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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."
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.
--sdem
It beats the cheesy Works Suite that people end up using because it bundles with their OEM PC.
My American Vaio came with Corel Office.
Sony's been shipping stuff other than office for a long time.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
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.
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?
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.
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?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
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.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
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.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Is there a better GUI app for charts than OpenOffice or Gnumeric? or do I have to learn the command line of gnuplot?
"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.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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.
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
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.
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.
Mmmm.. Donuts
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.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
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.
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.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
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.
Intelligent Life on Earth
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?
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
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
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).
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
...and maybe not. I'll give you the benifit of the doubt and respond as if you are not troling.
/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.
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
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.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
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...
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.
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
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
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.
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.
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.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
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
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
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!!!
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.
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.
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.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
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.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Or does Sony just bundle cheaper/less powerful software and charge the same amount and pocket the difference itself?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
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.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
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.
.. 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.
Did you try Xemacs? :)
Less is more !
"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:
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.
Virtually serving coffee
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.
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.
Less is more !
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.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
It's a local government initiative and limited in scope.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
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...
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.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
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.
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.
unfinished: (adj.)
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).
unfinished: (adj.)
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.
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:
-ZipwowI don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.