Slashdot Mirror
Another Office Alternative
MiTEG writes "The Washington Post has an article on a cheaper alternative to Microsoft's Office Suite, ThinkFree Office. Currently selling for $50, their product also includes a one year subscription to Cyberdrive, a 20 MB web file-storage service. While it's no StarOffice, this glowing review may help people realize that Microsoft is not the only option." 'Glowing review' probably isn't the right term to use, since the reviewer found quite a few faults.
"Less than glowing" review is right. To paraphrase the reviewer, it's buggy and slow.
My experience with Java, the language this app was written in, is limited to a little experimentation, web-based javascripts and using Limewire (the Gnutella client). Limewire is also an app that I would describe as buggy and slow, with emphasis on slow.
Does anyone else have an opinion on the suitability of Java in medium (Limewire) to large (thinkFree's product) desktop applications?
I dont fancy their chances of success. Its gonna be pretty hard to charge for an inferior office package, just ask the many fallen along the wayside in the past (smartsuite anyone?) :) and good. No point in raising awareness of a Microsoft compeditor, if the compeditor doesnt have a good supporting case. It only makes M$ look good.
The real competetion to the Microsoft juggernaut in this sector has gotta be opensource, and more importantly, free (as in, free beer
(I wish them the best, though between MS, StarOffice, OpenOffice and many other less known Open Source alternatives, they've got a long hill to climb to get a foothold in this marketplace.)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
There are a list of alternatives at fuckmicrosoft.com
The worst part about all these MS Office competitors is that none of them are as good as MS Office. I use Linux exclusively (and have since around 1997) but I'd have to say without a doubt that the application I miss most has got to be Microsoft Word.
I know the slashdot sentiment is to hate on all things Microsoft, but it's easy to use and does damn near everything you'd want it to. Star Office and the rest just really aren't as nice.
I guess Linux isn't as polished, either, but when I'm developing, I prefer Linux to Windows by far. But when I'm writing, I prefer Word to anything else. Oh well.
Either the max. spreadsheet is abysmally small (8k-16k rows), or there is no cross-tab reporting functionality, etc.. There is always something
I know that playing catch-up with Microsoft is a losing battle, but some features are essential. If it is available in Lotus, WordPerfect, and MS Office, you can be pretty sure there will be people who can not work without it.
I'd love to switch to a Microsoft free shop, but until I can go to management with solutions to every problem, and assurances that no functionality will be lost, I can't. Office suites are only one battle in the war, but it is one I should be able to win...
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
it runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux. and the needed specs dont seem to be to high..
Maybe i will try it later on..
Quazion
anyone know why people would normally pay cyberdrive for 20 megs of web storage, when yahoo gives you 30 megs for free?
Oh, and
Point 1: "Connect to Briefcase from your Windows desktop with the Yahoo! Drive Client. Drag and drop or save files directly to Briefcase from any application." (same page).
Point 2: on Linux you'd get the same functionality without running a foreign exe to modify your OS [!], but rather by mounting a ten-line Perl script of your own design, to proxy the http connection as though it were your web browser.
Point 3: This, incidentally, is why people use Windows.
Maybe they ought to call themselves "ThinkFiftyDollars"... their name kind of suggests that it's free!
RP
I wish that the industry would get together an agree a usable file format that would be supported by all document processors even if they just settled on some SGML based format such as Xml.
Hmm imagine if every word processor used Xml for storage...that would be miles better than having every business use Word.
Look at WordPerfect, look at Lotus Word,they were both excellent word processors and the market leaders and look where it got them...
Microsoft eroded there market share using its by now commonly known tactics.
The problem is, right now we have Word and Pdf as being the only file formats of choice that are universally accepted.
Pdf is ok, but again the file format itself is proprietary
Word is especially bad not so much for its bloat, but for the bugs that never get fixed and worse of all Microsofts habit of changing the format frequently
Sign of times, surely. Old Office suites are into nth generation and they've accumulated so much excess baggage that something written from scratch can actually compete.
From the article, it seems that this particular one is not quite ready for prime time yet. It's ok if the feature count doesn't include the kitchen sink, but what there is has to work. Especially if anyone would consider using it for work.
I suppose there will be the open-office people coming out of woodwork again. As if $50 would be excessive cost for a word processor, spreadsheet and an app to make simple slides. It is excessive if the apps do not quite work, like it says in the article.
Sort of useless as an 'office suite' in the 'real' business world with out those..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Also, the article said it lacks "the feature that flags possible misspellings". Does this mean no spell checking at all!? Or just the inline checking as you type? Lacking something as simple and basic as a spell checker is almost unforgivable. If it lacks as-you-type checking, I wonder if that could be a patent issue. I wouldn't be shocked.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
That doesn't sound like a huge gap until you notice that -- oops -- the 1.7 version of ThinkFree Write has no word-count function.
...)
I learnt many years ago that if you want a decent review of your word processor you MUST include a word count function.
Sure, the word count function is, for 99% of users, just bloat that they are never going to use, but reviewers get paid by the word for writing their reviews, and naturally try to write their reviews using the word processor under review, so if you don't include a word count function the entire review consists of a whine about the missing word count function.
(The same reviewer, oddly, seems to think that a missing spelling checker is no big deal. That's fair enough if s/he is a properly trained professional journalist and never uses words s/he can't spell and never makes typing mistakes, but for the other 99% of us
No. No. No.
Their name simply means that everyone who uses the software, thinks it SHOULD be free.
i hate pansy republicans
The open-source world has produced a few free Office-compatible suites, but they, in turn, don't run on either Windows or the Mac OS.
Hmm... let's see. OpenOffice for one. It's running quite happily on my Windows machine here. Only gripe I've ever had with it was it's conversion to StarOffice files so I could print them out on my Uni's printer (didn't handle the page margins, but I've never worked out how to get that sorted with StarOffice anyways)
Beware the psychokinetic mimes!
If that review was glowing... I'd hate to receive a scathing one!
The sad fact is that office applications are the most vital component of a business system. If someone intends to take the office application monopoly from MS, it is insufficient to be "almost as good" some of the time... there needs to be some dramatic benefit. I hope this will eventually arise in the form of a suite of productivity programs offering all the desirable features of recent MS Office suites but also offering a level of guarantee that the software will not become obsolete due to future enhancement of others' systems.
Competitors need to look at producing a reliable, functional, easy to use, feature rich alternative - as far as I'm aware that hasn't happened as yet.
"...help people realize that Microsoft is not the only option."
Yet when Microsoft moves Office XP to a subscription-based model (yes, yes, I know the XP subscription plan has been delayed in the USA [strange looking URL, but it does work], but it IS avaliable in other countries), like ThinkFree already uses, I'm sure Slashdot will be the first to proclaim it as the beginning of the end.
--jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
We want a commercial alternative StarOffice is commercially available from Sun.
Training is an issue Hardly anyone uses all the features of Office, and StarOffice mimics Office almost perfectly (at least Office 97, which we run)
By the end of the meeting, the answer is to stay with Microsoft for no good reason -- does anyone else experience this?
Click here or here.
Yes I deal with it.
CAD software is a biggie in Automotive.
They (Pick one, GM, Ford whoever) say "As of this date we will use X Package version X.X.X.
And thats it, you must submit CAD files in that format using that version of the software.
It is a pain, but that is the way it is done.
The article lists some basic MS Office features and says: It's a waste to use $480 worth of Office suite for such simple work.
It depends on how important the work is. A PowerPoint sales presentation may be worth thousands of dollars in sales, an Excel spreadsheet could manage a large budget, a Word document could be a report on an important project or a book manuscript. Any one of these examples would be worth more than $480 by itself. In fact, the time spent creating the document would exceed $480 many times over.
If what you do with an office suite isn't worth $480, maybe you should do something else that is.
I get it. The review was scheduled for April 1, but his editor made him use this word processor to write it, and it was a little SLOW. . .
Not only does it require java, which is quite sluggish on 600mhz, but it also installed itself ,without asking, directly to C:. I don't use C for anything but the OS. I wanted it installed to D:\Program Files where I keep everything organized, and away from the OS. It was uninstalled immediatly.
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Is this a sig?
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Oddly, their favorite was Corel Word Perfect Office 2002. They gave it five stars. But of the reader reviewers, one gave it five stars and the rest only ONE star (awful). Reason: Buggy as hell. Plus it took away some user control in favor of MS-like automation, which is not the way WP users like to operate.
I see from one of your links that the annual subscription rates are (NZ dollars) Microsoft Office Professional Subscription - $439 and Microsoft Office Small Business Subscription - $299.
Would someone please explain to me how this is more cost-effective than simply buying the suite and using it for even as little as TWO years??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"While it's no StarOffice, this glowing review may help people realize that Microsoft is not the only option."
I guess that is the crux of the matter. Since StarOffice is superior, why would I pay for the Think Free Office suit unless Sun's new pricing scheme makes is a lot more expensive?
The real things to consider are functionality, interoperability and price.
Microsoft Office is known for having a lot of functionality. In my opinion it has WAY more then I need. For example, I hardly ever need to write a virus to destroy the piece of mind of the average computer user. I find that now days the entertainment industries are doing an adequate job by sending there paid flunky Politicians like Sen. Hollins and friends to screw over the American people. It would be a good thing to remove that man from the equation. (Vote him out. No violence please.) But I digress.
StarOffice also has a lot of functionality and again, probably more than I need. If the price of StarOffice does not become prohibitive then really the only thing that concerns me is the interoperability issue.
Unfortunately in order to be competitive an office suite must interpolate with what most people use. Whether official or unofficial there usually is a standard that most people use. One of the biggest issues that I have with Microsoft is that they try to set standards that are proprietary. If you will not or can not be compatible with that standard then you can't compete. Further, the only way that Microsoft can set proprietary standards is through the use of their Monopoly power. Times have changed and we need new laws that require that standards be open so that no large corporation can leverage their Monopoly power in the way that Microsoft does. Hmmm.. I seem to have digressed again.
So, to sum it up. Unless StarOffice is way more expensive or the Think Free Office suite is superior in interoperability then I think I'll just continue to use StarOffice. Oh yeah... And Microsoft is an evil Corporation and Sen. Hollins is an asshole thinking only of his corporate benefactors and needs to go.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Honestly, if there is something I am willing to install to replace MS office it has to be OpenOffice. This is a true drag and replace version of the beast's best seller. The final release is going to amaze you if you don't know about it yet, give it a try.
You'll never go back. Kinda like IE and Konqueror.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
We use Access to connect to MySQL for data entry. I do not know of a suitable replacement for Access.
On my Linux workstation at the office, when _I_ have to do data entry(for some things, my boss won't trust anyone else... *groan*), I do it all with SQL commands... that sure is getting old.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
An agreed-upon public replacement for Word files would help, too. Probably something that's zipped XML. Then push to make it a formal standard, get government agencies to mandate it, and put a display engine for it in browsers.
. I've got a 120 GB drive in my desktop at work, 80 GB at home and 30 GB in my notebook, what would I need 20 MB for?
Lets not forget my MP3 player doubles as a 6Gb USB hard drive, supported by Mac OS 9/X, Linux and even any version of Windows that supports USB.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
People want the newest and most featurefull app they can get, that's why you see them using MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, etc.
Wordperfect killed themself. Anyone remember the first WP versions for Windows? They were absolutely TERRIBLE. Extremely buggy..not just little bugs, but big show-stopper bugs. Until then WP was THE word processor.
The reason we don't have a common file format is that software makers don't want it. It's the main hook that keeps people locked into using a particular program. And before you unleash all your wrath on Microsoft, keep in mind that every other major player has been doing the same thing all along- Lotus/IBM, Wordperfect, Adobe, etc. Wordperfect and Adobe originally went even further, with their proprietary fonts. Things would be a lot different if these companies hadn't been more stingy than Microsoft to begin with.
Yeah, I know, a lot of pros do use Word, but their publishers waste an awful lot of time and money fixing the inevitable problems.
Virtually all technical papers are written using LaTeX.
Of course, it's not really suited for writing the quick english assignment, but then again, why use Word for that? Any of the others work perfectly.
Thanks for the comments on my review (although I really didn't expect it to draw a mention here, as opposed to my piece on the CBDTPA a week ago).
:)
To answer a couple of points people have raised:
* Spell-checking: ThinkFree Office has a spell checker, but it doesn't flag misspellings as you type them, Word-style. You have to invoke the spell-checker "by hand." (My editor was afraid my description here might not have been clear enough. Guess he was right
* Importance of word count: Guilty as charged! I write for a living and I *need* this feature to do my job. Since a word count isn't exactly a difficult feature to support (as opposed to, say, revision tracking), I don't think it's out of line to expect it.
* Other Office alternatives: I left out AbiWord because it is a) just a word processor, not a full suite, and b) it's OS X compatibility is only available if you install an X11 server, which is a lot of work to ask of a home user (the target reader for my column).
I am planning on a review StarOffice whenever 6.0 ships, most likely as part of a comparison with OpenOffice.
Any other questions, y'all know where to reach me...
- R
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let's look at the statement in context, shall we?
The point is that a vast marjority of documents are actually very simple and do not require the features of Microsoft Office to produce.
Sure. These documents may have a lot of value. And a smart business will pick tools that enable their people to produce those documents. There are certainly cases where Microsoft Office's features justify the price. But just because a document is valuable does not mean it requires expensive tools to produce.
>>What could be better than a command line
>>driven office suite.
Umm - a sharp stick in the eye?
Command line driven word processor? Command line driven spreadsheet? Is this 1978?
Although it would help if there were some more or less standard file format for documents, the central problem is that the various word processor software writers have implemented vastly different document models. The file formats reflect this model. Even if Microsoft and WordPerfect and Sun and whoever else agreed upon a standard file format, it would still be nearly impossible to accurately import complex documents from one word processor to another, because for some features in one document model, it's virtually impossible to represent that feature correctly in another's document model. That's the biggest hurdle, and that is not going to change any time soon.
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people.
But the guns seem to help a bit. (apologies to Eddie Izzard)
Well, there are several of premature remarks here. "Java is slow", "it's not free", "it's not Office/StarOffice/KOffice", etc...
Just to let you all know. I actually tried it.
I used it to whip up an updated version of my resume, and saved in in rtf, doc, and html. I then proceeded to open the doc and rtf in Word, and the html in various browsers, only to find they all looked exactly as expected.
I thought that was rather nice.
-... ---
Well, come on. I think the reviewer was talking about fairly basic things. Extra spacing between lines or characters when you paste text is something that I'd reasonably expect not to happen.
Sure, both XP and Thinkfree have faults. In my opinion, though, if the faults involve *basic* functionality, the annoyance factor shoots up pretty quick.
Has anyone else tried HancomOffice?
It is a non-java MS Office clone that seems excellent from what I've seen so far. And it's less than $50! (It used to be less than $30!!) I haven't used it very much yet (I'm not much of an office software kind of guy; I'm a geek) but it seems stable and it has correctly understood every MS format file I have tried to use with it. It supports MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.
It's a Qt based application; works great on KDE.
No, I'm not associated with them in any way other than having used the software.