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OpenOffice.org, MS Office 2003 Compared, Evaluated
kotj.mf writes "eWeek is running a relatively lengthy article comparing OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2003, as part of an IT decision whether to migrate a 300-plus userbase office away from Office 97/2000. The not-so-surprising conclusion: OO.o can be a better deal for smaller companies that can't fully leverage Redmond's volume licensing. Hell, it'd be cheap at twice the price."
I work for a not-for-profit company that qualifies Microsoft's charity licensing. I haven't ever seen the actual prices, but from what I hear, the per-seat costs for Office are less than even the highest-tiered volume licensing.
:-(
Kinda hard for me to fulfill my conquest of moving our mail away from Exchange.
For all the documents you absolutely must exchange with people, PDF fits the bill 99 times out of 100. How often do you email an EDITABLE document to someone, have them edit it, then send it back? OOo's "Export to PDF" fits this nicely. I have a 'stealth' OOo install here at work, most other people fear the fact that somehow I scored Adobe Acrobat. PDF simply rules.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It was a short review, but one problem I had with their comparison of PowerPoint/Impress was that Impress had a hard time working with a PowerPoint file that had a lot of imbedded Excel and Word information. Frankly, PowerPoint isn't nearly as good at handling those things as it ought to be either. Most of the testing was done to see how well an office could migrate from MS Office to OpenOffice, so the concern is a legitemate one, but I think that one will see that Impress will handle Writer and Calc files as well or better than PowerPoint will handle Word and Excel files.
I struggled for days and days and all I got was this lousy sig.
I'd agree that small businesses, shoestring budgets, home, school, charity, underdeveloped nations would be better off going OO.o.
At large corporations, smooth 2-way compatibility with MS Office is a must have and OO.o is not there yet.
It's ironic, though. If a few of the larger MS Office licensees were to pool their resources they could contract out to improve OO.o so that it would be sufficiently compatible.
But there's the tragedy of the commons: even though many would benefit from lower costs, etc., everyone hopes "George will do it" I'll just wait until its good enough for me and meanwhile I'll shell out for MS Office.
But the more small time users lap over the barrier, the more it wears down.
A day will come when a Fortune 500 company makes the jump. It will look impressive, but it will just be the culmination of years of work by others on OO.o
"Provided by the management for your protection."
CON: ...
Lack of traditional support Office suites typically do not require much vendor support, but the fact that OpenOffice.org is an open-source project means software support must come from the community, generally spread out across various Web sites and newsgroups.
Ok, so tell me again why the guy was thinking about switching from MS to OO? Oh yeah, "Benincasa is looking to upgrade because Microsoft has discontinued distribution of new licenses for Office 2000 and Office 97"
So MS won't support what they deem "old" products at all, and that isn't listed as a "Con" for them. Yet distributed, widely available support is a "Con" for OO?
And in the "Con" for MS high licensing costs, it doesn't mention that these will be recurring costs, at the whim of Microsoft and their End of Life policies.
mangles documents when passed back and forth between MS Office and OpenOffice
As someone who also has to transfer documents between the two applications, I can honestly say that most of the time, Office does far more mangling than OO.o does. Hell, Office often can't even properly read older versions of Office itself!
OO.o isn't completely in the clear, but I find it's more consistent.
I like OpenOffice.org as much as the next guy, or maybe even more -- I've used OOo on my Windows box exclusively for about two years now. But, I just can't get used to OOo on my PowerBook. I really wanted to like it, but the OS X version left me wanting more. Really, it's hardly a port at all -- it's just the Unix version running under X11 for OS X. So, it has the Unix interface and it's lacking the usual Mac OS niceties such as the Aqua look and even the nifty Finder-ized open/save dialogs.
At this point, I'm just torn between trying to find MS Office/Mac for cheap (perhaps an older version) or just waiting for the proper Aqua port of OOo (even though that could be a while).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Thats because that while everyone moans and complains about how you can't live without office, its still just a word processor, spreadsheet ... to most people.
.....), plus they are not willing to run an "unlicensed" version.
I rebuilt a PC for my inlaws last year and when they asked about office, I said it would cost them about $300 (consumer version, no student discount
I installed openoffice and it worked like a charm. A couple of weeks getting used to it and then it was no trouble. The only extra help needed was instruction in importing and saving to office formats. I know the filters aren't perfect, but being that the machine was only being used for basic word processing and spreadsheets, it wasn't an issue.
I work at a school -- We don't license MS Office for the students, but this year is the first that we have put MS Office on every faculty machine (about 60). I also put OpenOffice on every machine. We have been 100% Wordperfect until this year, but the new president "likes MS Office", so he's slowly forcing everything that direction. When I rolled out this year's install image, I had made a bit of a mistake (completely unintentionally). When someone double-clicks on a MS Office document, it opens in OpenOffice instead of MSOffice. This has basically "forced" everyone to use OpenOffice.
And HARDLY ANYONE has noticed. Only two or three of the faculty (those who call themselves the Techno-elite . . . yeah right) have switched it back to MS. Most people don't realize they're not using MSOffice. I'm of the opinion that I could COMPLETELY remove MSOffice, rename all the OpenOffice icons to the MS equivalent, and we'd be in business.
I was also pissed that they didn't include Outlook in the comparison. Anyone who's worked with Outlook 2003 will know what I mean. It's by far the biggest upgrade to Office since 97. I can't stand Outlook 2002, no less 2000! To say it's a fair comparison, then leave a competitor's strongest asset, is totally bogus. And, just in case you're wondering, no you can't buy Office without Outlook. The lightest weight version (retail) still has Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook. proof
Cost to install is not the only cost. With a free product, your own IT guys are the only resource if you encounter a bug or difficult error situation. If you're paying for a license, you have another level of support, i.e. the developer.
It has been said many times before, and better than I could, but:
When you find a bug in a Microsoft product, can you really get hold of the programmers? Is the helpdesk really helpful? Are Microsoft products (Office, in this case) really more bug-free than the major alternatives?
I has also been said that it's often a lot easier to just email or call the OSS programmers and to talk directly to the person who coded the app you are using, and suggestions for new features have more chances of being listened to in the OSS world.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
One of the main problems with OpenOffice on the Mac is that it does not yet use Aqua for its user interface, and a side effect of this is you cannot use the different international input modes in OS X to type in OO. So I can't just switch to Chinese and start typing in OO, as it does not know how to handle it. Without that, half my use for a word processor goes out the window.
There may be a way to rig the X11 environment or OpenOffice itself to allow Chinese input in another fashion, but it's just one more usability knock against the program when run on Mac OS X. Ugly UI, incosistencies with the Mac's interface conventions, international input kludges, etc. Not to mention the performance issues, and missing niceties like AppleScript automation (which can be done on ANY native OS X app, even if it's not designed for it), non-crappy file dialogs, etc.
Microsoft Word may have its share of problems, but at least it can start in less than 45-60 seconds, and it follows most of the Apple UI conventions. So while OpenOffice is nice, it definitely is not a decent substitute for Office X at this stage.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Say I'm creating an Outlook 2003 group appointment. With 2 clicks (inside Outlook), I can create a portal site for the meeting which includes a discussion list, document/picture library, agenda, surveys, etc. No programming and very easy for the average user to accomplish.
Say I'm in Word working on a document and I'd like to get my attorney to look at it. With 2 clicks (inside Word), I can create a portal site to allow him to review the document. We can discuss it using the discussion features, and he can create different versions. Using the web folders functionality, this entire process is seemless (no downloading the file locally, editing it, and uploading...just hit save and it saves automatically back to the portal).
I have put OpenOffice on three machines in our office, but mostly for the ability to open and use Excel and PowerPoint files. I have used Writer in place of Word and it was pretty quick to learn and I wouldn't complain about some of the problems with it when it is free and very full featured.
But, in our field (legal), we need Word or Word Perfect. So, we've been buying copies of Works 2003 which contains Word XP/2002 at 40 bucks a pop on eBay. We just don't need Excel or PowerPoint to pony up for MS Office, and can use OO.org when we need those programs.
I would love to go to OpenOffice in its entirety, but the problem is that many popular and specialized programs in the legal field support Word or WordPerfect and will never support something like OO.org (heck, our scheduling program doesn't support the main file being on a Linux server, which would have saved us some money for getting additional licenses for WinNT).
Our scheduling program (Amicus Attorney) supports creating documents through its scheduler/address book only though Word or WordPerfect.
Until OO.org figures out a way to interact with specialized programs in specialized fields (legal, medicine, engineering, etc), I think it will be hard for many companies to make a switch.
I have one version of office. I paid it. It is 97.
And it cannot open recent word documents. So saying M$ as no migration cost is PURE BULLSHIT.
Don't tell me it is normal, it is too old because:
1) the PII/400 I bought it with is still more than enough for bureautic, and I don't see the first reason to upgrade.
2) OOo can open, even if not completely correctly the Word files I cannot open with Office97.
True, although the costs of switching are odften short term and the savings long term. Which can be a problem in pitching to senior management. You pitch "OK it's going to save us $200,000 over 5 years for an upfront cost of $10,000 over the first year and $2,000 in the second year." and they only hear the cost part. They see the short term drop in profits and it's effect on their bonus and the share price. Then they say no. In many ways it's easier to sell StarOffice than OpenOffice.org as at least Sun have a marketing department, plus automatic credibility due to being outsiders.
Actually, on the subject of StarOffice. Due to the heavy discount (on purchase, training ("train the trainer") and support costs, remember enterprises like support and training) and free/very cheap consultancy Sun give to public sector bodies in Europe (and I assume elsewhere) it actually works out significantly cheaper to switch to StarOffice than it does OpenOffice.org for such bodies. worth bearing in mind.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
(cut and paste from email)
Microsoft SharePoint is Microsoft's take on a Wiki.
Search google for "wikiwiki"/"wiki wiki" for details.
Important: If you haven't delt with wikis before, I suggest taking some time to look at them. Very very interesting stuff. Very practical as an information collaboration and storage/search system.
The differences in Microsoft's approach are basically;
* Document-centric -- specifically MS Office document suite from Word through PowerPoint with very tight integration with the FrontPage way of page design.
* Good for checking or logging existing documents into the system.
* Good for people who basically want a filing cabnet for Microsoft Office documents.
These good points cause problems that are not usually an issue with other Wikis;
* SharePoint is not easy or practical to use if the primary tasks involve;
+ Colaboration in general.
+ Searching existing data.
+ Editing/creating links and subdocuments.
+ Auditing.
IF you deal with folks where Microsoft lock-in is perfectly fine (as SharePoint inceases lock-in), and the negitive parts of the software are also not concerns, go for it. Otherwise, treat it like any other Wiki and decide from the list of available ones not just this one brand.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.