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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?"
40 PC's hardly constitutes an Enterprise. It would be an entirely different story if you had 5k+ desktop users to install to, support, and make happy.
11*43+456^2
I am manager of a project with 5 staff. Before shoving it down the throat of my people, I wanted to use it myself and see if it's really usable/stable/reliable/compatible....
(I have quite a bit of unix/linux background, detonating kernels and X servers for some 10 years, not your average newbie)
It's Ugly and Slow.
I'm still using because I don't want to shell $$$ to Micro$oft which is rich enough already, but it's unpleasant when it takes 14 seconds to start on a P3-850 w/ 256MB. I more often end up moving the document to a PC with Office, working there, then taking it back, using OO only as an emergency.
Only recently I discovered AbiWord and it was instant love: 3MB installer, small memory footprint, starts in a flash, and it's NICE!!!!
OO is soooo unsexy (and memory-hungry) that I avoid using it whenever possible. Its UI definitely needs some work, not even the scroller on my touchpad works in it (it does in AbiWord and in everything else).
If only there was some usable Excel replacement for the Win32 platform (Yes I'm running Win2K on all office PCs. No Linux, sorry, it's not really ready yet for the desktop.) a la gnumeric, I think OO would disappear rather quickly from my PC.
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
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
Before even attempting this in our office of about 60 workers we took a sample of around 50 word documents and tested each for template compatibility, macro safety, embedded object handling, printed output, faxed output, HTML conversion, spelling, preservation of tables, lists, you name it... It passed that OK and we moved on to the next phase, which was testing about 10 **HUGE** excel files for problems between formulas, macros, printed output, charts, etc. etc... the results were acceptable. PowerPoint was not as important but it passed those acceptably as well. In addition to all of these internal tests we had to mail some files to frequent clients and suppliers to make sure we weren't breaking anything with our partners, and apart from one or two glitches everything was a go (not like there are never glitches with "real" office anyway).
So finally we rolled everything out one weekend, uninstalling MS Office in the process.
After three days we were back to re-installing Office 97 everywhere, because we found to our surprise that *nobody* could work without the paper clip.
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?
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"
This is a good point, and you can't compare Microsoft programs on Microsoft OSs with non-Microsoft programs on the same OS.
This is a valid point but what alternative is there for an IT manager catering for Windows users?
In the real world, if the options are Microsoft Office running on Windows 98/2000/XP or Open Office running on Windows 98/2000/XP then nothing's going to change the fact that, to the end user, Microsoft's suite launches faster and thus appears to run quicker.
I really respect IT managers who are making the transition from Micosoft's suite to the open source alternative. We're all naturally suspicious of change - it's a basic instinct - and your average PC user is no exception. Users who bend over backwards to avoid "learning" how to use a new piece of software are all too common and two or three of these can really eat up a helpdesk's time.
Let's face it, transitioning difficult users from one revision of Microsoft Office to another is often hard enough - transitioning them from Microsoft Office to Open Office must be like trying to push water uphill.
I'm not saying that such transitioning shouldn't be done - of course it should, and not just because of the cost implications - but what I am saying is that it isn't always an easy task.
But focusing on how Microsoft's OS architecture is favoured towards their own applications isn't going to help sell end users on the merits of Open Office; it's just a big red herring. Better that you just acknowledge that Open Office does take a few seconds longer to load but affirm that it's just as fast (if not faster) and just as reliable (if not more reliable) in operation.
That last point alone will sell most of the doubters - after all, we've all lost a document or two to a crashing application and anything that will reduce the frequency of such crashes is officially A Good Thing.
In summary if you play down the startup speed and just focus on the application and it's benefits to the end user then you'll do just fine.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg