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gobeProductive 3.0 - Office XP killer?

Posted by Hemos on from the somethihg-that-goes-head-to-head dept.

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.

6 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. BSD? by saintlupus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  2. Re:It might be a great product but... by gfxguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You're absolutely right, but the problem is that if someone already has office, what's the incentive to switch to something that's not even 100% compatible (in Word documents, especially)?

    So I use it at home, several of my office mates use it at home, and since I'm a developer and they didn't give me office on my work machine, I used it there, too - until they sent me a form to fill out in Word and I couldn't make it work with StarOffice. Now I have Office. It's not any better, but it can read 100% of the crap they send me.

    Sure, I could use WordViewer, but then I couldn't fill in the form. That was the problem.

    Since I only use it five minutes every two or three weeks, it was a giant waste of money, but hey - they wanted it in Word format. Whatever. They didn't even just give me word, they gave me the whole of MS Office. The model of inefficiency.

    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
  3. Tables from Word by mccalli · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From the review: "Also, tables inserted inside of MS Word documents do not translate."

    Utterly essential that this works for communicating with the outside world.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  4. Why is everyone saying how great Office XP is? by InsaneCreator · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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. :)

    1. Re:Why is everyone saying how great Office XP is? by pubjames · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree.

      In fact, I don't understand why people think MS Office in general is that great.

      Considering that it is MS's cash cow, it is amazing they haven't put more effort into making it better over the years. They just seem to add junk, rather than simplifying things. Read the review - you'll see what I mean. This office suite does some simple things (from a non-programming perspective) that would improve MS Office a lot.

  5. No demo version by nosse_elendili · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...