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MS vs. Open Source Office Suite Compatibility
Anonymous Coward writes "Though Microsoft may soon be blocking Office suite compatability with open source productivity tools, in the mean time Hal Varian (of Berkeley) has conducted the Microsoft Office-Linux Interoperability Experiment which shows a surprising amount of interoperability. Hey, another reason NOT to upgrade to the new version!"
That's what slashdat needs. Spalling is not "compatable" with nerdness. At least the British are coherent in their massacring of the latin vowels.
"Hey, another reason NOT to upgrade to the new version!"
New version of what? The Microsoft or the OpenOffice?
If OpenOffice, is there something wrong with it? Please, tell me, why shouldn't I upgrade?!
...compatible (only) with Microsoft Paper XP
you may find the Higgs in this signature.
As they say themselves, this was based on files downloaded from the Internet, which were probably designed in order to be viewed by the greatest number of people.
Hmmm... Then again, putting MS Office files on the Internet, instead of PDF of plain HTML probably means the user do not have enough computer knowledge to optimize said files. So, it's a good point.
On the other hand, I am surprised that the numbers for StarOffice are greater than the numbers for OpenOffice... How come?
Anyway, this is good news, and should be a valuable lesson for most people with PHBs... =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Of course we need to upgrade....We need to see how annoying the new animated logos are
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
School papers need one other important features: the ability to quickly repaginate after changing fonts, margins, and spacing!
Tell that to a friend of mine that submitted a design for a web book search database, which would be maintained by the school Liberian.
Help children born unable to swallow - www.tofs.org.uk
Are password protected files supported in any free office application?
.xls files with OpenOffice 1.0, but then again it could be he was just too stupid to enter the correct password ;)
I think my father once had problems with opening password protected
Per Abrahamsen
Church of Emacs
Regrettably, I think I found a use for clippy that's about on par. I started letting my preschooler play with Word with one of them visible. Later, I invested a whopping 12 or so hours to make a "game" that teaches the alphabet using the Agent control. That was my undoing.
Now, whenever I open Word and I forgot to hide the assistant, my son (from the other side of the house, mind you) will run screaming from the other side of the house to play his game or type on Word. On the way, he usually racks up 1 or 2 cats, the dog, and at least one piece of furniture. When he gets to the computer, he finds me trying to get started on a report for school.
Him: "I want to play my game, daddy"
Me: "Not right now. I've gotta do something for school"
Him: "That's not fair."
Me: "Sorry, bud, but I have to get this done."
Him (Alternate 1): "You want a piece of me?" (Assumes Jet Lee pose)
Him (Alternate 2): "I'm gonna pop a cap in your ass, daddy." (Thank his mother for that one...)
I for one have happily made the transition to OpenOffice because, well, it's just safer...
If you include Wine in the mix, then the answer is a resounding...sometimes.
The competition should have scored major bonus points for not using clippy! That annoying little Fscker!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
And if Office did save as *pdf, Adobe would scream bloody murder and probably successfully sue under antitrust.
I had a similar experience. I bought an olympus digital camera, took a movie clip. My linux box had no problem viewing the clip (mpeg format?). Mplayer had the codecs. We have a fresh XP installed box at work, so I plugged the camera in to show the clip, assuming that it would work. No, didn't recognize the format.
When the linux desktop becomes a competitive threat, MS will start matching features, such as packaging all the various formats. Antitrust complaints won't work anymore. With a stroke, all the competitors of Microsoft will be blown away. Expect them to start doing heavy linux development soon.
Derek
"I have actually heard of someone creating a spreadsheet, then adding up the figures with an idiot-calculator and entering this in the total box"
You must be referring to my old boss. We were doing a budget on an $40,000,000 construction project and the final column total was off by $1.00. He threw a snit and required it be fixed by just filling in the final amount by hand.
The problem was caused by rounding, but no one could be bothered to use a proper round() function - just click the little widget on the Excel button bar and those pesky cents dissapear!
His more fundamental problem was that he viewed computers as glorified typewriters, good only for making spiffy output for the monthly report. This really came to roost when, while doing Primavera scheduling runs, the project showed as running late. As this was unacceptable for the monthly report, he would cut logic ties and arbitrarily change values until the schedule was "acceptable" for inclusion in the monthly report. This went on for months, and then he couldn't understand at the end why the job was ACTUALLY LATE!
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Correct, but I'd venture that most software would suffer from that, not just M$ Office.
Strange, I can open any document that I've created between 1989 & 2003 with any version of my word processor suite.
God love ya, vi & tex.
Belloc
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.