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Sun to Offer Support for OpenOffice.org
An anonymous reader writes "NewsForge.com [ed. note: Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN] is reporting that Sun announced today they will offer both free and for-pay support for OpenOffice.org. The story says the cost will be about the same as that it is charging for StarOffice, the proprietary cousin of OO.org."
This is good because now Open Office will compete with Microsoft Office on *every* level.
While I personally can't see the need to pay for programs that are easier to use than my electric toothbrush or mom's VCR, I bet lots of less-than-dextrous-office-chimps have oodles of questions and concerns about the new office programs.
Where this really hits home is in those dreaded product direction meetings; now we can fight for OO by saying things like, "well it comes with Sun's free techsup and if we extra care, we can order it at a fraction of the cost of Microsoft product support!"
Buh Bye Billy Gates; I knew you shouldn't have pissed off most of your users.
Each time I demonstrate Open Office to a friend, they are surprised that such an interoperable (With MS Office) office suite exists. My favorite is to provide them with a copy of the Open CD, which has a number of free and Open Source Software distributions.
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troll blacklist. Please mo
This means they don't have to spend as much money on usability testings... Use the customers for feedback.
This is one thing that will help companies except open source is support. Companies are scared of open source to some degree as if something like OO goes wrong there is no-one who can offer support there and then.
Its nice to have someone to speak to on the phone who know what they are talking about as well as sometimes having someone to blame
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I tried OO.o for a while. I was quite surprised to not find newsgroups particularly for OO.o. Would it be difficult to have these newsgroups created and propogated to the various servers? That way users can help each other in an easily reachable manner.
alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"
To be honest, I can't imagine what kind of support you need for an office suite once it is install (maybe that's it!), however, if this means the leary will consider OpenOffice, woo hoo! I work in education and OpenOffice has allowed once-useless donated computers to become a real tool without massive costs for licenses.
Re:Just by star then?
In Corporate America, they teach you how to spell "buy". Misspelling "buy" is an unforgivable crime. Buy, buy, buy. Buy from us. From U.S.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This is a good thing, though. Not because the Sun support will really help all that many folks, but because of the appearance of legitimacy it lends to OOO.
And a big plus: it flips a solar middle finger at Microsoft. Jyahh!
sigs, as if you care.
Seems to me this is may be the sort of large enterprise lip-service support that comes with most software. Basically help with and install issue or maybe a bug, but if you want help with how to do something - you are still out of luck.
Better than offering support as described above (which should be free IMHO), would be to get O'Reilly et al to write looks about OO.o and the migration from office. Even specific edditions for Office 97/2000/XP would be applicable.
That would be better that someone helping me install the software.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Maybe OOo comes with your linux distribution or your XP pre-installed machine and you don't want to fuss with installing Star Office.
Yay, another phone number to call and wait in line for - I'm sure that MSO users will relish the benefits of installing OOo and waiting in the phone queue to Sun for support - can we look forward to extra fees too?
Seriously, this is excellent news IMHO, given that Sun already has the infrastructure to support SO, they can leverage the same for OOo.
As others have (or will) point(ed) out, this is no guarantee for more market penetration, but I'm sure that small business users will be able to at least feel more comfortable with the concept of a central support point.
Of course, it will take some time until end-users will leverage the Internet for support. To this day it still amazes me that users will phone me to solve their IT problem - generally in the form of: "I'm getting 'error 43b: The widget cannot be broken.' errors, how do I fix it?" - my response is to uhm and ah for as long as it takes to type the error into Google and hit return.
The user is continually flabbergasted that I know the answer. I then tell them that I just used Google, how I used it and that they could too - for some reason they still call me... go figure.
Go Sun!
|>>?
... for anyone who read the AOL PC story last week. AOL's ad clearly lists the Office suite supported by Sun.
But The more people that switch to OO, the more attractive switching to Linux becomes. If your company is already using OO then they could switch to Linux and let their users keep the same office suite.
In Conclusion: Go OpenOffice Go
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
According to Sun's official OpenOffice support page, OpenOffice 1.1 is only supported on Windows, Solaris, and Linux...in other words, only platforms where StarOffice also exists...
No offense, but the two products are so similar that it wouldn't be too difficult to learn how do do things yourself. The ONLY major setback would be if your class utilized the scripting language of Office (in my experience, most Office-centric intro classes don't do this.)
Not Free(as in beer). Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
Why does it matter, CoboyNeal posted an informative comment, just because he is trying to gain karma points by having a similar name to CowboyNeal doesnt mean that his comments aren't good, dont moderate because of his name, moderate because of his comments, and if you have to, moderate me as offtopic/flamebait for defending him.
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
My guess is that it's not TRUE support (ie You can't call up and ask how to align your margins just so).
It's more likely that this is just "Put the CD in the tray, click this, then that, etc."
OR, since StarOffice and OpenOffice.org are so similar, Sun feels that they can support both (I'm guessing this wouldn't be the free support). To be honest, it makes sence to try to open a new cash flow, because the products are VERY similar.
Not Free(as in beer). Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
If OO competes too well with M$word, then Micro$oft is likely to make their next version incompatible with OO or incompitable enough that people will be reluctant to switch. Then there's "shovel wear", the mass of M$ stuff that they charge you for (it's in the price for that new computer) but they pretend is free, which fools the masses into believing the only reason to use OO or other non-M$ wear is to save a buck.
-Turnip Onion --- Neither micro nor $oft. Linux is a fine tool.
Do you think the actual phone support reps will be in India? Just curious, not that its a bad thing... There have been a lot of slashdot stories about open source projects over there lately and it would seem to make sense.
SCO: 800-726-8649
Verisign: 800-361-8319, 888-642-9675
Diebold: 800-433-VOTE (8683)
Have you tried OpenOffice on Win2k/XP? I tried it and recall it was pretty decently speedy - mind you this was a while ago, so my memory would be faulty. These days I use Office XP, despite the feel-bad MS factor, since I have lots of document exchange to do with Windows users, and I don't want my files to be imported "almost right".
compiled with -o4 -funroll-loops and Open Office 1.1.1 installed with Ximian enchancements
I'm hoping that was a typo, because I'm 90% sure that there is no -O4 option to GCC. -O(1|2|3|s) is valid, but -O4 doesn't do jack. (which might be why you aren't getting the performance you should.)
Another option would be to put your proccessor in make.conf (Can't remember where it is off th top of my head, but scan through make.conf and you'll find it). It will then use processor specific optimizations to speed up programs. This will effectivly make any binaries processor specific (ie p3 binaries can only run on a p3), but it should speed things up even more.
Gentoo 1.4 with kernel 2.6.0-test12
exclusiveley for games thanks to the Optimized gaming kernel and WineX
Sorry dude, but that just makes me thing you're a troll. Those two are mutually exclusive. You can't be running 2.6.0-test* while at the exact same time running the gaming sources. can't happen unless you are running bochs or something, in which case it's no wonder you're getting horrible performance.
My suggestion would be to install the binary port for openoffice (ie emerge openoffice-bin). Sometimes the larger programs seem to choke on certain processor optimizations. For example, I had problems when I compiled my own firebird, so I installed the binary version, and it fixed everything.
Either do that, or try recompiling it with the -Os option. Since it will be optimized for size, it won't take as long to load the binary into memory, and you'll (hopefully) see some performance gains. This seems to be the common consensus on the gentoo forums, anyway.
Not Free(as in beer). Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
StarOffice is Sun's product, designed for businesses; OpenOffice is what individuals use at home (why pay when there's no real difference?). Sun wants people to be comfortable with StarOffice and perhaps suggest/demand/support its use in offices, so what they're doing is supporting the home users of the almost identical home counterpart.
Basically, they're encouraging people to use a free product at home so that they can charge for it in the office. It's a very smart move.
GL
Sooner or later, MS is going to integrate MS Office into their operating system (in the name of enhancement)... deja vu... all over again..
I had used a version of StarOffice on Windows 2000 a few years back, and found it to be somewhat slow and occasionally counterintuitive.
However, for ~6 months I have been using OpenOffice on my Windows XP box. I was prompted again to make the switch because I desired a German dictionary as well for the spell checker. It's a lot speedier than I remember StarOffice to be (and I'm still running on the same machine).
I have kept around MS Office at my wife's insistance, but I do all my work in OOo, especially because I work frequently on Linux at school/work (and am using it more frequently at home, too). I love the pdf exporter, and my documents (albeit, never very complex) have imported just fine.
"Yarrgh! I be just a paintin' of a head..."
Sun already offers support for all life on earth.
It would be something of a desparation move if they did. Right now, OSes and Office suites provide two distinct and large profit streams. It is common opinion that Windows and Office are the only things making MS money. In any case, that is where they make most of their money.
Sure they could integrate at least a significant portion of Office into Windows to kill nascent competition. But this would reduce them to one primary profit center that would be smaller than the two separate ones. I suppose they could sell an "Advanced Office Funtionality" package but it wouldn't be as profitable. It couldn't be. They would have to integrate at least as much functionality as OpenOffice provides and not significantly raise the price of Windows.
It might even make things easier on their competition. Since OpenOffice functionality becomes the basic benchmark, their competitors would know to explicity target the what the "Advanced Functionality" product provides.
If nothing else, such an integration move would tell me that Open and StarOffice have caused MS significant pain.
To my way of thinking this is where the honest money in the IT business should be made: Support, Support, Support. Instead of paying lawyers bundles of cash protecting intellectual property, train and pay support personnel that can actually help people. I have the crazy idea that a lot of people might be willing to pay for such service especially if the service were effective and, hence, not outrageously expensive. There is, of course, the obvious caveat that the so called nerds that don't need that sort of thing won't be anxious to pay but there are still a lot of semi-computer-literate users out there that could benefit and know it. redsilo
Um, I hate to rain on this parade, but I downloaded Open Office 1.0.2, used it for a couple of months, and was thrilled...at first. It was really great to be able to use free software. Worked great.
.doc and .xls, just in case, and I am sure glad I did. After several months of use, I started to notice weird errors in my Excel files. The screen on Excel was all wigged out, and some of the formatting was trashed. I had to go back to older versions of my files, and re-enter data. Not fun.
Using OO, I saved my existing files in the Microsoft file formats as
After 3-4 months of this, I recently switched back to MS Office, whereupon I found that my Excel files had weird errors, which I now manually had to go fix. In addition, sometimes I couldn't type in the data entry box, or see what I was typing. Similarly, my resume in Word lost its proper formatting and bullet points. I am not at all a happy camper about this, and have fully switched back to MS Office.
Don't bother to write me about how much better OO 1.1 is, I've got work to do. I'm a small business owner, and I don't have time for this nonsense. It's easier just to pay the hardware vendor a couple of hundred extra dollars every 3-4 years, when I replace my PC. Time is money.
For the record, I don't use Macros or anything fancy, just normal Excel with some formatting, and I also use 'window freeze' and group/ungroup. This is all on Windows 98.