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Gateway To Use Corel Over MS For Office Suite
djellusion writes "Dealing yet another blow to Microsoft, Gateway has announced that it will be using Corels Wordperfect office suite instead of Microsoft Office. I can only see this as a good thing because friendly competition creates drive for better(less clippy) products. Can I order my system with no office suite please?"
Must refrain from making yet another OpenOffice plug... must be strong... concentrate...
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
The WordPerfect suite is installed on the laptop I'm using right now. It's somewhat less useful than Office (in a "my co-workers don't have it installed" kind of way), but the flip side of that coin is that it is substantially less facehugging, although it has its own annoyances (it puts about 63,000 little icons in the system tray. yuck.)
So far my favorite part of it is the calendar applet, which is smart, unobtrusive, and useful.
Can this be soley due to economical reasons, or is it due to the curse of Clippy?
Friendly competetion is a concept Microsoft has never understood.
Can I order my system with no office suite please?
Sure, if you actually want a Gateway.
In another blow to Microsoft, a fourth computer maker plans to bundle Corel's WordPerfect Office with its low-end consumer machines.
Gateway is planning to include WordPerfect 10 and Quattro Pro 10 on its 300s desktops in North America.
All they teach at high schools and colleges now is MS Word due to the widespread acceptance of it over the last six to seven years. Now, because of higher prices caused by piracy, there is a market backlash against it. Most users will pay the extra amount for Microsoft Office, for it is the program they "grew up" with using. So, all HP and Gateway are doing is lowering their visible cost and making it cost extra for the premium Microsoft Office package, which is exactly what free market should encourage.
1 model of GW machines gets Corel over MS Office. These are the low end machines. Hell I don't blame them, it keeps costs down.
This is like Dell offering Linux on on their high end workstations...
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
I've been impressed with OpenOffice (esp. given some of the vitriolic criticism I've heard, I guess none of it applies to what I use it for), and I wonder if you have used that, can compare with the recent Corel suite. I've seen a few screenshots, but the last time I actually *used* WP was when they had a Linux version, which I thought was a neat concept but I never really got into WP, found it rather clunky.
:)
And since a lot of other people are probably asking "Why not OpenOffice?!" I wonder if you've used both and can answer that
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Wow. You got to hand it to Gateway. This call took some serious courage to make. The days of reprisals from M$ for not using their software are probably over, but it still is impressive to be the first big player to take advantage of it.
I just hope it pays off for them in being able to sell their computers for enough less that people buy more of them!
Ben
Which is always nice.
Back when I worked for Gateway they began shipping StarOffice with all their low-end boxes and laptops- the consumer models.
Went through with a training session on it (dull) and we were officially supporting boxes with Sun's StarOffice!
For about a week.
Looks like MS got wind of it and made some phone calls because in no time flat all those models shipping with StarOffice was re-imaged with a load using Microsoft Works (an oxymoron if I ever heard one).
I don't expect this to last any time at all. Once MS gets wind of it, phone calls will be made and things will quietly go back to the status quo.
In better news, I heard a while back Gateway finally got rid of Vantive. Yippie!
Every time I see the term "productivity suite" associated with Microsoft Office, I almost loose control of my bladder.
At least they have Open Office to fall back on. It's pretty intuitive software, especially if you know Word.
I wish I had that option. I'll be one happy man when Open Office can preform all the functions Word can AND the formatting, etc. is fully compatible with all versions of Word. Until then I'll be forced to use Word XP for all the nice little features it has...well, that and the hundreds of documents I edit every week are all in Word and ALL use the advanced formatting / markup features.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
caused by taking advantage of a near monopoly position, which they would not have held if they had clamped down hard on piracy.
I rest my case...............
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Microsoft hates a fair and competetive environment, especially with it's most intensive cash cow, Office (now that DOS is dead). Of course there is still the Windows Tax. Open Standards are against everything Microsoft believes in. It's Developers, Developers, Developers are encouraged to embrace and extend every known component that users find useful.
While I find it very appealing that Gateway and several other PC manufacturers are looking to cheaper alternatives for their low-end PC's, this probably won't make a dent for a long time to come.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. -Samuel Johns
In my opinion WP beats office any day for functionality, the downside is that it peppers my system tray with millions of useless icons trying to control every facet of my life. I like 4 icons in my systray. MBM (takes up 2), apache, mysql. At least alternatives to office are being considered.
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
While, don't get me wrong, this is true in the general case, it may not necessarily be true in the absolute case. Let's say that operating systems was a truly "competitive" market with 1000 really world class, interoperable operating systems out there. Each producer, lacking the ability to compete on features (because each would be good enough per users' needs), would compete on price. No producer could get large enough to invest significant amounts in R&D. Overall product quality declines.
So yes, it is nice to see somebody lighting a fire under MS's butt and that's exactly what Corel, with an objectively inferior product will do--it will force MS to innovate and perhaps complete a little more on price. But don't confuse that with the general notion that competition is always good, especially in software, which many people would say has tendencies towards natural (and in practice sometimes not so natural) monopolies.
What will really happen is that people buying the low-end machines will then borrow a copy of Office 97 or Office 2000 from a friend and copy it.
this is not a sig
Too bad for Gateway then. Less people will be buying those PC's. Its just a fact.
My HP laptop came with WordPerfect2000. Can't stand it. Akward to use, lacks in features. WordPerfect was cool back in version 5.1. Of course, it was just about the ONLY viable word processor back in 5.1.
The first thing I did was uninstall it and install OpenOffice 1.0.1.
can Wordperfect read/write to MS Office format?
Surely this is the real issue?
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Even though this is not OpenOffice.org or anything, it is still good news.
Consider that if they hold out on this, and people really want to use MS Office, that they will have to pay the full price for MS Office. When you start seeing a couple hundred clams being dropped for just an office suite maybe folks will come to their senses.
Right now my work is based on MS Office and a number of other MS tools. When I mention the idea of looking into OpenOffice.org they say we get MS Office for free. Which isn't true. We just buy it in bulk (pay an obsene price to have as many licenses of MS Office/W2k/...). It hides the cost. So companies never see the cost of MS Office.
However, the end user will start seeing the price if they buy machines with Corel Office, which does the trick. But if they want to do MS Office thing, then they truely see the price at home.
I like this idea. The whole concept of pricing themselves out of the market.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
I have ben using WP for the past 8 year never had problems. If you take word for that mater It crashed on me to many times allready and counting. So WP rocks and Word such for that mater....
<html>
<body>
I feel that a little healthy competition for microsoft can't hurt anything, but I still feel that OpenOffice is the better way to go. <a herf="http://www.openoffice.org" title="Click here to try OpenOffice">
</body>
</html>
Who needs all the extra features of MS Office anyway? the great majority of home PC users (and some offices also) don't even use any of the advanced only-in-MS-Office features. All people need is a simple word processor with simple features such as spell checking, printing, changing fonts and colours and inserting images. Hell adding a spelling checker and a bit more to WordPad would have been enough for daily use.
Then there is the spreadsheet. Again, same trend applies here. Who has seen anyone at home actually use VB scripts or insert OLE objects to do weird stuff with Excel ? Not the majority I can tell you.
Just include a simple usefull wordprocessor and spreadsheet and you are set. Who needs MS Office?
Nostalgia rush! This takes me back to 1994, when I was buying a new PC, comparing features on machines from lots of different companies. Back then it was very common for a computer to come with Corel WP, or Lotus SmartSuite. There really was no de-facto standard for home computers, though I never saw any of these suites in use in eductational orgs (I was a student at the time).
Word isn't fully compatible with all versions of word.
Make a political statement! Boycott our evil twin to the south and buy from the good guys! : )
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I might be going out on a limb here, but since P4 hasn't been selling well and people are happy with 1ghz P3 systems. More and more people are going to buy the cheapest system, since all they need is a computer to surf, write an occasional letter, email and play games.
Pardon me, but have we all forgotten whose team Corel is batting for?
They've been very quiet about it, haven't they? I Google "gobeproductive gpl" every few weeks, and can find nothing at all new. Makes me wonder if it's actually going to happen.
They have changed their logo more than a year ago. The new one is, for example, here..
I can only see this as a good thing because friendly competition creates drive for better(less clippy) products.
Microsoft Friendly?
Friendly Competition?
Since when?
Does anybody here know that MS bought Corel a few years back and owns them anyhow!
I work a help desk for a consulting firm which uses Wordperfect 8 and 9 for many projects(due to client needs). I hate it, and I hate dealing with it. It has many problems including formatting issues, compatibility with other office suites (Office, Lotus, ect.) and applications, printer driver issues and is really slow on fairly speedy desktops. I know MS Office has it's problems as well, but at least you only need to know one set of problems if we all use the same suite.
:(.
P.S. I know about open source solutions, but I don't make those kind of decisions
People who have witty things here blow.
"I can only see this as a good thing because friendly competition creates drive for better(less clippy) products."
I've used OpenOffice, Corel, MS Office, Lotus, and a few lesser knowns, and MS Office is by far the best app. Sure the price is a little steep but if you rely on these office applications (i.e. you don't use programming apps all day) to run your business then the functionality MS Office provides is unmatched.
I don't see this as being a good thing. We all hate to say/hear it, but M$ Office is easier, more 'logical' and much more stable than any version of Wordperfect suite (after 5.1/Dos of course). Even though it's Wordperfect that started out in the ice age, and was cloned in Word later on, it has become superbloated and superceded. Quattro Pro ? Where'd my functions go ? Corel Presentations, as a graphics engine, sucks ass and is probably the reason why everything else crashes. As a presentation (slideshow) designer, it feels like a windows _port_ of Harvard Graphics 3.0. Eeeyuck.
Really, my money is with M$ Office, and my heart is with StarOffice. Corel used to have a solid draw suite, but even that's gone to tatters as I've done the unthinkable and switched over to Adobe Illustrator.
They suck, their support sucks, and they're always trying to give away their apps for OEMs to try and gain market share, because very few people would actually pay for this second-rate fluff.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I want to be able to insert my "files" into office
I have not seen any good office suite reviews in a LONG time. The last was MS Office 2000 vs. Corel 2000 over at cnet.
Anyone know if there are any reviews with the massive amount of suites. Koffice, open office, star office, ms office, ms works, corel office, applix, easy office, lotus smartsuite, siag office, axene, newdeal, 602Pro, etc..
-
I'm too shy to express my sexual needs except over the phone to people I don't know. - Garry Shandling
Can I order my system with no office suite please?
Or without OS!!
I'm not a karma whore with ready-made "Insightful +1" link-laden posts sitting around, but I'd like to offer an unfounded observation.
Is it just me, or have we been seeing a lot of these types of announcements lately? There was this whole "Lindows" thing at Wal-Mart. Gateway moving to Corel. Didn't Dell (or Compaq or somebody) do the same thing a few months ago? And just before that (weeks?), didn't another of the big boys move to Open Office? I know the answer to those questions is "Google", but I'm no search string guru (Another topic is that I can type in what I think is intuitive for Google, and get nothing but junk, but fellow /.ers can find what they want by hitting the "I feel lucky" button).
In the beginning, the PC world was filled with choice. There was Dos, DrDos and a few clones like that, and they shipped with new computers. Then, there were multi-tasking shells (Quemm? Windows, Norton system commander?), and they shipped with new machines. Word, Word Perfect, Word Star, etc. shipped with new machines, too. Was it Windows 95 that ended the diversity? Or had Office been the de facto before that?
I'm wondering if perhaps the Justice Department thing may end up bringing some diversity back to a previously-diverse world. Not that I think the ruling will be anything to speak of, but rather a warning shot that lets the independant vendors go with other products without (much) fear of retribution. Or is this just noise in the grand scheme of things, and ammunition for M$ to scream, "Look, they chose to go with other vendors, then came back to us for superior products!"?
Why aren't they considering open office? Not ready yet, what?
Microsoft's largest competition is themselves pricing their products too high. If they lose it will be at their own hands, nothing OS will ever do.
"never met a Microsoft zealot"
What this says to me is that the laws of economics hold true at Gateway.
(1) Gateway is struggling to compete against the "Dudes at Dell" who lead in education and business as PC suppliers
(2) They are looking to sell a lower cost system with major functionality so they have to include SOME office suite
(3) They look to Corel for a lower cost licensing option and I feel certain Corel gave them a sweetheart of a deal
(4) SO WHAT'S NEXT? Well if you are already shipping systems with your lowest end hardware and a less expensive productivity suite, the next obvious place to look is your OS. By offering a Wal-Martesq Lindows or Dellesq Red Hat option, you can offer an even less expensive system AND reduce component configurations since Linux doesn't require as beefy a system as OSes from Redmond do.
Humm, add a coffee bar to those Gateway Country stores and in 2003 they'll be the hacker hangout in ever mid-sized town.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Such good news, in abundance, doesn't seem to be helping Corel's stock price much. Is the market so pessimistic on any news now?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You already forgot?
I'm sure that they have enought market share to have a special deal with M$... something that Joe "IT" Smith computer shop can't do... Cheers...
I got a Gateway back in 1999 and it came with WordPerfect 8. I think WP has a lot of nice features - MS should steal the Shadow Cursor (if they have not done so already in XP), but the product crashes quite often. Also, the new MS Works suite comes with Word when you get it from Gateway.
While there are now dozens of books available about Star Office, most (if not all) are useless. Star Office has quite a lot of features that are documented very poorly.
(As an aside, she's holding off upgrading to Open Office until the database integration is more complete. Her primary use for an office suite is the database.)
IMHO, OpenOffice still has a ways to go. It's not enough that all the functionality is present, it has to be present and accessible in an intuitive manner. I don't mind OpenOffice. I use it at home, and at work (where I've had a license for MS Office for like 4 years) mainly as a viewer, and sometimes as a creator. However, my girlfriend (an average- to power- user) does not like it. There are many little annoyances. Like, for instance, if tables, things that look like date are AUTOMATICALLY CONVERTED TO DATES, no matter what you do. Is the preference in auto-complete? No. You have to right click the cell and turn number recognition off. If you look in the prefs, you will find it is under the "Table" setting. Do you think users will automatically look at preferences for tables when a number is auto-completing? Apparently not in the case of my girlfriend. It took a few days to figure out what the fuck was going on (it would NOT happen outside a table). Those few days is plenty time for a user to get frustrated an throw OpenOffice in the trash bin and just reinstall MS Office. So while the functionality might be there, the hard problem is really usability (hell, most people don't even USE most of the MS Office functionality). Add to the that not-quite-right look and feel, and it give the impression to the average user that they are working with a low-quality piece of software. Until OO can stand on its merits, it will have to make sure to keep up with the latest MS look and feel (well, it should as a matter of principle). Complain about them all you want, but MS users (and Mac OS users) have come to expect a certain consistency in the UI.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Open markets are self-correcting. Over time, there can't be too many competitors because new entrants will percieve a lack of opportunity, and invest elsewhere. Existing players will consolidate. Look at the early car business. There were over 200 car makers in the US at one point. The small ones could not command the resources needed to build big assembly lines, they could not compete. They were eaten by the bigger companies.
So you would not get 1000 world class interoperable OS products unless the market could support that many. There is no reason at all why the OS market should tend towards a natural monopoly. In an open market, natural monopolies usually exist only where duplicated infrastructure is inefficient. Like your local power company. It is very doubtful that another power company could come along, string new power lines and still compete effectively with the existing utility. Again, in most open markets, natural monopolies are allowed, but regulated to some degree.
Microsoft is not a natural monopoly. There is no reason at all one company should have a 90% share of the OS market. Indeed, MS has been convicted of using illegal means to protect that monopoly. If they had anything close to a natural monopoly, they would not have felt the need to employ those means.
Economics also posits that unnatural monopolies eventually fall apart. The monopolist eventually puts more resouces into protecting the monopoly than the monopoly is worth. If no competition exists, subsitution begins to happen as people find more efficient ways to accomplish the same tasks. In this case, PDAs are a good example. Between subsitution and inefficient protection, the monopolist's power begins to slip away.
Office XP to Corel WordPerfect: Mission Accomplished, Convert Thrilled
October 9, 2002
Yes, it's true. I like Corel WordPerfect to change my whole computing world around. Here's the bottom line: WordPerfect gives me more choices and flexibility, and better compatibility with the rest of the technology world.
WordPerfect relieved my fears about switching. I can read my files, import e-mail addresses from my Palm* to the CorelCENTRAL messaging and collaboration client, and keep my Web favorites. All the Office XP hardware--including my printer, broadband cable, Zip drive, and Palm handheld--works perfectly with my Corel-based PC.
To my surprise, the process of switching was as easy as the marketing hype had promised. I was up and running in less than one day, Girl Scout's honor. First, let me tell you more about why I converted.
More Hardware Options, for Less Dough
I am a freelance writer; I demand the best in mobile computing. There's a much greater choice of portable computers and features, for less money, on the Corel platform. My laptop came with 512 MB of RAM, a 15" screen, a DVD player, and WordPerfect Home Edition preinstalled, for $450 less than a comparable iBook. My recommendation is to go straight to WordPerfect Professional; the extra features for mobile users are worth it. See Which Edition is Right for You? for more information.
More Software Flexibility
Office XP (previously called Office 2000) pales in comparison to Corel WordPerfect. There's no equivalent for the versatility of Corel WordPerfect, QuattroPro, and CorelPresentations. Toolbars and menus customize themselves to the way I work. I wouldn't know how to function without the Track Changes and Comments features of Word. I adore the WordPerfect Clipboard, which copies multiple elements from one file and pastes them into another.
Corel Internet Explorer 6 does more for me than Netscape Navigator ever did, and I am a surfing addict. Searches are faster; the History feature makes it easier to find that site from last week; and I can name and organize my Favorites any way I want.
Speak truth to power.
Reconfigure WP to remove everything but PerfectPrint from startup. I have WP with NO ICONs in the tray. Now, how to do that with Mozilla?
____________
I have seen war. You won't like it.
Microsoft Work Suite Dead at 2002
.RTF documents as
.NET stepped in and restored operational order.
... then again, neither was MWS."
William Gates, CEO of the CPU, has announced the watered-down, kissing cousin
of Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Work Suite (MWS). It was version 2002.
MWS was laid to rest in one of the largest disassemblies in recent years.
Placed in a bit bucket between Lotus Smart Suite and WordStar, its demise
was celebrated by such luminaries as Bjarne Stroustrup and James Gosling.
The gravesite was piled high with unfinished
longtime wannabe, WordPad ruffled some feathers when whie delivering a eulogy,
it describing MWS as an app who "was constantly on a quest to please the home user."
Internet Explorer didn't help things by asserting that MWS' demise was accelerated
by imposed strict licensing deals with hardware makers, expensive user upgrade paths
and intrusive registrations and overbearing EULAs.
At that point delegates from Visual Basic
Later, Notepad was heard coming to the defense of WordPad by asserting that a
double entendre was impossible as it was not equipped
"extended thesaurus support
MWS is survived by a 30 year End Users License Agreement, along with
a host of incompatible database files.
--- have you healed your church website?
I don't know how this is bad for Microsoft...
I seem to remember nothing but Apples in our computer labs in middle and high school, but I don't think that made much of a difference...
So this would be good only if abiword, etc all could read/write word perfect files. It seems just as proprietary as MS word to me.
One of the biggest reasons I use WordPerfect over Word is the Reveal Codes feature. I have to use Word at work and it drives me crazy. It puts in formating the way its thinks it should be done, not the way I want it. In WP if something is not right, I can select reveal codes and see exactly what the problem is. Nothing is hidden. I know Word can reveal some of its formating but not everything like WP. When I want to get my work done in a reasonable amount of time I use WordPerfect.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Hmmmm .... although Gateway is just about at the bottom of my list of PC vendors ... maybe some good can come from this!
... productivity ... heh!) package with their systems. Then, Crapway will be forced to switch to Linux ... or BeOS (ok ,maybe not Be)S) ... :)
... and I'd hate to see them trying to learn something new ...
.... which should be cheaper than having to pay for a Windows license for every system they sell ...
... now finsih the job and totally dump Billy Boy and his pack of vampires on their asses!!!
....
Maybe M$ will get PO'ed enough to stop selling bulk Windows XP licenses to Crapway in an effort to force them to package their office "productivity" (I laugh my balls off when I hear that
Then again, this might be bad since it is usually clueless cow-lovers that purchase crapways
But again, this would force Shitway to fire all their Windows monkies and hire some REAL consultants
------
Note to the CEO of Gateway: You're moving in the right direction
Oh, and do something about that crappy hardware while you're at it
Please don't flame too me to much
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Regardless of whether people here do or don't , most of the people who are buying Gateway-type computers LIKE the Microsoft suite of products. Most of these people, politics aside and given a choice, would take Word any day over WordPerfect and would take Excel any day over 1-2-3. That's the reality of the marketplace that MS Office dominates - in fact, it's the very reflection of MS Office dominance.
So what this means is that the Gateway PC is going to have to be cheaper - when you factor in the lost MS Office - then competitors. What's it worth having MS Office vs Corel's suite ? $100 ? $200 ? Whatever number you come up with, that's how much the Gateway is going to need to be cheaper (assuming an otherwise equivalent feature set).
If Gateway's PC is not cheaper on a feature-adjusted basis, then people are going to buy their PCs from Dell, or IBM, or HPQ, or whomever. LOTS of companies have been substituting other office suites in the past, and they did NOTHING to threaten MS hegemony, let alone provide a modicum of competition. IBM did it with their line of PCs years ago, bundling WordPro and 1-2-3 right after their Lotus acquisition and when MS Office was not nearly as dominant as it is now, and I'm sure their sales were hurt as a result. Now WordPro is history while MS Word rolls on.
This isn't news, it's just Gateway trying to cut their costs.
Not funny, only a idiot would want a gateway, and after buying one, the idiot wouldn't either. Idiots dont generally want a computer without "Office software"
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Wow. You got to hand it to Gateway. This call took some serious courage to make...impressive to be the first big player to take advantage of it.
Other than HP and Dell (August).
You obvoiusly need less life and more slashdot browsing.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
"This alliance enables Corel to introduce a whole new group of customers to the unique benefits of our productivity solutions," Steve Houck, Corel's executive vice president of strategic relations, said in a statement.
As much fun as this is, don't you just hate people that talk like that and on top of that, seems to mean it?
"Gateway is going to use Corel over MS Office in their day to day office work."?
I think it would be interesting to see large companies like Dell, Gateway, etc switch to non-MS software (Open Office, Corel, etc) for their internal operations.
...and I hope they come for me. I will, as Tyler Durden put it "just let go." Beauracratic over-the-line BS. What is this, medievil London where unlawful carnal knowledge can get your head cut off? Knowing how to murder someone is not illegal, but knowing how to copy digital data is??
Say what you will about Adabas, but it works quite well as a desktop database. Is it the optimal solution? No. Are there better alternatives? Yes, but they currently all cost money (Filemaker, Access, Paradox). PostgreSQL (or mySQL for that matter) are overkill for most desktop database needs.
I used to work for a modem manufacturer and it's mindblowing how much we paid for software we bundled. When we had 'Quick Link II' it cost us $1.40 per copy. Of course, our marketing people switched to WinFax Pro and it's communications software when we got the chance because it was $.80 per copy. Incidentally, if we included AOL or Prodigy CD's they paid us kickbacks for each customer that signed up using the 'free offer' included in the box.
My guess is that MS Office was probably about $50 and Corel Office goes for about $5. That's the reason for the switch...Also, look carefully at the PC you buy. You'll notice on the CDs that they say that all tech support has to go to Gateway instead of Corel or Microsoft--that's to make up for the ridiculously low cost of the OEM bundle.
Heh. I'll take that as a compliment! :-D
Ben
It's called the Corel BOB or something, some sort of collection of programs accessable through 50 icons, but when you disable/close the one program, they all go away.
:\
For what it's worth, I like WP better than Word, but I often use Word just because everyone else does
Word processing applications have not changed substantially enough to make people need the new versions. We use Word97 at work, and it does what we need. I could use Open Office if I wanted to.
It's like a vacuum cleaner. We all pretty much know what it is, how to use one, and several competitors sell similar products with the result of small, incremental improvements in pricing and functionality. No revolutions in that business.
This is Microsoft's biggest nightmare come true. More and more people are realizing that the the latest and greatest will not offer then enough extra stuff to make the upgrade worthwhile.
If Microsoft wants to compete, they will need to modularize Office to the extent where the user buy a simple version that does the famous 90% for a low amount of cash. Then, they will offer to sell new modules at a relatively low price.
If they cannot make something like this, Microsoft Office is doomed as an office suite product.
Stop the brainwash
Is that it will put pressure on MS to lower its large-scale OEM pricing to Gateway (and others), which is how we wound up with office-preinstalled-on-everything in the first place. The net will be lower prices to consumers, and maybe some lost revenue to Microsoft, but if you are predicting the decline and fall of Office as the standard you are being way too unrealistic. Still, I think it would be really nervy to offer Open Office bundled on all computers.
The new Palm Zire may be a case where competition is not working. Palm and Pocket PCs are heading in the opposite directions. While Pocket PCs are adding more functions, getting better screens, and adding more memory, Palms are going backwards (Sony is the exception, of course). Microsoft is kicking Palm's butt. Palm is about to be a boiling frog! They should do the honorable thing and sell out to Sony.
Geez, more bickering over software choices? Use what you like. Office XP is awesome. It loads slow on one of my machines, but that's because I've installed Kazaa and it's a slow machine, and it requests a virus scan from Norton whenever it loads. 3 of those things aren't Microsoft's fault.
It runs great on my faster machine (running XP). I still haven't seen one good reason to switch to Linux. MS can have my money.
Grow up or get a real job.
Your friendly flame-dodging coward.
Way to go, Microsoft. It took them years to get Notepad right. What was the deal with this clumsy workaround?
I myself use OpenOffice.org for MS Office compatibility but I also bought Lotus SmartSuite 9.7 on eBay. I just use it for word processing, it fits my needs perfectly.
First, the article suggests another "blow" to MS office penetration. MS has 95% market share by revenue. You are not going to get market share by creating a worse product (i.e. less functional) and giving it away. I will always pay for steak when a burnt shoe is free. Why not try and make a better/similar product for less money. Wow, what a thought! Read these comments carefully, everyone says I love OO or I love SO, but it doesn't do this or that. Your right it doesn't. Microsoft does. They try to be everything to everybody (and you pay for it). The other thing I've found w/ other productivity suites is that they don't do TEXT TO COLUMNS. TEXT TO COLUMNS is the most used business function in the US today bar none. Someday someone will come out with a Microsoft-equivalent for less money and that will win the day.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
I thought M$ bought (25% of) Corel back in 2000!?!?!?! http://www.thelinuxlabs.org/The%20Linux%20Labs.htm
Notepad also does not read unix-style line feeds correcty, while wordpad does. Quite an annoyance.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
Can I order my system with no office suite please?
That's an option that too many online vendors seem oblivious to. What if I don't want an office suite? And no operating system? And no sound card? etc...
Forcing it on you doesn't seem right, nor does it help bring the cost down.
Microsoft (and Corel also I would presume) foist tech support for OEM software onto the PC manufacturer. To get Microsoft support for a product bundled with a PC, one has to pay by the minute. I would be greatly surprised if Corel and other software makers did not have the same policy in force.
Internally, IBM recently signed a corporate license with MS for the use of the office 2000 suite internally. Why did they do this when they own the own the Smart Suite tools? Well the Lotus tools suck, I personally dislike them a lot. I don't know the high level details of the move, but maybe the top brass realized that the tools they provided suck too. Or maybe IBM is just buying into the MS crap. I dunno. Just thought you guys might wanna know what Big Blue seems to think of their own tools. I wonder if they just decided this was cheaper than actually paying for development of the Smart Suite tools to make them worth using. Heh got to love the economics of it :P
"Boys have a Penis, Girls have a Vagina", kids say the darndest things!
As much as I like my job at Apple, brother do I hate Vantive. It is contrary to everything that Apple stands for, seriously impedes my workflow rather than helps it, and is just plain hard to use, buggy, and slow. I hope I meet a Vantive programmer in a dark alley some day, I'll teach him something about undimissable pop-ups and how to connect to a printer API.
How someone was actually paid money to develop it is way beyond me--I envisage the conference room where the deployment demonstration took place while I'm waiting for my page to refresh.
I sure wish Apple gets a serious case of whatever Gateway caught that made them move from Vantive.
--
$tar -xvf
On the other hand, probably you're not in the position of needing the Perfectionist's Text Editor that shuts up and leaves you the f*ck alone, unlike Word, which gets in your face all the time, and suffers from the persistent and troublesome delusion that if you indicate you want to do X it does Y anyway, because it knows
that's what you really mean;
that it has a better grasp on grammar and spelling than you (when it's wrong 3/5 of the time or more);
that you really want all those auto-nag and autocorrect things that you turned off, turned back on suddenly, and when it will inconvenience you the most.
I oughtta know; I use it all day long at work.
I mean, for stuff like document design and layout, if you don't have a high-end tool like FrameMaker, you will get inferior results using Word -- for only three times the effort -- as you would with WP. (Those drag-and-drop multiply-adjustable margins make my day.) Then again, I'm what you might call really familiar with the program, having started using WP in 1988 (4.1 for the Amiga, ahh, sweet nostalgia!).
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
"This file is too large for Notepad to open.
Would you like to use WordPad to read this file?"
Notepad in Windows 2000 never produced that error. I'm reasonably sure that NT4's Notepad didn't have that limitation either.
In other words, they fixed it like 5 or 6 years ago.
As my mom would say, "Huh?"
Mictosoft Word crashed the other day and wouldn't open. I deleted it and tried to reinstall.
You guessed it...M$ Word won't reinstall...now I'm looking at reformatting the hard drive.
WTF R U TAKLING ABUOT CLIPPY == BESTSEEST!!!! LUNIX IS SUX!
ok they dont want too many caps
here are sum uncaped keys and stuff:
lunix is bad but clippy is good
okay
i think that should be good enuf 4 now k byebye
Gateway started out of my hometown, Sioux City, Iowa, so we hear a lot more about the business than most people. As I understand it, a while ago, Mr. Waitt, the chairman (and founder) of Gateway stepped down. Shortly after, the new chairman started making poor decisions and the stock started plummeting. So Mr. Waitt stepped back in last year and has been making lots of changes. AFAIK, it was the first major manufacturer to have their commercials sell directly to the rip-and-burn cd crowd.
So I'm not surprised at all that this is one of the first big manufacturers to sell non-Microsoft Office suites. (Don't bother flaming me with all the companies that did this before Gateway.)
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
Economics 102 takes into consideration the fact that 1) the natural market for an OS per se is tiny, what people really buy is a system to run particular software applications, 2) there is a big functionality incentive to run applications that store data in compatible formats with friends and co-workers, 3) it takes a lot of expense (fixed cost) to produce a complex application and a big chunk of the expense needs to be reduplicated for OS with different API and ABI, 4) this expense can only be justified if there is a big enough user market for the application, 5) there is a significant user penalty to the complexity of installing multiple OS on the same computer and also a time/convenience penalty to rebooting between OS even having done so, 6) most users depend on using an OS installed by the computer hardware seller, 7) most computer hardware sellers have historically depended on special deals on the price of the OS software that they get in exchange for some combo of a) only selling from one vendor, b) co-marketing, c) achieving certain volume targets for the given OS, 8) the effort to create a complete roster of applications/games is larger than the effort to create an OS in the first place - practically no company/organization could do that by themselves.
It's only point 7) that has been finally somewhat nullified by anti-trust cases against Microsoft. It remains to be seen whether the absence of 7) will create more competition in the desktop OS space given the existence of a monopoly and all the other factors.
I can get the latest version of Corel's WordPerfect Office suite from several local vendors for $20.00 if I buy a piece of qualifying hardware (A floppy drive - $11.00). If any average customer can buy Corel's suite for that, I would imagine Gateway is paying less.
With MS Office costing so much, I wonder why more people and companies don't switch over to WordPerfect Office? I think that Excel is a little better than Quatro Pro, but with the exception of the email program (which absolutely sucks) the rest of programs that make up the WordPerfect Office suite are at least as good if not better than their Microsoft counterparts.
Since word processing is the most used application of any suite, and since WordPerfect is far better and cheaper than Word, it only makes sense.
Mooooo.
For incoming documents we need an app capable of opening Word and Excel files. For outgoing documents we use LaTeX to generate PDF or HTML. We got sick of office bloatware. The nice thing about LaTeX is the ability to program it for complete customisation. It's worth the effort.
http://www.levitjames.com/crosseyes/prversion2.htm l allows "reveal codes and edit them" functionality in Word.
Yes.
;))
(Anything that doesn't do syntax highlighting and brace winking is useless
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Neo Golden Logres
Its here (it's here) for us to enjjjjjoooooooyyy!
Come on for more!
Yeah, I was glad to see someone bringing up AMI Pro. (Otherwise, I was going to do so myself!) That was my favorite word processor too, for quite a while.
It looked like the "WordPro" incarnations were noticeably better than the AMI Pro I used to use, too. As an experiment, I loaded a copy of WordPro on my brother's laptop so he could use it when he went away to college. Unfortunately, he said it just didn't work out for him - because he was the only student there not using MS Word. He didn't like having a unique set of menus and features, because he could never follow other people's step-by-step directions to perform tasks.
If it wasn't for IBM/Lotus's terrible job of trying to unify the products in "SmartSuite Millenium" - I would still use WordPro myself. Like you said though, the interface between the Lotus apps isn't even consistent - and their toolbar/launchbar thing is a screen real-estate wasting annoyance.
Dude you're getting a Gateway!!!
It's about the way in which the program works with documents. WordPerfect has always looked at documents differently than Word and its knock-offs (OpenOffice included). For me, a stubborn hold over from the days of WP5.1, it's all about Reveal Codes and the way in which codes work in WordPerfect.
Now, if someone would finally come up with one standard document format, preferably one like html (code based) but with a better system for printing, then life would be good.
Anyway, for now, there is a standard format and it's called plain text. If that doesn't work, PDF is pretty much universal in the Windows world. Not sure about PDF under Linux.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Bleah.... All your story does is gives me less respect for Gateway. Microsoft simply can't "force" any business to stop providing an alternate office suite. Oh sure, they can threaten and suggest that they might not get as good of pricing next time around, if they don't change their ways. But ultimately, the PC makers hold all the cards.
Now, more than ever, most of the computer being sold come from a handful of vendors. (Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq, Toshiba, etc.) Microsoft is the one who can't afford a rebellion by even one of these vendors. Ever since 1995 or so, it's been a "given" that MS Office is a requirement for a PC used for "productivity". Now, that's slipping away, because workable alternatives exist at lower prices. Of course, MS feels that the Windows OS is another "given", which all the vendors "need" from them to build a sellable PC.
It sounds to me like they're trying to leverage the Windows OS (their last real "jewel") to keep people buying their Office products. How long until they lose their "lock" on the marketplace with Windows, too?
Anyway - for what it's worth, I have no qualm with Microsoft Works. I've loaded their latest version on PCs as slow as Pentium 100Mhz systems with 32MB of RAM, and it's *still* functional. It's certainly not "bloated" like most MS code. It lacks a lot of "power features", but it's targeted squarely at a buyer who doesn't use those features anyway. It's also priced reasonably. So in the grand scheme of things, one could do a lot worse than having MS Works on their PC.... I just don't like the corporate B.S. that says "We had to switch from StarOffice to this, because MS said so."
It's a fact that here in the office I refuse to use Word for anything and I get along just fine. In fact, when clients and vendors send us Word or Excel documents we can't open (despite the insistence of every manager to have the latest and greatest MSO suite on every computer), or something generated with MSO in-house gets corrupted, I open it with either WordPerfect9 or OpenOffice (previously I used StarOffice) and then save as a Word document we can use. Shame that noone here has realized yet that I could save the office only about $100,000 in software fees if we switched away from these Micrsoft kludges.
As far as usability and features go I have found that most users don't want to learn how to use new software even if they can do the same thing with fewer steps in the new package. I spent five years trying to get Word and Excel and PowerPoint to do the things I can easily do in WP and now happily do in OpenOffice. The fact is MSO does not do what I need it to. Especially when we're talking about complex document layout. Hence why I now refuse to use it at all.
AmiPro was a Win3.1 product, and was quite competitive in the market.
However when Win95 came out, Lotus replaced AmiPro with WordPro. WordPro had a much better user interface, it was more consistent and so forth. I really liked to use it better than Word.
However, WordPro was not compatible with AmiPro, so companies looking to migrate had very little to gain by staying with Lotus. Also the first versions of WordPro to be shipped were filled with huge massive bugs. Memory leaks and so forth that were so bad you couldn't run the software for more than maybe 30 minutes without crashing.
I worked for a company that had standardized on Lotus, and when we migrated to NT4 we gave up on it and moved to Office 97. Oh, also at the time, Lotus was charging more for their suite than Microsoft, mainly because they thought they at least had us locked in with Lotus 123.
They were wrong.
At the time that my company used AmiPro, I was co-writing a large book. AmiPro couldn't handle the formatting and kept corrupting the subdocuments and MS Word (at that time) could not handle the document size. When the company switched from AmiPro to WordPro, the inital versions of WordPro were so slow we gave up on it. Except for the initial Windows 3.1 and Corel 7 versions, WP has been a great product.
Since then I've played with WP, MS Word, and OpenOffice. WP still wins. MS Word has lots of features but is most efficient for office drones writing short memos and letters. OpenOffice doesn't have enough features to do anything but replace MS Word for memo writing.
Microsoft paid Slashdot for me to view this article. I *LOVE* that!
Click here for screen grab
Yeah, I know it's 8 color. I'm trying to save on some bandwidth, okay?
I use Notepad quite a bit in Windows. It's fast to open, fast to save and close: a good temporary text holder (rather than 50 post-it notes on my monitor).
For me though, KNotes is one of my most-used Linux apps. Panel docking, no load/save hassles, multiple renameable notes, and a configurable colour scheme to match all my other pretty widgets. The only problems I have with it are the lack of alt-tab switching, and, umm... guess that's about it.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
UK retailer Time (AKA Tiny, The Computer World, and probably more) also ships PCs without MS Office, this time in favour of Star Office 6.0
Link to one of the PCs
So, yeah, Word sucks, but the point is that everyone uses it in certain arenas. So you're forced to use it if you deal with OPD a lot (Other People's Documents). Also, in Word's defense, it is profoundly easy and intuitive for people to use. And once people get used to it they are loathe to switch to something new to figure out.
One time, I was, like, writing this paper, it was a really important paper, and the stupid paper clip came up, and he was like, BEEP BEEPBEEPBEEP It looks like you're writing a letter, can I help you? And I was like, what the fuck is that? So I, like clicked the clip and he went away, until I did something else, and he was back with a vengeance, like, BEEPBEEPBEEP and it was like, Word has shortcuts for this action, so I, like, picked up the keyboard and smashed it into my monitor while screaming obscenities. I had to write the rest of my paper on a manual typewriter. It was a good paper but it looked like crap because the keys didn't stay on the same line. So I got Wordperfect instead, and a new monitor. But I got kicked out of college for smoking too much pot, so I don't have to write papers anymore.
Microsoft owns a big chunk of Corel. As part of the deal, Corel dropped support for all operating systems other than Windows.
Someone please metamoderate the idiot who marked this a troll? Sh1t! Isn't it obvious that this is a pardoy? Guess you Windows fcuks can't take a joke!
I saw it quite often before upgrading a few months ago to Win2k, so WinNT's Notepad had the limitation. I think it was at the 64K mark, but I am not sure.
/A /S >> DIRLIST.TXT" from the command prompt. Then trying to open the file from Notepad would give that error message. Just doing this now, I get a filecount of 20,000+ files and 4,000+ directories, and a text file size of 1.5MB. Notepad 2000 opens it just fine.
One thing I sometimes do is make a directory listing of the computer, by typing "DIR
On a side note, ever fill every cell in an Excel spreadsheet, just to see what will happen. Takes a long time to open it. Oh the things I do when I'm bored.
The one thing missing in OO, is a good database GUI builder and reporting tool..
I know its planned, ( and im awaiting that point so i can switch over ) but for now the 'quick and dirty' world runs on MSAcess...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Nope, Clippy is watching and it's turned on. I was unfortunate enough to have it on win2k at work. If you actually push the help the silly thing in one of it's many stupid animated facades comes up. When you want to turn it off, the only option that does not produce an error message with a warning is "hide". So, Clippy is there stealing your clock cycles to do God knows what while it watches your every move. Yes, it's slow.
ViGore, on the other hand, is honest.
Word Perfect needs no assistant.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
first, i dont care about americans.
... well you know...
second, i dont care about americans laws.
third, i dont even care about what somalians gets to eat.
fourth, anyway i care about my neighboors, particularly the one on my left, he always have a pack of beers.
fifth, who cares about me if i dont?
the last worse thing that happenned to america is bush
the little puppy of his father...
the last worse thing that happenned to israel is
the little puppy of his own hate...
arent you affraid he can push THE button?
arent you affraid they can push THE button?
i dont care
same ideas, same price, same pride...
i hope someone will bomb them before they nukes us....
http://freddo.netfirms.com/
-- search the web
Uhhh, no, Word Perfect 5.2 was available soon after Win3.1 and it had a much better interface than M$ Word. To this day Word is frustrating to use as it adds codes without asking then conceals them. Word Perfect had a code view window where you could fix the few mistakes more complex routines might make. Asside from that, WP used standard typographical and typesetting terms and their menues reflected that order. M$ made up their own terms which were confusing and hide missing funtionality.
Despite some people's fear of "codes", WP was easier to learn too. My wife tried both of the programs side by side without much experience with either. After a few weeks of use her clear and unbiased opinion was that Word Perfect was easy to learn and use and M$ Word was difficult on both scores. The 5.2 interface was so good that secretaries refused to "upgrade" to more feature filled interfaces that Corel came up with to compete on the feature front. An excellent balance was struck between automation, ease of use and ability to manipulate tags.
Word users are pig headed fools. The average Word Fanatic moved from non-graphical WP or nothing to graphical Word and just learned to do things that way. M$ "won" the editor battle because they dumped Word on MBA dummies who made purchasing decisions later. Blind from the start, those who have strong feelings about using Word are the same suckers who think IE is great and get hit up for $500 every two years when Bill cranks the upgrade machine. Ego plays a large roll here because Bill keeps telling the folks handing him money just how smart and productive they are to be using "standard" software.
I gave up. Vi with HTML and generated graphs and scanned in equations work just fine for me. If I ever really really need it, I've got a copy of WP 8 for linux that works with Red Hat 6.2. If I ever become a typesetter, I'll learn LaTex. Word blows as a word processor and is unacceptable as a means of sharing information. If I can't open up someone's crap with KWord, I'll let them know about it. In the mean time little chips like this will keep that from happening as often. Word Perfect might come back if they export to real XML or HTML, PS or other published and recognized standards. Until then, who really cares? wp is just another format I can't read any more.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The April 9 issue of PC Magazine has an article titled Office Tips and Applications with a subset titled The Office Alternatives.
They compare EasyOffice, gobeProductive, Lotus SmartSuite, MS Works, 602Pro PC Suite Plus, StarOffice 5.2, ThinkFree Office, WordPerfect Office, and of course MS Office.
Here's a link to their site for this article and other reviews on office suites. Whether or not you like ZDNet's criteria is another story.
is better anyway. who the hell cares if gateway uses it? just means i wont be getting a gateway, that's all
What's weird is that I posted this yesterday and it was rejected. Oh, well. :)
GANNS.com
Corel's recent behavior has been peculiar, however, especially their unwillingness to patch the billionth second bug. Another is their refusal to support the Mac. (This is especially ironic as Corel was a big early Mac supporter years before it bought Word Perfect.) The most recent ancient Mac version is no longer sold and I've heard no hint that they are either willing to release an OS X version or let anyone else do it. Given that they have a Linux Word Perfect 8.0, why not at least release Word Perfect 8.0 for Mac OS X?
I use Open Office now, but don't want my old buddy to fade away (or become a single OS product).
Are they really doing that badly? They left the UK market a year or two ago, I didn't realise things were that bad everywhere.
Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design.
Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor
any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.
Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the
center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will
usually know what's wrong."
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