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Why You Should Choose MS Office Over OO.org

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the looks-like-a-handy-checklist-to-me dept.

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."

64 of 1,393 comments (clear)

  1. some stuff by frazzydee · · Score: 5, Informative
    For anybody who doesn't have software to read .pdf files (or for anybody who doesn't want to download the pdf file), here is a link to the HTML version of the above mentioned on the above link.
    also, here is a translation of the link to linuxfr.org. Slashdot should have posted another link to the english version- i don't think the majority of /. readers can read french fluently.
    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.
    is it just me, or is microsoft the one who we usually hear about leaving bugs unresolved for months?
    1. Re:some stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Slashdot should have posted another link to the english version- i don't think the majority of /. readers can read french fluently.

      From what I've seen round here, the English version would be no more useful than a version in Klingon.

    2. Re:some stuff by Leomania · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

      --
      You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
    3. Re:some stuff by cheesybagel · · Score: 5, Interesting
      They didn't publish it in .doc because the PDF was done in Quark XPress:

      Title: competitive OpenOffice.qxd
      Author: Gravity
      Application: QuarkXPress(tm) 4.11
      PDF Producer: Acrobat Distiller 4.05 for Macintosh

      How about eating your own dogfood before complaining against other brands Microsoft?

    4. Re:some stuff by netsharc · · Score: 5, Funny
      It's funny, considering Point no. 5:
      Seamless Information Exchange
      There are over 300 million users of Office worldwide who can seamlessly exchange documents without concerns for loss of data or formatting errors. Third-party studies show that competitive office suites retain only 75% accuracy (data and formatting) when receiving documents from Office users. See Summary eTesting Labs: Microsoft Windows XP/Office XP versus Red Hat Linux/StarOffice Migration Study

      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? Oh did you have to pay someone else for that feature? *snigger*
      --
      What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
  2. Fallacies by FractusMan · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    1. Re:Fallacies by SoTuA · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I would have expected them to say MSOffice has lower TCO or higher ROI than OOo, at least trumpet "Office is better". But no, all we get is "Don't you DARE switch from MSOffice or ALL THIS will happen to you!".

      Ah, Microsoft is feeling the heat the free software community is lighting under their asses.

      Got any of that "Ronson Fast Lite" left?

    2. Re:Fallacies by mr.capaneus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Fallacies by n9uxu8 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I must be missing something. I just created a doc with a table in OO.o and saved it three times (XP doc/win95 doc/rtf). I then opened it up in word 2000 and it was correctly formatted in all three cases. Of course, I haven't bought a copy of office since office 2k premium, so this may relate to office xp and later revs... DAve

    4. Re:Fallacies by peterpi · · Score: 5, Insightful
      "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! :)

    5. Re:Fallacies by dasunt · · Score: 5, Interesting

      OO.o doesn't provide basic functionality.

      It fails to write Word-compatible .doc format documents.

      You are correct -- in a heterogenous environment, MS Office is better then Open Office.

      However, how many environments are running the same word processor, nevermind the same version?

      This is more anecdotal then hard evidence, but have you tried to read a complex document written in an older version of word into a newer version? OO.o seems to get it more correct then the latest release of MS Office.

      Have you ever tried to import a non-word format into word?

      Now, consider this rebuttle:

      By using Open Office.org, you have several benefits to promote a heterogenous environment. Due to the fact that its free, everyone can run the latest version. Since it runs on a variety of platforms, you are not locked into a single vendor of OS or hardware. Your employees can run the same version at home without additional cost, and transfer those files to the office without any compatibility issues.

      Also, being a large commercial open source project backed by several large businesses, you recieve the quick bug and security fixes of OS, yet have the security of a fortune-500 company.

    6. Re:Fallacies by Thorizdin · · Score: 5, Informative

      You may need to check your work here. I created (yesterday) and 7 page Word doc that included mutiple tables created in in Calc that behaved flawlessly. There are some problems in document conversion, but I have been using OO for more than 2 years and I have had only 2 issues that I had to find work arounds for, one of them being the font translation issue that messes up some bullet points. Btw I produce an average of 6 docs per week, since a large part of my work is technical writing. Also, its worthy of note that most of the people I send these to have never heard of an Office alternative, that idea hasn't even entered their universe, but I have not had one report of a problem.

    7. Re:Fallacies by EtherMonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      --- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
    8. Re:Fallacies by BollocksToThis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
  3. good logic by pvt_medic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    yes because i get all sort of virus alerts about new security threats for open office.

    --
    30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
    Score:5, Troll
  4. Note the URL path by GPLDAN · · Score: 5, Funny

    The path is:
    /partner/salesmarketing/opensource/discguides

    Disc stands for "disinformation campaign"

  5. Hmm, very little is said about features... by coupland · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Hmm, very little is said about features... by The-Dalai-LLama · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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...

      --
      My sig could be your sig!
    2. Re:Hmm, very little is said about features... by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 5, Funny

      "MS-Office was feature-complete as of Office 95"

      They did add that wonderful feature that refuses to believe that you actually do want bullet points numbered 1,2,3,7, and 9.

      -B

  6. Its a beautiful thing! by KingReuben · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    --


    --
    om Shanti
  7. PDF by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice" document, published by Microsoft in ... PDF format.

    Amusing...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:PDF by igaborf · · Score: 5, Funny

      I wonder if they produced the document in OpenOffice 1.1 so they could just click the "Export Directly as PDF" button?

    2. Re:PDF by Avtar · · Score: 5, Funny

      Even better, it was created on a Mac...

  8. Time to check out Open Office by MissP · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Time to check out Open Office by Golias · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was just thinking the same thing. Last time I tried OO, I concluded it was "not ready yet" and went back to Word & Excel. The fact that MS thinks it's worth attacking makes me think the newest version must be worth another look.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  9. Unresolved bugs. by NeoBeans · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Unresolved bugs. by Drathus · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...

      But stainless steel is silv... Oh.

    2. Re:Unresolved bugs. by Doesn't_Comment_Code · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm torn...

      I can't decide which is worse:
      groping through Knowledge Base documents and being put on hold for hours calling Microsoft

      OR

      reading outdated man pages then being cussed out by an experience, yet socially inept user, for asking a question on a discussion board

      When it all comes down to it (MS or OO), I just end up entering the error message into Google anyway.

      --

      Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
    3. Re:Unresolved bugs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I live on a university campus... And ALL of the presentations I've seen were done via OO.o or StarOffice (before OO.o was around), mainly because the professors chose it.

      In the labs they have both Word and OO.org.

      Y'know... If you want OO.org on the labs computers, maybe you could ask one of the CS assistants around. They usually serve pretty good intermediaries between the students and the Admins. Chances are that if you want it, that the admins would also prefer to have it (especially if there exists any sort of unix-department at your univ.), and unless there is some sort problem the higher ups have with OSS, you're likely to get it.

      Just speak up and stop being a pussy.

    4. Re:Unresolved bugs. by dietz · · Score: 5, Informative

      I tried to use OpenOffice for an online Technical Writing class last term (just ended last week). It worked fairly well. I was always able to get the information out of the documents. Only formatting was ever broken.

      Unfortunately that's not always good enough. After too many times correcting "mistakes" that weren't actually mistakes (e.g. suggesting that a classmate put bullets in his list, even though there already WERE bullets, OpenOffice just wasn't showing them) I ended up switching back to Word.

      OpenOffice is good at reading Word documents, but it's definitely not good enough for everyone's needs.

    5. Re:Unresolved bugs. by winse · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Interestingly it does OO is great in a homogenous environment. I work at a large size corporation (5000+) that has just switched EVERYONE to OO. there have been some glitches moving things over, but most of them had to do with excel file macros etc. Now that it is very uncommon to recieve a .doc,ppt, etc file from anyone inside the company, I just don't think about the MS software anymore. All it takes is for someone higher up to have a little vision and a reason to control expenses, and this could be your company soon.

      --
      this sig is deprecated
    6. Re:Unresolved bugs. by pingveno · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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. ;-)

      --
      "it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
  10. hmmm.... by mrscorpio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  11. Naturally they EYODF by JohnGrahamCumming · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of course Microsoft would create this document using their own products, naturally, they are the big proponent of the "Eat Your Own Dog Food" methodology.

    So why then when I click on Document Properties on this PDF do I see?

    Creator: QuarkXpress 4.11
    Producer: Acrobat Distiller 4.05 for Macintosh

    Bill: while you're transferring this over to Microsoft Publisher perhaps you'd like to fix the typo on page 1: "rteam".

    John.

  12. Clippy! by dswensen · · Score: 5, Funny

    "B-but, Open Office doesn't have Clippy, the helpful paper clip. Or a wizard. Or a little Microsoft logo that tells you when you're writing a letter (because obviously, you don't know). We even have a helpful little puppy! You like puppies, don't you? Everybody likes puppies! Fine, go ahead and use Open Office, puppy killer!"

  13. Step 3 by FearUncertaintyDoubt · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  14. Rule one of marketing.. by Sexual+Ass+Gerbil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  15. They're admitting to anti-competitive behavior by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  16. Open Office is "good enough" by L-Train8 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This quote made me stop:
    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.

    It reminded me of an incident that happened several years ago. I was working at a company with close ties to Microsoft when the "I Love You" virus struck. Both Microsoft and our company were hit hard by it. A couple days after the messy cleanup, I sent a Word doc to a Microsoft employee. It was a form we used often and it had a macro that allowed the recipient to fill in some check boxes.

    I got a nasty reply from the microsoft employee about how it was irresponsible to send word docs with macros in this time of virus vulnerability. Since then, I have used as few of the gimmicky features that MS Office supplies. They don't add much to your documents, and they set you up for virus and incompatibility problems. Only using basic features isn't something you should settle for, it is a good rule to follow to avoid lots of nasty problems.

    --

    Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
  17. Migration cost is the biggest by bratgrrl · · Score: 5, Funny

    M$ is right about one thing- migration is the most painful and expensive part. Unlike using M$ products, though, the pain stops afterwards.

    --

    ---

    SCO is weenies
    Gator is Spyware
    Microsoft is thugs

  18. Having an option is bad? by richmaine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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. :-)

  19. Support? by cabingirl · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    I could kill you, sure, but I could only make you cry with these words
  20. Forgot to include... by (1)down · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WHY open office can't format Office Documents correctly.

    --
    my other sig is a commando
  21. My experience with OO.o by jfengel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just bought a new computer and chose to skip getting MS Office on it, so I have been experimenting with OO.

    My results so far: in general, I prefer MS Office. Perhaps it's just because I'm more familiar with its eccentricities, but I find many things about OO annoying.

    I can't map functions to ALT keys, and the relatively simply "switch to style X" involves setting up a macro before I can bind it to a key.

    It took me a long time to get section numbering right. Eventually it did work, but the vast array of options confused me and tweaking them introduced subtle problems of their own.

    OO doesn't have book-style figure layout. (Neither does MSO.) Drawing is not easy, and not well integrated.

    This is not an evaluation; this is just the list of things I wanted to do on day one that pissed me off. MS Office has its own problems, and many of those persist for version after version. But the devil I know is better than the devil I don't when all I want to do is get some work done.

    I assume OO.o will get better, and I'm going to keep using OO.o to see what happens as I get more familiar with it. I sure can't beat the price.

  22. Re: unresolved bugs? by hafree · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Back in 1995, Microsoft Word had a problem with auto-page numbering in the footer of documents that affected the page numbers as well as the font used if changed from the default 12pt Times Roman. 9 years later, this exact same bug remains.

  23. Support Team by althalus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, besides the already helpful OO.org developers, Novell has recently announced at brainshare that they will be giving full support for OO. From developers, to sales and user support. Not just for the linux part, but full OO support. Not a bad thing to have for those just getting into open source, or companies that need the assurances.

  24. Little anecdote... by Dimensio · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work in a US spinoff of a Japanese chemical company. As such, there are times when users here have to deal with documents from Japan, complete with Japanese fonts.

    A rather nice lady reported a problem with an Excel document that contained Japanese fonts. The characters in the spreadsheet were appearing as squares rather than the proper Japanese characters. Naturally, this appeared to be a fonts problem, so my first attempt at a fix was to install the Japanese language set. Unfortunately, this didn't work, as the document STILL had nothing but squares where the Japanese characters should have been.

    It looked as though it was a versioning issue. It looked like a document created with Japanese character with Excel 95 (the document seemed to have been created with that) could NOT display the characters properly in Excel 2000. I couldn't find any method of getting the document to show up properly in Excel 2000, and the solution seemed to be to install Excel 95, because that was the only application that would show the characters properly.

    Then I remembered OpenOffice.

    I didn't know if it would work, but I downloaded and installed OO 1.1. I opened the Japanese document, and to my surprise, I was greeted with the spreadsheet just as it should have appeared, complete with the Japanese characters. Not content to leave it at just that, I re-saved the document from within OpenOffice, then I opened it with Excel 2000. Lo and behold, the document appeared correctly! The only way that I could get a document created in Excel 95 to show up properly in Excel 2000 was with Open Office.

    Needless to say, I related the solution to the network admin who had assigned me the task, recommending that OpenOffice be considered as an alternative or replacement to MS Office.

    --
    STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
  25. Trademark issues by Fencepost · · Score: 5, Informative
    It's a little buried in the FAQs, but
    7. Why should we say "OpenOffice.org" instead of simply "OpenOffice"?
    The trademark for "OpenOffice" belongs to someone else. Therefore we must use "OpenOffice.org" when referring to this open source project and its software.
    --
    fencepost
    just a little off
  26. Halloween XVCXXIXXCVIX by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 5, Funny
    From an email that went through the marketing offices of Microsoft headquarters:
    Ten reasons you should choose Microsoft Office Deluxe Professional Edition over OpenOffice.org:
    1. It makes us more money.
    Ok, so we're still about nine reasons short... Someone needs to conjure them up. -Bill.
    Make of it what you will...
  27. Have to Laugh by GMFTatsujin · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the PDF:
    Question the "free" argument... 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 databases)

    My emphasis, there. And I couldn't agree more. Handling issues of inaccessable Access databases is incredibly important, and is notorious for chewing up helpdesk hours.

    Especially when Office 2000 broke Access compatibility with 98 databases, and forced everyone to upgrade (or to not touch the database with Access2000 so that those who had not yet upgraded could still get to their data).

    OfficeXP did the same thing to 2000 databases - all it took was one XP user to touch the database, and all the 2000 users would suddenly be out of the loop. I fully expect Access2k3 to be the same way.

    So yes, consider those Access databases as a major component of the cost of data migration. When one version of Access touches the database, be ready to install and deploy that same version to all your other clients, because with Access, you migrate your data whether you're ready to or not. And you pay every year for the privilige! Hooray!
  28. Re: unresolved bugs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    See, now, whereas some may call this a bug, isn't it far more positive to characterize it as a commitment to tradition?
    It's you humorless types that give /. such a negative reputation...

  29. Oh? by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

    Bill, give Darl his crack pipe back...

  30. Re:buying e-mail client ??? by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmm, is Mozilla still free ?

    Yup.

    Now, let me know when Mozilla will do calendar, appointment book, task list, and email integration.

    And before you flame me as a troll - I use Firefox at home and work and Thunderbird at home. Work requires I use Outlook, and it's because of those features that it has value. I don't find its email capabilities particularly wonderful by themselves, not to mention the slew of virus vulnerabilities (but that's ok, because we paid for, at a considerable expense, a mail server virus scanner). Despite the drawbacks there is very little that is actually competitive with Outlook/Exchange. And most of the alternatives (Notes, for example) suck even more. Yes, there are some OSS solutions out there as well, but they're not up to the same level in functionality as Outlook/Exchange. And that's a pretty sad statement.

  31. Re: unresolved bugs? by eofpi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That bug was so difficult to deal with most of the time that a lot of my papers wound up being numbered by hand either on the computer or with a pen once I printed it.

    --
    Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
  32. So sick of the TCO argument by aduzik · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    If it's not one thing it's your mother.
  33. Bugs from 2002 by overshoot · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    Sure you can. One of those is mine, in fact: OO.o doesn't have an overbar (opposite of underline) font attribute for text. Really a problem for doing technical documentation, but to date nobody has wanted to bother with it. Including me, as it happens; if it were important enough to $EMPLOYER we'd have added it already.

    Of course, MSOffice doesn't have overbar either. Wonder what it would take for $EMPLOYER to enhance MSWord?

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  34. Re:There's only one really good reason to use Offi by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Although you shouldn't lower yourself to doing business with such people in the first place, here's a trick:
    • Save as .RTF from your favorite libre word processor
    • Rename the file from .RTF to .DOC
    Microsoft Word will see that the .doc is actually an .rtf, and handle it properly, while your clueless MS Word user will never know what you really did.
    --
    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
  35. No, really, it was created on a Mac by macdaddy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the Document Properties for OpenOffice.pdf:
    Description
    Title: competitive OpenOffice.qxd
    Author: Gravity
    Subject:
    Keywords:
    Created: 9/11/2003 10:05:53 AM
    Modified: 9/11/2003 5:06:03 PM
    Application: QuarkExpress(tm) 4.11
    PDF Information
    PDF Producer: Acrobat Distiller 4.05 for Macintosh
    PDF Version: 1.2 (Acrobat 3.x)
    Path:
    File Size: 53.96 KB (55,259 Bytes)
    Page Size: 11 x 8.5 in
    Tagged PDF: No
    Number of Pages: 2
    Fast Web View: Yes
  36. It's not a tangent! It's important. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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.

  37. Gems... by seanellis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Sean Ellis
    Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
  38. undocumented unresolved bugs by Stephen+Samuel · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I've told this story many times:

    A friend of mine worked for a rather large company and his users were having problems with excel corrupting files in a wierd, almost viral, way.

    His Microsoft account rep kept on telling him that the problem must be with something that he was doing, because nobody else seemed to be having that problem.

    Then my friend found out that someone at another company was having the same problem, and my friend had the following conversation with his MS account rep:

    friend: I was talking to Mr. X at Ycorp the other day and, ...
    MS: Oh yeah, Mr. X. I talk to him all the time.. YCorp is one of my accounts, you know...
    friend: Ah, then you'll know that, for the last couple of months, he's having the same problem with excel that I've been having!.
    MS: <guilty silence>.
    One thing that you rarely get in the Open Source world is people lying about the existence of a bug.
    --
    Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
  39. CLO (Chief Licensing Officer) sinks TCO by rjamestaylor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    -- @rjamestaylor on Ello
  40. I'm Convinced by jeddak · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm ready to switch. OpenOffice doesn't have all the wonderful nifty features that MS Office has, and I'm tired of explaining my use of this obscure piece of software to my friends and family...

    So. Tell me - where do I buy MS Office for FreeBSD?

    No?

    Linux?

    Solaris?

    Oh.

  41. Advantages and Disadvantages by Trillian_Angel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 ;)

    --
    -- RJ