Slashdot Mirror
EIOffice 2004 vs. MS Office 2003
ryen writes "Designed to compete against MS Office, EIOffice 2004 is coded in Java therefore able to run on both Windows and Linux. EIOffice 2004 offers features which should get a few users' attention, but does it have enough to have people switching from MS Office? Flexbeta has the review." That's Evermore Integrated Office, if you're wondering.
"Written in Java so it can run on both Windows and Linux"
hehe, what about all the other platforms there's a JVM for? Like, uh, OS X? Solaris?
How myopic.
But the web site doesn't have any trial versions.
Its hard to put down $150 without seeing if it will actually open up my spreadsheet and documents.
The review had an eval copy, but no such animal on the web site. Too bad; Do you have to wait for a warez copy to figure out if its worth buying? Makes me think they have something to hide.
Believe it or not, I think real Excel compatibility is the hardest to achieve because there are so many different macros (VB Script), charting features, and other goodies in Excel that its easy to get "locked in".
I'm sticking with OpenOffice.org for now. Just MHO.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Re: Java GUIs being slow
They can actually be quite fast and responsive, if written correctly. I run eclipse on my PIII500Mhz on Fedora Core 1 and it runs very nicely. Some changes coming down the line in Java 1.5 might actually make it even more responsive, for some things even faster than typical C++ applications (the run-time optimizer cannot easily be duplicated in statically compiled languages.)
Aye, it looks like a lot of the "useful new" features offered by EIO are already available in OpenOffice, such as suggest-as-you-type.
I think the big clincher for me would be how it interprets MS-Word shapes and drawings, as that's the only problem I've ever had with OpenOffice.
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
IIRC, Lotus Development Corp v Paperback Software Intl demonstrated us in 1990 that copying the look and feel in exact form is copyright infringement.
When are people going to learn that consumers don't care what language a program is written in? For some reason, the Evermore Software folks are attempting to use this as a marketing bullet point (it's the first point on their web page, even), when Joe User really just wants to know why it's better than MS Office.
I write Java to pay the bills, and as such I'm a big supporter of the platform. But users just don't care. In fact because of the Microsoft FUD machine, saying it's Java might even be a turn-off to quasi-technical people. I once had a government purchasing manager say "Java? We're moving away from that because Microsoft no longer supports it." Idiotic yes, but to paraphrase Forrest Gump: Customer is as Customer does.
Writing Java apps is key for the software developer, because your market suddenly is no longer linked to the hardware platform your customers have. You can sell it to anybody. But from the customer standpoint it simply doesn't matter.
I disagree. To effectively overtake a product with a commanding lead in the market you practically have to make a clone of it and sell it cheaper. Anything different is too different for many people and they won't switch.
Many times people just want something better not different. I want a better government not a different one and so on and so forth.
did you forget to take your meds?
What is the market for this thing? Its not going to compete against MS Office- no db just to start- and it can't compete with OpenOffice - price alone- so who's going to use it?
While I am not the biggest fan of OpenOffice (disclaimer I have tried OO and deinstalled it in favor of MS Office- flame away)I would use it in a second over this thing because OO is free and OO really does have some nice features.
B O R I N G
From their whitepaper...
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use - Mark Twain
The good news is that the "winner" in the computer world is hardly ever the guy with the best product. Instead the folks that win generally end up being the folks with the cheapest product that is "good enough." If usability or innovation mattered then the early Macintoshes would have destroyed their DOS based PC competitors. The problem is that most people aren't really willing to pay extra for innovation or usability. They simply want something that will get the job done at the lowest price.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that Free Software doesn't innovate or anything like that. In the long run the ability to take existing software and innovate on top of it (instead of starting from scratch) is going to be a huge win for hackers everywhere. Once OpenOffice.org (or whatever) becomes wide spread then all sorts of cool things are going to be possible just because anyone with a crazy idea as to how office suites should work will actually be able to try those ideas out. Most of these ideas will be crap, but the wider range of ideas will still almost certainly be a net win. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft has been lifting ideas from other software developers and implementing then in Windows and Office for years. You would be hard pressed to point to a single major feature that Microsoft actually pioneered.
Microsoft has made a living by being "good enough" and less expensive, and for years the dominated the desktop despite the fact that Windows (and DOS before that) were pathetic knockoffs of other people's innovation. Now Windows is finally getting to be pretty good, but Linux is cheaper, and for an increasingly large group of people it is becoming "good enough."