately, because many such files seem to include weird, undocumented formatting and executable code, non-MS Office suites have a really hard time reading them.
I bought the BeOS version when BeOS 5 came out and thus was able to get the Win version a few months ago. In compairing it to MS Office97 and MS Office2K (the only versions I have) I'd have to say that it's a very nice and well done office suite. For just doing normal, basic "office" work (99.9% of what everyone really does) it is as good as MS Office or better. One of my favorite things it has is that it can save to PDF format so I can easily create PDF files w/o forking out $$$$ for Adobe Acrobat. I can't wait for the Linux version to ship.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
there's nothing more that i'd love to do than get rid of office xp, but it doesn't look like there's an e-mail client packaged with it. how do they expect to even compete without something like outlook?
Sure, an Administrator needs to visit their desktop to do nearly everything, but the cost of support should go down drastically when you're not cleaning up after users who installed webshots, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Real Player, Real One, MSN Messenger, Spinner, "Merry Christmas" screensavers, and 300 other unapproved applications...
Since when does quicksort use more memory than bubblesort. I would think that if any of the two used significantly more memory than the other it would be bubblesort.
Johan Veenstra
Hopefully gobe doesn't use that gawd-awful MDI interface like that S.O. 5.2 crapware.
Does MS Office support frames? (For that matter, does GOBE?)
Most computers are sold here in Brazil (as of 2002.March.27) with 32 or 64MiB. 32MiB, I guess, is the disappearing norm, quickly being replaced by 64 everywhere. 128 and 256 are seen in more costly models.
Most knowledgeable (sp?) shops will recommend 128 or 256 as minimum configs. OTOH, one year ago I told my brother-in-law to buy a Celeron 500MHz with 64Mib and a 15" monitor (good standard offer in a mart here).
Instead the salesperson convinced him to get a 550MHz with 32Mib and a 14" monitor, for the same price. Do not underestimate the power of the salesmen (see MS).
Vendors here are so qualified that I once asked if a computer comes with internal modem and got the answer: "Yeah, sure, look it's a 48x one!". Sigh.
I myself would not *want* to buy a computer at a mart, but maybe it is unavoidable as they have better financing (longer and less costly). Besides, cutting edge technology is too expensive and out-of-reach for me, anyway.
Unfortunately, I haven't been in a Porsche in years. But I'd bet that if you drove one around the dealer's lot, you would notice a big difference between it, and, say, a Suburban (which is what I'd compare most MS products to).
This was available back in December 2001 - as a matter of fact, I submitted it then, but no one bothered with it...
I've used GP3 for Windows for some time now, & I must say it's great! Total integration makes life so easy, rather than having to run separate apps & "integrate" these different docs together with some kludgy workaround. Want a table & a graphic in a word processing doc? Put them in. What a concept...
It also saves as PDF, with no 3rd-party addon, and is WAY faster than using the Acrobat plugin for Office.
As for import/export, it seems to be about on par with StarOffice - some good, some not so good. However, they have made a lot of progress in a short time, with a fairly small team. I think this is a testament to their good work, rather than a shortcoming - NOBODY can import/export Office file formats perfectly - not even between different versions of Office! So to use this as an absolute benchmark of quality or useability is a red herring.
To me the most important thing is that it be a word processor that does what I need and works on Linux. If I can't read Word documents perfectly, that's too bad. I'd prefer to, but that's not what's really important. I can do that on another machine if I must (and then export them in another format).
AbiWord it good enough for what it does, but it doesn't do enough. KWrite crashes when I try to make it do what I need. Open Office 641c crashes on my Linux system (I'd tell them why if I had a clue). Mozilla is good at what it does, but HTML isn't a page layout language.
If this doesn't work out, then I'll need to try Lyx. I'd have done this already if it didn't look like composition & formatting would take so long.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
you can do most of your word processing in HTML...i know people that have gone their entire school careers just using an HTML editor for writing documents.
Sure. Unless, for example, your time is billed at $100 per hour, your machine is out of action while you swap the processor over, your sysadmins are incompetent and ordered a part that isn't compatible with your motherboard so you have to do it twice, and then you have to Flash the BIOS to get it to work. The $80 for the hardware is, as usual, nothing compared to the cost of getting it up and running. Except that you can't do that, because opening up the case voids your corporate warranty, so you'd have to get the PC upgraded by the manufacturer at much higher cost anyway.
Obviously, you can make a similar argument about downtime for the software, but that doesn't mean the point about hardware upgrading isn't valid. Comparing hobbyist home users and the commercial world is not fair. Why else do you think so many big corps shell out 2-3x as much for their everday PC systems than you or I would dream of paying for a home box?
Funny you should mention that. I actually borrowed the beta CDs for MS Visual Studio.NET from work a few weeks ago. Since we didn't have a spare machine at the office, and I was about to trash my hard drive and reinstall anyway, I volunteered to put it on mine to see if we wanted to upgrade. Unfortunately, my PC (about three years old, then nearly state of the art) is clearly below Microsoft's radar at this point, as the system was so laughably "underpowered" in processor, RAM, OS, and all the rest that I couldn't even install the tool, never mind use it.
So, until there's a spare PC at the office to try it out on, we'll still use VC++ 6, and MS will have lost a whole load of business, and all because a simple editor+compiler application couldn't run on a PC that's three years old.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Why teach them a specific platform or program at all? My personal theory is to teach people concepts and let them try out the different packages and decide which one they like.
I mean, do you have any problem switching from MS Office to Wordperfect to Star Office to Gobe Office?
I can fire up any of them and do any of the basic functions because I understand how a word processor or spreadsheet works, I can also do specific functions in each one that I can't do in the other.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I read the review. From the way the features were described, this doesn't sound like a product in the same league as Office XP; it's more of a Microsoft Works level product.
If it truly has 100% compatible document import/export, then people might feel comfortable using it as a replacement for Office on some desktops (much as StarOffice is being used now in many companies).
I especially like the licensing. I hope that they sell many copies to families with new computers.
On Linux, I don't think they have much chance of making money. The word processor sounds like it is pretty similar to AbiWord in available features. The spreadsheet sounds like it is not quite up to Gnumeric's level yet. Graphics are not up to the GIMP yet (although they might be a bit more newbie-friendly; I couldn't really tell from the review). In short, there is very little functionality here that is not available already in the free software. Most of the people interested in using Linux probably won't be interested in paying for software that offers little beyond what is already free on Linux.
The integration features are sort of interesting. When you do a Save As on a document with a spreadsheet, several pictures, and some text, I wonder what happens?) Microsoft Office has had features like this since forever, though: you can pick one document to be a shell and drop other documents into it, or else you can run the "binder" and make a metadocument with several other documents bound up inside. (I think most people just do the shell document thing; MS has mostly retired the binder. You can still install it if you like but it is no longer installed by default.) The clean "sheets" interface is nice, but I think you could get that in Office by using an Excel spreadsheet as the shell doc.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
602 Download
But why pay when office 2000 is free.
when the best search tools for Microsoft errata are Linux based. /. seems to be the best early-warning system for Microsoft wormage.)
(And
Office 2K, running on a 500 megahertz P2 box with 256 megs of RAM. (Although it was running with 128 for quite some time.)
Idle at startup: 7.5 megs of RAM
With 8 documents open, all of which are many pages in length, half of which have embedded images, tables, and various other heavy formatting options: 17.5 megs of RAM.
Now, that's not exactly what I'd call terrible. If it was linear, and it was 7.5 per document yeah, that would SUCK. But it's not.
-Jayde
What's a sig?
Unfortunately, nothing will ever 'kill' Office until MS gets in (real) legal trouble, and Office loses support or something like that, Office has a huge, damaging exploit in parallel with another product's release, or other such things.
That, and 100% compatability with current MS Office products. I hear you say, "What about WordPerfect?" This really isn't such a big concern, because most people do, and have used, MS Office for the last 5 or so years.
The main concern with compatability isn't necessarily, "Can I use this flawlessly with the other documents circulating the office?" but, "Can I use this to flawlessly read documents generated in all the various versions of Office?" or, "Will I still be able to retain my original formatting, and can it be saved with that same formatting as well, so people still using Office can read it properly?"
Unfortunately, I suspect that MS Office has some sort of 'failsafe' *cough* mechanism that causes any documents written with another program to be rendered differently each time, etc.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
OK, gobe are the people that have been developing for BeOS (created by a splinter-group from Apple), and evidently Productive is developed by some former Claris employees (Claris was acquired by Apple). So, where is the Mac OS X version of this application?!?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I am serverly DYSLIX.
Therefor I can not spell.
Mlk
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I understand what you're saying, but do you think if those same people were brought up using different platforms they'd be so clueless?
Kids are being taught younger and younger, so I kind of have a feeling that the next generation of "office workers" will be more computer savvy and will be more non-microsoft.
Look at kids who learned on a Macintosh. Most of them that I know don't have any problems using MS Office, even if they were using Clarisworks on Mac.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
i don't care how good they say it is. i can't find a demo on the site and if they think i'm buying without testing it first they must be frickin' idiots.
or am i the idiot who can't see a big fat DEMO link somewhere on the site?
Nalfy
-- Despair is an operating system that ANY human being can run, sort of a psychological JAVA --
"By the way, I will venture to say that today Excel (for the common business user) is probably Microsoft most well put together apps minus all the bloat."
bzzzzzt! wrong.
the following applies to excel 2000, maybe they actually got a decent product out the door with XP, i have no idea. excel 2000 must anyway be the standard at the moment. just two examples to start us off:
Example #1. open a file, save it as 'myfile.xls'. open another file, save it in *another folder* (very important!) as 'myfile.xls'. close excel. reopen excel. now try and open both those files at the same time. you can't: the program does not allow two files with the same name - *even in different folders* - to be open at the same time. that is, pardon my french, f**ked.
Example #2. Autosave is an 'optional extra' that you have to install with the 'Add-Ins Manager'. WTF? That is also A Bad Thing.
From my experience excel should be spelt Exhell. Excel it certainly doesn't.
Thankyou,
Nalfy
-- Despair is an operating system that ANY human being can run, sort of a psychological JAVA --
The 7 MB was with the document (which happened to be the review) open.