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OpenOffice vs. MS Office for Education?
dbrian asks: "I work in a large high school district where there will be some discussion on whether or not to purchase another term of 'Software Assurance' for MS Office licenses on thousands of computers. This seems to be an ideal opportunity to promote an alternative such as OpenOffice. It will not be an easy sell, even though OpenOffice should more than satisfy all curricular needs and save the district lots of money; like many other districts we have political and cultural 'challenges'. So, I ask you, have you been successful in moving your education or business organization from MS Office to OpenOffice? What were the pros and cons from your migration? What advice do you have in selling this to tech coordinators and administrators who are not enlightened by Open Source?"
Guess what?
If the punk brings a wordstar file, to heck with him.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
When I got my new laptop in September, I decided to try it with open office instead of MS office. As a graduate student, I deal with LOTS of powerpoint files (both making them and reading others'). I was sincerely disappointed by the experience. First, the files it produced inevitably had formatting errors (if someone else tells you they are fully compatible, they are lying). Graphics tended to display differently, with different color schemes, 'etc. Second, it was so slow as to make it unsuable. On a top-of-the-line Pentium 4, there was a 30-45 second load time for the program, a 10-15 second lag between slides, and a really annoying 1-3 second lag between mouse clicks. After a semester, I gave up and went back to MS office. I'll be staying put until I see these issues resolved.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Schools don't (or at least shouldn't)pay that much for MS products.
Educational Resources (I believe there is one for each state -- I know there is one for Missouri and Iowa) takes care of schools.
They buy the media (usually betwwn $50 and $200) one time then buy licenses that can range from a few bucks per machine into the $20-$30 range (depending on the software).
If the schools aren't doing this, then the TC's of those schools aren't doing their job properly. There are many district and state related mailing lists that the TC's can get on that will provide this type of information.
I'm not saying that OpenOffice isn't a good thing to switch to -- I use it in the shop. I'm just saying that schools don't spend anywhere near what individuals (and even businesses, unless the business is very large and constantly threatens to go to other software to get a better deal) pay.
bork bork bork!
Aside from the "minor," bugs with OOo that this thread is bringing to light, there is another serious consideration as far as interoperability and cross-office compatibility: Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
Before anyone considers a migration from MSO to OOo, you must consider your existing use of VBA; if none at all, no problem. On the other hand, if you have administration using VBA to manage accounting information, and teachers using VBA to manage grades, and students using VBA as part of their curriculum, then OOo is definitely going to be a more expensive solution, at least in the short term.
On the flip side, VBA is one of the major featu^H^H^H^H^Hsecurity concerns; you could try to take that angle if you are using VBA extensively.
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
Another word: Access
The article didn't mention which version of Office he'd be upgrading from. If it's something moderately old (maybe Office 97, which would be pretty reasonable given the governmental nature of the job), then I'd say that Office XP will require as much training as OpenOffice.
On the same note, my 45-person company was facing a group upgrade from Office 97, and our enlightened IT guy switched everyone to OpenOffice at that point. After the first week everyone just took it for granted and never really mentioned it again.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
1 - How much will it cost to reinstall everything? That's IT time, == $$$.
Openoffice has this thing called *network install*, once it has been installed on a main server all that is needed is to install small user files, if you can click next, next, next then you can do it in less than 10 seconds. I can install OOo on 50 computers in less than 45 mins.
2 - How much will it cost to upgrade some computers, since OOo is usually more resource-hungry than Office?
OOo can be made to load up on boot so that it loads almost as quickly as MS Office. If the computers are automatically turned on in the morniing before school starts this shouldn't be a problem even on a pentium running win95.
3 - How much will it cost in money and grief to retrain everybody (yes, there are people who just get by with Word provided you don't ever change anything to their computers).
An idiot can learn how to use Openoffice. Especially if the idiot has used MS Office. In any case school is for learning. I'm not just talking about the students either, that goes for the teachers as well.
4 - How much grief will the remaining file format incompatibilities with Office bring to the school?
I challenge you to list any format incompatibilities you may think *school* kids may come across when converting from MS Office to OOo.
I can already say that Open Office, for as nice as it is, cannot load MS Word files that have embedded jpeg images. Even the latest beta versions have this problem.
WTH are you talking about? I've been using MS Word docs with jpeg's/tiffs/png's/etc inserted into them since OOo v1.0.1 (that's my first install of OOo).
My only real regret was writing a full paper in the latest beta version of it, for the thing crashed consistenly when performing a File>Save,
What kind of idiot writes crucial documents with *BETA* versions of programs. I haven't used the latest 2.0beta of OOo so I can't comment on your problem. A simple bug report to the OOo bug website will get you a quicker reply than you could get out of MS. Especially with critical nature of your bug.
Actually, we tend to prefer that people be able to use computers. You want people that can use whatever you throw at them.
So instead of teaching people "click precisely here, then here" you teach people to actually read the file menus.
It really isn't that difficult. Its all in how you explain it.
Open Office has all of the word processing features you'd need at a high school. While many of those secretaries do use things like mail merge quite effectively (which exists and is easy to use in OOo), they're not likely to be using some sort of powerful, complicated macro, which is the only reasonable reason I've seen to not switch to open office. Its like teaching someone to fish vs giving them a fish. You can just show them how to do what they want in [input specific program here], or you can teach them to read menus and dialogs and help files and cover their computing needs for life. So get used to using a computer instead of a program, grow up, join the twenty first century, and stop using the bandwagon peer-pressure approach.
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
Office 2003 all the way.
I'm sorry, but OOo just blows. I've used 1.1 and 2.0 (beta), and they both suck in a wide variety of ways.
Here's a few:
- OOo defaults to A4 on my distro. You have to recreate the damn template to get it to use Letter.
- OOo's spell checker has neither the comprehensive dictionary nor the excellent suggestions that make Word's usable
- OOo manages to use 171MB on my Windows system, and a similar amount under Linux. Compare that to 15MB for Word - more than a 10x difference.
- OOo's spreadsheet doesn't autofill well. For example, Excel's autofill doesn't muck with the unchanging "data" part of the percentile function. OOo's does. In addition, if you move an entire column in OOo, the cells often don't update properly.
- OOo doesn't use native file selector dialogs (on Linux) without buggy 3rd party plugins.
- OOo sometimes coredumps when I try to start a presentation under Linux.
- OOo's 2.0 beta doesn't have working spellcheck at all on Linux.
- OOo doesn't use native GUI calls, so every element has that "not quite right" feeling.
- OOo can't autosave to a temp file; it must save to the original file
- OOo Impress doesn't ship with any templates.
- OOo has no groupware integration.
- OOo's outlining doesn't work like Word, AbiWord, KWord, or practically any other word processor.
- OOo de-italicizes an entire word if you hit CTRL+I before typing the space.
These are not minor squabbles. They are major issues that add up to a product that feels buggy, bloated, and awkward. It's a suite that just doesn't feel ready.
Above all else - BE HONEST. Let them know what shortcomings exist with OOo and how to address them. I wouldn't try some stunt like fooling them into believing it was MS Office (PHB's HATE that sort of display because it makes them feel foolish); however I *would* compare them side by side in something like 'Impress' and then conclude the slideshow by saying that it was prepared using OOo.
.DOC is NOT a standard! Prove it to them with examples. Not every student at home has office - some have Works and thanks to Dell, some have NEW versions of Wordperfect (go figure). Standardizing on OOo (or StarOffice for support in-school) is a way of circumventing this without stepping on a lot of toes. In fact, OOo now imports WP/.DOC as well as exports in Flash, .DOC, and .PDF (a real standard). Compare this to MS Office and OOo becomes more compelling.
.DOC as the U.S. OOo revels in it's worldwide usability.
.DOC documents. Use examples from your school and be truthful with them. If something breaks, be honest about it. To this end, do use 2.0 because it now supports tables in tables (required for decent .DOC compatibility). HINT: 2.0 hasn't broken a single .DOC here yet! Yay!
.DOC was in the minority. Use your own school's history if you can. Example: Before we standardized on OOo we had Word: XP/2000/97/95/DOS, Wordperfect Win/DOS, XYwrite, Notepad, Edit (yes, I'm serious), and a few others I can't remember. All this in only the last 10 years!
.DOC is not a standard. It varies between versions and changes at MS's whim. Some administrators may remember a row with Office '95 - a truly horrible version for those who are in the least concerned about compatibility.
.DOC is damn good now.
Here's some more things you can do:
1) Demo it by giving it away to those who are making decisions as well as to the teachers. Before OOo 2.0 I would have said not to because of installation hassles, but even the 2.0 beta makes this a thing of the past. Be prepared to answer questions on usage and comparisons to MS Office. I would recommend using 2.0 beta since it's release is imminent and it is far more polished.
If you can wait, I'd wait until The OpenCD w/2.0 OOo is finished before handing them out, but if you can't, then by all means give them the beta anyway.
2)
3) International concerns? Some private schools wrestle with the fact that Word 2000 in Asia and elsewhere, does not produce the same
4) Prove compatibility with existing MS
5) Use the past to point to the future. Point out that there was a time back in the 'elden days' of computing where
Remember this mantra:
Mayhap some of your administrator's remember a conversion process long ago with Wordperfect or some other format. Remind them that this process would not exist for OOo for two reasons:
a) Import of
b) Export of pure XML data is assured with OOo.
And finally, mention that it's FREE. Better still, preface this with the fact that StarOffice's terms for schools are outragiously good. Tell them that in standardizing to OOo, your teachers, administrators, students, parents, whoever wnats a copy from the library (you DO have some in there, right?), can have it free of charge. Remember: 'Free' should be the LAST thing you mention, not the first.
Let them know how the world is changing. Show them examples of who and where OOo is already being used full time. Convince them that they could grasp the brass ring before most others have. After all, isn't embracing new technology and learning new things what education is about?
Again, be honest about what OOo can do for you, and how it will improve compatibility and document longevity. You can win this battle (I did at Linden Hall School), but you have to 'sell it' for the right reasons and be prepared to help in the transition.
Good luck!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."