Why You Should Choose MS Office Over OO.org

sander writes "As noted on linxfr.org, Microsoft has published a competitive guide on OpenOffice.org 1.1 vs Microsoft Office. Some of the weirder things they claim in it is that by choosing MS Office over OpenOffice.org one is protected from the threat of viruses. But the giant seems to be sweating -- and with a good reason."

Comments

Fallacies

[FractusMan]

Fascinating use of "facts" and "logic" going on here. Let me start with this one: "...Basic feature functionality that enables content authoring is only one small aspect of what a small business needs. Businesses need to:..."

Well, that's a great argument. No, it isn't. The opening line was, "Open Office is good enough. I only need basic functionality." And Microsoft's response is, "No, you don't! You need more than that!" Well, thanks. I'm glad you know what we need more than we do.

Another argument they make is "User support such as training (OpenOffice UI, although similar in many ways to Office, is not the same and users may require 'retraining')."

Well, that's also swell! I'm glad Microsoft has assumed that we'd need retraining, because obviously everyone was originally trained using MS Office. I'm glad they assume that. That makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. So what about everyone who hasn't had training in either?

I'll leave the rest of the fallacies to more experienced users than myself.

Re:Fallacies

[Ayaress]

After a couple years using WordPerfect, it took me about an hour (during which I still managed to get things done) to get used to MS Works. It was maybe 15 minutes (during which I managed to get work done, again) to get used to MS Office. OO took me a couple hours (and again, I still typed up a term paper in that time).

Yes, people require retraining to use a word processor they aren't familiar with, but it's not like you have to send them off to boot camp for nine weeks.

Re:Fallacies

[mr.capaneus]

Sorry to break it to you, buddy, but MS Office compatibility is not a "basic funcionality". It is a requirement born of Microsoft's monopoly. If MS were to release the Word document specs then other people could write compatible files. As it is, there are plenty of other options (i.e. pdf and rtf) and as soon as MS loses an appreciable amount of market share to any other text editor, it will be a moot point. As consumers we really need to demand an open standard. If we could ever get to that point, life would be much easier for all of us.

Re:Fallacies

[peterpi]

"I'm glad Microsoft has assumed that we'd need retraining, because obviously everyone was originally trained using MS Office."

Well, that the truth isn't it? For every slashdot headline about some school, college or course teaching some 'other' Office suite, there's hundreds teaching MS Office. Even if they had no training at all, Microsoft Office is what most people have had prior expeirence of, so some readjustment will be required.

I agree that for computer literate users the move would go unnoticed, and so MS' argument is a bit weak, but so much of Office (Word in particular) is learnt parrot fashion. For the person who thinks Word is the computer, retraining would be required.... but not too much! :)

Re:Fallacies

[micromoog]

Try making a table in OO.o and then displaying it in Word some time.

Done and done. It works fine. Thanks for the FUD.

Re:Fallacies

[Drishmung]

Do you mean "homogeneous", i.e. "all the same"? Not "heterogeneous", "all different".

Not trying to be a grammar Nazi, but the words mean totally opposite things.

I disagree that a homogeneous environment is better, because it's not practical. Do you never exchange documents with other organizations? Unless you can force the whole world (or at least the bits you communicate with) to use the exact same versions, you need to be able to support diversity. If you want everyone in your organization to use the same version, you can't upgrade anyone until you can upgrade everyone. Upgrades will be few and far between; painful, feared and hated.

Re:Fallacies

[EtherMonkey]

ARGUMENT: License cost is only a small part of the total cost of ownership.

FACT: License cost is a significant part of the cost at $369-479 per PC (per CDW.com) for MS-Office 2003 Standard/Professional.

ARGUMENT: Installation and deployment costs

FACT: Many of the same methods used to deploy MS-Office work equally well, or better with Open Office. There are no software keys or other serial numbers to deal with in Open Office. You do not need to invest time and money into administering software licenses, audit trails and license compliance reports with Open Office. You do not need to worry about entering 25-digit CDKey codes on each PC or performing Microsoft Product Activation. You do not need a Microsoft Passport or the risk of associated unintentional information disclosure to use Open Office.

ARGUMENT: Existing MS-Office users will need retraining to use Open Office.

FACT: Like the retraining necessary when MS-Office 95 users were forced to move to MS-Office 97? And again to MS-Office 2000? And again to XP/2002? And, though to a lesser extent, again to 2003?

What happens when students, either due to school policy or an individual effort to save money, grow up using Open Office instead of Microsoft office? Won't this argument then get turned on its head?

ARGUMENT: Open Office does not have an email client, so customers may incur cost to get one.

FACT: Netscape? Mozilla? Pheonix? Eudora? Pegasus Mail? Outlook Express? Need I go on?

ARGUMENT: Businesses need to exchange documents with other businesses.

FACT: HTML and PDF are the two most widely used formats for sharing documents with other businesses, and both are natively written and read in Open Office, without the need to spend $200 more on Acrobat Writer. Microsoft's argument exposes their belief that they should and do monopolize the office productivity marketplace, or else how could they argue that MS-Office format files are more portable than PDF or HTML?

ARGUMENT: Ensure their mission-critical data is protected from virus attack.

FACT: Like those pesky office macro viruses? Or the dozens of exploits for Outlook? Or the fact that VBScript does not properly implement sandbox security? And since when is Microsoft so concerned about viruses? Hell, they used to include antivirus software at no additional charge with Windows 3.x. We now pay 4x more for Windows and Microsoft REMOVED the antivirus features from the OS!

ARGUMENT: Microsoft ... providing [support] resources where, when and how you need them. OpenOffice users have to search the web for answers.

FACT: I see no difference between searching Microsoft's website and newsgroups for answers than searching OpenOffice.org's, except that in Microsoft's case I get anectdotal answers (this worked for me) or (I learned this trick at work), whereas with OpenOffice, there's a chance I can talk to someone who KNOWS THE SOURCE CODE.

Of course, I can pay Microsoft for support if I really need it. After spending $125 I usually have to wait on hold for over an hour to speak with someone with an accent so bad that I have to get everything spelled to understand the answer.

ARGUMENT: MS-Office documents may not open properly in Open Office and visa-versa.

FACT: Isn't this Microsoft's fault? After all, they are the ones that keep changing their applications to make interoperability more and more difficult with each release.

Re:Fallacies

[phasm42]

You forget that part of the reason MS's format gained dominance is because their programs were good at opening up their competitors' files, and they could save in their competitors' file formats too. If OO is to succeed, it needs to be able to do the same. Not that MS has made this easy... but that's what has to happen.

Re:Fallacies

[johnlcallaway]

If the retraing argument were true, then no one should ever upgrade MS products. I just installed XP on a new computer and have spent weeks trying to learn the damn thing. They moved everything, and even setting things back to classic mode still has quirks. I still can't get it to use my Samba server, it sees the server but can't open even public shares. (OK .. I haven't really been working that hard at it, I just assumed that it would work like EVERY OTHER NON-XP SYSTEM IN THE HOUSE!!!)

Re:Fallacies

[BollocksToThis]

OK, now instead of creating a poxy one table "test document", open MS Word, create a document with actual content, apply liberal and inconsistent formatting, and then use spaces to line things up (you know, just like you are a regular office secretary who doesn't know you can use tab stops or other 'tricky' things like that). Insert a table if you like. Be sure to use bullet points, and add headers and footers.

Once done, save into Word 97 format. Now get OpenOffice to open that and make it look like it did in Word. It's just about impossible.

When a document is created in a sane way (by a person who has experience with Word), OpenOffice works like a charm. Unfortunately, most people aren't experienced with Word (and most "training" doesn't tell them what they need to know, like why it keeps changing the font if you move to the last line), and they create crappy documents. As soon as the document looks different in OO, they *hate* the new software, and it often never gets a second chance.

Re:Fallacies

[Mr_Huber]

ARGUMENT: Businesses need to exchange documents with other businesses.

Does anyone else see the irony in distributing this document as a pdf rather than a word doc?

Hmm, very little is said about features...

[coupland]

One of the things I find most interesting about this guide is how much it focuses not on how MS-Office is better but on the many inconveniences you will suffer by switching away from it. They focus on the pains of data migration, macros, and training. And to the question "What if OpenOffice has all the features I need" they don't attempt to refute the claim, they point to all the pain you will feel when MS-Office users start sending their "full-featured" documents to people who only have OpenOffice. MS-Office was feature-complete as of Office 95, everything else is not simply window dressing, it's down-right irritating

Re:Hmm, very little is said about features...

[The-Dalai-LLama]

"They focus on the pains of data migration, macros, and training"

Ah, the trials of a monopoly. Once you've attained complete market saturatation, your only option to is to keep locking in your current users more and more tightly. It's a bitch moving an Access database to another version of Access, let alone another suite entirely.

The Dalai LLama
A watched comment never gets modded...

Re:Hmm, very little is said about features...

[js3]

remember it's competitive guide for sales people who probably don't know everything about open office. It's supposed to guide them on how to respond to OOo questions when they go about trying to sell MS office.

I suspect more and more of their sales partners around the world are coming under increasing fire about open office that's why they put out the guide

Its a beautiful thing!

[KingReuben]

Inch by lonely inch, the Open Source Movement/Linux/whateveryouwannacallit matures and grows more powerful.

And M$ says they won't release a new version for (what was it?) three years? Five?

Meanwhile the opensource coders and fans continue whittling away in the trenches, refining their dreams and ever more gradually making MS look pretty damned bad and ugly.

I think of where Linux distros are today compared to 5 years ago -- and I think about where they will be 5 years ahead!!

It's a beautiful thing!

Time to check out Open Office

[MissP]

Hmmm. If Microsoft considers OpenOffice a sufficiently mature product that it warrants a comparison, then I guess it is time for me to compare.

Re:Time to check out Open Office

[dtfinch]

It works quite well from my experience, and something that caught my attention is that by default saves documents into zip compressed xml files that are usually a fraction of the size of MSOffice documents (often 1/10th) and allows for easier integration with other applications.

I'm really annoyed by the sun shaped clippy ripoff though. Haven't figured out how to disable it yet. You'd think they'd learn from Microsoft's mistakes.

The only thing we still need Office for is to work with existing Access databases. But non-development systems can still get along well with the OpenOffice + royaltee-free Access Runtime setup, so the full MS Office is only needed on a few systems at our company.

Good

[KoopaTroopa]

Many of the same people who could possibly be swayed by this probably haven't heard of OpenOffice.org anyway. This is free publicity.

I can't imagine anyone seriously basing their purchasing decisions off of such a document, although I'm sure someone here has an acquaintance who can disappoint my small amount of faith in humanity.

Re:Good

[autumnpeople]

I don't think that is the point of the document. It is aimed at partners to use against their customer claims that they don't need word, as they already have OO.o and it works for them...

Unresolved bugs.

[NeoBeans]

That is one of the things that stuck out to me... Given the longstanding bugs in Windows, and the lack of support to end-users when bugs do occur, I'd say this is a case of the pot calling the stainless steel pan black.

Re:Unresolved bugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd really like to use something other than microsoft office, but I am simply chained down because on most college campuses, everything is "powerpoint lecture" or the syllabus is a Word .doc file. If there was an open source alternative to powerpoint that was significantly better and for efficient with an editor that was extremely simplistic (anyone can pick it up) it may have a chance of taking over powerpoint, but it just seems that so many people think of presenting lectures automatically think powerpoint. Ever heard of blackboard? blackboard sucks, it's a cruddy implementation of a great idea. what do i imagine? something that could be called openboard. an OO implementation that is far better than anyone. that allows excellent online communication with students.

Re:Unresolved bugs.

[TwinkieStix]

That's not totally openoffice's fault. If your friend would have sent you the file in an open format, then you wouldn't have had a problem.

Let's look at it in reverse. Your friend has openoffice and you only have Word. He sends you the sxw file, and you can't open it. Now your argument would be that Word isn't ready because it can't read openoffice files.

Now, I know it's not the same thing because doc is standard, closed, but standard. But, if he would have sent you a file in HTML, PDF or, best, RTF (which is, by the way, an older standard than Word), it would have looked fine in either word processor.

I've had the problem you are talking about between two MS Word users exchanging DOC files. Openoffice, in my opinion, treats sxw files better than word treats DOC files.

Re:Unresolved bugs.

[Master of Transhuman]

At City College of San Francisco, my instructors also use PowerPoint and Word docs.

Open Office opens them fine in Windows and Linux and AbiWord opens DOC files fine under Linux.

The instructors aren't getting that fancy with their PowerPoints and Word docs that you need Office to handle them, most likely.

Re:Unresolved bugs.

[phoenix_rizzen]

You need to separate "reading other people's docs" from "creating my own docs".

Use whatever office suite you want to create your own documents. Use OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, KOffice, GNOME Office, Wordperfect Office, SmartSuite. Hell, use notepad if you really want.

For viewing other people's documents (including presentations) just grab the viewer apps for those formats. Microsoft provides free viewers for all office formats since 97 in their Word Viewer, Excel Viewer, and PowerPoint Viewer software (free downloads from the Office site). There's also the Inso Corporation viewers and QuickView which supports just about every office / image format under the sun.

Just because someone else decides they need to use Office, doesn't mean you have to.

Re:Unresolved bugs.

[pingveno]

Unfortunately, MS doesn't have to use a standard because it has, more or less, a monopoly in this market. Maybe the EU could force Microsoft to use an open standard? And work with competitors to improve filters and interoperability? IMHO, this would be much more damaging to MS's grip on the market than just a fine.

One the other hand, I'm not sure if the politically liable EU has the guts to do this. ;-)

Re:Unresolved bugs.

[jmt(tm)]

For viewing other people's documents (including presentations) just grab the viewer apps for those formats.

Interesting. When did they put out the Linux/*BSD/Solaris Version?

Different Day

[kensai]

Same FUD

hmmm....

[mrscorpio]

And yet the comparison document is in a format that can't be read by MS Office, but CAN by OpenOffice.org...not a great idea :)

Chris

Step 3

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

first, they ignore you
then, they laugh at you
then, they fight you <-- you are here
then you win

Will step 4 happen? Stay tuned.

Re:some stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

For anybody who doesn't have software to read .pdf files
Am I alone in thinking they should have made it a .doc file? Considering that the audience for this guide would be current users of MSOffice.

Rule one of marketing..

[Sexual Ass Gerbil]

1. Never mention the name of your competitor.

Once a company names their competitors in marketing literature, you know the company is losing ground. Or so the marketers say. I'm not sure if I believe it though

Re:Rule one of marketing..

[DR SoB]

Your are 100% right (MOD PAY ATTENTION TO PARENT!!)

I work for a software company, when a customer questions a competitor product or asks "Which is really better" kind of question, we always tell them:

"Install both and you can make a better decision".

I bet Microsoft would _never_ use that line!

Re:Rule one of marketing..

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are the dominant incumbant in the market this is absolutely true as it just gives credibility to the challenger.

However, there is a point where the challenger begins to gain marketshare on their own. This is when the incumbant is forced to respond to try and stop or at least slow the market segment share gains of the challenger.

Linux is clearly at the stage of forcing MSFT to respond overtly in an attempt to guard as much of their market share as possible.

Having MSFT battle Linux in public like this is a huge milestone for Linux. From here on out it will be hand-to-hand combat at each IT shop (first) and home (later) throughout the world.

Linux will not win all of these battles. In fact, it will lose many of them in the beginning. But it won't matter as the campaign will be, as Rummy likes to say, a long hard slog and even if Linux only gets to 3% market segment share on the desktop it will be more than enough for businesses and consumers of the world to use Linux as a club to beat down the exorbitant prices of MSFT software.

This will be a "good thing".

They're admitting to anti-competitive behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what better argument can you give than that OO.org can't open "full featured" word documents of the most recent word versions?

Now, why can't OO.org open those documents? It's not because OO.org doesn't want to, or isn't up to date; the reason is because Microsoft keeps the method of opening those documents secret! They drive out the competition by not letting them know how to open the files. This justifies the EU's recent actions even more.

Re:They're admitting to anti-competitive behavior

[Frizzle Fry]

It's not because OO.org doesn't want to, or isn't up to date; the reason is because Microsoft keeps the method of opening those documents secret!

First, they didn't say that. They just said that you can't read the documents. This is a well-known fact, so I don't see how stating it is "admitting to anti-competitive behavior".

But anyway, the main point is that if I were running a business, I would not want to use a product that can't read documentst that others send to me. I wouldn't be interested in why I can't read them, so this still sounds like a compelling reason to use MS Office. Whether the software has the features they need (which might include reading Word .doc's) seems like a better basis for a business decision then the reasons why it has or doesn't have those features.

Wow, Sales people get it REALLY wrong sometimes

[DR SoB]

After reading this, it looks like they are marketing OO!! I mean, sure it doesn't have Clippy and all (more features) and it doesn't have an email client (umm, do we really need another anyways?), but personally, I _hate_ Clippy.

Why didn't they put the "System Requirements" of Office? I mean, if it's a comparison shouldn't you put some sort of "comparison" information somewhere? That alone would show that OO is multi-platform, a HUGE benefit for most business..

The open-source community should be using this paper to hype OO, IMHO it does a great job!

Having an option is bad?

[richmaine]

I was amused by the claim that OO was inferior because "if bugs [in OO] go unresolved, users have the option to resolve problems by...".

This apparently contrasts with MS Office, where if bugs go unresolved, users do not have any options.

Ok. I knew that, but I'm surprised that MS raised it as a point. :-)

Same old FUD as before

[daveo0331]

We've already discussed most of what's in this document. For example:

3. "OpenOffice 1.1 is an open source alternative." OpenOffice does not have a dedicated development or support team. Consequently, if bugs go unresolved, users have the option to resolve problems by scouring through numerous community sites and chat rooms.

MS has been saying things like this about OSS for years. Of course they don't mention what your options are if a bug in MS Office goes unresolved.

The number one reason NOT to use MS Office...

[Ayaress]

Too expensive, no useful additions in years.

I'm still using Office 97 on my Windows computer. It cost me about $70 when I got it, and it's functionally identical to the Office 2000 and Office XP that my university and workplace use. The additions in the last several iterations of Office have been of only niche usefullness, and you can usually get something to do that with 97 anyway.

At least with OO, I'm not asked to pay another $150 every year or two just to get a new font, or a new text overlay effect that I could do with the old one anyway.

Download it yourselves

[lurwas]

Fortunatly, anyone can download OpenOffice and make their own judgement about it. I myself, prefer GNU Emacs :)

Support?

[cabingirl]

OpenOffice does not have a dedicated development or support team. Consequently, if bugs go unresolved, users have the option to resolve problems by scouring through numerous community sites and chat rooms.

I guess they've never tried to resolve an MS issue as a lowly home user, slogging through the MS "knowledge base". I usually end up Googling for answers to my MS Office questions.

OpenOffice.org?

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

This is amazingly petty of me, but I can't stomach using OpenOffice since they changed the name of the software to "OpenOffice.org". What, was "OpenOffice" not getting the point across?

Sigh. I suppose I should at least be thankful that they didn't call the individual components calc.openoffice.org, writer.openoffice.org, and so on.

However, pettiness aside, to the uneducated, the ".org" at the end is thoroughly confusing. Ever tried recommending it to someone? "Hey, you should switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org!" "Oh, you mean I can create my spreadsheets on the web?"

Perhaps if they spent more time making it less resource-intensive than Microsoft Office, it might actually be a contender. For now, I'll stick with Microsoft Office on my Mac when I have to use it, and LaTeX otherwise. PDFs for everybody!

Forgot to include...

[(1)down]

WHY open office can't format Office Documents correctly.

buying e-mail client ???

[S3D]

customer may incur a licensing cost associated with buyng an e-mail application

Hmm, is Mozilla still free ?

Microsoft Sweating over Office?

[jxa00]

Definetly.

From a developer's perspective, over the last year they have pushing Office 2003 down our (mainly MS based shop) throats. I can't rememeber how many free courses I have both declined and been to - all evangelising using a component of Office as part of the front end. (Not mention to all the free cd's of Office for us.)

Not a bad strategy - get the developers to build their apps requiring a cool little widget in Office 2003 so the customer HAS to upgrade to the latest version to use the app.

Thanks, but no thanks our customers are not keen when Office 97, Star or Open Office is fine for their needs.

There's only one really good reason to use Office-

[Ralph Wiggam]

The golden rule...he who has the gold rules.

If someone is giving you money (employer or client) and they demand that you give them Office files (.doc, .xls, .mdb), you have to be able to provide them. They don't want to hear "well .rtf blah blah conversion blah". They use Office and they're giving you money, so they call the shots. An internal debate between open-source principals and cash is a short one.

-B

Re:some stuff

[frazzydee]

the audience for this guide would be current users of MSOffice

No, I think that current users of OO.org are also targeted. They not only want to convince people not to switch, but they wouldn't mind trying to prove to current OO.org users that the software they're using is inferior to ms office. Also, oo.org is compatible with ms office (although sometimes formatting is lost), so users of oo.org could read the file anyways. Besides, why should they narrow their audience when they can target everybody (ok, well the people w/o pdf readers aren't targeted, but then again, there's an html version- but you get the point)?

Re:some stuff

[Kourino]

Man, you know, the funny thing is that the one thing you pick on them for is true. Yes, even GPL'd software can have unresolved bugs sitting for months. Hell, go to the OO.o bug tracker and you can find entries from 2002 if you look for two minutes.

This isn't to pick on OO.o - writing bug-free software is manageable, but not necessarily easy, especially for something that big. But no, Microsoft isn't the only one who leaves bugs unresolved for months. If you're going to debunk this, I'd start somewhere else.

Re:Viruses!!

[cshark]

Macros aren't compatible according to the document.

Futher more, it doesn't integrate with Exchange, Access, or any other Microsoft product. The rapscalions! Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole point of oo to get away from using ms products?

OO rollout goes well

[puzzled]

I have a customer with about two hundred Windows desktops. Most are win2k which are relatively trouble free, but they're so thrilled with XP (Wintendo) that they've blocked any more entering the enterprise after the first five. We're working on a Knoppix installation and the Mocha TN5250 client might be the final piece of that puzzle ... we shall see.

Some users intially whined about receiving a non M$ office package, but they whined much less when the IS department started a charge back scheme. A few of the finance folks are heavily invested in Office and they will rightly stay there, the rest are very likely to get moved to OO the next time the M$ tax appears, and they'll have no choice if we get Knoppix to do everything that is needed :-)

Of course, nobody I even know uses OOo.

[karmaflux]

Ignoring for a moment the snide tone of the post, and the flamebait headline, let's look at this realistically.

The company I work for evaluated OOo. I have managed to get them to use several other free software packages (notably perl rather than asp) but there's no way I could sell them on OOo. It's ugly, it's counterintuitive, and it inherits all the interface mistakes Office has -- and you can't get professional support for it. And so my office shelled out to get everyone copies of Office 2k3.

It's getting better, but it's not really a threat to Office. Yet. In the meanwhile, MS is probably responding to OOo out of precaution. If they didn't react at all to competing packages, they wouldn't be much of a company.

Re:Of course, nobody I even know uses OOo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugly, yep -- but there are much prettier versions around. OOo 2.0 will have proper GTK and Qt rendering too.

Counterintuitive -- well, it's different. I personally find it more pleasant to use (if a bit slow).

Support -- AFAIK Novell will be offering support for it soon. Sun might already, and there's always Sun's StarOffice if you want top-flight support.

Re:MS Office versus OOo

[myg]

Why? I don't want to use a Linux desktop. Actually, I prefer to use an OS X desktop. Sometimes we can't. For example, my wireless hardware on my x86 laptop isn't supported by Linux (or the BSD's).

But I don't want to use an office suite that insults my intelligence. And if I could strip off a big chunk of the clown suit in Windows, believe me, I would. The NT kernel with a MacOS 6 look and feel is as fancy as I would care for. ;-)

And lets not forget the very important rule that keeping code portable helps keep it bug free. The chances are much higher that a bug will come out the more operating systems/compilers/platforms that chug through your code.

Re:some stuff

[Leomania]

Hell, go to the OO.o bug tracker and you can find entries from 2002 if you look for two minutes.

Exactly... you can't go and find what unresolved bugs there are for any Microsoft product, can you? No, that's proprietary information, my friend, and you and I are not worthy to view it -- whether we're MS customers or not. What a beautiful example of OSS in action, and a strong alternate point to their argument.

- Leo

Re:some stuff

[jhoger]

> writing bug-free software is manageable

Oh, you just admitted you aren't a programmer.

All software of any reasonable complexity has bugs. Period. Process can help but it will never prevent 100% of bugs.

There are bugs in FOSS. There are bugs in proprietary software.

Now then, what's the difference? Well, with a proprietary vendor you can spend hours/weeks with tech support trying to move up through 1st, 2nd, till you get to 3rd level where you might be able to convince someone there is a bug. And then do you think that engineer is going roll out the red carpet, whip up a build and send it over to my house? No... I'm just another user with just another problem, and he might give me a workaround, but likely I will be waiting for the next release like everyone else. It's my only choice. Now if I'm a megacorp paying real money for lots of licenses I might be able to get that red carpet. But I'm not.

Now with FOSS I have options. I can get onto IRC or I can file a public bug report. For bad bugs, these are likely to be fixed right away. If it is decided its invalid for some reason I will get a response from an actual engineer saying why they closed the bug. If I don't get satisfaction well, I have the source. If I have the ability I can fix it myself. Or else I could contract someone else to do it. And then I'll probably give the patch back to the project if they want it.

There's a huge difference there. It's about power to get done what you need to. FOSS gives that to the user.

Thud!

[eroyce]

That is the sound of me closing the door on Office and moving to OO. Reasons for this change:

1. MS does not make a good argument to not change, in fact they promoted their competitor IMHO.

2. If MS doesn't use Office to create press releases, why should I?

3. The pot has called the kettle black one two many times. Outlook, Office Macros, have been the cause of most of my virus problems, now they have let me know of a better option where I can do something to fix it.

4. Help menus that are more work than they are worth. I need a help menu for working with their help menus. Hmm, see #5.

5. F**king Clippy. 'nough said.

For Managers Only

[aml666]

How many times has your boss/manager purchased a product that has made no sense? Even when a cheaper better version exists?

This "report" is not targeted at us; it is for the gullible managers to consume. They will eat this up.

Re:PDF

[Anonymous Coward]

Last paper of theirs that I downloaded was a .doc with the Word 2003 weirdisms that wouldn't even open in Word X without killing it.

and isn't that just exactly part of the problem with MS Office? It can't even stay comaptible with earlier versions of itself!

I find it interesting that MS keeps harping on their macro support as an advantage. I gave up on macros in Word many years ago. I got tired of rewriting them every damned time they upgraded Office!

Re:MS Office versus OOo

[You Been Rob-ed!]

Yes, but the jihad proceeds much quicker when the users are already familiar with the tools they'll be using on Linux. And the jihad is really not about getting people to use Linux. It's about enabling people to use whatever they want.

So sick of the TCO argument

[aduzik]

Is anyone else here tired of MS whipping out the ol' TCO everytime an open source product kicks their product's ass?

From the article:
License cost makes up only a small portion of the total cost of ownership

We all remember Microsoft's skewed Windows .NET Server/Linux comparison and how they creatively invented numbers to show how expensive Linux was in TCO. Funny that they never factored in the billions of dollars companies lose due to security flaws that enable breakins and data theft, macro viruses and exploits of other features they think you can't live without, and lost time/effort/work from programs/OSes that crash. That will raise your TCO, won't it?

So Microsoft, QUIT IT with the TCO argument. None of us are buying it, and subsequently, none of us are buying your stuff.

OO.o bears the burden of translation BOTH ways

[IceAgeComing]

The reverse is also true: I absolutely love the eqn editor in OO.o, but the equations I make with it aren't read by MS Word properly.

Note how the non-MS software bears burden of translation in both directions.

lying liars and the lies they tell

[victorvodka]

It seems Microsoft is learning from the administration of GW Bush in this regard. When dealing with an opponent, claim that the opponent has your flaws, whether or not this is true. This strategy is tailored to a news media unaccustomed and unprepared to investigate or otherwise do any more than quote sources. It becomes Microsoft's word (excuse the pun) against the diffuse band of evil virus-writing hackers who also happen to write open source software.

Even more bizarrely...

[Yobgod Ababua]

...one of their other big points is that OO doesn't have it's own email/PIM client.

Of course it doesn't... between mozilla/evolution/insert your favorite email client here/ they don't -need- to include one.

It's primarily only MS that keeps insisting that different functionality needs to all get sucked into a single monolithic 'suite' (which then gets sucked into the OS)...

MS Office vs MS Office

[ManuelKelly]

Almost every point they point make in their document applies equally well between generations of MS Office. The most important point in the document in MS Access compatibility. There are a whole lot of small business applications built on this, and these would need to be rewritten.

It also seems that this document is about the best argument against upgrading to a new version of MS Office.

Some differences aren't really that different...

[baudilus]

From the document:

1. "OpenOffice is free."
License cost makes up only a small portion of the total cost of ownership. More significant costs include:
Installation and deployment
Data migration and testing (especially if customer uses Access database)
Document conversion and rewriting macros (OpenOffice does not support Office macros)
User support such as training (OpenOffice UI, although similar in many ways to Office, is not the same and users may require "retraining")

What they don't say is that most of these "costs" would apply when choosing to switch the M$ Office as well. In other words, the documents assumes that Office is the business' native enviroment. Look at the quote again and imagine switching from say Corel's office suite to M$. Same difference.

Or not.. you actually have to pay for the software to switch to M$. Bummer.

Re:There's only one really good reason to use Offi

[blackmonday]

In OO do a simple "save as" and save it in word format, similar steps for excel and powerpoint.

By the way I haven't seen anyone mention Sun Microsystems here, we owe a lot of our Open Office success to their team. Cheers.

Microsoft does it again

[unoengborg]

I thought Microsoft would have learned by now.
FUD is not effective. Didn't they even mention this in their own documents.

Today there are a lot of CEOs that not yet have heard of OpenOffice.org or StarOffice. After reading this they will start asking themselves can I reduce my costs using OpenOffice.org intead of accepting the Microsoft Office suit as the only way to provide office functionality.

Microsoft may, or may not. be right that MS-Office is better. But what managers will ask is: Is OOo good enough?

Just like managers found IE good enough when compared to the costly but better Netscape.

So I suppose we have to thank Microsoft for their unintended free marketing of free software.

Re:some stuff

[RLW]

Actually, I think the target is the OO.org user's pointy headed boss. The OO guy probably already doesn't buy the M$FT line nor is he likely to.

Office can't save files as PDFs.

[Vandil X]

I've found the "Save as PDF" feature in OO.org to be invaluable.

If you work in an environment that does not require press-quality PDFs, but does use PDFs for office document exchanges, OO.org saves you the $300+ cost of buying Adobe Acrobat.

Re:Email client...

[C_Kode]

What I think is more noteworthy to point out is that you pay for Microsoft Outlook when you buy the MS Office suite. So, they claim you might have to buy a license to use an Email client with OO.org, what they didn't tell you is you have no choice but to buy theirs if you use MS Office even though you could also use a free one (thunderbird) with MS Office.

Re:some stuff

[MikeFM]

Did you ever see Ma&Pa Kettle actually use Access? I'm familiar with Oracle, Mysql, Postgres, etc and I find Access a pain to use and others I know with similar experience usually agree. It always gives me a headache quickly. I've seen less experienced users spend weeks trying to make minor things work properly. Is Access really something we want to copy? I've thought of making a Access-like wrapper to MySQL but never really thought it'd be useful.

MySQL is usually about the right mix of features and ease for me. I can whip up a fair sized database and supporting functions giving it a nice xml-rpc interface in a couple hours time.

With the large number of freely available pre-designed apps available as opensource I wonder if there is much needed in the way of [non-techie] user created db driven apps.

MS employs extremely efficient foot-shooters.

[Futurepower(R)]

Yes, but I think everyone will get the point that OO makes PDF files, and Word doesn't. PDF files are MUCH less likely to cause problems, because they can contain the fonts they use. I don't think that is available in Word. In most cases, you don't want the person to whom you send the file to be able to change it, and maybe later forget and think it is his.

I would LOVE to see someone make a similar two-page brochure, formatted exactly the same way, that would provide all the arguments for using OO. Here's one: Word is quirky; it often does things that you don't expect, like put footers at the head of the next page.

Re:some stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

An Access-equivalent is the biggest lack I see on Linux. It's incredibly useful in the real world, both for casual users, AND for building small, database-oriented applications. (Say up to 10 or 15 users.) Perhaps similar bits-and-pieces could be assembled from Open Source world, but there is a *real* value to integration.

It's not a tangent! It's important.

[Futurepower(R)]

It's not a tangent! It's important. Chen and Chan and Lu and Li (not their real Chinese names) have been completely unable to answer an important question about Windows XP. The reason? They're in China, and if they don't know the answer, they have to lie, since they have no way to contact anyone at MS who will listen.

Whenever I ask for MS technical support, I am calling about a difficult question. If it weren't difficult, I would answer it myself. Those are exactly the kind of questions MS technical support can't answer.

The Psychic Friends Network is sometimes equally as good as Microsoft technical support at understanding bugs in Microsoft software.

Re:some stuff

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

Well, with a proprietary vendor you can spend hours/weeks with tech support trying to move up through 1st, 2nd, till you get to 3rd level where you might be able to convince someone there is a bug.

That's my least favorite part about calling tech support. I don't even mind waiting so much... at least I can do something else.

But to sit on the phone and try to convince someone that I'm not a moron...

"Is the computer plugged in?"
"Yes, and I know what the problem is..."
"Slow down sir. Is it turned on?"
"Yes, it's turned on, and it made it through the first part of the boot process to..."
"Have you tried restarting? Is there a disk in the floppy drive?"
"That's not the problem. The problem is that..."
"Could you just double check that the power cord is secured into the back of the computer and wall socket?" "Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!" Click

That right there is enough to stop me from calling tech support 3 times out of 5. Maybe that's why they do it.

Re:This document should not even exist...

[Peyna]

If a group of people got together on the internet and designed a car that could be built from parts available from Home Depot, would Ford or GM have to explain to us why their cars are better?

No, but when Japanese manufacturers started producing more reliable vehicles Ford, GM, and Chrysler all had to resort to intensive marketing strategies until they could develop something that was more competitive. It worked pretty good too.

They thought they were in control of the automobile world and were proved wrong; the same *might* be happening to Microsoft. For quite a while they had little to no competition; now they are seeing some real threats on the horizon, and they're only doing what anyone else would do in the same position. They simply became too comfortable with having a large piece of the pie, and now are having to fight to keep as much of it as they can.

Re:some stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

The form of the question, "Ma&Pa Kettle" is insulting. There are many smart people who aren't Linux users.

But yes, I've seen untrained administrative employees sit down with "Access in 24 Days" and build an application that got an important and painful job done.

Applications that were too small or too niche to attract the attention of professional developers.

These folks could never sit down with a KDE box and get a MySQL app built. The cognitive overhead to get started and productive is just too great.

Re:some stuff

[rocket97]

I haven't used M$ Office since college 5 years ago (it was crap then and still is)

If you haven't used it in 5 years how can you honestly make this argument? I am just curious.

Re:MS Office, OpenOffice and Macs

[Watts Martin]

Saying that this leaflet was created on a Mac doesn't help the OpenOffice cause, it reinforces the Microsoft one.

Actually, I'm not sure it says much about either office suite: as someone noted above, the Document Properties reveal that the leaflet was created on a Mac using Quark Xpress.

From the Free Software world, I have hope for AbiWord 2.2 being a usable Mac-like application, and I'm curious about the QT/Mac port of KWord that's in progress. In practice, though, I actually broke down and bought Mariner Write recently. (I'd have bought Gobe Productive if they'd made a Mac port, but Gobe's developers, most of whom came from Claris, failed to recognize what I think would have been a great opportunity for them to eat Appleworks 6's lunch.)

Re:some stuff

[Lumpy]

the lack of MS access like device in OO.o is a GOOOD THING.

cripes, access is the most abused app on this planet. with PHB's trying to use it as a full fledged DB everywhere and making IT try to keep it working.

The ony thing worse than Access is Foxpro.

Re:some stuff

[jdgreen7]

We honestly use it extensively. However, we only use the front-end piece. All of our data is stored in a mySQL database, but most of our front-ends are very complex Access forms. It's actually great to work with, and once you get the hang of it, makes application development a breeze. And, we're not a Ma and Pa shop, either. We have between 20 and 50 users in the databases all day, all using Access.

Granted, I inherited a few really bad Access DB's and had to basically rewrite them, but after you get a little experience, great things can be done with it quickly.

There are a few bugs here and there, but the majority that I've come across are due to poor ODBC drivers (we occasionally link to other DB's, too - Pervasive, Btrieve, SQL).

There is no need for Office!

[BCW2]

Years ago I learned word processing on Wordperfect 5.1 for Dos and spreadsheets were Lotus 123 version 2.3 for Dos. I switched to Win 3.0(big mistake), then to 3.1(improvement, on to 3.11(not bad). Along the way (2years) I got Lotus Smartsuite R4 and had everything I needed at 1/3 the price and disk space of office. I have used Lotus R9 and now OO 1.1. Last fall I put together a business plan on OO 1.0 and had no trouble at all, that was in RH9. I still use Win xp for games but serious work is Linux and OO.
Who needs a bloated virus trap with lots of fluff, but no useful, different features?

Re:Dijkstra's principle

[a7244270]

Unless of course, your name is Donald Knuth.

Some real reasons not to use OpenOffice...

[PetoskeyGuy]

(From the misses)

No comparable clipart library. (Different colored toruses??)

No comparable powerpoint type themes.

No document wizards, for Drawing app like in Publisher.

Sometimes difficulty figuring out the options menu. It's not layed out very well.

Seriously these are why she won't use it. She can go into publisher, click new X document, choose a picture, etc and print out the page. She couldn't care less about open source, she just wants to get something printed in 5 minutes or so while the kids are busy.

Re:some stuff

[zurab]

Don't get me wrong, I haven't used M$ Office since college 5 years ago (it was crap then and still is) but there is nothing like Access in the OSS world. Yet. There are some excellent front ends to e.g. pgsql/mysql/etc. but nothing Ma & Pa Kettle's General Store can fire up w/o being a DB admin. Is there?

Feel free to ask Corel to make Paradox open source. It's currently a part of WordPerfect Office Professional. Remember when they used to make Office for Linux? They had Paradox for Linux too. I never understood why Borland sold Paradox to Corel. It was a perfect companion to Delphi and other programming tools, and Corel sent it downhill right away. It's not like Paradox has a big market share or is creating sales at Corel either. People use MS Access. Paradox was/is an excellent product in need of a new strategy.

Re:some stuff

[edwdig]

Of course, if there's a bug that really hurts, and you have a competent IT staff (or even just one good programmer), you can fix it yourself. This advantage of OSS isn't stated often enough.

Theoretically that's true, but, the usual reason for bugs being outstanding for a long time is that they're really hard to fix. I doubt many companies would be willing to dedicate someone to do massive reworking of Open Office to fix a bug caused by architecture limitations - particuarlly not if Word doesn't have the same problem.

MS doesn't need to worry that much...

[issachar]

The biggest thing wrong with OO at this point from an end-user perspective isn't features or even compatibility. (OO reads .doc perfectly well for most users).

It's that OpenOffice is ugly. Plain and simple. It looks like a crappy piece of software compared to other windows programs, so people assume that it is and won't use it. Putting skin functionality in it (or themes if you want to call them that) would dramatically improve acceptance of OpenOffice. The theming in Thunderbird makes a huge difference when trying to convince people to use it instead of Outlook Express.

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be a high priority for the developers. I can't complain because it's a free product, but if they want to do some simple to improve end-user adoption they could start with just prettying it up a bit.

MS Office *is* better - right now.

[Mephisto_kur]

Putting cost aside, and loyalty to the OSS model aside, MS rules the desktop because of Office. Now, I run OO. I never encounter any problems. When I build a new machine, more often than not, I install OO on it. But good god if you could hear my wife cuss! At work, they use MS Office for everything but email. OO is basolutely NOT able to deal with most of the documents that she gets from work. No matter the version of office, there is *always* some problem. Whether it's a weird formatting thing, or a completely unreadable document, there is always something that isn't right.

But if she makes something in OO, it rarely has a problem going the other way. She opens it at work with no issues.

But I would like to throw some points out there:

1. There *is* a learning curve. OO does thing just differently enough to confuse a long term Office user.
2. There *are* bugs - and we aren't talking about the obscure ones that MS Office tends to have. An example is superscripting and subscripting. My wife was swearing like a sailer over a math document she was preparing because of these issues - admittedly, I have no idea if 1.1 fixed the issue, snce she hasn't had to do a math document for awhile.
3. While with OO, you can search Google or the bugtracker for some answers... The MS Support sight is very good for Office. Office is MS's bread and butter. It isn't perfect - no complex software is, but its pretty damn good.
4. Groan if you want, but what email client do you have with OO? None. All versions of Office come with not just an email software, but one that happens to be a damn good one with an integrated PIM system, and direct server support on the backend. Outlook, altho the largest target for attack, is really nice and full featured. With proper setup, viruses can be very difficult to get - even in Outlook, and with proper user training, it can be almost impossible.

But on the flip, OO has a huge point on its side - it's free. The second biggest thng OO has going for it is that it is constantly evolving and getting better. OO gets exponentially better at every point release. Unlike MSOffice which has gotten more bloated than anything over the years.

Seemed quite fair to me...

[lonesometrainer]

Of course a competitive comparison done by one of the competitors is always biased. To me most of the stuff seemed somehow fair. They are not *really* bashing OO.

Gems...

[seanellis]

There are over 300 million users of Office worldwide who can seamlessly exchange documents without concerns for loss of data or formatting errors.

As anyone who has tried to open an Office 2000 document in Office 97, this is blatantly untrue.

License cost makes up only a small portion of the total cost of ownership.

Indeed. For MS products, the cost of constant forced upgrades, security problems, antivirus tools, e-mail scanners, etc. represent a serious additional cost.

OpenOffice UI, although similar in many ways to Office, is not the same and users may require "retraining"

Indeed, this is true. But at least they had the decency to put "retraining" in quotes. The vast majority of commonly used functions will be at a user's fingertips within minutes of loading OpenOffice. The rest are no more different than from one version of Office to the next. My wife is not at all technical, was trained on MS Office, and hardly noticed the difference when switching to Open Office.

OpenOffice does not have a dedicated development or support rteam. Consequently, if bugs go unresolved, users have the option to resolve problems by scouring through numerous community sites and chat rooms.

Note the "if" in that sentence. Note also the number of defects open in MS Office. Note also the excellent reputation of MS support.

businesses do not operate in a vacuum; basic feature functionality that enables content authoring is only one small aspect of what a small business needs.

Businesses indeed do not operate in a vacuum. I presume that this is why the document is in PDF format - so everyone can read it. Compare and contrast the ease of creating PDF documents in MS Word and in Open Office.

I could go on, but my righteous indignation circuits are all burned out. EUR500M? Should have been the full EUR5G.

Re:some stuff

[lpp]

Very rarely is an office suite considered a core part of a business. That core is the revenue generator, the lifeline. If you have a competent IT staff (i.e. a large enough group of people to qualify as what most folks would understand as a "staff") or one good programmer, you presumably hired them for a purpose, likely to work closely within the core business or very closely to it. Good IT assets (I should be hit for calling people assets...we're PEOPLE d*** it!) are expensive and not to be wasted.

So the perceived benefit of pulling such folks off of your core revenue-generating part of your business to work on an office suite seems just that...perceived. As in "unlikely to be realized". I will grant that I can't make the absolute claim that no bug in OO.o or Office could possibly make such a problem that pulling resources away from what your business is in business to do makes sense, but it seems a bit far-fetched.

Anyway, my post came across as a bit acerbic. Sorry about that.

Not exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, Microsoft ignored the DOJ.
Then, Microsoft laughed at the DOJ.
Then, Microsoft fought the DOJ.
Then, Microsoft won.

That quote is so fucking overused. It is also too general, and can be twisted into almost any situation for either side.

Hell, you could even do this:

First, Linux kiddies ignored SCO.
Then, Linux kiddies laughed at SCO.
Then, Linux kiddies fought SCO.
Then, SCO won.

So, wtf is the point of recycling this quote over and over again? To make yourself feel good?

Re:some stuff

[Jooly Rodney]

Au contraire -- FileMaker "Pro" is worse than both put together.

What's the pro stand for? PRObably you should start looking for another job if your department wants you to implement anything in FileMaker.

CLO (Chief Licensing Officer) sinks TCO

[rjamestaylor]

OOo is good. Good enough that I use it myself and install it on executives' PCs instead of MS Office w/ PowerPoint. It isn't as polished as MS Office; this is true. But it isn't "finished" yet, either.

Anyway, the real killer feature of OOo is lack of concerns over license compliance (for users, I mean, not developers; but that's an interesting distinction to need to make considering that license compliance with MS Office unambiguously refers to end-users). In a reasonably sizeable corporate office software license compliance is enough of a concern to have created a burgeoning market for compliance tracking and auditing tools.

In fact, I believe you'll soon have a new executive level CxO designation: CLO -- Chief Licensing Officer. This person's job is to oversee the department in charge not of installation, acquisition, maintenance, training, selection of software but merely of adhering to license terms. The impetus will be to avoid draconian (or has it progressed to Machevellian yet?) BSA audits carried out by warrant-holding sherrifs. Think I'm kidding?

With Open Source there are many benefits. One that cannot be denied is the total elimination of license management and compliance. This is true on both sides of the software equation -- producers and users. Imagine how much better MS Office would be if MSFT didn't have its brightest minds inventing ways to stop the software from working (XP Activation being only the latest incarnation; now you know the great advantage OOo has over MS Office -- it doesn't have to delay waiting for the Activation team to finish its work.) Anyone who's had to track licenses for a large installation knows the headache on the user side.

Remember, one violation per the BSA's standard (i.e., not just the "license" but the original invoice is also required to establish that you are not a THIEVING PIRATE!) can cost you not only a year's worth of milk money (up to $150,000 or more) but also your freedom (up to 5 years in the federal pokey with Bubba, the federal poker). That's a big price to pay for making an "extra" copy of MS Office for Mr. Jones' take-home laptop, isn't it? With proprietary software it doesn't take much to ruin your day.

Don't forget to add the potential for fines and/or prison as well as the overhead needed to maintain license compliance records to avoid them into the TCO equation.

Re:What do people do with Access?

[LWATCDR]

It is not what Ma and Pa Kettle do with Access it is what the local computer consultant does with Access. OSS is missing a niche here between a SQL server and a flat file database. I would not use Access for a multi-user system Yes I know other do but I find if iffy at best. But for single user applications it is a solution.

it's funny...

[neko9]

from pdf:

Office provides innovative security on three levels to protect your business environment, data and intellectual property:

and one of these levels is

Data Loss: Auto recovery and application recovery tool

it's funny that OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 on my machine actually can open corrupted Word documents but M$ Office still can't.

and

...Microsoft has continued to innovate and invest in productivity applications since the '80s, evolving Office from a content authoring tool to a collaborative productivity enhancement platform. With an R&D budget of over $4.8 billion....

hmmm... what they are researching with all that money for all these years? PowerPoint?

OO 1.1 good, but has a ways to go

[DarkProphet]

I've been using OO periodically for quite a while now (the pre 1.0 days I'd say, but can't really remember) and its made some fabulous progress, but as much as I'd like to, I cannot recommend it for my business or my employees just yet. The main feature that I use OO for these days is its PDF export function -- you don't get that with office unless you've got a full copy of Acrobat. However, I feel that the OO interface has something to be desired. Its just not as simple to navigate as Office 2003... I'm not one to give MS undue credit, but MSO2K3 is pretty nice. I don't expect OO to be of the same caliber as MSO2K3, and hopefully the next few releases to OO will make some inroads. At least it starts up a little faster now ;-)

Wait a second...

[illuminatedwax]

Wait one second...
"R&D budget of 4.8 billion"
*blinks*
Did I see that right? Is that how much they spend annually on developing Microsoft Office or is that a cumulative figure?

Microsoft should really investigate their TCD (total cost of development) to output ratio.

Unbelievable,
--Stephen

Advantages and Disadvantages

[Trillian_Angel]

On the whole, when I first read the pdf on the microsoft site, I was actually rather impressed. For the most part, it was civil. Not what we'd all like, but relatively civil.

It was *almost* truthful for the most part... not entirely, but *almost*... ... and it is probably the best advertising OO.o has had. With this established, there are a few key points I think I would make about this arguement.

In the #OpenOffice.org channel on IRC, I was asked what I thought about the article, and the impact it has on OpenOffice.org as a whole. All in all, I thought its great for OOo. As long as we don't get into a petty pissing fight with MS Office, that is. Then someone was throwing around the idea that we should have a pointer article tossed back as a response to Microsofts little publication. I only replied "Why bother?" No matter what route we took with a reply, I think it would do more harm than good. The only thing I could think of as a reply would be a nice polite response to some of the false comments in the article.

There are a few ways where this advertising could hurt OpenOffice.org, but that would realistically only effect the crowds that would never switch even if their existances depended on it. I know a few people like that that live and breath the harddrive space Microsoft uses.

In cases like that, OpenOffice.org just might not be the better alternative, as they would be very stuck in their ways. I would like to think we would rather have 10 very satisifed users than 20... 10 of which would do nothing but complain about this problem or that problem, and do little if anything to help resolve the issue.

But, OO.o still has quite a ways to go. While I love it and use it for all of my writing, there are still a few things that need fixed and improved upon. But, I've decided to join the project and help make it happen when I have a little more time.. which should be in about a month when my current projects settle down. But, that is what I find so beautiful about the OO.o project. If I don't like something, I can dig on in and help fix it.

If MS Office offered that flexibility, I would have been enticed in joining the team. But, as it did not and never will, I'll be stuck in my ways and keep supporting OO.o ;)

This document is for salesmen

[Slotty]

It's all good and well to read this but if any of you work in a company that receives technet and MSDN kits in the mail from M$ then you would know that what you are reading is pitched towards sales consultants. This sheet comes on a nice piece of carboard for a companies sales staff to read it's basically a response card. Companies here about this Open Office and speak to their IT vendor who promptly (for profit reasons)says oh but these are the reasons why you should use MS Office he rattles off what's on the card and low and behold they believe him because OO.o has done nothing for their company and they've been using MS Office for years so they don't care. If it gets the job done they will use it most SMB's can't afford to test a whole new system and will seek professional advice from their supplier who happens to have an interest in keeping them on software they can charge large ammounts for of course sales people are going to sell M$ could you imagine how shitty you'd be if someone sold you OO.o for $200AUD for the package sure it costs a fraction of the price for MS Office but when you found out you could get OO.o for free you'd ring up and abuse the vendor and cease to deal with them. Basically it comes down to a few things SMB's don't want to research IT products for themselves it's a waste of their resources. They want something that can access the files their colleagues/clients send them. Vendors want to make money but not seem like bastards. Open Office is great for those that sell services it sucks ass for those that sell products. This document is simply microsoft giving sales consultants tuition it's all being taken out of context

Tough Time gaining acceptance at work for OOo

[tweedlebait]

My work luuuuvs office.. like they luuuuvs their gun.

Not that they use it for much but....

I've been trying for the last few years to get
my users to switch over to OOo for many reasons.
Office (97,2000 and XP) send our machines to hell as far as stability and speed goes. I have only had one problem with stability with OOo on an exotic piece of equipment. OOo runs much faster and doesn't do an alien facehugger installation on my boxes.

Most everyone here give OOo the big thumbs down. There are a few valid reasons (neeeded features and a few incompatibilities) but they are so trained in the idea of 'if it isn't word and excel it doesn't work' that it becomes an impossible barrier to having it gain acceptance.

I will get OOo complaints of incompatibility BEFORE the problem has even been tried!

example --"Install MS office on these machines because OOo probably has a problem reading my excel file"

Geez!

I open up the file in OOo and it reads fine.

"install ms office anyway!"

2days later

"your network is slow"

Now if they do find a file or application that OOo doesn't handle well, then I get the smug cat ass in your face behavior. Like bill is going to buy them a spaceship now or something.

My users are typically not like this with most issues, but MS vs Openoffice.. whew!

What I and others need from the OOo team is this:

1. A mass batch converter to OOo for all MS Office files with some error detection
This should extend even to an email attachment converter.

The converter should allow me to convert everything to native OOo, and then anything that had problems in the transition I can work on and convert. Conversion troubleshooting info should be easily accessible for others.

2. The ability to share workbooks like you can in excel (multi user simultaneous update)

This should help get them off the crack pipe.

Chained down

[MisterBad]

You're never chained down to use non-free software. You just have to figure out what level of effort you're willing to make to break your chains.

1. Deal with the less-than-perfect conversion of OpenOffice documents into and out of Microsoft Office form. This is, at the moment, pretty darn good -- comparable to if not better than proprietary non-Microsoft office suites.
2. Talk your professors into accepting open-format documents.
3. Talk your professors into giving out open-format documents.
4. Get your department to make a policy allowing open-format documents for any assignment.
5. Get your department to make a policy requiring open-format documents from professors.
6. Get your university to do the same.
7. Transfer to another university.

OK, that last one is pretty extreme, but it's not like you don't have any choices. The first one is relatively easier, and each successive one makes things easier for more and more other students, too.

Speaking about document exchange.

[DrYak]

There are over 300 million users of Office worldwide who can seamlessly exchange documents without concerns for loss

Yup. The the 300million Office XP can exchange without data loss
Too bad : it's not the case if they try to exchange them with the other million users using Office 97...
Or worse : Office 95.

Standard? *WHICH* .doc format is standard?

[leonbrooks]

There is the question of 'de facto standard' [...] .doc is an extremely widely used format

You should say "de facto standards" and "widely used formats".

The dotDOC written by MS Office 97 is different to MS Office 2000 and different in turn to MS Office XP - and of course the corresponding Mac versions of MS Office are all slighly different again. Then you have dotDOCs written by MS Office 2000 purportedly in an earlier dotDOC format (typically 97 or v6) which are different again. Later MS Word versions usually read the earlier dotDOCs OK, including "earler" dotDOCs written out by later MS Words, but will usually not be able to reliably write something that the genuinely earlier MS Word versions can read.

OpenOffice Writer is separately valuable for being able to take an "MS Office 97" dotDOC written by MS Office 2000, read it in without crashing, and write it out as a genuine MS Office 97 (or version 6) dotDOC that MS Office 97 (etc) can then read without crashing.

OO in HTML editor mode is also top class. Very good WYSIWYG and gotta love that "@" button.

Re:Standard? *WHICH* .doc format is standard?

[Gadget_Guy]

The dotDOC written by MS Office 97 is different to MS Office 2000 and different in turn to MS Office XP - and of course the corresponding Mac versions of MS Office are all slighly different again.

How long are people going to keep regurgitating this misinformation. We still run Office 97 at my company and we get thousands of docs from outside the company without any dramas. The only problems that we have had involved documents with embedded objects from applications that we do not have.

Quote

[vex24]

First, they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
-Gandhi

Is this the fight stage?

Send me 'stuff.doc'... HEY! It doesn't work!

[Chordonblue]

No kidding. Compatibility issues exist between almost every single version of Office. Then you have people creating documents on older versions of Works at home and bringing them into the office (or school). Good luck opening those also.

Then too are international issues. Ever try to open a Japanese version of a document in English Word? Again, good luck.

Most people don't run into a lot of issues with Word because most people don't use 1/4 of the features of Word. And that's exactly why Microsoft is worried. OpenOffice.org LOVES these kinds of users!

A Bad Idea For Microsoft

[petrus4]

I'm not saying I advocate Microsoft here, but to me they should really stop doing these comparitive analyses from the point of view that even when they try and tilt them with propoganda, they still only really succeed in making themselves look bad and telling the world that they're frightened of Open Source. I'm sure anyone who read the original Halloween memorandum will remember VinodV's exhaustive analysis of Linux's strengths, and the areas in which Microsoft lags behind GNU/Linux. In doing so, he gave us probably a better piece of advocacy material than we could have written ourselves, and made Microsoft look terrible in the process.

If MS were intelligent, they'd shut up about this...because every time they try and make themselves out to have a superior system to GNU/Linux or it's applications, the only two things they do are either
a) Make themselves morally look bad by resorting to FUD and intimidation, not to mention the fact that this also reinforces the idea that they know they're losing, and
b) Draw attention to the monumental technical inferiority of their products. They do this because, presumably in trying to appear objective, they exhaustively list Linux's strengths in these comparisons. The problem for them is that once they do that, anyone with half a brain who reads them can see how much of a better deal they're getting with GNU/Linux than with anything Redmond could offer them.

Then again, it is really good for us because it means that when we're trying to convert people to GNU/Linux and away from Microsoft's products, all we really need to do is point them in some cases to Microsoft's own literature...so I know I shouldn't discourage it. I was just talking from MS's POV.

Re:some stuff

[1u3hr]

Hey MS, If you weren't afraid of formatting losses, why did you choose PDF? And how did you get your nice Office suite to create PDFs?

You may notice in the info for the PDF that it was created by QuarkXpress on a Mac. (I wondered why it looked so nice, though it has spelling mistakes.)

Just De Facto

[fm6]

To be fair, Microsoft has finally gotten the message that they can't change their application formats every other year. Recent versions of Word 2003 (and other Office 2003 products) have no trouble talking to their 2000 predecessors. Plus they're moving to XML as a native format (as OO already has), which will open the door to more third-party filters.

Still, there are many reasons not to passively accept Word format as a "de facto standard". It's a goddamn mess for one thing.

I mostly have a strong positive impression of OO, the recent versions anyway. It has what people need, and it's reasonably easy to use. If it weren't for people needing interoperability with their existing Word and Excel files, Office would be dying, instead of dominating the market. Yes, this is ironic, considering how bad Microsoft is at supporting interoperability -- but it's true all the same.

But the one part of OO I dislike is the one you love: the HTML editor. Yes, it does a lot of the basic stuff very well, including WYSIWYG editing. But it treats HTML files as a kind of Word Processor file -- and that's a major design flaw. Like most WPs, the HTML editor relies on template files to standardize style -- which means that it's pretty hard to impose a new style on a bunch of existing files.

The sane, maintainable, standards-compliant way to author web pages is to put your styles in a single CSS style sheet, which all your web pages link to. For that to work, you have to be careful about separation of content and presentation, meaning you have to avoid tags like <font> and attributes like "align". The OO editor simply doesn't know how to do these things.

Link managment could use some work as well.

I suppose the OO editor is fine if you just want to create a bunch of web pages and that won't undergo a lot of revision or redesign. But for serious web design, look elsewhere.

Re:your sig

[vegetasaiyajin]

Do you find it rational to believe in the axioms of science, especially non-intuitive ones like the axiom of choice in set theory?
What is the difference between believing in an axiomatic system (on which most science is based) and a religion, which is very much like an axiomatic system in which there are a few axioms called dogmas?
Why do you thikn one is rational and the other irrational?

Just a few points...

[Angry Pixie]

Excerpt from article:
User support such as training (OpenOffice UI, although similar in many ways to Office, is not the same and users may require "retraining")
In reference to total cost of ownership of Open Office. I agree to an extent. Retraining does incur costs, but I don't know - I think retraining is really an overemphasized cost, and it's careless to suggest retraining may be necessary without a deeper explanation of what the difference is between the UIs, and how those differences affect the user experience. Gourmet Settings flatware, while similar in many ways to Oneida flatware is not the same, and yet I've found it unnecessary to be retrained.

Additionally, OpenOffice does not have an e-mail client, so customers may incur a licensing cost associated with buying an e-mail application. http://www.openoffice.org
There is an implication being made here that an OpenOffice user will inevitably need to buy a separate e-mail application. I see language like this all the time in "persuasive arguments" such as position papers. The brochure could have mentioned that users could acquire equally free email applications, but it doesn't because the goal is steer consumers away from the product.

"I only need basic features. OpenOffice is good enough." In today's networked, highly collaborative world, businesses do not operate in a vacuum; basic feature functionality that enables content authoring is only one small aspect of what a small business needs. Businesses need to: - Exchange business transaction information externally with customers and vendors.
How is this an advanced feature of MS Office? This is a secondary business activity that can be accomplished by using any set of compatible communication methodologies including EDI.

- Ensure that their mission-critical information is adequately protected from virus attack.
MS-Office protects businesses from virus attacks? Verdict: clever use of juxtaposition to imply a relationship between two independent things.

- Effectively manage customer relationships so as to maximize sales.
At least this point is more relevent; however, CRM implies much more than storing client emails in an addressbook or designing Word templates that tailor letters to specific clients.

- Quickly access key information from accounting and other business applications.
Finally something I can support. Excel is very flexible and there are a lot of business applications out there that make use of the interactivity between Excel and Microsoft SQL database servers

- Create sales and marketing material that portrays the business in a professional manner.
Photoshop. Illustrator. Dreamweaver... and yes, PowerPoint too... but Powerpoint is empowered by one's skills in the aforementioned applications. When you're giving a presentation, what matters is that the presentation is good, not whether it was done in PowerPoint. The new database features in Flash will help make Flash a very edgy presentation development app overtime. Especially if we start getting presentation templates for Flash.

- Do all this in a cost-effective manner because a small business does not have the resources of a large company for IT integration and support.
Perhaps the strongest argument for using OpenOffice instead of MS-Office. The bulk of document sharing is still paper-based. Therefore, if you won't be sharing your documents for editing purposes electronically, then you will be either printing the document or creating read-only versions of the documents using Acrobat.

I do like the idead of a document being perpetually current - always updated. The database features of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word bring us one-step closer; however, as I said, document sharing in business is still paper-based and will remain so. People will print out their documents to study them, archive them, and share them with others. Also, I have an inherent mistrust of documents that dialup database servers to update their contents.

Re:Their "XML" isn't, OO HTML editor

[fm6]

I can't comment on the virtues of WordML, having let my evaluation copy of Word 2003 expire. But when you refer to "everything useful stripped out" it sounds like they've removed the formatting info, retaining only the basic structure of the document. That's the way content-presentation separation is supposed to work. Of course, creating the stylesheets to put the presentation back is non-trivial!

Your OO/PHP solutions seems to work pretty well. But it seems to be very specific to your needs and goals. Here's some of your site parameters as I see them:

• Your overall design is simple, content-oriented, easy to navigate. A pretty good job overall, but your site is quite small, and I don't think your design would work if it got much bigger.
• You also seem less concerned with esthetics than most webmasters.
• You apparently author all your own content, and do all your web design. And of course, you write your own scripts. In short collaboration, workflow, and communication are not big issues for you.

None of these things are bad, if they're consistent with your needs as a webmaster. But your needs seem to be pretty atypical. Most serious sites are much bigger than yours, and involve collaborations between multiple authors, designers, and script writers. And there's more of a premium on appearance. If you had to meet any of these constrains, your current workflow simply would not work.

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose you work for a business that has standardized on OO. Your boss says, "I want you to design a new company web site from scratch. That includes content management and workflow. You only have one constraint: all authoring must be done with OO, because that's what our people know how to use. For authoring content, you can support OO HTML or OO Text Documents, your choice."

Now the choice of editors might seem a simple no brainer: it's a web site, you have to use the HTML editor to create content. But as I pointed out in my previous post, the OO HTML editor doesn't create maintainable files. It's possible to write scripts (like you did) to strip out the extraneous stuff, but OO HTML is so messy and non-standard that's it's tricky and unreliable.

Now OO Text Documents are also pretty baroque -- but they're all well-formed XML, validated against some well-documented XML schema. In theory, it should be possible to transform OO native XML into HTML, using XSL scripts. The OO designers even had that in mind, since they made it easy to plug in XSL scripts as export filters.

That's the theory. It's probably more complicated than that, because you'd have to understand every XML schema used in an OO doc. I just created a simple OO text document, and it's got seventeen different namespaces. Maybe you should tell your boss that OO is more trouble than it's worth as a web authoring tool!

Re:your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

[...]it's simply saying that science and religion are not mutually exclusive

It's simply saying that science and God are not mutually exclusive.