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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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?
Word isn't fully compatible with all versions of word.
Pardon me, but have we all forgotten whose team Corel is batting for?
They have changed their logo more than a year ago. The new one is, for example, here..
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.
What lack of features? The only features WP lacks is its vulnerabilty to Word macro viruses. WP 10 can publish to PDF and has an integrated XML publisher. I have to use Word at work but I always use WordPerfect at home and on my laptop. Quatro Pro is no slouch either. It can handle worksheets with a million rows, has more functions than Excel and has the best charting on the market.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
"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 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..
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I'm too shy to express my sexual needs except over the phone to people I don't know. - Garry Shandling
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!"?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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$tar -xvf
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.
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.
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?
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.