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.

Comments

Compatible

[flipflapflopflup]

*The* most important thing with new Office suite, is compatibility. Near 100% compatibility.

Oh, 1st post too ;o)

Ram usage doesn't matter???!

[Lawrence_Bird]

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.

Re:Ram usage doesn't matter???!

[larien]

Our systems here only have 128MB of RAM. I discovered last week that isn't even enough to run Windows 2000 on; I wanted to defrag the disk fully so I removed all paging spaces. I couldn't even open the defragger before it complained about being out of virtual memeory.

Add on to that the programs I have running all the time (explorer, Outlook, Xvision) it makes running anything else (Word, Excel, SAP etc) a complete git.

Re:Ram usage doesn't matter???!

[sql*kitten]

Our systems here only have 128MB of RAM. I discovered last week that isn't even enough to run Windows 2000 on; I wanted to defrag the disk fully so I removed all paging spaces. I couldn't even open the defragger before it complained about being out of virtual memeory.

Windows will wig out with 2M page file (don't ask me why right now). You should have left it and just defragged away. The result would have been good enough for anyone. And if it wasn't, just create a new contiguous page file, and take off the old one, then defrag the rest.

I'd prefer 256M, but Win2K will be fine with 128M if you're just running Office-type apps. Honestly, it seems to me that people contrive to create situations in which Windows will fail just to complain about it on /.

Mmm... Fair Use...

[MrHat]

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.

pricing and availablity

[Alien54]

As seen on the order page, it costs about 80 dollars, and is available for Windows and BeOs.

Some of which seems a bit odd.

Re:It might be a great product but...

[gfxguy]

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.

Re:Linux?

[Steev]

From the FAQ:

Q: The initial release this fall is Windows only. How do I get the Linux version?
A: There will be a certificate in the package that entitles you to a free Linux installation CD once the Linux version is available. Fill out the certificate and send it to us. Once the Linux version of gobeProductive is released we will send a CD to you.

Q: Will both Windows and Linux installation CDs come with the package after the Linux version is completed?
A: Yes.

Re:waste

[Tim C]

2) cpu power is not a concern
3) memory usage is not a concern


Try telling that to someone who's tearing their hair out at 8pm on a Friday trying to get something finished so that they can finally go home, only to have their underspecced machine grind to a halt as it swaps due to lack of RAM, and/or run at a snail's pace due to a slow CPU.

Admittedly, I'm speaking from the perspective of a programmer, but for me, resource usage is of paramount concern. My work must be finished on time, and I don't get paid overtime. "Sorry it's late, but my PC is too slow to run the software I use" is not something the client will accept if a deadline is missed.

Cheers,

Tim