Microsoft FUD Machine Aims at OpenOffice.org

Roblimo writes "If you're using Microsoft Office and considering a switch to (free) OpenOffice.org, Microsoft would like you to read their Open Office Competitive Guide first, in which they tell you how much better/faster/cheaper MS Office is than OOo. Taran Rampepersad, an IT consultant in Trinidad, believes this "Competitive Guide" is nothing but FUD, so he wrote a detailed rebuttal to it -- and released his article under the FDL so you can feel free to republish his piece or share it with anyone you like, however you like." A followup to this story. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.

Comments

Seamless data exchange

[platipusrc]

(4) Seamless Data Exchange: Microsoft claims seamless data exchange within Microsoft Office - but it's only between people using Microsoft products. OpenOffice allows people who use a variety of operating systems and data formats to interact with each other. Microsoft Office does not.

Often it's not even possible to use Office formats between versions. Try to edit an MS Office 2003 file on a system that's using MS Office '97.

Re:Seamless data exchange

[CdBee]

You can download the Office Resource Kit to install Office 2003 file formats on older versions of Office. It's my belief that Office 97 is included.

This is free software from Microsoft, available on the Office website.

Re:Seamless data exchange

[Hi_2k]

... With an XML format, as OO.o uses, it's fairly easy to ignore features that your current version of the program cannot interpret. Just ignore the tags that appear to be meaningless. Set up a special "Errors" section that takes note of lines of XML that arent readable, and you're gold. As I remember, OO.o supports the former, though I'm not sure about the latter.

You think it stops there ...

[nemaispuke]

I don't know if any of you read SysAdmin or Dr. Dobbs Journal (I get both) and the Microsof tFUD machine doesn't stop at OpenOffice. In my latest issue of SysAdmin was a pack containing a 180 day time crippled copy of Windows Server 2003 and a "Learning Resource" CD.

I went through part of the CD before I raised the "bullshit flag" over the following:

1. Poor Plug and Play support based on Solaris 2.6 and an equally ancient version of Linux. Did not mention HP-UX, IRIX, or AIX.

2. The only way to have a remote desktop similar to Terminal Services was to use VNC, what about a remote X session?

Microsoft would not get in so much trouble over this stuff if they simply told the truth. Or are they expecting Linux and Unix admins and developers to "jump ship" for some crippleware (not including "Windows Services for Unix" which Microsoft had to Interix to develop!

Re:You think it stops there ...

[Richard_at_work]

The only way to have a remote desktop similar to Terminal Services was to use VNC, what about a remote X session?

Just a minor nitpick, but one of the main reasons i use Terminal Services on windows and VNC on X desktops is the ability to disconnect and leave applications running, and return to them at a later date. Im under the impression that you cannot do this cleanly with X. Remote X definately is more useful for exporting individual applications, rather than an entire desktop.

Re:Hardware

[Kyouryuu]

It's pretty simple though. Microsoft Office "cheats" in the same way OpenOffice does. The difference is that MS Office is more discreet about it. OpenOffice generally comes up quickly if you have the quick launcher client running in the taskbar. Parts of the OO suite are preloaded and ready to launch at the press of that icon. MS Office is the same way, but its quick launcher is transparently running in the background with no fanfare.

Take that away and you'll see that the initial loading speeds are somewhat comparable.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Mr. No Skills]

Actually, its not a press release. Its a document sent to Microsoft partners (solution providers) with the speaking points to use when dealing with a customer asking about Open Office. They also have documents like this for Linux, Sun, and many other competing products. I get a box full of them each month, and some times they come attached to Dr. Dobb's Journal and other publications.

I think everyone expects Microsoft to promote their products. And most of the comments seem to be undie-bind-free (at least as of my reading). The only thing that is really interesting is that the argument against Open Office is relatively thin, as the other link shows, and could be the same argument against upgrading from Office to a new version of Office.

But, I'm over it. I switched a few weeks ago and don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about Microsoft products anymore.

Re:I'd like to use this, but I've always gone back

[stef49]

Not a pb with OOo 1.1.1r3 on Linux.
I almost never use OOo (or MS Office or any spreadsheet btw) but it took me less than 1m to find out how to define my own shortcut for fill down:

(1) select menu "Tools>Configure"
(2) select the tab "Keyboard"
(3) select "Edit" as Category"
(4) select "Fill down" as Function
(5) select an unused Shortcut key in the list.
(6) press the buttons "Modify" and "Ok"

Re:Yaaaawwwwnnnn

[neko9]

Is there anything that OpenOffice does that is new?

why yes - it opens corrupted office documents and saves documents directly to pdf. for me thats priceless.

Re:Yaaaawwwwnnnn

[AstroDrabb]

OOo can export any of its documents to PDF, MS Office can not do that by itself. OOo can also export its presentations to Macromedia Flash(tm) which makes it very easy to put it out to a web page somewhere to share. You just click the Flash presentation to go to the next slide. Again, MS Office cannot do that. Those two features are very useful to me. Plus the format for OOo is open so I will always be able to read my documents with out paying the MS Tax. Not to mention that I can keep all my important docs as PDF by exporting them from OOo and not have to worry about some proprietary format going away after the support period has expired.

Wanted: marketing job (-:

[leonbrooks]

They did very poorly at that.

• deployment: no difference except that with OOo it has to be redone less often.
• data migration: necessary for both systems, more of a problem with OOo. MS-Access is only a part of MS Office Professional though, which does raise the cost for the MS side.
• doc/macro conversion: doc conversion is a problem for both sides, as I can testify from personal experience. Anyone who uses MS Office macros for anything but the simplest automation tasks (ie, easy to rewrite if needed) will get what they deserve sooner or later.
• training: OOo is indeed not the same as MSO, and is in some ways much easier to learn from scratch since in many areas it is more consistent (e.g. format char/par/page all in same menu in order).
• carefully not faced by MS - cost: the cost of MS Office professional can cover a lot of evils, and in the vast majority of cases none of the above points will be relevant.
• interoperability: OOo is actually better in many ways at transacting with older MS Offices than the newer MSO versions are.
• viruses: hah! Seriously, I have never seen a virus from OOo, I have seen countless thousands from MSO. Experience suggests that MSO is far more susceptible to virus attack. If MS argues that it's more the platform's fault than the office suite... well, give us MS Office for Linux, and we'll test that theory out for you, eh? (-:
• CRM: not relevant
• Accounting data: not relevant
• Personal portrayal of business: not relevant
• Cost effective: OOo wins... this whole section kind of reads like MS ran out of ideas.
• Limited compatibility: true, and MS wins that basic point, but most users will never notice the difference. The sub-point about not supporting a database client is false. I use OOo as a PostgreSQL client regularly.
• integration with other tools: is more than good enough for 99% of users, and total integration carries some disadvantages as well, particularly in the areas of security and component choice. OOo allows considerable customisation of component choice, and integrates reasonably well with (for example) FireFox and ThunderBird. FireFox is just night-and-day more useful than Internet Explorer, particularly after you've clicked down a few of the extensions.
• tailoring: OOo and anything you're likely to integration with it totally ace MS Office in terms of direct customisability and external file manipulation.
• support: OOo documentation is still behind the curve, but community support is already significantly better than MSOs and accelerating
• faster work: if you do your studies without subjects already accustomed to your favoured office suite, the results come out quite differently.
• seamless exchange: is a myth. I regularly use OOo to enable document exchange between MSO users who have otherwise failed to exchange at all, let alone seamlessly.
• office/windows deployment: is slower than rolling out entire offices with an automated network install, which would include OOo as a matter of course. Updates are a simple matter of dropping the .rpm files (or .pkg etc) into the office's update cache. Leading, of course, to cost savings well beyond the licence price for the team not using the MS products.
• security: OOo provides many of the same security features as MSO, but some of them are not needed for OOo
• investment: you can invest yourself into OOo, something not seriously possible with MSO. You can also take or leave each piece, each level of integration as you will, not being forced to submerge yourself in a meta-platform unless you wish to.
• misc items from the trailing blurb: most of these are "features" not of MSO but of Outlook.
• MSO's XML sucks: the non-Pro version strips out everything useful, the Pro

Re:PDF

[darien]

Word doesn't produce pdf files because thats not really a word processor format

Adobe Acrobat installs a virtual PDF printer so you can create PDFs from any application; and for Word in particular it goes so far as to add an "export to PDF" button right onto the toolbar. In other words, it is very easy to create PDFs from Word. I guess there must be some other reason why Word wasn't used for this task.

Re:PDF

[nolife]

Adobe Acrobat

Not to be confused with the Adobe Reader that just about everyone has.
Every place that I have used or maintained Samba, I've also installed a network PDF printer for the client workstations to use (using this guide as a reference). Of course why stop there, you can also use the same concept descibed in the above link to install various printers like jpg, tiff (color and group 4 fax), and just about any other printer that gs can export to. These virtual printers make a great document converter for those people that you want to share stuff with that may not have the specific application to print or open the native file you may have to send them. Another advantage is printing confimations, receipts, web pages etc.. in electronic form instead of on paper.

Substitute ps2pdf in the above linked guide to gs for other printers, examples below

RGB color tiff at 300dpi:
gs -sDEVICE=tiff24nc -r300x300

Standard Group 4 Fax (tiff):
gs -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -r100x100

300dpi Jpeg:
gs -sDEVICE=jpeg -r300x300

Re:Conflict of interests

[ninjadroid]

You don't find it a bit twisted that VA Linux owns a site called Slashdot that posts articles that bashes competitors and calls it "tech news?"

No, although I do find debate-by-interrogation to be a little perverse. I doubt you'd ever be happy with Slashdot's anti-MS tint, even if the site was funded by CmdrTaco's lottery winnings. The connection between Slashdot and OSDN is no secret, and if that perturbs you there are undoubtedly greener pastures over yon fence. Slashdot is mostly a community deal, and you're outnumbered. Deal.

Imagine the outcry if some other company owned a site that called itself a news site and posted articles negative toward Linux. We'd hear endless rants from the zealots about how it's "biased."

In essence, stupid people would do stupid stuff. No surprise there. Somewhat surprising that you don't see the connection between these zealots and Slashdot iconoclasts such as your self.

On a more serious note, I've read your comments and journal, and I'm convinced that you've nailed the issue dead on. Slashdot is horrible, and I don't think there's any hope for it (at least, I got better things to do than try to fix it). I advise seeking an alternate news source for your daily fix.

My personal experience

[DrXym]

I've had MS Office in one form or another running on Windows for a number of years. When I bought a Dell in 2002 it shipped with an MS Works bundled with MS Word and some other miscellaneous MS packages.

So rather than bother getting the latest MS Office just for the spreadsheet and the occasional slideshow I started to use OpenOffice more and more. Since 1.1 I haven't hit any brick wall in terms of functionality. It really does all I need to do for my home / work requirements. It also has some brilliant features of its own such as being able to print straight to PDF which is just awesome.

I was pretty nervous of it to begin with, but now I don't know any reason to switch back to MS Office. I submit timesheets with OpenOffice, I write letters with OpenOffice. It works, it's free and MS is 450 out of pocket. Good riddance.

Besides, MS Office seems to double in disk space with each release for a barely discernable functionality improvements. I suppose someone somewhere needs whatever that bloat is there to provide but I suspect most people don't. OpenOffice takes a mere fraction of the space and provides nearly the same functionality and certainly enough for mere mortals.

Now I do have some criticisms. The first is the OpenOffice UI looks lousy. It looks like it was designed for Windows 95 and has never changed. Some of the icons are very confusing - maybe the Ximian ones should be used. And certain buttons such as the text colour / highlight dropdown buttons have a counter-unintuitive behaviour, where clicking on certain bits of the button make it popup but other parts don't. I'm assuming also that future versions will make use of theme engines that most OS's provide to ensure a native look & feel.

Secondly, the OO people must recognize that nearly all of their 'business' is ex-MS Office users. The easiest way to spread the word about OO is to offer new users an experience (toolbars, menus and keybindings) that closely resembles MS Office but for free. This would also make OO considerably easier to pick up and use and could mean the difference between OO being dismissed entirely as too difficult and the user raving about it to all his / her friends.

Finally I do miss outline mode in MS Word. Does OO have this functionality? I've searched and searched but have seen nothing like it. Now this would be a useful feature, especially for writing long documents.

Using Oo.org does NOT mean switching to Linux

[hacker]

I did a talk at Linuxworld back in the beginning of last year (one of several I did that week at LWE), that focused on the business savings of using Free Software on Windows instead of the more-expensive Microsoft alternatives. The room was jam-packed, and ever spare bit of space was taken up by standees. Most of these people were IT managers and upper-management people.

The cost savings are enormous. Think about the current Microsoft Office paradigm; $450/desktop at retail rates (slightly lower for volume purchases). Now, compare that to OpenOffice.org on the same Windows desktop at a cost of $0.00/desktop. Multiply that out over say... 3,000 desktops, for a medium-sized installation. Let's say that you have a volume price of $200/copy of Microsoft Office in this case. You just saved yourself $600,000 in just licensing costs , and just for one application . Multiply that out across many more Free Software applications that run on Windows natively. Do you think you could use a spare $600k to improve your business, or hire some more staff, or upgrade the existing computers, or buy new applications for your core business process? I bet you could.

That's just for a small-to-medium sized business. Take a Pfizer Pharmaceutical for example... 70,000 desktops, most of them running Microsoft Office. If they get a nice cheap volume price of $100/copy of Microsoft Office vs. the $0.00/copy of Oo.org, they just saved $7,000,000 (yes, million) dollars by moving to Free Software on their existing Microsoft Windows desktops. $7 million dollars saved, in just licensing costs ! Yes, there are some advanced things that Oo.org doesn't do yet, but it will fit the needs of 90% or more of "office users".

But wait, that's not all (insert catchy As-Seen-On-TV jingle). If you ever decide to switch your users to a Linux desktop, they can continue to use the same exact applications that they were used to on the Microsoft Windows desktop; i.e. OpenOffice.org in this example. There is zero training curve, downtime, or lack of productivity.

Also, Oo.org provides MUCH more functionality, in terms of file formats, usability, interoperability, than the current Microsoft Office suite, and Oo.org is improving every single day in leaps and bounds. Is Microsoft Office improving this fast? Unlikely.

The switch is a no-brainer, and you don't even have to run Linux to reap the benefits.

(Note: I don't work for or endorse OpenOffice.org in any way, I just believe in Free Software very strongly, both as an author of Free Software, and an evangelist in the community)