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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 see what you're getting at here. Enterprise is hardly a term I'd use to describe forty computers, and "mass deployed" leads me to think in the hundreds to thousands range.
Of course, given that "enterprise" is a mostly meaningless buzzword and is overused by vendors trying to hype their products anyway...heck, if he wants to use it to make this sound more exciting, works for me.
May we never see th
That is an increadibly good point... one of the first things I do with any software package I install is remove the "Quick Launch" program from my Start Up folder; I tend to run older computers, and don't need the overhead of of a dozen little programs running in the background so that Word or Mozilla may load a wee bit faster, if I decide to run either on that day.
By not running Palm's HotSync, PGP, Office's Fast Start, Mozilla's Fast start, the AOL system tray, and various printer programs on startup I reclaim about 25% of the resources (as reported by Resource Meter) on my PC (Dell Optiplex P200 64MB RAM).
Folks,
I'm seeing a lot of negative comments about MSO document conversion here, which I find surprising. I use OpenOffice.org exclusively, as do two of my clients, and all of us trade back and forth documents with MSO users all the time. The problems I've found are limited to:
1. Floating text boxes and lists in Word, two areas I will point out have problems converting between versions of Word as well.
2. Page formatting/header/footer stuff in Word where there are numerous section breaks. This is something we need to work on.
3. Dealing with unsupported fonts. Another area that could be smoother.
So, we still have some issues, but on my testing our conversions to/from MSO are better that WP Office or Mac:Office.
If, however, you have documents that do *not* agree with the above, how about joining the OpenOffice.org project and filing some issues so that we can debug? We're reverse engineering, here, folks, give us some help!
-Josh Berkus
OpenOffice.org
Do recall, however, that Windows XP loads a bunch of stuff that MS Office at boot time. Things you don't see in Task Manager like DLLs. Open Office loads it's own versions when it starts. This is a good point, and you can't compare Microsoft programs on Microsoft OSs with non-Microsoft programs on the same OS.
"Free beer tends to lead to free speech"
And if his 40 PC network goes down he's effectively shut down the entire company, so size is relative. Also, if he manages his 40 PC network as if it were a 10,000 PC network he's probably able to take a two-week vacation and really relax; if he's loaded everything by hand he's gonna jump every time the phone rings.
The project I'm on now is specifically targeted to "enterprise" customers, defined as five or more employees (many Fortune 500 companes are our customers, so when I say "or more" I mean really huge). "Enterprise" means the customer depends on our product working, as opposed to "consumer" where the customer is mearly inconvenienced if it doesn't work. Think the difference between consumer and business DSL. The funny thing is the consumer generally pays more, because enterprises get a volume discount!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.