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Deploying Open Office?
scubacuda asks: "I've mass deployed OpenOffice at work. Of the 40 computers running, ALL are running OpenOffice (only about 5 are running Microsoft Office in addition). I'm quite surprised at how well-received the deployment has been thus far: secretaries seem to be pleased with how well it integrates with Avery labels, it converts to/from Microsoft Office DOC/XLS files, etc. Have any other slashdotters implemented OpenOffice in an enterprise environment? If so, what have been the reactions from users and management?"
I've been using OpenOffice for several months in a very MS-biased shop. Running on a 1.7P4 w/512, both office applications start blank in under 3 seconds. Specifically, I have a document where I track the email throughput on my linux gateways. Since others look at this document, I have always saved in MS format by default and it takes about 22 seconds to load. For s&g, I saved a copy in OO (sxc) and it takes 9 seconds to load. Opening with Excel in native format takes 4 seconds. So, in premilinary testing, yes, OO does take a bit longer to load, even in native format. The question then becomes, is it $400+ faster? Deciding the answer is a task left to the reader.
Also, the xls document is 605K, while the same doc saved in OO is 68K. Zipping these docs yields sizes of 50K and 64K respectively. So who's format is more efficient?
Show me what you want, and I'll show you how to get along without it...
My office is divided between the savvy Engineering department, which uses Linux and gcc for development and, believe it or not, groff for written stuff, and the Sales department, which used to use MSOffice 97. Due to extensive lobbying by the lead engineer, and some incompatibilities between Office97 and 2000, when the hour came for an upgrade we seized the opportunity to switch sales and management to an OO-based environment.
The results so far are that:
(1) Some unexpected people are going to _need_ MS Office, point-blank. The popular financial package we use only 'exports' data to Excel. Not excel file formats; just Excel (via OLE or COM or whatever they're calling it this week.) Although it has a 'print to CSV' feature (don't ask), it saves the file with some silly Lotus-specific extension that OpenOffice doesn't believe is actually a CSV file. Although renaming should in principle be easy, the people who need to use this data are simply not up to the task of understanding (a) why they need to set their folder options to show all those funny little three-letter thingies at the end of the filename, and (b) why they can't just click the 'Excel' button like they used to. So the people that need to regularly manipulate the data in the financial database at a relatively low level need MSO. Also, upper management simply adores Outlook, so you might have to appease them with the real mccoy. So buy a couple of copies of MSO, just in case.
(2) Many other people won't notice the switch. (Seriously!) Or, at least until they try to open a heavily-formatted word document sent to them from someone outside the company, which leads to point
(3). Always install the freely-downloadable viewers for Office documents, which are available for free on MS' website, and make sure that they map to the MSO filetypes. Really, the Word-document import engine of OO is not yet up to snuff, and the spreadsheet (although very, very close in quality and feel to Excel) barfs in some strange places where Excel is still (perversely) happy. For instance, if you cut and paste a column of cells into a column absolutely referenced by the formulae in those cells, it becomes self-referential and then, in the judgement of both reason and OpenOffice, should display an error. However, Excel will simply display the original contents of the cells before they were copied, and silently ignores the formulae. OO's is obviously the theoretically correct response, but many of the (ahem) generalists in Sales have a hard time understanding what, precisely, they're copying, and Excel's behaviour often gives them what they want despite their incompetence. This is just one small fruit on the tree grown of the millions of dollars spent by Microsoft on focus-group testing and UI design, which is still growing and bearing dividends. OpenOffice has a formidable competitor, even if it is overpriced.
(4) Consider using StarOffice, which is cheap (although not free, obviously) and handles Word and Excel documents better. Or, wait for whatever it is that 'GoBe Productive' is metamorphosing into, which I have not tried and cannot speak knowledgably about.
- undoware.ca
I've used it and while its not a bad office suite The .doc/.xls compatability isn't very good; for example I had a .doc file containing nothing but text it couldn't bring in right. So I tried exporting from word .rtf and then reimporting, same thing. These guys are years away from the really hard stuff like VBA, OLE... And lets not forget that at any point Microsoft can shift the ground (and given more corporate resistance they might want to do that for reasons having nothing to do with OO).
The other thing is that OO doesn't offer anything that Word doesn't have, except cost. By contrast LyX for example has lots of features that Word doesn't have, so it is more like comparing apples to oranges rather than cheap oranges to good oranges.
Anyway I think it comes down to this:
1) Does a small subset of office features cover all or almost all of your needs?
2) Is cost a big deal?
3) Can you handle only so-so importing?