Sony To Package StarOffice On European PCs

Jahf writes "This News.com article talks about how Sony is adopting Sun's Star Office suite over Microsoft office in some areas. It's nice to see it being adopted, maybe this is the beginning of a trend. While Star Office is still not as optimized as it could be (read: it eats memory and can be a little slow even compared to MS Office), it has all the features most people need and then some at a much better price." Specifically, as reader Yacoubean points out (pointing to coverage at InfoWorld),"The PCs will be sold in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland."

Comments

Anti-competitive?

[I Am The Owl]

Isn't bundling applications with an operating system and computer what got Microsoft in trouble in the first place? I hardly think a large multinational like Sony would be any more generous than the money-grubbers in Redmond. Beware.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Cali Thalen]

Wasn't it more like "charging customers to include bundled software in an operating system that they were required to pay for when buying a computer whether they intended to use either"?

Re:Anti-competitive?

[rawshark]

Microsoft had a monopoly, Sony does not have a monopoly on PCs. If memory serves, it is not illegal to have a monopoly, nor is it illegal to bundle applications, but it is illegal to use bundling to tie one market to the market you have a monopoly in.

Besides, I say that if the almighty dollar causes more marketing and development work to be done in the name of Open Source and Free Software, than so be it!

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is: do you _have_ to buy the Office suite with the computer, or is it an option ? If you have to buy it then, yes, Sony isn't any better than Microsoft.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[AnEmbodiedMind]

It would start to be anti-competitive if Sony owned StarOffice, and had a monopoly on distributing machines. It's not much like Microsoft at all.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[l810c]

Just about anything you buy computer related has bundled applications. It's common practice. Sony is the one with a Choice, and they exercised it.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Locutus]

well yes it was. What Sun/Sony is doing is different in that Sony is but one OEM and it's their system. Now Microsoft came in and bundled apps in the OS and told every OEM that if they don't keep the bundled apps they will lose their license to sell the MS Windows OS. There is a big difference here. Atleast if the OEMs can decide what their customers might want, users would have choices among OEMs for the hardware and software features they want prePackaged .

Without choice and competition, Microsoft has been able to dictate what is popular and what's not.

LoB

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP. The person who started this thread has no idea what they're talking about.

What's next, him asking if bundling AOL or any other app outside of the OS is anti-competitive?

Re:Anti-competitive?

[AlgUSF]

Yeah, but you can probably hit the uninstall/remove application button and get rid of it. Try doing that with IE before the settlement. Microsoft was a late comer into the internet domain and tried to flush everyone out by bundling IE with Windows... That, my friend is illegal, because microsoft was trying to use one monopoly to make another.

If you don't like staroffice, just hit the uninstall/remove application button.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[jsse]

That's not as simple as whether bundling a software is illegal.

Microsoft was extending their monopolization power by setting the price when the vendors wanted to have choice. Say if a vendors chose to bundle non-MS office, then the OEM price of Windows OS would be risen to an extent that using non-MS office was totally unjustified. That could kill the all the competitors making office-suits.

I don't recall the exact legal term, but taking actions to extend your monopolization across other market, e.g. price-setting, is illegal. It's good that the court has recognized OS, browsers and office-suit are of different markets at the very first place, otherwise the lawsuits would be rejected.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[spress]

No

Re:Anti-competitive?

[a20vertigo]

except... you can't remove IE, just the shortcuts to it. Same with all the other MS crap, even with SP1... now whenever www.litepc.net gets around to releasing their stuff, things might change for the better, but that'll be from a 3rd party utility. some pieces it's fairly easy to remove by editing, say, the sysoc.inf file, but most windows components, especially IE, cannot be removed as long as Windows uses the fancy "web view" "active desktop" shell. To make windows non-integrated, they would either have to go back to the Win95/NT4 shell, or do a complete rewrite.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[spike hay]

Why not just include Openoffice? It's not like their getting any branding advantage with Staroffice. The average joe doesn't know what either star or openoffice is.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Sparks23]

Probably because (having a Sony PC myself) they tend to include support contracts for bundled things as well. I imagine they could get a bulk rate commercial support contract for StarOffice while such a beast is (at least as a guess on my part without checking around) likely harder to find for OpenOffice. :)

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Jucius Maximus]

"Isn't bundling applications with an operating system and computer what got Microsoft in trouble in the first place? I hardly think a large multinational like Sony would be any more generous than the money-grubbers in Redmond. Beware."

MSFT got into trouble because they used monopoly power combined with bundling to squash other web browsers. Sony does not have a monooply on PCs so bundling staroffice is not illegal.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot IANAL. Or you could have just said IAACI (I am a clusterfart idiot)

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

StarOffice does more and likely sells to OEMs at the exact same price.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[nyseal]

Not illegal to have a monopoly? How about AT&T?

Re:Anti-competitive?

[rawshark]

According to this AT&T was using its monopolies in local to gain an unfair advantage in long distance, or vice versa.

Mean while, you deal with legal monopolies every day. Your local phone company, gas company, and electric company are all monopolies. Those of you in the US, EDS (who administer the GRE, SAT, etc) is a monopoly

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Zemran]

Sony do not "own" StarOffice and do not have a monopoly to use, so it cannot be anti-competitive. Microsoft bundled their own software with their "monopoly" OS, thereby stifling the competition. If Microsoft had bundled Lotus's office suite that would not have been anti-competitive.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just had to slip in this comment:

All you people who define yourselves by what you are not (ie. Moft/Intel: Wintel): just watch as you are now creating another beast (Sony/Sun: Suny?) that will start wreaking havoc at their first opportunity.

I really wonder what the new icon on slashdot will be for Suny (after Billy Borg) in 5/10 years.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Martigan80]

What not illegal to have a monopoly? Maybe not the board game, but an actual monopoly is a no-no; well unless you're a union then you can have a monopoly.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Lasalas]

I wouldnt call that monopolistic behavour, that's only a bad choice in marketing. A product that doesn't fit the consumers needs does not neccesarily mean the company is trying to monopolise the market. I myself don't see what the problem is with Sony's choice - if the people who know to make a choice don't want Star Office, they will also know that there are plenty of other places they can go.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Nexx]

Heh? Where's you get that idea, or do you mean outside the US?

It's certainly not illegal to have a monopoly. It's certainly illegal to use that monopoly to squash competition in other realms.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Martigan80]

Where's you get that idea

Here it is pal, look at privilege number 2 and you'll find out. And yes this is in America

Re:Anti-competitive?

[AlgUSF]

I guess it is like Konqueror for KDE. It is a web browser/file manager/windows file manager look alike, but I can easily get rid of it if I want to.

BTW who uses active desktop anyway, only feature I see it has is the ability to have jpeg/gif wallpapers?

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it wasn't.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is more simple than you'd care to admit: Open Office sucks.

Re:Anti-competitive?

[nyseal]

Really? I wish you would tell my local utilities that! I could have AT&T in my local area but choose not to. I could have Time/Warner and choose not to; I could have Sprint PCS and choose not to. Either way...a choice is still given and I choose my way; not the populous way.

Works Suite

[Comster]

It beats the cheesy Works Suite that people end up using because it bundles with their OEM PC.

Re:Works Suite

[IndependentVik]

Ahhh, yes, the infamous MS Works--one of the oldest misnomers in the PC market :)

Re:Works Suite

[Pilferer]

I think MS Works is far easier to use than Word, Excel, etc. My mother could figure out the word processor in Works - but Office is a bit too complex.

A simple, small, easy to use word processor that's geared at newbies is what Linux needs. Something that's not so intimidating as Office, something your mom could figure out, without having to ask you "What are all these things(icons) for?"

I wonder why MS hasn't put more effort into Works! That's a HUGE market - Office is the WRONG choice for 1st time computer users.

Re:Works Suite

[Comster]

They dont put more effort into works mostly because it sucks. That and because it is very free.

Re:Works Suite

[p00p]

no it doesn't. eat poop you retard.

Re:Works Suite

[p00p]

see my review of OpenOffice here. It'll broaden your mind.

Re:Works Suite

[nyseal]

I agree. The MS Works suite is PERFECT for the beginning home user. I shy away from it because I create newsletters with graphics and hyperlinks on websites, but for the home user there's nothing better; even StarOffice. I was just wondering when someone would bring that up.

Re:Works Suite

[p00p]

Have you ever actually used Works? It's no more cheesy than that shitty OpenOffice. There's a good reason why everybody complains about OO performance too. Asswipe.

Re:Works Suite

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has put entirely too much effort into Works...

I bought MS Works with my first computer - a 286 running MS-DOS 4.01 - and it absolutely ruled. It did - well, almost - everything I needed it to do, and back in those days, a few simple freeware programs made up the difference.

A short while later, Works v2 appeared. Being poor, I didn't even think of upgrading. But my employers did, and I quickly saw that MS had stealthily *removed* functionality. The alarm clock/calendar feature, for instance, was gone.

Then came Windows, and Works was duly ported to the new environment... and boy, did it suck. It was slow, incompatible with any other software (including MS Word), and had even less functionality.

My theory? MS has realised that, with Works, they're in danger of competing with themselves. They'd much rather have people paying serious money for Office. So they've done everything they can to make Works unattractive to all but the most desperate.

Re:Works Suite

[driverEight]

A simple, small, easy to use word processor that's geared at newbies is what Linux needs. Something that's not so intimidating as Office, something your mom could figure out, without having to ask you "What are all these things(icons) for?"

Abiword!

Re:Works Suite

[Nfnitloop]

Works is gone the way most people remember it, actually. The "Works Suite" the parent post referred to is now just M$ Word with the Encarta Encyclopedia and something else like maybe a greeting card app.

Re:Works Suite

[amokk]

The new versions of Microsoft Works come with Microsoft Word as the default word processor. Interestinly enough, MS Works alone is cheaper than MS Word and includes all the functionality. Plus, when you buy MS Works, you batch of other programs which may or may not be useful to you.

Re:Works Suite

[danrees]

That might be so, but most first time computer users [b]think[/b] that they need MS Word to type up letters or CVs. My seventy-year, who has copies of Word and Works, didn't understand why I wanted to take Office off her computer and replace it with her licensed copy of Works...

So?

[Wakko Warner]

My American Vaio came with Corel Office.

Sony's been shipping stuff other than office for a long time.

- A.P.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

The low-end J-series (US) came with StarOffice 5.x. This was a year or two ago. Why is this news?

Compared to MS Office

[i_luv_linux]

You can't compare any product with MS Office. It is one of the best products I have ever seen. I don't know how they do it, but it is extremely fast even in my machine.

Adaption of StarOffice may be good, but I would prefer MS Office over any product out there. It is simply the best in its area.

Re:Compared to MS Office

[thrig]

Office is a non-portable security and support nightmare for me. Most of the time it works as you describe, but then every so often a user wanders in wondering why their document has corrupted itself, or is otherwise doing something weird or crashy (copy/paste export/import to clear the gremlins?). Just this week I've had "large Excel document crashes when you try and do so-and-so" and seen a "I've never seen this before, but the spelling checker says it is skipping some text as being labeled as uncheckable, help!" reports.

On the portability front, users find that documents created in one version of Office cannot be opened to being with on other platforms or, once the conversion hoops are figured out for that particular os/version pair for the users in question, why the same document looks slightly different (this mainly happens between Mac and Microsoft versions of Office).

Ahh, security. Macros, viruses, and a document format that can pull all local files and URLs into itself before being sent back. Lovely.

Re:Compared to MS Office

[2muchcoffeeman]

Let me put this bluntly: I have MS Office. I use OpenOffice and I'm a little mystified Sony chose StarOffice over OpenOffice.

It's the same code base but on a modern processor (with real Java added in), OpenOffice flies where StarOffice sputters along.

And my resume, drawn up with extensive formatting and inserted graphic (my picture) in Word XP, translates perfectly into OpenOffice.

I may not go back.

Re:Compared to MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

How about creating that resume in OpenOffice and having someone pull it up in Word? A large number of employers will require it to work in Word, like the NSA for instance.

Re:Compared to MS Office

[primus_sucks]

Even if this is true (I highly doubt it's better than any product!), OpenOffice is good enough for 99% of the people out there. And there are lots of people out there that can't afford or don't want to afford $500 for MS Office. Enjoy MS Office while it's still around!

Re:Compared to MS Office

[primus_sucks]

OpenOffice can save to Word format. I do it all the time.

Re:Compared to MS Office

[stewartj]

I wonder how much room there is to innovate with Office software? Up until recently, I would have agreed with anyone that said they wanted MS Office over anything else "because it is the best in its area." But lately the competitors have gotten pretty good too.

My first thought was, "oh well, MS will innovate something in MS Office that all the other office suites don't have, and then everyone will want MS Office again." I think that would've been the case a few years ago, but I think we're getting to the point where there aren't that many huge innovations to add on to an office suite. don't get me wrong, there's always nifty little bells and whistles, but MS Office has enough of those already.

My company is moving away from netscape calendar/navigator to an Active Directory/Outlook system next year. I don't run windows at home, but to be honest, I'm looking forward to the tight integration between Outlook email, Outlook calendar and Office documents. I think that's where MS Office has all the other office suites beat at the moment. I'd like to see that kind of integration between the KOffice, KMail and KOrganiser!

Re:Compared to MS Office

[Zemran]

I agree with all you say but logically, how often do users actually use the extras they "want"? All these bells and whistles do not help anyone except the marketting people as 90% of the users still write a standard document with the standard command set. As long as you have features like tables abd insert objects then you can do most things. I find Open Office more than enough for my needs and I do some difficult stuff.

With regard to Outlook, have you tried Evolution? I know it is a clone but it is a good clone. I use it and like it but I only started using it because I want Outlook compatability on Linux.

rot foast

[Anonymous Coward]

woo haa.

This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[IrvineHosting]

I just recently got my dad one of those cheap walmart computers and installed redhat 8 and staroffice and he loves it! He only dabbles with writing a few letters but he really seems to get along fine. I think overall it is a little slow compared to Microsoft Office but it has a surprising number of features you wouldn't necessarily expect from a free software product.

Kudos to Sun and the StarOffice group for creating a true Microsoft Office killer.

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[prizzznecious]

Why would you install StarOffice on a RedHat 8 system? It comes with a OpenOffice.org properly configured to use xft2 and everything.

Is there something in StarOffice that isn't in OpenOffice.org, or did you just mean to say OpenOffice?

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[Anonymous Coward]

look, fscktard, use OpenOffice if you want. I like StarOffice and I mentioned it intentionally.

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[IrvineHosting]

No, I bought the package for him because I wanted him to have the documentation and access to the support. Believe me, he will need it.

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[sebmol]

StarOffice used to be a fully commercial and proprietary product before Sun bought it from Star**** (don't remember the full name here), a German company. They published the source code for it and maintain a closed-source version including support and documentation. It was actually a fairly advanced office suite when Sun bought it.

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[Khalid]

Sun bought Star division which was selling and developing Star Office, two or three years ago. SD was a German compagny, I believe that StarOffice developers (which still count for 99% of Star/Open/Office developers) are still located in Germany.

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[nyseal]

I don't get it....you acknowledge it's slower with less features but claim it's a MS killer? What gives?

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[Anonymous Coward]

LIES!! You, sir, have never used the StarWindows and are a lying bad person. StarWindows is complete crapware shovelware and is not good for use by people.

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[mithras the prophet]

What gives is my wallet, to the tune of $400.

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[Anonymous Coward]

StarOffice originates from StarWriter, StarXYZ from Star Division. A successful company from Hamburg, Germany, bought by SUN Microsystems. In the early nignties they were very strong on the market in Europe. So the StarXY series has many years of experience. Same is valid for OpenOffice derived from StarOffice. I like it very much.

Everybody shall get a copy of OpenOffice. Works is crap, but Works-Word is nice.

Re:This is Really a Microsoft Office Killer!

[nyseal]

Then you can afford not to have it. Point, set and maybe match? I'm a consumer as well...no need to put your heart above your head. People should really think before backing a format that does not support their needs (linux and MS alike). If OpenOffice or StarOffice does it for you; great. If not....well, then suck it up and sue MS for anti-something....

Complaint

[pope nihil]

I really only have one big complaint about OpenOffice. It works just about as well as you could hope for importing and exporting microsoft office documents. The one problem I ran into was with regard to printing (arguably a pretty important point). When printing spreadsheets, I couldn't select only one tab to print. OpenOffice printed all the tabs. Does anyone have a good way to get around this limitation?

Re:Complaint

[b17bmbr]

try this: click

file->print. choose pages. if you want tabs 1-3 printed, type 1-3. if you want 1,3, 5 printed, type 1,3,5. viola.

Did antitrust actually work?

[LostCluster]

Here's one to ponder... the article cites that PC makers are now less fearful of retribution from Microsoft for chosing other programs since the anti-trust settlement.

Could the anti-trust settlement, as weak as it is, actually be that effective? Is it really the reason the office suite market is going back up for grabs?

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Chris_Stankowitz]

I don't think so. Maybe though. Correct me if I'm worng but more people there run linux to begin with than in the US. So it seems to me that its not that hard to get them to addapt to something like StarOffice.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[pope nihil]

I got a forwarded e-mail from Steve Ballmer (to MS employees) about the anti-trust settlement. To all appearances, Microsoft really is trying to change the way they do business.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Locutus]

I really don't think so. This is in Europe anyway so what does the anti-trust case have to do with it?

Microsoft will tread lightly with regards to licensing of Windows but MS Office is open game because Microsoft was able to get the US States to drop their case against MS Office and concentrate only on the Windows OS.

When you see the US OEMs bundling StarOffice, OpenOffice, or Corel Office on business systems, THEN there's something going on at Microsoft.

LoB

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck is this? Thats the crappiest astroturf ever...

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[jsse]

The rulings barely scratch MS, but at least it has made a precedent case and the public in general has aware of the whole issue. They will not excise the same practice in the very near future.

Sales1: "Our competitor dare to make reference to the word 'choice' in their brochure. Can I fuck them like we did before?"
Sales2: "Hold on, cowboy, we are buying media and researchers to prevent our crime being uncovered again. It wouldn't take too long don't worry"
Sales1: "Man I'm horny!"

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[municio]

Yes, since the anti-trust trial they have learn that their previous behavior was inadequate and they are indeed changing it: now they make political contributions and don't email how they are going to crush competitors. All internal email now is full of love, kisses and flowers. Everywhere they look they see very worthy competitors that challenge them to build better products.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[aero6dof]

But Sony is certainly not your typical PC maker. They're backed by an enormous corportation with many lines of business other than PCs. I doubt that Sony I doubt has much fear of retribution from Microsoft.

On the other hand, a small to medium company whose primary line of business is PC systems still has plenty to fear. Specifically that their OS licensing costs might just happen to go up by their Star Office cost savings + 20% because they don't fall under the same purchase plan anymore...

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you. I am not astro-turfing. I have a friend at MS who forwarded me the e-mail from ballmer. I thought it was relevant.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever. Ballmer kneels at the church of IBM.

The "new" Microsoft will confine it's assraping to Fortune 1000 customers instead of wasting it's spum on punk ISPs that send out Netscape disks. 15 years later they'll still be rolling in dough but won't be a monopoly any more. Whoopie.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[bstadil]

This is in Europe anyway so what does the anti-trust case have to do with it?

There is an antitrust case ongoing against MS in Europe in case you didn't know. This means that MS needs to be careful what they do. Sony can do what they want as MS can't retaliate. This is the time for Sony et al to provoke them.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. The key point in the settlement was a standardized price sheet for Windows OEM licences.

That means no more MS Office and Encarta 'favors' demanded from the OEMs.

The anti-trust settlement has everything to do with the sudden reinterest in WordPerfect and Star Office.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Vryl]

From what I know of the PS1, it accounted for just about 50% of Sony's revenue/profit. I assume the PS2 will be of similar order.

Now, m$ are going after that, and Sony is pissed.

So, what do they do? Release a PDA running Linux, and bundle StarOffice.

Business as usual, it seems.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Anonymous Bullard]

Oh come on. The key point in the settlement was a standardized price sheet for Windows OEM licences.

That means no more MS Office and Encarta 'favors' demanded from the OEMs.

Does the court's amnes..., I mean settlement ruling also apply outside the court's jurisdiction, i.e. outside US territories? Or is M$ allowed to price their warez differently in different EU states, let alone elsewhere in the world?

Considering how unwilling the conservative pro- big business judicial system was to apply even most toothless remedies I would be extremely surprised if any restrictions whatsoever were placed on the home-grown global monopolist's foreign operations.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the settlement, that would be a no-no. I'd like to see it tested though.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Nexx]

Heh? PS1 accounting for just about 50% of Sony's revenue?
IIRC, they sold more TV's and Monitor's than PS1's during the years that the PS1's were around. Guess which business line has a higher ASP *and* margins?
They don't have a PDA running Linux either. It runs palm.
IHBT. *sigh*

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[neillewis]

This looks lto me like a slap for MS from Sony for muscling in on the PlayStation fanchise. Sony are old hands at milking money with proprietary systems, they probably can't stand it that MS is playing the same game.

Re:Did antitrust actually work?

[Vryl]

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2083960,00. html

Two seconds with google would have verified the veracity or otherwise of my assertation.

As it is, it appears at the time of writing that Sony's 'gaming division' accounts for more than 50% of profit.

On the pda thing however, you are right, I was thinking of the sharp Zaurus.

Children....

[Anonymous Coward]

Little slow even compared to MS Office?

I've been using Linux and Star/Open Office off and on for 2-3 years now. Let me just say that anyone from the Linux camp complaining about speed in MS must do their word processing in vi at runlevel 3. Linux is 2-5 times slower (usually closer to 3) on the same machine. I've tried KDE and Gnome, several versions, and multiple distros. Slow. Very slow. Star/Open office is even slower on Linux or Windows.

Linux was more stable than Windows 98. It's less so compared to XP in my experience. Time to start talking up the actual benefits of Linux if you want any converts. Better stability is not one of them any more. Speed never was.

Re:Children....

[Anonymous Coward]

Prepare to get modded down, troll!!

Stop taking showers and start using Linsux!!

Re:Children....

[Anonymous Coward]

oh i see, i guess you are god and this is the truth.

ka;judscbfv

Re:Children....

[shellbeach]

The solution is to use a different approach to word processing. Linux has had the wonderful LyX word processor for years, and as a front end to LaTeX - and coupled with BibTeX - it is faster, more efficient, allows easy editing of enormous files and is far less buggy than either MS Office or OpenOffice. LyX is my word processor of choice, and I constantly regret that it's not really usable in Windows (the whole cygwin, X server setup is much too unstable to be really useful, IMO)

But all that aside, you can't say "Linux is 2-5 times slower" based on the performance of OOo in Linux vs MS Word in Windows. MS Word is a really good programme, pure and simple; OOo suffers from terminal bloat and delusions of grandeur. Hell, MS Word under WINE starts up about three times faster than native Linux OOo ...

KDE and GNOME are bad examples too ... if you're looking for speed in a desktop environment, there's much better software out there! (try ROX for starters, together with a fast window manager like IceWM or Sawfish)

I've never used XP and so can't comment on its stability. But considering the extreme up-times I've experienced when running a linux box as a desktop computer (and web/file server at the same time) I'd be very surprised if XP is actually better. (IIRC the box crashed a total of three times in ten months continuous running, and we're talking RedHat 6.1 here, not Debian) In the last year of using Mandrake Linux (8.1, then 9.0) as a sole desktop OS, I cannot remember it crashing. Put simply, the underlying OS is very, very stable, and it's getting better, not worse. Now, granted XP may well be as stable, but I can't see how it can be noticably more so ... unless you're confusing OS stability with application stability, which is a completely different issue.

Re:Children....

[nyseal]

I can't disagree with you, but I can tell you that I've had my XP system running 24/7 for about a year now with no viable crashes (crashes I created myself, by mistake; ie...interrupting an install, overriding an update during startup...)and none of my programs were affected due to the system restore function. I'm not sure that's what you were referring to, but my experience has been nothing but good; better than average at the least.

Re:Children....

[axxackall]

I use LyX also all the time, but unless I have to send the document or I have to edit the received one: no surprise most of people around me do not know what's the heck is TeX and use obsolete MSWord.doc or improved OOo.sxw format (HTML in the best case).

LyX would have much more chances on Linux arena if it would get better and out of the box export/import with such formats as RTF, DOC, SXW, HTML. Until that LyX will exist only between enthusiasts.

On the other side, if a hard copy is all you need then LyX is the best word processor. It helps you to think in styles, rather than in sinlge characters. I wish OOo (OpenOffice.org) will improve the style management, which is horrible now in both MS Word and Open/Star Office.

Re:Children....

[shellbeach]

RTF export/import shouldn't be that difficult - RTF is (surprise!!) an open format (from Microsoft ... who would believe it?), and all the documentation's available. I had a play around with it once, trying to design a bibtex-type replacement for RTF files; but since I ended up realising that I'd never use it, it got ditched halfway through. But RTF is a fairly straightforward markup language - it's really easy to write a simple RTF file in a text editor; in many cases you should just be able to use a simple perl script to replace LaTeX tags for RTF tags.

In fact, I think there are already LaTeX-to-RTF converters out there.

Wretched Plotting!

[Bullseye_blam]

I believe that this is all a vile plot by Sony to eat into Microsoft's profit margins so that Microsoft must cut its losses on the Xbox and cede victory to Sony!

Any takers? heheheh.

Re:Wretched Plotting!

[ottffssent]

Microsoft was prepared to lose as much money as a company like AMD or Nvidia is worth (their current market cap is around $2billion). Now they just released a statement saying they're prepared to lose *more* than that. Microsoft doesn't cede victory to anyone. The PS2 is older and slower and is still outselling the X-box many times over yet Microsoft haven't even blinked.

I for one am loving the PS2/Xbox battle. Microsoft, for all their success, is a young upstart compared to Sony, which has been playing the same game far longer than Microsoft has. Sony almost killed Sega and is kicking Nintendo's ass - they're not about to let some newcomer start playing in their console market. Microsoft though is pretty big too and they play to win. Always.

Will Microsoft learn from their mistakes come time for PS3 v. Xbox2 and come to dominate? Will Sony have learned Microsoft's weaknesses and exploit them to the fullest? Coming to a TV near you, the Sony/Microsoft joint venture: the multi-billion-dollar game, Cutthroat Business.

--
Whose cuisine will reign supreme?

Re:Wretched Plotting!

[nyseal]

I'll take that bet; only as a gentleman though!

Re:Wretched Plotting!

[doug363]

Microsoft though is pretty big too and they play to win.

So Microsoft is using IBM's e-business services now? Or just their slogans? ;)

You can tell that I've been brainwashed by those ads...

Re:Wretched Plotting!

[dirtmerchant]

I'll believe it when Sony starts putting an alternate OS on their Vaios.

Open/StarOffice speed

[Chordonblue]

I have to say that startup speed is probably the biggest issue I have with these programs. However, on a brand new PC with a 7200 RPM drive and GHz processor speed, it should flat out fly anyway. At my school we use Open/StarOffice almost exclusively. It's working out, but for the students with under 400 MHz laptops, it's nightmarish.

On a side note, does anyone here know why Microsoft's 'Word' can load in like, 2 seconds, and OpenOffice.org's 'Writer' takes about 10 times that? Does M$ do something special with the OS to facilitate faster loading for Office?

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[bagboy]

Per some info I located: "The Office Startup Assistant (Osa.exe or OSA) is a program that improves the performance of Office XP programs. Office Setup places a shortcut to the Osa.exe file in the Windows Startup folder; the file is named "Microsoft Office". "The Osa.exe file initializes the shared code that is used by the Office XP programs. When you use the Osa.exe file to initialize shared code, the Office XP programs start faster. If the Office programs, instead of Osa.exe, initialize the shared code, the programs take longer to start." Microsoft already pre-loads most of the shared code on bootup, so you're already running portions of it even when you don't want to. Under WinXP, run msconfig and you can disable it from the startup. Time how long Word now takes to load (after rebooting) - not real noticable on a P4 with lots of RAM and fast drives though.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[2000 Britneys]

Last time I checked the Star/open office was built using Java, hence the slow startup performance. Also the MS Offcie is preloaded at the start time and that is why it loads almost instantly or so it seems. I remember reading some performance reviews some time ago talking specifically about that. Maybe someone here can collaborate this?

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[Locutus]

I would guess that things like MFC libraries are already loaded because they are used in the OS and in MS Office. Also, it's likely that other libraries get autoloaded at boot time when MS Office has been installed.

OpenOffice/StarOffice should have a boot time module loader IMHO. Let it get swapped out if the apps aren't used and memory gets tight but atleast make it an option.

I found it strange that StarOffice 5.2 starts quicker than OpenOffice 1.0.1 considering OpenOffice was supposed to trim down the apps by separating them. It's painfully slow on a dual 333 Celeron, 7200RPM IDE, 384MB RAM.

LoB

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[Craig Ringer]

StarOffice and OpenOffice DO have a preloader that's runnable on system boot. Its only available under windows, and I've heard some concerns about reliabiliy under win98, but it does exist.

Linux users who use GNOME or at least the GNOME panel can also load some sort of applet to perform the same function. Can't help you more, sorry, until someone comes out with a "wm-ooo-preloader" or even better a completely user-invisible one.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[bloosqr]

Actually, this would be an interesting idea in general. Make an autoloader that moves frequently run programs into memory at bootup. The script would be optimized for typical desktop use;that is bootup load your favorite browser, your favorite OS shutdown. On the other hand i've noticed a lot of people dont shutdown anymore ; so if the machine has its APM working properly the point is moot..

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[WetCat]

Hey! People in Russia do not have basements. In fact, most people in Russia live in apartments, not houses.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[Khalid]

OO quickstarter under Gnome http://ooqstart.sourceforge.net/

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[Ensign Nemo]

Except Office apps still load faster under Wine than OO/SO do on Linux natively.
It isn't Windows preloading, it's something else. I read somewhere that there is a problem with glibc in preloading. Any gurus here know?

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[mlk]

No it is not.

It has some 'intergrate with java' thing (which I still don't know what it does) which is not required, but it is not written in java (go check the source if you don't believe me).
Some random code from http://framework.openoffice.org/source/browse/fram ework/desktop/source/so_comp/evaluation.cxx?rev=1. 1.2.1&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup

#ifndef _SV_MSGBOX_HXX
#include
#endif

using namespace rtl;
using namespace ::com::sun::star::uno;

Looks C++ to me...

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[mcdmike74]

You've got to be kidding. StarOffice 6.0 is pretty quick. On a E450 ( 1-400mhz US-II CPU 512MB RAM Solaris 9 Gnome 2.0 beta 3 desktop) running around 150 processes with 4 SunRays hanging off of it, StarOffice takes about 5 seconds to load. I don't have a system over 400mhz and I use StarOffice 6.0 everyday. A nightmare on the other hand is that damn paper clip and the cost of MS Office. I paid about $75 for StarOffice.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[deppe]

I just tried timing OpenOffice writer startups on my AMD XP 1700 w/ U160 scsi. A cold startup took 10 seconds while a subsequent startup took 1 second.

I have a gig of ram, so disk I/O was not involved in the second startup. Whatever the problem is, it seems to be I/O bound.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[nusuth]

(disclaimer :IANAGuru) There is no problem with glibc preloading, it just didn't exist except as a hack prior to most recent version. It still requires a certain amount of sweat (but not brains) to get it work. At gentoo forums people are talking about really spectecular kde/kde-app loading times with it. I doubt other applications will benefit that much, because kde was slowed down (not that it is slow but...) due to depth of qt's/kde's C++ class hiearchies, which prelinking helps quite a bit.

Openoffice is not optimized while ms office is, that is why it takes much longer to start up, uses more memory and cpu time with less functionality. Blaiming prelinking, preloading or microsoft of dirty tricks won't get anyone anywhere. MS office is a mature product, OOo isn't, yet. If OOo guys follow kde guys' trend, OOo will be better and faster with time, instead of better and slower.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU ld.so (the Unix-like symbolic dynamic linker used on Linux) used to be dreadfully slow for linking C++ libraries. Windows .dlls loaded by Wine used to be faster than native .so files.

Unix-style dynamic libraries without caching of symbol relocations are intrinsically slower but more flexible than Windoze ones or Amiga ones. (Those three cover basically every technique used widely for shared libraries...)

However, GNU ld.so is now much, much faster, thanks to the "prelink cache". However, mainstream Linux distros have not yet enabled the prleink cache in their versions of ld.so - it is another system-wide layer of complexity, in a system-critical area, and thus requires an amazing amount of testing (If they were Microsoft, they'd find suckers willing to pay for the "privilege" of being their beta-testers, o course...)

It doesn't help that the x86 architecture has no decent IP-relative addressing, so Unix-style shared libraries, which were invented on architectures that didn't suck, need a "GDT" kludge in ELF/x86 to work. AMD x86-64 apparently has full IP-rel addressing, could be good.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[benwb]

MS Office doesn't use MFC.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[Zigg]

Under Linux? Probably everything was in the buffer cache, with that much RAM, before you started it the second time.

Re:Open/StarOffice speed

[Locutus]

"MS Office doesn't use MFC"

You've got to be kidding. Microsoft doesn't even use it's own class library for it's apps? Either they don't believe OOP is easier to develop and maintain, they use some internal framework, or they strictly use the Win32 API's directly. If it's Win32 API's then they probably throw tons of monkeys at it to keep it updated and would explain alot of the bugs in Windows in general.

They sure do have alot of the worlds money so they can throw a heck of a lot of monkeys at the problems.

So, if Microsoft itself does not eat it's dogfood , in MFC, why do other companies fall prey to the MFC tie-in? Will this .net stuff be the same thing? Makes sense. They'll be telling people to use the .net cross platform stuff on other systems but their clients and servers will be compiled directly to Win32 and then they'll hold up this performance flag. Kinda sheds some light on things doesn't it?

LoB

keep in mind

[morgajel]

they're enemies.
sony knows that office and windows are the cash cows for microsoft. sony knows that if microsoft starts hurting there, they can't afford to keep pissing money away on the xbox, sony's direct competition...

it's a street fight, and sony just kicked microsoft in the balls.

makes sense to me.
it'll be interesting to watch where it goes.. a new service pack kills sony dvd drivers? I have no clue.

either way I'll get some laughs out of the two slugging it out.

Re:keep in mind

[rseuhs]

it's a street fight, and sony just kicked microsoft in the balls.

Hehe, you just made my day.

Re:keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

We are far from the end, though.

Just remember how many balls Microsoft has.

Re:keep in mind

[Salubri]

It is a logical choice. If they stripped away Windows in that equasion they'd lose too many customers, but at the same time people come to expect nowadays that computer makers will switch to "other crap" to save money anyways. But it's more than that. They're going with Sun Microsystems. Sun and M$ have locked horns over MANY things in the past, Java licensing being one of the biggies. They didn't just kick them in the nuts. From a politics standpoint they just had their genitals smashed by a topless midget with a sledgehammer baby!!!

Re:keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

ms_balls = ms_lawyers * 2

Re:keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

> it's a street fight, and sony just kicked microsoft in the balls.

That's "Ballmer", not "balls".

Re:keep in mind

[sql*kitten]

sony knows that office and windows are the cash cows for microsoft. sony knows that if microsoft starts hurting there, they can't afford to keep pissing money away on the xbox, sony's direct competition...

Sony have a fairly small share of the PC market and anyway, historically any threats to Microsoft's market share have only made them compete harder.

VAIO means video audio integrated operation. How many VAIO users are heavy Office users? Most likely Sony did this so they can save some money on licensing software their customers barely use anyway.

no plot...just smart business

[djupedal]

Sony isn't stupid.

MS reveals that Office is paying the rent while they lose money on Xbox... Sony thinks about the fees they're paying MS every year, as long as MS Office is part of their computer package..."...choto.... Tanaka-san...look at these numbers....why are we helping MS to keep the Xbox afloat?"

Sony has been subsidizing the Xbox, and now they have a way to halt that practice :) =========

Remember...investing in or doing business with MS is risking having your own money used against you in the marketplace.

Re:no plot...just smart business

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be noted that they're not completely getting rid of Microsoft software on their PCs. They still run Windows, probably since if they didn't 99% of their customers would be outraged and go to Dell, Gateway, IBM, HP, etc instead. Switching office apps is less noticable, not to mention common practice on low and mid-range PCs (the last three prebuilt PCs I or my family's bought have had Corel something-or-other and/or MS Works on them rather than MS Office).

So, it's nice to see Primo Open Source.

[twitter]

Who could argue that a Vaio is a low end system? Seeing open source and free software on high end computers is nice. I get sick of seeing free software clasified as bargain and low cost while significant feature set improvements are ignored. Sony, IBM, Sun will help change that perception. Corel Office was premium software that, as long as M$ was dumping Office, you had to pay "extra" for and you did so to gain superior software. Everything else comes with a post script and portable document file output, does Star Office? That would be cool, and that is definatly an "extra" right now.

My wife used to run Star Office and liked it better than M$. M$ Office is an ugly beast that writes hideous propriatory formated files. Star Office read those files, dispelling the bizare perception that M$ programers were some kinds of wizards. Other than that, my wife simply enjoyed Star Office's easy to use layout.

Re:So, it's nice to see Primo Open Source.

[Graspee_Leemoor]

" Who could argue that a Vaio is a low end system?"

Me- my 700Mhz PIII Vaio laptop won't play divx3 movies without mucho framedropping.

graspee

Re:So, it's nice to see Primo Open Source.

[Stonent1]

" Who could argue that a Vaio is a low end system?" Me- my 700Mhz PIII Vaio laptop won't play divx3 movies without mucho framedropping.

I had a 700Mhz Celeron Dell laptop and all forms of Divx played just fine. What kind of video chip did it have?

Re:So, it's nice to see Primo Open Source.

[amokk]

Here's why .DOC doesn't suck:

The majority of people use Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office flawlessly reads .DOC files.
That's as simple as it needs to be.

Go to any office building and ask the secretary what she thinks of the .DOC file format and then tell her that she could be using a slower, less sophisticated, less featured office suite that MIGHT read her files correctly, sometimes.

I'm getting tired of people bashing MS Office simply because it's a Microsoft product. You have to consider the possiblity that people elect to buy these products because they like using them, not just because Microsoft is ramming them down their throat. In fact, I challenge you to find a better office suite than Microsoft Office... (Hint: It isn't StarOffice, it isn't OpenOffice, it isn't Corel, and this is far from a matter of opinion).

OpenOffice will be a glorified text editor for some time to come.

try this

[djupedal]

StarOffice calls them sheets...not tabs. Try the checkbox option in the printer dialog:
->Print
--->Options
------>Print only selected sheets

I use the shift key to select multiple sheets.

Re:try this

[Anonymous Coward]

just define a print range...look at menu item "/View/Page Break Preview"

Charting?

[deanpole]

Is there a better GUI app for charts than OpenOffice or Gnumeric? or do I have to learn the command line of gnuplot?

Re:Charting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sodipodi and Kivio (Kvisio? I forget) might be what you're looking for.

Re:Charting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your distro doesn't have a good version? If you have a recent version and you have Guppi then you shouldn't have to resort to the command line. Depends on your needs, I guess. Check the other ac's recommendations. Or look into Ximian.

WTF is up with mods these days?

[bogie]

"Linux is 2-5 times slower (usually closer to 3) on the same machine"

Bullshit. Slower running what? All of those crossplatform apps you tested.

"I've tried KDE and Gnome, several versions, and multiple distros. Slow. Very slow"

No more than XP on that same machine. You want all the eye candy there is a price to pay. Of course you can run XFCE and other lean apps, but why bother with real facts?

"Linux was more stable than Windows 98. It's less so compared to XP in my experience."

Again Bullshit. What is less stable? Oh right why give facts when you can just make things up.

" Time to start talking up the actual benefits of Linux if you want any converts. Better stability is not one of them any more. Speed never was."

Pure trolling. K thx Bye.

The only thing your right about is Star Office on linux is slow. On windows once you enable its quick launch feature, which MS does as well, its plently quick at opening anything.

Again WTF is wrong with the mods these days? This was pure trolling.

Re:WTF is up with mods these days?

[Sivar]

"Linux is 2-5 times slower (usually closer to 3) on the same machine"

Bullshit. Slower running what? All of those crossplatform apps you tested.

He was probably saying "StarOffice is slower than Microsoft office."
This is a fact. I personally prefer OpenOffice/StarOffice because of it's lack of "I know more than the user" policy, but there is no denying that Microsoft Office is hands down faster at starting and at certain time consuming tasks, like complex scripts and searching large text files. It seems you agree with this statement.
(Honestly I don't think a few seconds loading time makes much difference, but that's me)

"I've tried KDE and Gnome, several versions, and multiple distros. Slow. Very slow"

No more than XP on that same machine. You want all the eye candy there is a price to pay. Of course you can run XFCE and other lean apps, but why bother with real facts?

Linux newbie from Windows:
"This window manager (Blackbox, XFCE, IceWM, etc) sucks! I want something perty like Windows (and with a decent interface and consistant applications)."

Linux guru: "Use GNOME2 or KDE3! They are what you want! They even have more options and power than Windows!"

Linux newbie: "This is great but man is it slow! I was hoping for something faster than Windows. I want something at least as fast!"

Linux guru: "Use Blackbox or XFCE (etc)! They are what you want! They are even faster than Windows 95, nevermind XP!"

Ad infinitum.

"Linux was more stable than Windows 98. It's less so compared to XP in my experience."

Again Bullshit. What is less stable? Oh right why give facts when you can just make things up.
I can't speak for Windows XP, which I hate with a passion, but Windows 2000's applications and GUI are definitely more stable than GNOME2 or KDE3. No question. As far as overall system stability, Linux almost never crashes. Almost. Windows 2000 crashes for me about every other month, usually due to Creative's infamous soundcard drivers.

I would know. I have been working for weeks setting up and tweaking a Linux server to serve Xwindows applications to remote terminals. GNOME2 crashes frequently, but usually only when logging off or running Nautilus. I'd say about twice a weak on light use. KDE3 itself has never crashed for me, but Konqueror and its help system have done so three times each so far, and Konquer has simply frozen once in addition to that. Of course, it is only fair to mention that Internet Explorer seems to me far less stable (but a better actual browser) than Konqueror, but then I use Mozilla on all platforms but OpenVMS, so that doesn't much matter to me.
Fluxbox is stable but simple, and a recent update made it suddenly decide to:
1) Place items in the slit in a large grey box on the lower-right corner of the screen rather than at the top as configured, but ONLY when running remotely over the X protocol
2) Not work at all (GSOD) over TightVNC.

Those complaints about Xbox itself don't really count though, because running a separate user session remotely isn['t even an option with Windows (less the expensive and flaky as hell Terminal Server setup)

That said, Linux desktops crash at least ten times more often for me than Windows 2000 does (which is integrated with its GUI, so when it crashed the whole thing goes down). That is to say, both rarely crash, but Linux GUIS noticeably more. I have tried custom compiling everything with conservative flags with no effect.

You critique the original posters lack of evidence when you yourself offer nothing but that critique. It would probably be best to offer counterevidence rather thanjust be argumentative.

Again WTF is wrong with the mods these days? This was pure trolling.
I was wondering the same thing, but for different posts.

Re:WTF is up with mods these days?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep on reading comments about how KDE3 is slow or this and that crashes on Linux and I have had exactly the opposite experience. And I am wondering why? I think it might be because I am running a distribution that builds everything from source and only what is needed (what I want) and not everything under the sun -- Gentoo 1.4 RC1. Sometimes I wonder if maybe the people out there compiling stuff for Redhat, Mandrake, you name it are screwing something up.

Re:WTF is up with mods these days?

[Sivar]

Gentoo is my preferred distribution as well. Were I running Redhat, I would not have easily been able to recompile such core parts of the system.
Gentoo is wonderful, no?

Re:WTF is up with mods these days?

[frantzdb]

If your Linux desktop applications crash, please submit a bug report. With GNOME, bug-buddy makes this very easy to do; I'm sure it's not difficult with KDE either.

--Ben

OO vs. SO

[djupedal]

I think Sony considered liscensing, support, packaging, compatibility etc. on the backend and decided to play it safe...for now. The target is Europe, so there may be some specific considerations in play that led them to pick one over the other.

Not a bad move.

[StarTux]

This isn't a bad move as I know Star Office 6 is pretty reliable as I purchased this for my dad, and he was able to open an MS Word documents (including a monster 15MB one) all on an old laptop.

Just wish Apple would Open Source AppleWorks and take over the GUI section of SO and OO though :).

StarTux

Re:Not a bad move.

[MeNeXT]

Just wish Apple would Open Source AppleWorks and take over the GUI section of SO and OO though :)./
Yikes! While I like the apple GUI I cannot stand how there menus work. I just wish that Apple would go the NeXT way on the menus. It made more sense.

Impressive, but not quite

[aerojad]

I won't be impressed, personally, until I see StarOffice or any non MSFT actually forcefully pushed in the American market, since it is the market where MSFT has the tightest grip. Make a dent here, and getting the rest of the world should be easier.

Business Decision

[donutello]

I think all the posters who are talking about the relationship between this and the fact that MS is competing with Sony with the X-BOX are just plain wrong.

If Sony was a well-run organization, its computer division would be making business decisions based on their own market rather than some vague spite because of some other divisions battles. There are several valid business reasons why offering a cheaper (to Sony) Office solution would make business sense.

MS is not going to run out of money any time soon - so suggesting that this is being done so MS stops spending money is just plain asinine. Rather, the very reason MS is investing in the XBOX is because they want to earn money in more diverse ways and if the Office business were to become less profitable, that would only encourage them to invest further into other markets in the hopes of being able to grow or maintain revenue.

It is possible that management asked the computer division to do this and use that as a threat to ask Microsoft to back off from the XBOX. However, that is arguably an antitrust violation similar to the one Microsoft got into trouble for since the PS2 is a virtual monopoly. However, I sincerely doubt that this is the case.

Re:Business Decision

[w42w42]

If Sony was a well-run organization, its computer division would be making business decisions based on their own market rather than some vague spite because of some other divisions battles.

I have to respond to this. I think normally this would be a valid point, except that Microsoft has two business divisions referred to as "Office" and "Windows", which are used to fuel their slash and burn business practices.

I would love for any other Microsoft division to compete on its own merit with that from any competitor, without the immense backing they recieve from those two monopolies.

Re:Business Decision

[the_rev_matt]

MBU (Mac Business Unit) does quite well on it's own (and actually has little if any interaction with the rest of the company, from what I've heard). It's the one business unit that really puts out high quality work, IMHO.

Double standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

StarOffice eats memory and can be a little slow even compared to MS Office

I see. We're supposed to applaud slow and bloated software as long as Sony and some Open Source are involved rather than Microsoft?!

Re:Double standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

supposed to applaud slow and bloated software....

Its Open and Free this might be worth a big
applause. Bloated no slow olny at startup.

Fighting fire with fire???

[DavittJPotter]

However, your zealotry is also devoid of factual content. With your cavalier attitude towards a contrary opinion, it will be hard to persuade people to try Linux or any other 'new' technology.

I'll ask you some of the same questions: What about Linux is more stable? Examples, please.

Yes, Linux is very fast on a command line - there's no UI loaded up. But comparing XP to RedHat's BlueCurve on my Athlon XP 1500+ w/ 512MB memory and GeForce 3 Ti500 - running the latest Detonator drivers in Windows, and the latest NVidia drivers in Linux - they're both pretty quick. Yeah, that's not "scientific" - but neither one is *appreciably* slower than the other. MS Office XP is fast. StarOffice is slower, however. Normal usage of the core OS is about the same.

In the early part of your comment, you made a sarcastic comment about "Yeah, all those cross-platform apps you tested." Please, post the information you've got about cross-platform applications.

Well, my Linux side does run the Codeweavers and Transgaming plugins - the plugin versions are fast enough to use, but they *do* slightly lag behind the Windows versions in their "native" environment.

Windows XP - with Windows certified drivers - is very stable. I've had ONE BSOD in 13 months - from a Beta Detonator driver. Since then, not one.

Zealotry will get us nowhere in the halls of Corporate America, the desktops of Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Joe Sixpack. It makes us look like little children who ignore reality because it's our favorite toy.

I like Linux as much as the next geek/wannabe-geek, but I'm objective enough to see where we need to go, not where we imagine we are.

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[3141]

Do you care nothing about freedom? Has it not occurred to you that if you are using XP legally, you have given Microsoft permission to change what they like on your computer?

Do you LIKE the idea that you are supporting extremely powerful criminals who want to control you? Even worse, supporting them over those who would offer you choice, for nothing in return?

Even if you are right, things change. Linux is usable, fast and reliable NOW. The more people using it, the more support it will get.

Linux is getting better and better, and even if Windows is too, there can be no doubt that Microsoft, the company, is getting worse and worse. Why support them?

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[DavittJPotter]

The reason I have my box dual-booting with RedHat and the Codeweavers/Transgaming plugins is because I *do* care about freedom and where I'd like to see Linux go. That's why I support the community as I am best able - with my purchases and support.

My comment was about the validity of an argument that Linux was superior to Windows without the very evidence the poster was complaining about.

_This very attitude_ - the one you're displaying about "extremely powerful criminals who want to control you!!!!!" is the attitude that immediately turns off the non-geek, non-Linux, non-computer-using public - which makes up about 97% of the world. We are a minority with a passion - in other, less polite circles, we'd be called a cult.

I would personally like to see these attitudes change, and then we can really start to have Linux win on the desktop, and be able to move away from a Microsoft-dominated desktop.

Damn, I think I've been trolled. But I do earnestly believe what I've written.

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[aardvarkjoe]

Don't start spouting off about freedom in the middle of a technical discussion. Changing the subject because you don't like how the discussion is going isn't a very good way of argumentation.

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell wants to get into the halls of Corporate America?

You cannot troll. Linux is not about defeating Microsoft. You cannot troll. The dark FUD will not avail you, flame of bandwagon. Go back to Windows. You cannot troll.

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[3141]

You have not been trolled, at least not by me.

Why should we just sit down and be quiet about it? Everything I said is true, and if it sounds a bit fantastic, then that's what we're dealing with.

I was always prepared to just think of it in terms purely of convenience. Now, I cannot any longer. With the internet and widespread access to computers, we are on the brink of something wonderful. Instead, I see people trying their hardest to make it illegal, crippled, or both.

One of the worst of these is Microsoft. I can't in good conscience pay money to those behind Palladium.

I think that if people like us, who have some idea what's going on, do nothing, or support it, we will regret it badly in the years to come.

I earnestly believe what I have written as well, and if it offends the "non-geek, non-Linux, non-computer-using public" then perhaps it's time they got offended, because I don't see anyone addressing the issues, and they badly need to be addressed.

Am I wrong on this?

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[Billly Gates]

Actually at work we purchased several XP laptops and they keep blue screening when flashing copiers and high end printers that we use. We downgraded to Windows2k and all the problems have gone away. I have seen 1 blue screen of death on w2k and thats it.

I have been using Linux since 1998 and I cant tell you what the kernel panic screen looks like because I have never seen it. Windows2k is a huge improvement and close in terms of stability but XP is a step backwards. Don't believe me? Go find out which OS engineers and graphics artists use? They prefer Windows2k bigtime.

My point?

My point is you really can't trust microsoft. There codebase is getting more and more bloated by the day. I predict that longhorn will be more unstable then XP and the os after so on.. I know from experience with Microsoft products that putting alot of legacy garbage fucks it up.

Linux has another problem not as much as adding bloat but more of rewritting the kernel after each release. All the kernel versions from 2.0 to 2.5 look like different operating systems whith huge rewrites everywhere. This can be frustrating to many nervous corporate buyers.

To be objective FreeBSD and NetBSD are still slim and code rewrites happen at a very slow pace. Code is just added rather then rewritten. Also daemons like inet and init are not superbloated like there linux counterparts. Xinet is whats keeping linux off older systems. This is what is causing alot of the slowdown you see in Linux.

XP has it too but Microsoft just loaded the OS dlls directly into ram so the system appears to run quicker. Linux should do the same with some modules for a similiar affect if a user wants it enabled.

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[llamaluvr]

Has it not occurred to you that if you are using XP legally, you have given Microsoft permission to change what they like on your computer?

So, if we use it illegally, than everything is just fine?

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[civilizedINTENSITY]

So what attitude do you recommend one should take with a convicted (criminal) corporation such as microsoft? Is it "attitud" to be aware of their control issues? Perhaps the phrasing could be adjusted, but the gist of the statement was correct. If reality is to politically incorrect, then you are a sheep.

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[m_pll]

My point is you really can't trust microsoft. There codebase is getting more and more bloated by the day. I predict that longhorn will be more unstable then XP and the os after so on..

I remember when NT4 came out people where screaming about the bloat and instability caused by moving GDI and USER into kernel mode.

Then win2k came out and it was declared even more bloated and unstable than NT4.

Then when XP came out, win2k was suddenly renamed "the most stable Windows ever" and XP was the new leader in bloat and instability.

Do you see the pattern? I predict that by the time Longhorn is released, XP (or .NET Server) will become "the most stable Windows ever".

Re:Fighting fire with fire???

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running Win2k for over a year now and I think I've seen 6 BSoDs, which I know is above average, but that's what I've seen. That's less than Windows 98 for sure and I find Win2k to be a very usable operating system, but by contrast I have had Debian (GNU/)Linux running on another computer for about the same time and I have only seen a kernal panic once and it was after I completely fucked the computer over (entirely my stupid fault, any windows computer would have fucked up the same way) and I never had to restart it for any reason other than power outage.

change it to suit yourself

[djupedal]

OO has a 'load during system startup' option (QuickStarter) that makes working from scratch much more tolerable. I can have a new text file, spreadsheet, etc., open on demand...a new drawing makes me wait a whole three seconds. If you run SO when you boot, and leave it running, you'll find it much easier to create new documents. Think of SO as an alternate desktop.

Sun should buy Corel for dismemberment

[Anonymous Bullard]

Yes, Corel, the weather vane of IT industry (just follow the opposite direction).

Price comes first, and Corel is valued at cash value, if not even lower. They've got loads of software, WP Office (which luckily wasn't rebranded Corel XXXX to even destroy the brand too), CorelDraw, Micrografx line, Softquad line (HoTMetaL etc.) and who knows what else. And thanks to Corel they're all essentially valued at NIL. Use what is useful and spit out the rest for sale (most of which might even have a chance of success once out of Corel's clueless fingers) or open-sourcing.

Although Corel have tried their best to become totally irrelevant, they still continue to release PR that some journos read, or at least re-circulate. Currently that muscular PR machine is churning out, you guessed it, Micorsoft PR and their employees probably get fired just for mentioning Linux. Problem easily solved by Sun.

Sun knows how to sue monopolists instead of giving them discounted shares and even working for them for free (yes, you guessed who). If Java is worth $billion + damages, what about WordPerfect which was pummelled out of all channels (esp. preloads) by MS. Isn't MS-Office micorsoft's most valuable cash cow? Hit 'em where it hurts most.

And StarOffice... I'm sure there's something worth scavenging in WP Office that would benefit StarOffice. At least WP engineers used to be good at reverse-engineering MS-word filters. Migrating their remaining users out of micorsoft's sphere of influence would also be useful, as would phasing out the MS-windows-based no-revenue preloads that some OEMs use to avoid the full force of MS tax.

Re:Sun should buy Corel for dismemberment

[Anonymous Coward]

I would hope that, before buying Star, Sun at least made an offer for Corel. If not, I suppose the reason is that Corel is one of the most Windows-centric companies outside of WA. They even bragged for a while that they shipped more COM objects than Microsoft.

It would be a shame if the only true contender for MS Office was dismantled for a 3rd rate product like StarOffice. It should be visa-versa (Unix portability bits from Star moved in to WP.)

Re:Sun should buy Corel for dismemberment

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be visa-versa (Unix portability bits from Star moved in to WP.)

I've seen this and many similar suggestions before: "Wouldn't it be cool if someone took Apple's GUI, grafted it on to StarOffice, then moved the filters in from WP, threw in Uncle Billy's barn code and Susie could make the costumes?"

My question: how practical is it really to meld together huge, complex projects such as these? My coding experiences are with relatively small projects that either came from my own head or involved modifying one pre-existing project.

So who out there has experience grafting two or more Really Big Projects together? Does it work, or does it turn out that you throw out all but one of the projects and pretty much redo the other desired features from scratch in the style of the retained project? For example, would Sun really gain anything by buying Corel and trying to suck their existing code into StarOffice, or would the presumably different underlying design philosophies completely stymie such an idea? Would the benefit only be in getting the coders, not the code?

Re:Sun should buy Corel for dismemberment

[Felipe Hoffa]

Yeah, but Bill Gates 'ownz' Corel.

Google cache has the analysis, and you can look more about it with the keywords 'Microsoft Corel stock'.

Seems OT, but....

[LinuxHam]

I've been wondering about all the slowness complaints that have plagued large applications like OpenOffice. Does anyone here do the hdparm tweaks to improve disk performance? I just stumbled across it (after 7 years) trying to improve mplayer's performance. This may take care of much of the slowness complaints we always seem to hear.

Re:Seems OT, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

It speeds things up, when compared to the speed without it, certainly, but OpenOffice still takes about ten times longer to start up than anything on my system. Just timed it, and it takes twenty seconds. If Mozilla takes more than two seconds, I'd be shocked. (My Mozilla is browser-only, which speeds load time significantly)

I don't even want to think about how bad things would be without DMA turned on.

Who gets the savings?

[CorporatePunk]

I know this is a little naive, but is Sony doing this so they can lower costs on their systems and pass the savings along to customers? Or will they provide a less expensive office package, and maintain their current pricing scheme? Most PC manufacturers (not out of the box) now allow you to configure your system almost entirely, down to the software packages you want (or don't). Will Sony still install MS Office on systems you order directly from them if thats what you want? And if so how much will the price difference be?

Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[puto]

Hey how old is Star Office 5.2? Ancient! And while there are many people say it is all I need, FINE, that might be great for you but not for the rest.

I love *nix OSes. But Star Office on anything is dog slow and a nightmare to operate.

I was the Technology Director of a Small University and I purchased a load of new Dells(bout 1 year ago i think) Pentium 3 1.0 ghz. 256 megs of ram. I grabbed 40. We had 40 plain jane 233 mmx pentiums with 128 megs of ram and win 98. We only had liscenses for 40 copies of office 2000, so I smacked star office on the 233's. I had 40 machines that became dog slow, erratic, and crash prone. The ran office 2000 just fine. The productivity level for the students dropped abour 30%. I started keeping a log of the problems and they all pointed at star office. Locking the box up, not opening word files well. Whole slew of shit.

I tweaked and tweaked, and finally threw office back on the boxes and the liscensing be damned. Cause in this case office worked better, the students got into Acess, Excel, and kept on chugging.

On my new boxes I dual booted win 2000 and redhat. Taught classes in both. Taught Star Office and Office. And Office is a great product, yes it is bloated, but you can do *alot* in it. Star Office could not touch it. Office 97 runs better, doesnt eat the desktop and resources Alive.

I like Open Office, still see room for improvement. Loads better than Star. But saying Star is an Office Killer in this day and age that is ridicoulous.

Plus, in poor countries they learn to use what they have, the file server I replaces ran sco on a 1.0 gig scsi drive, 486 sx 25. They had done wonders with the box. Replaced it with Red 6.2 dual 1.0 p///s. Raid 3 on 36 gig scsis.(we got a good deal with dell).

We took a survey of 300 students. They liked linux, they wanted to learn linux, and we taught it. But hands down they voted star office out. They just couldnt be productive in their normal school work with star office.

Puto

There's a big difference

[Chuck Chunder]

between Sony choosing to bundle Star Office with their PCs and offer them for sale and MS _requiring_ other MS software be installed on other peoples products.

When I bought my Vaio in the UK a few months ago I was surprised to find it didn't come with an office suite at all (which is no big deal to me, I didn't check because an Office Suite wasn't on my list of requirements. I've since installed OpenOffice just in case I need one, but I've not used it yet).

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

[JPriest]

It's about time someone pointed that out and was not moded as a troll. Linux sort of reminds me of "The Emperors New Clothes". I have been using Linux and alternitave office products along side of the MS versions for quite some time, and I have to say that Linux is generally much slower and much less stable. By the time there is enough code added to Linux for the features I need it will take a 2.4 GHz+ CPU to run smoothly and it's code base will be nearly impossible to upkeep. Not to mention that with it's current packaging trend most distros will need to be placed on 10 or 15 CD-R's. All this talk of Linux making progress etc., I've been following for years and think it's heading at a brick wall.

Re:Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently your experience is nearly the exact opposite of my own and many others I know. After 12 years of MS-ware I switched to Linux primarily because it is so much more stable. Finding out that it was also much faster on the same hardware was a welcome bonus, and among the first comments I've heard from nearly all new users. Other comments include the relative simplicity of updates and the wealth of packaged software available. (Also the 2nd biggest gripe: wading thru a list of 1000+ packages searching for the one they want.) Perhaps worth noting that most have been leery to try Linux because they've heard it is slow, unstable, no software, etc, say they're only trying it because of me, then keep it because _they_ believe Linux better meets their needs.

Re other posts I've seen, yes, StarOffice 5.x (and 4.x) was a glacially slow memory hog. StarOffice 6.0 (OpenOffice 1.x) seems to have fixed most of that. Much of the cruft is gone. Speed is *way* up. Try it.

Re:Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

[Anonymous Coward]

"relative simplicity of updates"? You gotta be f*cking kidding...

Maybe you're a Troll

[Bios_Hakr]

...and maybe not. I'll give you the benifit of the doubt and respond as if you are not troling.

I have noticed that some linux distros are slow due to DHCP problems. I think emacs was the first text editor I ever saw that took time to look up the machine's FQDN and try to match what the DHCP server returned to entries in /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname. Make sure those entries are correct before you whine about system speed. Also take time to do 'hdparm -Tt /dev/hd[x]' You should see data transfer numbers in the range of 20MB to 50MB. Also, under KDE, take time to optimize your video driver.

It was taking like 3 minutes to start emacs and 5 minutes to start KDE. Other programs were also effected by the mismatched IP addresses. After I did a few tweaks (like 10 mnutes of work), emacs starts instantly and KDE is up in 10~20 seconds. Mozilla and OpenOffice are also very responsive.

AFAIRemember, Star office was really slow because it starts it's own desktop and loads a lot of drivers at startup. OpenOffice seems comprable to MS Office in startup speeds. But try to keep in mind that 90% of the programs you install under windows will add entries to the services tab of the MMC. This alows programs to start lightning fast because they are already mostly in memory.

Try this: On a fresh install of win2k/xp, look at 'msconfig' and the services list. Then install Office, Kazaa, Visio, Winamp, MusicMatch, etc... Then go back and look at the service list agian. Winamp and MusicMatch are very open about running in the background. Office and Kazaa use services to be sneaky. But don't be fooled, they are still running all the time. Slowly eating your memory.

To be fair, Mozilla and OpenOffice under Win32 use entries in 'msconfig' (i.e., your taskbar gets bigger) to speed up load times, but both programs tell you this at install time. They have to do this in order to have the appearance of speed comparable to MS IE and MS Office.

Oh, one more KDE tip: Make sure the 'fam' daemon is running before you start KDE. Somehow, the fam daemon indexes files needed by KDE in order to speed it up.

Re:Maybe you're a Troll

[benploni]

fam is File Alteration Monitor. It allows a process to find out when a file or directory changes, *without* polling it. That way, you file manager will properly update the view, with no appreciable overhead. Nautilus uses it too.

It already happened here

[UserChrisCanter4]

When I was working at Circuit City about a year and a half ago, we had these, although only sort of bundled. The Sony rep stopped by, and along with his usual propoganda about various Sony features , he had a stack of Star Office CDs in slip cover-type cases with the Sun and Sony names printed on the outside (this was a pre-printed glossy cardboard slip, not some bootleg crap he rolled himself). It wasn't really bundled, per se, but he said, "when people ask you if they come with MS Office, you tell them they come with this." Right at that point I thought, "wow, that's a great idea. Way to go Sony. People really need to get used to the idea that they don't need to pay upwards of $400 for their basic word-processing and spreadsheet needs." Still, it never amazed me that in the face of Lotus SmartSuite and Star Office with different manufacturers (namely Toshiba and Sony), people still insisted on MS Office (even after we went to the trouble of saving various .doc and .xls files to a floppy and opening them with the other programs to show that you could indeed bring work home). Oh well, you can lead a horse to water...

Re:It already happened here

[thebeardedeel]

I worked at CompUSA back in 2000 and lots of Sony VAIO's came with StarOffice pre-installed. No seperate disk. It was right there on the desktop and listed with the software on the box/case. So Sony has been doing things like this in the U.S. for some time, at least off and on. Maybe this is a first for Europe as the Headline suggests?

BE HONEST...5.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Loading StarOffice 5.2, by hand, a year ago on Win 98 Dells is hardly a fair comparison to StarOffice 6.0 being preloaded on factory configured Sonys w/XP. The only thing you've pointed out is perhaps your lack of administrative skill and judgement...sorry :)

Echoes of Mozilla.exe -turbo ?

[yerricde]

The Osa.exe file initializes the shared code that is used by the Office XP programs. When you use the Osa.exe file to initialize shared code, the Office XP programs start faster. If the Office programs, instead of Osa.exe, initialize the shared code, the programs take longer to start.

So in other words, MS Office's preloader is like Mozilla's, right?

Re:Echoes of Mozilla.exe -turbo ?

[IvyMike]

So in other words, MS Office's preloader is like Mozilla's, right?

Except Mozilla's preloader is off by default, it's not hidden from the user, and it only exists in the first place because so many people complained "IE loads faster than Mozilla." IE and Office cheat by getting loaded even if you don't need or want them. I guess Mozilla is also sort of cheating, but at least they're up front about it.

Re:Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[Cyph]

I'm sorry, but you mention StarOffice 5.2. Sony is using StarOffice 6.0, which is as recent as Open Office, and uses the same base set of features.

Um, d00d....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have windows 2000 and linux on a dual-boot machine. Let me tell you, linux is definately more stable. And it is definately faster than windows. I'm using redhat 7.1 with a 2.4.19 kernel. I'm probably gonna install gentoo on my laptop, I will admit, redhat comes with quite a bit of cruft. At least XP and 2000 are better than ME.

Re:Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[puto]

Sorry, I was a little unclear about somethings. but the point being that apples to apples Star Office doesnt cut the Mustard.

I was using Office 2000 on 98 machines, and Star 5.2 on the same ones. Star Office had lower system recquirements, older product. Office 2000 on same system, but higher resource requirements whupped its ass hands down. And on 40 machines.

My windows 2000 box is an Athlon 1800, 512 meg, 7200 IBM drive, and Star Office 6.0 sits on it, and Office XP. And for work(as well as compatibilty issues with the rest of the world) Office is the better product.

I try and and keep all options on my machine cause you never know who I might support.

On the XP box is office 2000 and Open Office. And guess which one functions better?

Workstation productivity for pushing characters around Office is the best. Linux kicks ass in so many other areas but MS has office down.

I am sorry I was unclear. But I was comparing 5.2 to 2000. But even 97 is better than 5.2.

Best tool for the job aint always the free one.

Puto

Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

You really got your money's work from that $199 PC. Two posts at +5 in one day - well worth the money ;-)

Re:In KGB's Soviet Russia...BORING

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn!

Interesting Times

[USC-MBA]

The strategic issues with this situation are intriguing. Microsoft Office presently faces competition from several fronts, the biggest two threats to its dominance of the market at present being Sun's StarOffice suite, and Corel's Wordperfect. Also nibbling away at MS Office's market share are smaller Opne-Source rivals like Open Office, KOffice, etc.

Any one of these may not pose any threat on their own, but together they may be in a position to eat away a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's profits. The obvious way for Microsoft combat to combat this multiheaded threat is a two-pronged attack. .

First, Microsoft needs to emphasize the imporance of the network effect (which is basically when a product becomes more useful and valuable as its userbase grows: this effect can be observed in a product like an office suite, where I need my document to be readable on my client's system. It is considerably less pronounced in something like toothpaste ) in its marketing efforts. The pitch would go like this: most everyone is familiar with MS Office, most everyone uses MS Office now, so it's best to stick with MS Office. StarOffice may boast "95%" compatibility, but what business wants to risk their bottom line on the chance that they'll never have to worry about the other 5%?

The second prong to combat the hordes of rival office suites would be for Microsoft to simply slash the price of MS Office. Miscrosoft already pulls in nearly 80% profit on Office, and is in an excellent cash position, having over a billion in liquid reserves. They could therefore easily handle a temporary dent in profits for the sake of maintaining or even expanding market share. This would have the additional advantage of reinforcing the network effects enjoyed by MS Office, thereby strengthening Microsoft's position. Prices could be raised again, of course, with the next release of MS Office.

Or maybe not. Perhaps Ballmer and co. have something even sneakier up their sleeves, or maybe we will see Microsoft's rivals make inroads into the Office suite market. Whatever the case, it's fun to watch the plays unfold, kind of like the world's slowest RTS game.

Re:Interesting Times

[Anonymous Coward]

Ms owns a 20% share of corel. Corel stopped its Linux activity after the wine-nightmare.

Re:Interesting Times

[fferreres]

The second prong to combat the hordes of rival office suites would be for Microsoft to simply slash the price of MS Office.

They can't, and they want. If they are selling it at that price it's because it maximizes their revenues. If they lower it, how much more office sales do you think they will add to they already high 95% market share?

Do the math. For example, suppose a price drop of 30% gets them a 2% increase in sales:

Added revenue: 2% * (100%-30%) * old_office_sales
Lost revenue: (100%-30%) * old_office_sales

That's called price elasticity, and at 95% market share they'd even be better of rising the Office prices even if losing more market share.

NOW, what the monopolist wants to do is price discrimination. That is, harvest the demand curve. If you can pay $1000 per office, we'll try to charge you that. If you can pay $100 (student?) we'll charge you that. If you can't or will not pay us (usually home users) then "pirate it", and we'll look the other way arround. We'll charge you when you are ready and we make sure NO money goes to our competitors (this last only works for 0 marginal cost products, like software).

It really is pretty easy, if you don't let them do price discrimination and disallow the practice of "looking the other way arround" when their products are pirated, then competition is restored.

The trial makes it hard for them to do price discrimination. We only need them to enforce the payment on ALL users, not just big companies or people willing to pay whatever is they max revenue price.

The day you load up windows and there is NO way you can run Office without paying $300 you will start looking at SO as a real blessing.

Star or open ?

[katalyst]

I would consider bundling Star Office as a half hearted attempt. It would STILL mean a product from a large corporate, it would STILL mean you are paying for it. Why not go with OpenOffice ? Sony may have to build a support service specifically for OpenOffice concerns, but it would mean propagating open source and maybe pushing OpenOffice to develope higher standards.
We hate Microsoft coz they have a monopoly and they exploit it. Would things really be better if SUN or Oracle had that same monopoly? Why not just boost opensource? And let these biggies develope their support services for these products.

people actually use sony PCs???

[myowntrueself]

Well I've never seen one, not in a shop, and not in nearly 20 years of working in the industry.

Unless you count those tiny little handheld devices of the 1980s and they wern't exactly PCs...

Anyone on here use sony PC or even seen one for sale?

Re:people actually use sony PCs???

[mlk]

Are you saying you have never seen a Viso?
They are sweet 'ttle laptops

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfini ty /eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_BrowseCatalog-Start?Categor yName=cpu

CategoryName CPU?

Re:people actually use sony PCs???

[Duds]

Yep, they even get TV advertising in the UK.

Re:Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the opposite experience with OpenOffice. It starts up fast for me and hasn't ever crashed -- and I've liked much more then MS Office. The earlier MS Office versions were great but their latest is crap with tons of 'features' that are worthless to IMHO 95% of the people who use it. You have to click through 5 screens to find what you want often -- at least I do. I should mention though I run Gentoo 1.4 RC1 and I compiled OpenOffice from source optimized for my processor. It doesn't run as fast on my office's computer where I have RedHat.

this is becoming just like the metric system

[deft]

everyone else uses metric, it may be better... but the US will still use MS products, and the rest of the world will have to deal with it because we are who we are, for better or worse.

amen.

Re:this is becoming just like the metric system

[bstadil]

and the rest of the world will have to deal with it

The fact that the US uses miles, inches etc. makes no difference to the rest of the world.

Re:this is becoming just like the metric system

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that the US uses miles, inches etc. makes no difference to the rest of the world.

The UK pretty much still uses miles, feet and inches, ounces and pounds, etc. Europe is pushing to move us over to metric for most things, particularly with products weights and volumes - they legally have to be marked in kilos and grams now, even if that's in parallel with the ounces and pounds. One market trader was even fined for continuing to sell his bananas by the pound!

Beer is still sold in pints, and motorway exit markers are still measures in yards, etc. I don't think there are any plans to move us away from miles yet either. Most Brits have a fair idea about both the metric and imperial system so it's not generally a problem anyway.

Re:this is becoming just like the metric system

[melonman]

Well, it means that their scientists occasionally get confused and therefore crash their space probes. But, hey, if the USA wants to remain compatible with the only two other non-metric companies in the world Burma and Liberia), why not?

Not quite sure what he means about the rest of the world having to follow though. Are the bolts on American Toyotas imperial or metric? And American scientists must at least read metric if they want to benefit from any research done anywhere else in the world.

Meaningless.

[Anonymous Coward]

The end user who will keep Star Office is the one who would've pirated MS Office. In short, Microsoft loses no money.

Corporate clients? Star Office will be deleted faster than you can say, "I'm a fscking moron! I think Linux is all about defeating Microsoft!"

After the deletion, MS Office will be installed faster than you can say, "Clippy!"

Joe Blow who will use Star Office will not make a difference at all. When you go to work, you use what they tell you to use, and you like it, or start looking for another job. Joe Blow certainly won't be in any position to tell the IT staff what office suite everyone should be using.

As for the suits, no one ever got fired for buying MS, eh? Not to mention the fact that MS Office kicks the living shit out of all comers. In a sea of their crap, Office is the one thing that Microsoft made into a jewel.

Re:Meaningless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I've heard the exact opposite argument: "IT Staff are in no position to tell Joe Blow what office suite everyone should be using".

Most IT Staff would rather Users used Star Office.

Re:Meaningless.

[fferreres]

The end user who will keep Star Office is the one who would've pirated MS Office. In short, SUN loses no money and Microsoft loses market share (adoption).

Corporate clients? Star Office will be deleted faster than you can say, "Do we REALLY need to pay for a similar office suit?!"

Joe Blow who will use Star Office will make a difference. When you go to work, you use what they tell you to use, and you like it, or start looking for another job. Joe Blow certainly won't be in any position to tell the IT staff what office suite everyone should be using.

As for the suits, no one ever got fired saving them money, eh? Not to mention the fact that MS Office kicks the living shit out of all pockets. In a sea of their crap, Office is the one thing that Microsoft made into a profit jewel.

Re:people actually use sony PCs??? Troll?

[puto]

Well I have a couple of clients who bought them at Circut City and the like. Mostly because of Brand NAME, and the pretty case with all the matching baubles.

And of the ten on one the networks I manage remotely. I never really had any problems with them.

I can't beleive you have not ever seen one in the shop? They are a bit proprietary but well made. A decent store bought. Much better than an HP or Compaq. Have seen plenty of those.

Sony also makes a pretty sweet laptop, an they also hold up well.

Unless you live in a really rural area, this surprises me. Or the quality is good. One or the other.

Puto

This doesn't make sense.

[black people]

So what you're saying is, we should use an application that is slower and has less features because it's free? That we shouldn't use a superior, faster application with more features, because it costs money? Speed and features aren't worth money?

How poor do you have to be to come to that rationalization? Consultant poor? Living off of applications that lack ease of use and intuitive interfaces poor? Linux poor?

Re:This doesn't make sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually StarOffice is not free, OpenOffice (StarOffice minus some stuff) is free (as in RMS)

Re:This doesn't make sense.

[TheAwfulTruth]

But it is probably cheaper. Sony's customers are losing out because sony is being cheap here. Nothing more, nothing less. Everyone is hurting, especially Sony. They are cutting back on quality to save money. Pretty typical buisness.

Re:Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to whatever you are thinking, lying about OpenOffice's performance as AC on slashdot is not going to get it any more users.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Star Office Packages YOU!

More info from the still AC skeptic

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried Red Hat, Mandrake, and Suse, including all 3 most recent releases. All UI interaction (file browsing, waiting for same or sometimes comparable apps to load, app loading, you name it) other than resizing windows in Linux is slower, across the board. That's compared to 98, XP, and 2K, all compared on the same box each time. Tried 1.?? GHz+ Athlons with 256 or 512M DDR RAM, 2 PIIs (~400MHz and 500MHz IIRC) and a PIII (forget clock speed). Same results.

I also compared OO/SO vs. Office. Much slower to do everything on Windows.

Now, maybe there are some tricks or tweaks to play with Linux to get it faster, but I didn't do anything to XP to make it much faster. I could probably tweak it (less) and get a similar boost.

I'm not a troll, I'm still cross platform, and I still use Linux. I posted AC for a reason, and it was clearly confirmed, just read the responses. You zealots need to get over yourselves.

There are advantages to Linux vs. Windows, and similarly OO/SO vs. MSO, but speed is still most certainly not one of them, at least for day to day usage and UI interaction. It's like clicking into molasses a lot of the time. I'm still rooting for it, in spite of some of you hot heads.

Re:Works Suite - fixed URL

[p00p]

ahh this shitty slashcode is getting on my nerves - and you know what that means! time to ix the damned URL, eh? OpenOffice review here. Careful now!

Meaningless...like your post?

[djupedal]

ACs...where would we find joy and enlightenment without them?

And lest we all miss the meaning behind such razor sharp prescience, let it be known that in this case, someone has been given the gift of education for the upcoming Christmas holiday. Let us all hope this quick witted AC unwraps it before his/her next post.

Happy Holidays!!!

DON'T CLICK THAT LINK!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't click that link, it's a goat link!!!!

Please do not click on the cave troll's subtle attempt to get you fired.

I think everybody should be able to modify any post as troll, because then we wouldn't have to see these obvious attempts to get us fired.

Re:Is this Really a Microsoft Office Killer?

[LUN!X]

I totally disagree. OpenOffice is horrendously slow compared to Office 97/2K/XP on all my hardware from the trusty P-120 with 48MB up to P4-1.6 w/512MB. Hell, it's not even in the same class. KOffice is closer to MS Office performance, but lacks those precious 'features.'

Of course, what do I care? UltraEdit + a web browser does everything I need.

Re:Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[norkakn]

Are you sure that you configured it properly?

Star Office 5.2 worked fine for me on my PII 266 with 96RAM

Crashed less than word, fewer annoying problems and once I learned it, I found it to be faster than Word. I still like word97 for some things (hate the newer versions) but I have moved over to OO.org for most of my projects

GNU/PlayStation3 jigsaw

[rhyd]

Open office could be the last part of the jigsaw in GNU/PlayStation3. Imagine:

1. PlayStation 3 ships with 100 GB hard drive, keyboard, USB2...... fully backward compatible with PS1, PS2
2.Pre-installed OS is Linux, bundled with: open-office, mozilla , mplayer , JRE, WINE, full-on hardware accelerated X11..., and some DVR software would be great!
3.PS3 enters millions of homes, and reduces the demand for new home Pcs
4.Microsoft in world of pain!

If Sony are gonna bundle a HD with ps3 anyway whats to stop them doing this. They already have a version of Linux for the PS2, the cost would be minimal...

is this why gates is so desperate to make the Xbox a success?

I know why

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ as usual cheats. Windoze Pre-caches it.

Re:Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[MobileC]

Star Office 5.2?

Get with the upgrade cycle...

It's StarOffice 6...

Re:Works Suite - fixed URL

[Anonymous Coward]

What bug, your a retared dick that does not understand URL's.

Speed and Ram

[WindBourne]

You would think that if SO/OO is really as slow as everybody claims and as much a memory hog, that all the ram manufactuers would get solidly behind it. They would go into companies and encourage them to move to it. Hummmm....

You are being dishonest....

[anonymous cupboard]

Try comparing like with like, compare say Star Office 5.2 with Office 97. Office 97 was great for writing letters, simple letters, however when you took it to anything significant, it was slow, it crashed and the user interface plain lied about what the output would look like.

I guess you took the usual short cut and worked with small documents like business letters rather than long documents. You might be fairer to your students by giving them prepared large documents and spreadsheets to be changed.

Office 2000 is much better and is a reasonably solid product, although it still has problems with columns and object placement (forget about its DTP pretensions, MS Publisher does this much better).

Office 2000 is a great product, unless you have to pay for it (or the extra memory/faster processors). This is why some people only upgraded Office this year, because when you have several thousand users, upgrades are not to be lightly taken. Especially if it means machine upgrades and more memory.

Open Office isn't the best, but the price is right (remember we don't see educational discounts in the real world) and for a lot of cases it can replace Microsoft Office. If this means I can junk 5 copies of Office and just keep one for special ocassions, that is already a saving.

Re:You are being dishonest....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention how much you'll save when the next forced upgrade come about.

the sad truth is

[b17bmbr]

that as long as people can get a hold of office cd's, they will install it, because to them it is "free". and m$ knew this, and knows it. the sad truth is that for all their bitching about piracy, it helped them. and they knew it, and laughed all the to the bank. i know that for instance, although my school gets office for $50 a box, it is not available to teachers' personal computers for that price. you think the office97 install cd's haven't made the rounds 1-2 thousand times. ha. think again.

the big test will come when new version of windows no longer runs office97/2k.

But does the consumer see the savings?

[clickety6]

Or does Sony just bundle cheaper/less powerful software and charge the same amount and pocket the difference itself?

Star Office 5.2

[panurge]

The big annoyance I find with SO under W2k is the creation of vast temporary files. And yes, it is slower to startup and slightly slower to run than Office.

However, I get attachments from various people who are prone to macro viruses. The total absence of Office from my system means that this crap never gets a chance to run.

When I look at huge multicolored spreadsheets that actually do something that could be done far more elegantly in a three-table relational database, Word documents produced by people with the visual intelligence of a seaslug, and PP presentations that make my eyeballs go funny, I do wonder just how much highly paid make-work Office has caused in the last ten years. It would be interesting to know how much more profitable corporate America would have been if no-one had ever come up with competition for Lotus 123 and Word Perfect.

Which makes me sound, I guess, like a Luddite. But in a way the feature proliferation in Office has destroyed choice (I'm sure this is deliberate) by creating an insuperable bar to new entrants in the WP/SS field through the requirement to interoperate with the Office file formats. If SO or OO are only 90% as good as Office, they probably will not sell regardless of their other merits. What would happen to the world car market if every manufacturer, no matter what else they did, was forced to use Ford engines and transmissions? Hint: it wouldn't be bad for Ford.

It's a pity that governments and ISO don't seem to have been able to get together to develop an international standard for word processing and spreadsheet formats for official business. That might create a more level playing field and encourage a bit more real innovation in the user interface.

Re:Star Office 5.2

[doug363]

Heh. I think the reason that Excel is used in place of a database is for one main reason: Access is crap. Excel is actually faster and certainly more reliable for many things, and you can do a lot with linked sheets, lookup functions, filters, and maybe even a VBA form if you need that stuff. Not only that, but in Excel you can do more complex math and see results graphically. For many simple applications that don't need queries which trace through dozens of tables, Excel is better. As far as the back-end goes, I think Excel is the best MS-Office app by far.

Anyway, yes, I know what you mean about people wasting time with Office. But people will always find a way of wasting time. And there are some pretty clever hacked-together VBA apps in Office, despite Microsoft's obvious attempts to have VBA and Automation go the way of MS Bob. So there are some good things that have come out of it all.

Re:Star Office 5.2

[jimmyharris]

It's a pity that governments and ISO don't seem to have been able to get together to develop an international standard for word processing and spreadsheet formats for official business. That might create a more level playing field and encourage a bit more real innovation in the user interface.

The German government IS doing this and it may well spread EU wide.

http://www.1dok.org/eng/index.html

This is a turf war

[oob]

I think that outside of the cost, freedom and "chique factor" advantages to Sony for supporting StarOffice the essence of this is a tit-for-tat response to Microsoft releasing X-Box.

Unlike other OEMs, Microsoft can't push Sony around because Sony is involved in many other lucratice markets.

The Japanese (or indeed, Asian in general) technology maunfactures are getting into OpenSource (or other Microsoft alternatives) wherever they can, particularly with PDAs and embedded systems.

Europe and Australasia are overflowing with FOSS, particularly Linux.

Where is North America? Desktop and low-end server computing there looks to be destined to become like their wireless and mobile markets; stagnant and lagging behind the rest of the world.

Re:Plain beige box

[eggsovereasy]

There is a difference between a monopoly and a 'natural monopoly', the power company etc are natural monopolies.

In France it's also happening with other OEMs

[tincho_uy]

Over the last few months, I've seen an increasing number of generic (or not so well-known brands, such as Medion) systems being sold with Star Office (I think it's 5.2) in supermarkets (Carrefour, Géant, and the like).

Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet more proof that sony is willing to do absolutely anything to make more profit, even if it means bundling vastly inferior open source wares. Personally, I found that learning LaTeX was much easier and more enjoyable than using what passes for a word processer on the GNU?LINUZ platform.

POSTSCRIPT: the slashdot html program wil not let me use the HTML entity "&epsilon". Sorry.

Re:Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know that 5.2 is just plained flawed. Even Sun didn't think that it was worth charging a single cent for.

However, OOo 1.0.1 surely is far better than 5.2. OOo 1.0 is the basis of SOffice 6.0.

Try SOffice 6 now and will beat the hell out of MS Office. I use it exclusively. No more MS Office for me.

How to disable the god damn OSA.EXE

[Anonymous Coward]

> When you use the Osa.exe file to initialize
> shared code, the Office XP programs start
> faster. If the Office programs, instead of
> Osa.exe, initialize the shared code, the
> programs take longer to start." Microsoft
> already pre-loads most of the shared code on
> bootup, so you're already running portions of
> it even when you don't want to.

In order to disable OSA.EXE you can use Advanced Uninstaller from http://www.devstar-soft.com/products/au/. It's an excellent program.

This is very good news for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

If users get their first taste of non-MS applications, and find that they suck, what do you think they'll conclude from that?

And how bad does StarOffice have to be before even Slashdot admits that it's pretty poor?

Sony may have killed StarOffice in Europe for good.

It would be in Sonys interest to back Linux

[GauteL]

.. majorly in the PC-business. As it is, Microsoft is trying to take over the console-business, something Sony is not prepared to see happen. At the same time Sony is putting lots and lots of dollars into Microsofts warchest by selling PCs with Microsoft Windows preinstalled.

Sony is not alone here, IBM is another company in a similiar situation.

I think it would be in both companies interest to subsidize development of Linux desktop systems.

Macro languages

[Theatetus]

Last time I used StarOffice, you could write macros in "StarBasic" and JavaScript. Is this still true? Although VBA is probably the worst security hole in history ("Hey, boss, want to let haX0rz call the API from a PowerPoint presentation?" "Yeah, let's get them in on that!"), you can do some pretty cool stuff with it. And, if the thought of writing "code" terrifies you (and let's not forget it terrifies a lot of people, sadly), there's the macro recorder.

Oddly enough, in every office I've worked at, I've been the only person who knows how to use VBA and macros -- I'm not sure why people are willing to pay that much for software and then not even use it to its full potential.

BTW, what is Open Office's macro language? I'd love to get an office suite that would let me write macros in Scheme...

Re:Plain beige box

[mark_lybarger]

natural? what's natural about their monopoly? the power companies were given their monopoly. i'd call that more unnatural than the microsoft desktop monopoly.

Issue is cheap computer, not StarOffice adoption

[labradort]

In a typical knee-jerk fashion, people think this is about turf war. This is really about lowering the cost of the Sony computer. Do you really think people are going to use StarOffice just because it comes on the machine? Do you think people are saying

Oh yeah, StarOffice, I know that. Let's buy this machine.

Dream on.

This is about selling cheap computers, in a time that it is hard to sell them. Once the machine is home, they get their cousin Arnie to drop off his Word 2000 CDs he took home from the office for the weekend.

Sure, M$ takes a revenue hit, but the user is still in love with what they know, whether that is Wordperfect, M$ Office or HoTMetaL Pro.

Some day, if copying Arnie's CDs doesn't work, they might just be forced to send their dough to M$, and we know that is happening with XP.

Re:Is this Really a Microsoft Office Killer?

[axxackall]

Of course, what do I care? UltraEdit [ultraedit.com] + a web browser does everything I need.

Did you try Xemacs? :)

This is business

[melonman]

"chique factor" advantages to Sony for supporting StarOffice

Sorry? Chique factor? Sony's PR people must be hiding under the table. Of all the flagships that the Open Source community could choose, this is the one that has the most holes below the waterline.

the essence of this is a tit-for-tat response to Microsoft releasing X-Box.

I really don't think so. Surely it went something like this:

1. Some accountant in a suit works out that applications software contributes quite a lot to the cost of PCs, and that the market is price sensitive at present
2. the market research people confirm that a lot of customers don't care what office suite is shipped with their machine, either because they don't use it, they have a licence from their last machine or they are going to pirate Office from work anyway
3. their secretary finds a copy of Star Office on the cover disc of her son's magazine.

Sony are using Star Office because it is cheap, because it increases their margins and/or reduces their RRP. Star Office is a poor advert for OSS, and Sony are using it for the least noble of all possible reasons. So, while it isn't a bad thing, I think the street parties are premature.

Re:This is business

[clue_phone]

I do think that Sony now has an interest in not further enriching M$, given that M$ uses its monopoly income to support expanding into Sony's entertainment and games businesses.

Yet I am happy about the three points above:
1. it is free
Hooray! Someone noticed that price != value

2. it is an adequate substitute
again, why not dance? It may not be great but SOffice and OOffice mean OSS has matured to be equivalent at the apps level. How long ago did you hear, "OK so there is a GUI but there will never be an office"?

3. there is very widespread OSS awareness in the market.

No reason to call off the party ;->

Re:This is business

[melonman]

How long ago did you hear, "OK so there is a GUI but there will never be an office"?

About 30 seconds ago, when one of my clients asked if she could save a file directly onto a floppy disc from Star Office, and I told her that, unfortunately, this hangs the program and permanently locks up the floppy drive until the next reboot. Her next words were not "Where can I get a copy of this great program?". And I don't think we can blame this particular problem on MS.

And calling it OSS is a bit dubious anyway. All the development work was done by a private company. They went open source (ish) when it became clear that no-one was going to actually pay for the product. I haven't seen a whole lot of new functionality in SO or OO since.

SO is a great office suite for people who don't need an office suite. If you spend most of your time coding and want to open the odd file attachment or write the odd letter, it's great. But, as others have already posted, only a masochistic would want to use it 40 hours a day to earn your living.

Postscript & PDF

[Webmonger]

Considering that the Unix versions produce PostScript output when printing, it's surprising that Open Office doesn't support PostScript directly. Still, you can always do it the normal way-- print to file using a PostScript printer.

BTW, StarOffice is only Open Source in the sense that Mac OS X or Netscape Navigator 7 is Open Source. In other words, it's not.

Re:people actually use sony PCs??? Troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

The quality is good.

Star Office still faces some obstacles

[xmnemonic]

One area in which Star Office could be improved is its user interface. A good 90% of SO users probably use only 30% of the tools on the default toolbars. Why don't they just hide all those generally unused icons then? The power users by their nature would still find those hidden functions, in menus and/or perhaps customizing the toolbars to their liking. With a cleaner, streamlined interface they could attract new users with not only cost and power, but also ease of use and efficiency. More importantly, it would attach a significant benefit to Star Office for those who already own Microsoft Office and encourage them to switch. Cost doesn't matter to those who've already paid, and Microsoft Office is already powerful enough- only something more efficient could make people change their ways.

Re:Star Office still faces some obstacles

[xmnemonic]

Oh and I just listed hiding icons as an example of a way of improving the UI. I'd expect something much more extensive to really effect a turnover.

Why use 5.2?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard comments about how bad SO 5.2 was...so? It's not current. SO 6 and OOo 1 are.

Re:Plain beige box

[bezza]

A natural monopoly is one where it is much more inefficint to have two companies competing...for example imagine if there was a duopoly in the train network? Laying 2 sets of train tracks everywhere would be extremely wasteful and hence the train company is a natural monopoly.

Re:Is this Really a Microsoft Office Killer?

[pmz]

OpenOffice is horrendously slow compared to Office 97/2K/XP on all my hardware from the trusty P-120 with 48MB up to P4-1.6 w/512MB.

In Word 2K, I can type faster than the characters display (especially in tables)--on a 400MHz CPU, and I'm not a fast typist by any measure.

Word is a messy ugly kludge. What kind of crappy software requires faster than a 400MHz CPU for just text entry? Word is crap.

One serious advantage of OpenOffice over MS Office is that OpenOffice will always be making progress, and the GPL ensures that progress will never be lost. MS Office seems to take two steps back for each step forward.

So, if OpenOffice is too slow for your needs, there is a good chance that won't be true forever.

Star Office slower than MS Office?

[u-235-sentinel]

I remember using Star Office a few years ago and yes it was terribly slow even compared to MS Office. Over the last couple of years I've been using OpenOffice which eliminates that silly desktop Star Office seems so found of.

I understand OpenOffice source is used to build StarOffice. Perhaps eliminating the desktop would help speed things up.

General use of StarOffice seemed to be fast. The initial loading however took forever

Re:Star Office Just plain sucks! BE HONEST!

[Anonymous Coward]

And Office is a great product, yes it is bloated, but you can do *alot* in it.

Try not to emphasise your basic English errors.

Xbox arguments are BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony is more balkanized than the Balkans. It took years for Sony Online Entertainment to produce a version of EverQuest for the PlayStation, and those departments are practically side-by-side. The idea of the PC division making a decision for the benefit of Sony Computer Entertainment is ludicrous.

Re:Plain beige box

[Anonymous Coward]

no... train company is NOW a monopoly because it is a gov't funded company (AMTRAK) that has no competition. everyone flies or drives (car bus etc) now. trains are outmoded for personal transportation.

Dok1

[panurge]

It's a local government initiative and limited in scope.

Linux is just barely catching up with Windows 3.1

[Dr. Evil]

Printing is still a little flaky under Linux, most apps try for Postscript, and you had better hope you have everything configured properly. There are still heaps of problems rendering fonts consistently on the printer and on the screen, but those are being addressed.

Last I checked, Abiword still hasn't quite gotten that font issue sorted out, which still puts it a bit behind MS Write, neither do footnotes, so both apps are out of the question for students taking any arts courses.

OpenOffice also has some ugly fonts, but some people have figured out how to make them look pretty. I don't know how well it prints on their machines though.

Adding and removing fonts can be done graphically, which is something I've read that Linux can do recently. I don't think it is in Debian stable though. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Windows 3.1 seems to have the sound thing figured out. Yeah you need to load a DOS driver to get your DOS applications to recognise your card, but the Windows apps don't seem to have any problem figuring out OSS vs. ALSA vs. esd.

MS Office works well on Windows 3.1, as does Internet Explorer. The versions are a little old, but they're easier to use and more version-compatible with modern versions of MS Office than anything on Linux. The dialer is dead easy to set up with IE too.

The desktop metaphor is poor on Win3.1. But then it is probably easier to figure out the Program Manager and alt-tab than it is to figure out any given Linux setup.

The file manager is pretty slick. It's not consistent with the other apps, but the same can be said for any given file manager on Linux.

The Win3.1 clipboard is to die for. It beats Linux hands-down. OLE was a bad idea, but working with grapics and text throughout dissimilar applications and in just about any application or dialogue box is dead easy. Printscreen and Alt-printscreen is a nice touch too.

On the other hand, Win3.1 can't multitask for its life, won't do 3d, has trouble with unstable applications taking down the OS, hits resource limitations if you get the colour depth too high, has a big DLL hell issue... but then what do you expect for an OS designed 10 years ago for 1/10th of the hardware.

Still, Linux is getting there... soon it will be better than Windows 3.1 on hardware 10 to 20 times as large and fast.

Real soon now...

Does it really make a difference?

[Black Rabbit]

What planet are you from?

Most people will be content with whatever in placed in front of them because they usually don't know what else might be out there.

Back in the Dark Days of Win3x, we sent out our systems with Wordperfect 5.2, Harvard Graphics, Lotus 123 and Groupwise on them. When we were forced by government policy to switch to MS Office, outside of a few troubles caused by file incompatibilities, Word not being able to properly import the WP files that pre-existed, we had very little trouble doing it.

So what it boils down to is a) most of the time the worker bees have very little to say about what their PC comes with, and b) it doesn't really make much of a difference. Therefore, if our government decided to go with Linux and OpenOffice, then that's what people would run!

IMHO, it's all the backroom politicking that puts up the real barriers for Linux breaking into big markets like government. If governm,ent were really serious about saving money, they would look at exactly this combination, instead of continuing the M$ imposed cycle of constant upgrades.

Active Desktop...

[nickos]

Although Active Desktop is pretty useless and a waste of resources, the functionality that's set up with Active Desktop (around IE4?) is pretty useful for Windows users. For example, I started a new job 2 weeks ago, and they gave me an NT4 machine with IE6 (they'd skipped IE4 and thus Active Desktop). Since Active Desktop allows the HTML control to be used by explorer.exe, I can't have toolbars on the taskbar (I miss "Show Desktop") or drag things to the start menu. I've also partly written software for one employer that required that client machines have Active Desktop, and it's a complete nightmare to get users to uninstall to IE4 before upgrading to IE6!

facts (anecdotic, but still facts)

[fferreres]

I run a server and have been lucky enough not to have to upgrade anything except SSL. It's fairly stable, and requirement because I live far away from our server.

root@core:~# uptime
6:29pm up 267 days, 22:54, 1 user, load average: 2.78, 2.18, 1.68
root@core:~#

In my laptop, I use Linux mostly (99,9%). I like the fact that it never crashes, but the mosre important thing I like is nobody is forcing me to upgrade in any way. I am not afraid of command line utils, and find them very usefull.

I am a happy user. The conversion was painfull (effort needed) but rewarding. I can use VNC to access my sisters Windows desktop (she needs autocad), or access GUI apps on my server as well as local apps. There is nothing that makes me want to use Windows as a desktop. I want to use some Windows applications and like some Windows features, but the Linux advantages far outweight it.

I mean, don't just use or try Linux because it's cheaper. Use it because it's better, more flexible and you learn things that will not change with the next forced upgrade. I mean, have you invested in learning Visual Basic? Or Office macro (which version of the macros?). All that knoledge will go to the sink now. You are much better off knowing Windows (but not the propietary stuff that may change any second) and the rest of the open standard (real programming languages, real generic porpuse scripting language, etc.)

All in all, why should my desktop be controlled by Windows? It's not even a multiuser OS in a desktop sense! That means you lock one PC for one user at a time (try having multiple remote desktops for multiple users at the same time under windows, you can't except with Citrix or other hacks).

I agree, Works is exactly what most users need!

[aquarian]

Works is great because it does exactly what most users need -- basic word processing, address book, database, etc., and it's all seamlessly integrated. The only problem is the proprietary file formats and being able to share data -- undoubtedly an obstacle created by Microsoft to get people to "upgrade" to Office.

BTW, Claris Works is pretty good too. GoBe Productive is the same kind of thing -- geeks only think it's cooler because of its 'nix origin. With no prior knowledge and no super-sophisticated needs, most people would be way more productive with any of these programs than with Office.

Home users who ask me for PC advice usually get this answer from me -- buy a Mac, or an XP machine with Works.

Re:people actually use sony PCs??? Troll?

[myowntrueself]

I live in New Zealand, so the entire country counts as a rural area.

Your document disproves your point.

[zipwow]

The thing the document is talking about is the use of monopoly power to squash competition in other markets.

Your linked document doesn't spin it that way, but that's what it means.

To clarify, here's a quote from the FTC that spells things out more directly:

While it is not illegal to have a monopoly position in a market, the antitrust laws make it unlawful to maintain or attempt to create a monopoly through tactics that either unreasonably exclude firms from the market or significantly impair their ability to compete.

-Zipwow

Maybe you should start to realise that...

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a whole WORLD beyond USA...

Sony may make a Microsoft lover out of you

[allvi_singer]

The Japanese government using laws and funds supports the Sony Corporation. This is a reasonable and legal function for a government to perform. In contrast the US government attacks Microsoft with lawsuits for being a extremely competitive and rich company. They say Microsoft controls too much of a ****et sector. It's true, Microsoft does control a large part of it's ****et segment. But Microsoft is nothing compared to Sony. Sony is a monopoly that controls a large part of several ****et segments both vertically and horizontally. For example Sony controls or has a major presents in all of the following.: Desktop and portable PC's, PDAs, small software apps, home phones, cell phones, TVs, Camcorders, Mini disks, home stereos, car stereos, walkmans, video games, A major motion picture company, Music Labels, and lastly drive units; Video, DVD, VCD, CD-CDR, floppy, USB storage keys. Guess who makes 90% of all flat screen tv's in the world? Guess who makes the camcorders for the majority of the other major brand names in the ****et. Guess who created an absolute monopoly with mini-disks? Guess who is spending millions on software development? Guess who is likely to get an even more overpriced Sony OS to go with their over priced Sony TV in the future? Well, it may be all of us. If so, we will all be wishing for the good old days of Microsoft rule. Why do Americans and their government always attack those Americans and American Companies who are successful?

Last Post!

[alpg]

... it is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the
sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other
words... their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their
superficial design flaws.
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, on the products
of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...