Scottish Police Revert to Microsoft Office

LordGuha writes "The Central Scotland Policy is removing StarOffice and replacing it with Microsoft Office citing lower maintenance and running costs and greater integration with other departments. According to the article StarOffice was implemented in 2000 when the department was low in cash but lately have estimated that the Microsoft software would cost no more and lead to greater efficiencies."

Comments

Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[nokilli]

The other 95% were using Microsoft Office. So that answers why they were having so much trouble with StarOffice. They weren't. They were having trouble working with everybody else using Microsoft Office.

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do.

I'd bet real money that the textarea element in a browser like Firefox provides all the text-editing functionality that these people need, especially if you add spell correct via JavaScript. Hit submit and there's your save function, to a central server that can be accessed from any department. Click a link and there's your file open functionality. Amazing!

You can even do forms! LOL

Why aren't they using a system like this? Because some idiot somewhere equates more-expensive with easier-to-use. It's the oldest story in IT, and it's always a tragedy.
--
Why didn't you know?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[heffrey]

Actually they found that the IT admin costs associated with Linux + Star Office were greater than Windows + MS Office.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Ithika]

Yeah, I can't stand the fact that everyone feels the need to use hugely overblown packages to do everything. Your idea seems pretty elegant, and with a bit of regexp-ing could probably be seamlessly integrated with a TeX-based system too for beautiful output. And the coppers wouldn't even have to look outside their browsers.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Mick Ohrberg]

Just install vi for Windows and teach them the importance of :q!, dd, :set ts=3 and other commands.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they kept all their MSCE's on staff to manage Linux and Star Office? Of course they will "find" it costs more to have incompetent sysadmins.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[gowen]

So that answers why they were having so much trouble with StarOffice

That, and the fact that StarOffice simply isn't that great. Sure, it's cool that its free and all, but its demands for CPU and memory are at least as bad as MSOffice.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

So that answers why they were having so much trouble with StarOffice

No it doesn't answer the question. In all business cases, supporting two competing, parallel systems is going to cost you more, regardless of what they are. Add to the mix that MS Office is the defacto standard for office docs and you can see that it's easy to make the decision to do away with StarOffice, no matter how well it stands up on its own.

As for the comments about being able to do a police desk job using a textarea in a browser? Hmmm... quite laughable. I'd take your point about Office having features they don't need, but this is true of 99% of software in 99% of situations. I'd rather have access to functions I don't use than not have access to a bunch of stuff that could save me time.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Great rebuttal. 100% evidence free, and full of ad hominem attacks. Very convincing.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Ythan]

You even have your choice of a wide variety of WYSIWYG web editors if you need formatting capability. You could probably put together a pretty powerful web-based office suite.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. The OP didn't bother to comprehend what he was reading and decide to spout a load of crap. The 5% figure in the article relates to the size of Central Scotland police compared to all of the scottish forces put together. 100% of Central Scotland police are / were using Star Office.

FYI, your post is just as useless as the previous one.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[MoogMan]

Clearly you don't have enough experience in User Support.

Of course, any adept Tech Support person will tell you that one of the first things any n00b user will do is find the "Large Text" and "Cool Comic Sans Mode" buttons.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[hawaiian717]

You're not going to teach them to save their files before they quit?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[uradu]

Yeah, great comeback, especially posted as AC. Be a real jerk and put your karma where your (filthy) mouth is.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[suezz]

"In all business cases, supporting two competing, parallel systems is going to cost you more, regardless of what they are."

why is this? Please explain.

"Add to the mix that MS Office is the defacto standard for office docs"

I also don't agree with that statement. Might of been four years ago. But not now.

"As for the comments about being able to do a police desk job using a textarea in a browser? Hmmm... quite laughable."

No need to laugh at him. It is probably true that is all they need. You know do more with less - wasn't that one of microsoft's recent campaign slogans.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Doctor_Jest]

No, actually, according to the article, the deployment of "solutions" (read: applets and things) in StarOffice, optimized for Open Source software, was causing problems of accessibility in other departments. According to the article:

"It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station."

It, like you said, costs "more" to implement parallel solutions in certain instances simply because while supporting both, it's never easiest to take into consideration making things play nice together.

It's always "I want to use feature X", but product Y doesn't support feature X. So they return to products that support feature X, rather than doing a little homework and providing a solution that works best for all the systems. Deploying a mixed network is always more difficult, but it isn't impossible, and with a little effort, could be more efficient and better in the long run for everyone by removing Microsoft's stranglehold on the vertical monopoly. (like their stifling hold on "Office" standards.)

I would rather have none of the features I don't need and the ability to use my files and documents how I see fit, rather than allowing Microsoft to dictate what I can and cannot do with my own data. Text files may be something Johnny Windows users don't like because it doesn't have "pretty fonts" and such, but you can bet long after Microsoft is dead, those text files will still be accessible. And since this whole thing is about complying with some sort of "Freedom of Information Act of 2002", I'd have thought it better to look long-term rather than going back to Microsoft without the lube. Honestly, can anyone name a "feature" of Microsoft Office that is so grand, living without it will bring the world to a halt? Well, let's just say one that couldn't be duplicated with a little bit of effort using open standards and free software. (Convenience is a curse sometimes...)

It sounds as though Microsoft's "solution" is simply "well, the other folks are doing it..." And no matter who you are, that's never the ideal solution....

And yes, as an engineer, I detest Office. So take what I say with that bias in mind.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

> 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen

BS! When is the last time you ever saw such a document outside an early 70s academic article?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[mumblestheclown]

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do.

So, if I understand you correctly: yesterday, when they were using Star Office (officially), they were the paragons of forward thinking. Today, they are knuckle draggers who dont even need computers, probably, as most of them are probably illiterate anyway.

To suggest that a police force needs nothing more than a simple text editor is supreme arrogance. You have ZERO CLUE what you are talking about.

Whoever modded you "insightful" should be ashamed.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[MSFanBoi]

This has NOTHING to do with Linux. It has to do with Star Office vs. Microsoft Office. One would think one would easily understand that by simple reading skills.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[dbIII]

I'd bet real money that the textarea element in a browser like Firefox provides all the text-editing functionality that these people need

There's no chance - people need decent tools to wirte text.hhhhhhhhhxp:w:q!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

"I also don't agree with that statement. Might of been four years ago. But not now."

So it was true four years ago. You concede this. Let's see some statistics to back up your claim of a change. Since you already acknowledge that it was the standard, it is your requirement to show proof that that has changed.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[jurt1235]

They actually say that OpenOffice and opensource has lower TCO if the rest converts to it too. The conversion costs are what drives up the cost to MS level. Nice detail (-:

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[dknj]

people forget why word had a hard time beating wordperfect. because everyone knew wordperfect and didn't want to relearn a new product (back in the dos days). office tookover because they had a much nicer interface when windows came out and wordperfect still stayed in dos land. star/openoffice is going to need to tote 100% compatability with word and give a word compatability chart to explain how to do the same tasks in SO/OO. until this happens, no one (average joe) is going to want to sit down and figure it out.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[ednopantz]

RTFA.

The problems were document portability AND integration with other users. This is there MS cleans up and where OSS falls down completely. How many integrated OSS packages are there that play nicely? (See Info Week this week for some beginnings). Ten years since debut, even something as simple as LAMP is still a PITA to set up and configure. Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??

I just saw a demo of MS SBA and let me say I'm glad I'm not Quicken. It does all the usual Quicken stuff, but leverages the Office suite to do it all better. Integrating multiple tools: That is where their advantage lies.

Maybe, just maybe, 90% of the market isn't completely wrong. Maybe the most successful company in history makes products that are slightly better than what amateurs put together in their spare time. Maybe packages that come from one organization (or are bought from their creators and Borg-ed) beat those cobbled together from the efforts thousands of volunteers, occassionally undrwritten by consulting firms out to make system so hard to configure you need to pay for consultants to do everything. Just a suggestion from someone who talks to real users guys.

I have to admit I loved seeing this article, knowing the howls of shock and indignation that would soon come from the slashbots.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[heffrey]

My simple reading skills saw "It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station, he said." and assumed that mean Linux rather than Staw Office. But the detailed issues involved are not totally clear from the various media coverage.

As for the cost, the Register's coverage said, "Stirling also wanted to avoid splashing out £100,000 on a third party application to meet the deadline for compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, and instead chose to overhaul the entire IT system. He adds that he is still making a saving overall, by making the switch."

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[spuzzzzzzz]

vi? pfft

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[FudRucker]

RE:"You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do." if that be the case they should all stick to just using notepad :P

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[lwriemen]

The nicer interface is only a small part of the battle. The bundling of office for "free" with all of the PCs sold was what really pushed it.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[MSFanBoi]

Hello, knock knock, anyone home? StarOffice is OSS isn't it? So you just ASSUMED Linux was involved and jumped to a false conclusion.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the most successful company in history makes products that are slightly better than what amateurs put together in their spare time.

Hmm, wouldnt we expect such a product to be MUCH better? If it is just slightly better I dont see any reason at all to procure it.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Professor_UNIX]

Hello, knock knock, anyone home? StarOffice is OSS isn't it?

No, StarOffice is not open source software. You're thinking of OpenOffice. Sun still sells StarOffice as a proprietary office suite.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[TungstenSteel]

I would agree with you for the most part. However every time MS grows a new version of Office the interface has been changed and everything is in a different place. Users figure it out but only because they are given no other choice in most cases.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[reclusivemonkey]

99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen.

...and that other 0.01% wreak havoc with what they have at their disposal!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[gnork]

I was always wondering why they used "xp" for character twiddling ...

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[cdrudge]

Nah. It cuts down on useless government paperwork.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[__aaercy5451]

This is not an ideologically choice to support Micro$oft. For a small number of users it's a change in their desktop system. David Sterling, their Head of IT, said in an interview,

"We're not abandoning open source. Some of it we're keeping. Our major incident system, for example, is moving from something else to Linux"

,...

"Stirling also wanted to avoid splashing out £100,000 on a third party application to meet the deadline for compliance with the Freedom of Information Act"

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[kfg]

StarOffice is OSS isn't it?

No. Some of the code is open, some is closed and the license is commercial. The OS version is OpenOffice which would have saved them 25 pounds a seat right off the top, at the cost of some of the propriatary code and Sun's support.

Other than that your point stands.

KFG

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[The Spoonman]

I wish I had some mod points to give you, as this is the first rational comment I've seen in this thread. I had to go a long way to get to it, too. :)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[rihjol]

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about. If you think cops are just moronic, club-wielding brutes that walk a beat, you're dead wrong. They do a lot of office work, and a significant portion of the police force exist entirely within an office.

And maybe you've never worked in a real office at all. While I don't find a lot of the fancy-shmancy features of modern WPs necessary, people do use them.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[scribblej]

Well, I'm your typical slashdotter, about 30 and a professional programmer. I just say that to say this: I've never read, heard, or seen a concept that couldn't be expressed in simple text typed into notepad. Furthermore, I'm pretty certain the vast majority of things I've read (think advertising) could benefit from some less "features."

I really don't understand why a police officer -- or anyone else for that matter -- would require more than the grandparent poster suggests. Rather than just making assertions ("You're arrogant and you have zero clue") why not educate us. Why do they need more? What, specifically, would they need? What idea is there that cannot be expressed in text?

How does a blind person see a font?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[A beautiful mind]

Utter nonsense. When i had dealings with the police as a victim, i had a nice introduction into the typewriting skills of theirs. A sentence without an error was outweighted by 1:50 by those having one or more in them. This is not some predisposed thing against the police, but it is my experience. All they need is a simple form with spellchecking, not MS Office or StarOffice since they need to fill in forms anyway! (They have forms for certain incidents where they just need to fill in the details, don't tell me you need MS Office for that!)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Taladar]

So if you cut them out you should increase productivity (as in: produce useful things) by an order of magnitude or two?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[mauriatm]

"In all business cases, supporting two competing, parallel systems is going to cost you more, regardless of what they are."

why is this? Please explain.

Quote simply when you have 2 systems that are meant to do the same thing, there is a high probability that one system will get marginalized. This is not intentional but a common tendancy. It can be seen virtually everywhere. ... I downloaded a driver that was supported in 2.4 and 2.6 kernel, the 2.6 worked fine but the 2.4 had a simple bug which I was able to fix - point was that it wasn't tested. ... Sometimes we see features implemented first (or better) in a Windows version but not in the Mac (or Linux if lucky) version. ... This is only software. Similar problems exist in other aspects of technology. Broadband users supported better than dial-up. Etc.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Taladar]

To suggest that a police force needs nothing more than a simple text editor is supreme arrogance. You have ZERO CLUE what you are talking about.

Actually he has more clue what he is talking about than most people here. He just forgot to mention that by his criteria most office workers don't need something like MS Office.

I agree with him. If we would cut the layout crap for internal company documents we would probably save millions of work-hours. I don't say the PR department doesn't need layout tools but even they should use something that is readable with a simpler viewer (yes, I know there is a Word document viewer) than word documents.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Chemicalscum]

LAMP is still a PITA to set up and configure

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??

http://www.scalix.com/

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[TobyWong]

Quick everyone, to the pitchforks and torches! The enemy is among us!

. o 0 (good comment, displays a level of rationality not often seen on slashdot)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Amouth]

give them a chance - give them joe

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Ravnen]

I've never seen MS Office bundled for 'free' with a PC. It's usually available for a price much lower than retail (ie an OEM price) if you buy it with a PC, but this is true of a lot of software, including competitors to MS Office, and has long been so.

Stan Liebowitz (a professor of economics at the University of Texas) makes a fairly convincing case that Word and Excel succeeded because they were better than the competing products. Both were market leaders on Mac before PC, so those who think Microsoft cheated have to come up with an explanation of how it did so on Mac.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[AKAImBatman]

This has NOTHING to do with Linux.

That's not 100% correct. From TFA:

The agency said in 2000 that it would see initial savings of at least £245,000 (US$439,000) from switching to StarOffice and Linux, and that the open-source deployment would allow it to bring productivity software to more of its officers.

The article also states:

In the past, when the agency deployed a new police application on StarOffice and Linux, the application had to be customized to work with the open-source software, Stirling said. It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station, he said.

Despite the focus on StarOffice, that last sentence obviously refers to the Linux Desktop, most likely in relation to its SMB and NT Domain support.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[someonewhois]

I thought the OSS community blamed Microsoft for being a monopoly for doing what you just said. ;) Sure, it's dead convenient for the consumer, it's a great business move by any company, and it's going to make Microsoft millions... but let's call it illegal anyway.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[brucmack]

Maybe, just maybe, 90% of the market isn't completely wrong. Maybe the most successful company in history makes products that are slightly better than what amateurs put together in their spare time. Maybe packages that come from one organization (or are bought from their creators and Borg-ed) beat those cobbled together from the efforts thousands of volunteers, occassionally undrwritten by consulting firms out to make system so hard to configure you need to pay for consultants to do everything. Just a suggestion from someone who talks to real users guys.

This is exactly what so many IT professionals miss when they evaluate Microsoft's products. They just work for the users, plain and simple. It's even the same for Internet Explorer. Sure, Firefox has better features, but are they features that Mr. Average User needs? Certainly not in my office. And it requires almost no work on our part to configure and maintain for our entire user base, since it comes installed with the OS.

However, I do feel that Microsoft is going to have a problem selling Windows Vista and future versions of Office simply because what we have today works so well. Moving from Windows NT to Windows 2000 was a no-brainer. Moving from Windows 2000 to XP was less important, but it's quicker and has some benefits. And now, even though the OS is nearly 4 years old, we have no reason to be excited about getting a new one soon. I'm sure that there are improvements to be made in operating systems, but they are coming fewer and farther between.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[mnemonic_]

Something like FCKeditor?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[1u3hr]

To suggest that a police force needs nothing more than a simple text editor is supreme arrogance.

One of the major reasons cited for going back to MS was that MS was supplying the whole force with an application to "comply with Freedom of Information requests". This sounds to me like a database. Obviously, (well, to me) starting with Word files, MS is going to have the best shot at doing this at all, not to mention they will subsiduse it to make the whole deal sweet.

However, if you thought WHY the police are using PCs and not typewriters, as they were a very short time ago, it should not just be to give prettier printouts, but because it lets them automate filing and data-mining their reports. And using plain text makes this much easier. (Do cops need to worry if it's in Palatino, Garamond or Comic Sans?) More structure can be added; but they would have done much better starting from automating their forms, filled out with plain text, than using a general word-processing package with far too many features and shoehorning it into a database system.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[baker_tony]

"99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do. I'd bet real money that the textarea element in a browser like Firefox provides all the text-editing functionality that these people need, especially if you add spell correct via JavaScript. Hit submit and there's your save function, to a central server that can be accessed from any department. Click a link and there's your file open functionality. Amazing! You can even do forms! LOL"

99.99% of people who use "LOL" make rubbish statistics up and appear to be jackasses. Mod THAT insightful, freaken moderators.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[rcamera]

in what way (other than the pretty buttons) has the office user interface changed since 2000? just moved from 2000 to 2003 at work (and xp to 2003 at home a few years ago) and i see no change in the user interface for word/excel. outlook has changed a bit between xp and 2003, but not so much that it requires 'figuring it out'

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Maybe the most successful company in history makes products that are slightly better than what amateurs put together in their spare time.

What makes you think we're amateurs? I think you should check some of the OS MLs out there. Apache Xerces had full time engineers from Sun and IBM working on the project as their job. Other project are the same.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Ravnen]

This is only a guess, but I expect they have a lot of standard forms, with automated processes for finding the right forms, filling them in, saving them to the right places, sending copies to the right people and so on. A word processor can be used for much more than just expressing text.

Apart from word processing, there are also a lot of things I can imagine they would use Excel for, and even PowerPoint. They could also be using Access, but there are much better databases available, so I don't think they would be using MS Office for that.

I don't much like Word, but Excel is something I use a lot, and no other spreadsheet I've tried is good enough to convince me to use it instead. Besides, everyone I know uses Excel, so why bother with some other spreadsheet?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'm an idiot. Why was the parent modded as funny?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[feargal]

They didn't. It just happens that, when you do 'x' to delete a char and then 'p', to put the contents of the buffer in, the end result it a 'twiddle'.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Shakes268]

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do. ....and that is the mindset that keeps Linux from being a good desktop choice at the moment.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment: " They just work for the users, plain and simple." Really isn't indicative of a quality product. People use Windows and related MS apps because often that is all they've been exposed to.

Use MSOffice in your first job and you'll most likely use it everywhere else throughout your career and your own home computing.

I personally think the "interoperability" aspect is not as big a deal as people make it out to be. Why share Word docs when PDF's are more universally read and more secure? I wouldn't send files to clients or partners that could be edited. That's what MSOffice formats are meant for. Don;t mention the password protection. Its easy to break.

Within your organization, pick an office suite and stick to it. Outside of your office send PDF's.

My 2c :)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[kilgortrout]

Can't you MS apologists find some another choice of words in your anti OSS diatribes. Ever since Balmer first uttered the words "cobbled together" to describe open source, these words have been repeatedly used in MS propaganda ever since. Let's face it; MS products are also cobbled together by paid lackeys that hate their jobs. Does that make you feel any better.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[JohnFluxx]

Um, you do know that StarOffice was made by Sun? An organization? Right?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[JayJay.br]

Hey, remember when MS Office 2k announced the use of 12 clipboards? Yes, *12*!!!

vim has had this for ages! and there are 36 of them!! a thru z, and numbers!

instead of yy or dd, try "ayy or "add (with the quote sign, saves in clipboard a)! Same for paste.

Seriously though, how would a bunch of cops that only use times new roman and the default location for everything feel that MS Office is more efficient than any other point-and-click simple text processor? They could be using wordpad, FWIW.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[dan the person]

I doubt the networking was broken, that's easy to setup.

More likely the problem was they couldn't "access" their star office based paperwork from *any* police station because the other 95% of police stations PCs would have office and windows which can't open staroffice files.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

"xp" is really two commands: x - delete character under cursor p - put deleted text after cursor

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[LinuxPoultergist]

If I had mod points I'd mod you as a troll. Star/Open Office has had Microsoft interoperability since thei first release. Star/Open Office has been out about 5 years now and Microsoft still refuses to add code to read Star/Open Office files.

Undoubtedly they refuse because they know it would decrease their market share.

Reading the article it would appear that the Scottish Police Force admins are too incompetent to set up the systems properly. Perhaps they would rather use Microsoft's brain dead 3 clicks and you're configured interface, but they sacrifice security in doing so.

If you want to pay $800 bucks to use a product that assumes you're as dumb as 90% of the market go ahead.

The rest of us will happily use Open Office 2.0.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[mindwar]

nano you insensitive clod!! nano!!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

90% of the market do not own the code they run. 90% of the market is locked in an upgrade cycle by a convicted monopolist. 90% of the market does not realise the effects of having their infrastructure/platform vendor (Microsoft and Windows) being the same as the application vendor while at the same time having a monopoly (due to proprietary standards) on the file formats they use for data interexchange.

Their vendor lock-in is complete. Novell, Red Hat, Sun and compete for customer attention to the services they provide. As they use open standards, migration is easy from one to the other. Plus for most application the customer owns the code (as a consequence of the Licence used) and can opt to sub-contract whoever to do the work for them. (basic economics; it is called a level playing field where competition -i.e. innovation- occurs)

What takes Microsoft a cut above the competition is not their stellar product quality. It is their marketing genius (strongarm tactics, lobbying, and so on). It has been done before by a company called Standard Oil.

But you are right: The most succesfull company in history does make products that are substantially better than those cobbled up by volunteers. That does not mean that they are better than Open Source/Libre software though.

FOSS stopped being small time back in the early nineties. Keep up with the program. Everyone, including Microsoft is doing it.

And one last thing: I would claim that it is right for the public to demand that the civil sector (public money) use a product (FOSS products) that encourages/promotes knowledge (through openness) whilst adequately servicing the public needs (through proven functionality) AND which promotes the local industry (qualified people can work on it because it is open at ALL levels).

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[dan the person]

Well, let's just say one that couldn't be duplicated with a little bit of effort using open standards and free software.

It's not the one little feature that's missing. It's the 10,000 little features that are missing.

Each easy to implement on it's own, but together it's a huge hurdle.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[DogDude]

Reading the article it would appear that the Scottish Police Force admins are too incompetent to set up the systems properly. Perhaps they would rather use Microsoft's brain dead 3 clicks and you're configured interface, but they sacrifice security in doing so.

As a businessman, every time I read something like this from one of you zealots, I'm even further away from considering using OSS in my business.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[SocietyoftheFist]

Do you have a job where you work with a lot of people? I'm sure they have many different forms to work with and all are based on Word Templates. Do you really think they are just using their word processor to type up letters to mom?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[aled]

Why should they use a monolitic office bundle like vi when surely sed is simpler? it even can be scriptable...

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[daern]

Reading the article it would appear that the Scottish Police Force admins are too incompetent to set up the systems properly. Perhaps they would rather use Microsoft's brain dead 3 clicks and you're configured interface, but they sacrifice security in doing so.

I am so glad that *you* are so clever and everyone else is so stupid. That makes the world a better place.

Oh, by the way, have you ever seen a Microsoft based infrastructure that has been setup by a non-Windows "guru"? I have. In fact, I've had to rip out and replace more than one of them, where the OSS advocate had installed systems using the "I know Linux, so I know everything" approach to IT.

The only thing was, that they didn't.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Shakes268]

I certainly have to agree with you. It really is unnerving when someone makes a business decision that is best for them and the /. folks want to burn them at the stake because it is a decision they don't agree with. Sure everyone has their opinion but face it, sometimes OSS is NOT the answer.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[bad_outlook]

Good point, it's what I've done at my past two gigs, instead of ppl passing around Word documents everytime there's some small change, I publish all of my proopsals and docs on an in house Wiki. For software dev, I think it's all you need to share ideas, forget about printing out for a client; it's not needed in this capacity. I long for the days of 'dumb' terminal replacing the 2000$ computers every employee 'has' to have. Just a dumb term with a broswer, some AJAX action on the server - email handled through a Hula like client/server...ahhh...

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Versioning
Headers
Footers
Custom page breaks
Integration with document management/workflow systems (guessing based on SharePoint Portal Server from the article)
Mail Merge
Templates

This is just a quick list that quickly poped into my head. Remember, these guys are doing things a bit more important and complicated than making a groecery list! Could all these things be done with solutions besides MS? Sure. Again, I think there is an assumption because since they went with MS they don't know what they are doing. Sometimes MS actually is the best solution.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[afidel]

I wonder if there was any reason that they were NOT saving files to Office/RTF format rather than native Staroffice format? RTF would allow them to be opened in any OS and just about any modern editor, thus avoiding compatibility problems at the loss of a little bit of functionality.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[wwphx]

I spent 9 years working in IT for one of the top 10 police departments in the USA. I mainly did database development and administration, network administration, user support.

There's really not enough information in the fine article to draw a lot of the conclusions being put forth.

In our shop there are, largely speaking, two sides to IT: the mainframe (now super mini) side that contained all the criminal information, and the micro side, used mainly for administrative support. The mobile data terminals and the computers used by most of the sworn population connected to the mainframe. They used pre-designed screens for storing and retrieving information. The support staff used various Office products to provide various services, up to and including reports summarizing criminal data.

But keep in mind that we were a gov't agency. We had to have file interop with the rest of the City, and County, and State, and Feds. We had more severe budget restrictions than most private sector had to deal with. Try not having a pool of money for training for the future year, it isn't fun. When I needed training for a new product, I had to wait for my department head to be out of town and the bureau manager asked me how a project was going. I told him I needed training, he got funds taken out of equipment maintenance to send me to Atlanta for a week. This is not a slush fund, this was money to be used for maintaining the mainframe, fortunately there was some unused funds.

As a rule, if money isn't allocated, it isn't spent. And that is a hard and fast rule.

For the criminal side, they had standards that were dictated by the FBI and the National Criminal Information System. Everything has to be coded in specific ways. Trust me, you DO NOT want to see the information schema! It is not correctly normalized and nothing can be done about it because THEY DON'T CONTROL IT. They had to work around those problems as best they could.

The basic problem is that you don't have a dozen Java programmers and a dozen C++ programmers sitting around just waiting to solve every little problem. We had three network administrators supporting 15+ sites. We had five developers (on the administrative side) for a total micro staff of maybe 15 or so when I left supporting over 2000 officers and another 1800 or so civilian, not including physical networking support (cabling, PC installation and hardware support).

Saying "all you need is a web applet to do X, Y, Z" is disingenuous. It will never be that simple. Until you've lived in police IT for more than 5 years, you won't have a clue what their overall requirements are and you're making assumptions that don't translate. Their data must ultimately fit legally-mandated forms. That's taken care of by tight data restrictions on the criminal side. On the administrative side, by using Office, you have a mobile work force of people who can move back and forth between various other City departments, assuming they can pass the background investigation.

You're talking an insanely complex system and set of requirements that have grown out of old technology over decades and decades of modification.

Yes, it's a MS shop. Started with 3Com 3+Share file servers, went to Lan Manager, now NT Server. Desktops went from Dos to Windows to Win2K and now probably XP. Apps went from Word, Multiplan, DataFlex to Office and SQL Server. There are non-MS technologies both in the server room and on the desktop, but the only place you'll see *nix is on specific apps, such as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System which started out on an RS/6000, I have no idea what it's on, it was not in my realm.

I like *nix, huge pluses over MS servers. But OO/SO just isn't there. The IT requirements for interoperability with so many other departments both in the City and at other layers of gov't are too vast to take a critical area and make it less than 100% compatible with the rest of the infrastructure is bad. I make no claim to have a clue how Scotl

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do pretentious Americans ALWAYS write 'ad hominem' when they mean 'personal'? Do you ALL get taught the same shite in your crapulous public schools?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[KingVance]

My money says if bill gates were to unzip his pants in front of you...you would get down on both knees and give him the BJ of his life.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[JourneyExpertApe]

"Today, they are knuckle draggers who dont even need computers, probably, as most of them are probably illiterate anyway."

As a resident of a small town in the US, I have maintained from the beginning that cops are illiterate, knuckle-draggers who shouldn't be trusted with computers, let alone guns.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, but you know I have never gotten a virus from vi. No clippy, and no other "features" getting in my way like underlining spelling mistakes, which I find obnoxious (I check spelling when I'm done). When I just want to edit text, vi is all I need.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[dscho]

Maybe, just maybe, 90% of the market isn't completely wrong.

You are next to correct. But it is not 90% of the market. That would be the case, if they all actually had gone to the shop and purchased a copy of Microsoft Office. I am sure that 90% of your 90% would not have bought the product if they actually had seen the price tag (and were not forced to pay for it anyway).

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[iccaros]

truly this shows you know nothing.. koffice,open office,star office all can open each others files. its when you try to get MS office to open anyone eleses files you have problems (you don't or ever have used anything but MS or you would know this) answer to excahange ..hmmm.. OpenExchange... Novell and the free version (minus the million doller cost to cluster and prices of SA's) next.... and 90% of the market never had a choice thanks to a IBM deal with Microsoft in the 80's... and LAMP is simple if you know more about computers then just Point and Click..

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[dknj]

and that is a completely misinformed statement. the toolbars have changed slightly over the years, the menus have also changed slightly in the fact that new features have been added or old features have been removed. the edit/view/table/etc. menus and all its contents in word 2003 are practically the same as word 6.0.

i know this for a fact because my mom has been training adults and small businesses in windows and office since 1995. i did a good amount of her bitchwork (editing and printing copies of her manuals, assisting her students, etc) until i moved out. 10 years later, i'm getting questions on how to do autoformatting tricks, table manipulation, or other office tasks and i'm able to do them easily even though the last version of office i did practical work with was office 97 (and 2000 for a brief stint).

this also gives me a very biased view. i did sit down for awhile with staroffice and openoffice; but the fact that i couldn't swap documents with certain people because i didn't use word is a v-e-r-y compelling reason to not use them. unfortunately a lot of corporations (my father's included) insist on using macros for a lot of things. you can get around some of them with word, but some excel spreadsheets you can't. and don't get me started on access..

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[diamondsw]

Wow, so your projects have a couple full time engineers. Guess what - Microsoft has hundreds if not thousands of them working on their projects, and they are all marching to the beat of the same drummer. Whether or not you like the direction they're heading, they are all working together to make a truly integrated product. Linux and OSS development does not do this, but rather takes pride in its lack of consistency and direction.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Mome]

"So that answers why they were having so much trouble with StarOffice. They weren't. They were having trouble working with everybody else using Microsoft Office."

They said it was difficult to configure and they got superior vendor support from MS.

I love it when "They use a product you don't like" or "They found a different product suited there needs better" gets translated by people like you into "They're incompetent" and "They shouldn't be using the product to begin with."

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[theurge14]

Technically it was StarDivision that first gave us StarOffice. I remember running the Java version on OS/2 many eons ago. Well, "running" isn't the best word to describe that experience, more like "waddling".

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[yiantsbro]

Hmmm...I wonder how much mouthwash can be bought for ~40 billion dollars?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[vandan]

I have to agree.

We switched from Office 97 to StarOffice 5.2, then rode the upgrade wave all the way to the current beta: OOo-1.9.122.

There were certainly some complaints when we started. The problem is perception. As you pointed out, users typically don't need a word processor. They need WordPad ... but they want it to look like a million dollars, and cost like it too. In the 1st year, I had to field endless complaints than StarOffice / OpenOffice wasn't "up to it". I'd sit down with the complainee and ask them what they were trying to do. They weren't trying to do anything - they just wanted to complain. No-one has ever asked me how to do anything more complicated than insert an image. Oh yeah ... and change the page format of old templates from Letter to A4 ... my favourite problem. Why the fuck do people find it so hard to get their heads around the fact that the page setup isn't in the 'File' menu, like in Word ( where it's out of place ). It's in the 'Format' menu. It belongs there. But more importantly, it IS there, so why not just deal with it?

I've briefly skimmed over the comments attached to this story, and most of the anti-OOo posts boil down to bullshit such as:

- I can't figure out how to save my document "in Word".

Yeah. Go you technical people!

- OOo takes 3.5 seconds to load in the morning, but Word loads in 2.5 seconds

- The buttons aren't as nice as Word's. Word has nice buttons, and that is how we judge products these day - by the buttons.

- I used a combination of the TAB key and the spacebar to neatly align columns of text in my 200 page Word document, and when I opened it on another computer with a different operating system, different fonts, and OOo messed up all the formatting. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!

- OOo doesn't come with an email program, and I think my life will end if I can't email from the same office package as my word processor comes from, even though in Microsoft Office, Word and Outlook are completely different applications anyway. And no I don't want to use Thunderbird. I want YOU to drop what you're doing and write an email program for OOo, otherwise I won't use OOo.

I know the IQ of the average pig, and they're not the advanced word processing type. In fact I wouldn't be surprised it it were far more efficient to give them dictaphones and employ some kids to type everything up for them. I simply fail to see what the problem was. We certainly haven't had any issues. No usability issues. No compatibility issues.

OK. To be fair, there were some regressions in the early OOo-1.9.x series, and I had to revert a number of desktops to 1.1.4 while people acted on my bug reports. But they did so, and quite swiftly, and it was only 3 months after reverting people back to 1.1.4 that I was putting people back on 1.9.79 first public beta release ).

I know why they changed back. They missed the clipart. Pigs aren't all guns and corruption, you know. They like to get creative too! And there's nothing more fun than getting your sys admin to install all the clipart from the Office CD and make a nice collage of cool images and things.

The marvels of technology.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[misleb]

The problems were document portability AND integration with other users. This is there MS cleans up and where OSS falls down completely.

Well, I think I know what you meant from reading the rest of your post, but this statement is pretty far off. If everyone were using StarOffice, there would be no problem of document portability or integration with other users. I think instead of "other users" you meant "other software." StarOffice users have no problem sharing documents with other StarOffice users.

-matthew

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Kainaw]

Ten years since debut, even something as simple as LAMP is still a PITA to set up and configure. Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??

First, I assume you were not drawing a comparison between Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP and Exchange.

Second, what is the PITA? If you don't want to know how the software works, don't install it manually. Just type: "yum install apache mysql php-mysql" and you'll have a generic semi-secure LAMP system. After you do that, making it secure and customizing it is just as much a PITA as trying to configure IIS, ASP, and MSSQL. It took me weeks to figure out that IIS can't handle "my-sample-domain.com" as a home directory because it sees the ".com" before it notices it is a directory.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic? Now I remember why I rarely come back to this site anymore.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[vandan]

No.

Yesterday, they were cheapskates, who were moved en-masse because of a decision that came from on-high. Pigs certainly don't forward-think. Their inability to figure out OOo after 5 years demonstates that they have enough trouble thinking in the present tense. No time for forward thinking.

Now, they are the knuckle draggers that they were yesterday, but their IT department has caved in to economic incentives, political pressure, knuckle-dragger's complaints, and quite possibly some old-fashioned under-the-table incentives.

To suggest that a police force needs nothing more than a simple text editor is supreme arrogance.

They're not putting together an encyclopaedea. They're pigs. And that bit about supreme arrogance - yeah that reminds me of some friendly protectors of the people. I challenge you to give an example of some word processing task that the cops need to do that can't be accomplished in OOo.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

I use SO constantly and love it but this kind of blind devotion (i.e. claiming the problem is the 95% is why we never get any traction and are always a step behind in product development)...why not identify and address the issues, real or imagined (even if it's not necessarily correct an imagined difficulty is real to the user...you have to fix them in some manner be it training or ui changes), rather than blame the competitor who is kicking our ass.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Like mine just fine, thanks!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Interesting to note that they didn't find the Total Cost Ownership was going to be less. Looks like they needed help with Freedom of Information compliance and MS agreed to to create a CMS specificly for them if they'd switch. Yet the TCO still wasn't lower...

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Doctor_Jest]

Oh that is very true. But think of the benefits in the long term of doing so... The shackles of windows and vendor lock-in would be eliminated.

Plus you can sleep better at night knowing you're not making Bill G. any richer. ;)

And if you work it right, the 10,000 little features might never be missed. ;) It's all about mindshare. :)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[misleb]

This is exactly what so many IT professionals miss when they evaluate Microsoft's products. They just work for the users, plain and simple.

If you can keep them free of viruses and spyware, sure. Perhaps you take this for granted? Honestly, I think Apple is in the "it just works for the users" slot. Microsoft products still require a good deal of care and feeding.

-matthew

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd recommend Vmi!FmxpZZ

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[yanndug]

" I wonder if there was any reason that they were NOT saving files to Office/RTF format rather than native Staroffice format?" Because most people don't even understand what a "file format" is.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Delphiki]

Let's face it; MS products are also cobbled together by paid lackeys that hate their jobs.

Can you back that up at all? People I've talked to who worked for Microsoft said it was a fantastic place to work.

Can't you MS apologists find some another choice of words in your anti OSS diatribes. Ever since Balmer first uttered the words "cobbled together" to describe open source, these words have been repeatedly used in MS propaganda ever since.

If the shoe fits, wear it. Most OSS software is written with little to no thought to creating elegant code, writing it so that it will fit together with a larger system, etc. Hey, speaking of inability to argue points well, can't you OSS fanatics respond to any criticism of your religion with something other than calling people MS apologists or fanboys or calling what they have to say propaganda?

Your post has absolutely no useful or interesting information. You just denounce someone because they don't degree with you, and you act self righteous about it. It doesn't bother you to spew this waste of storage bytes and bandwidth?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Well but perhaps by "simple text" editor they meant text as opposed to a word processor. I'm sure that the "simple text" editors Emacs and GVim both would be excellent for this purpose. Now notepad is a little too simple for my taste.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[dodobh]

The problems were document portability AND integration with other users. This is there MS cleans up and where OSS falls down completely.

Given that the problems were integration with MS Office, perhaps a move to OpenOffice.org would have been so much cheaper. This is where the closed source, propietary MS stuff sucks for the world. If MS Office had truly open standards, that integration would not have been a problem.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[heffrey]

Well, if they were finding it difficult to "configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station" that's most likely not Star Office but the underlying OS/networking/SMB stuff. That was my reasoning.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[carnifex0]

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place

Yea, tell that to the cops who cry for it when they're trying to do report narratives or warrants without spell check.

And FWIW, there is at least one large police agency in the US that makes extensive use of OpenOffice. Mine. We started deploying it in our patrol cars about 2 years ago and now have about 350 MDC's on the street, all with OpenOffice, add to that the 400 or so that we've configured for the smaller police departments in the state, and we're close to 800 users with an OSS app.

It's getting the the point where officers come in to teach at the academy and they presentaitons are done in Impress rather than PowerPoint. Kinda neat seeing the adaption they're doing on their own.

There was some initial complaining, but the users have adapted very well. It's been great for us.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[brianiac]

Sure, Firefox has better features, but are they features that Mr. Average User needs?

Yes!

Just because they can't articulate the specifics, I'd say most users would appreciate faster, thinner, more responsive and adaptive pages. Maybe Mr. Average User has never heard of CSS 2.1, but I'd bet that stylesheets that are about half the size of current IE-bloated workaround code would appeal to him. I'd also bet that sites with more attractive and engaging interfaces thanks to PNG transparency support would be more successful. Not having to add big, kludgy workarounds for IE's lousy subset of HTML, CSS, and DOM also lowers costs and dramatically improves development efficiency, reducing the cost and time requirements of site improvements, and simplifies debugging. Users tend to like that.

Microsoft agrees, too. That's why they are adding these features to Firefox Lite (IE7). Of course the jarringly different interface means that IE6 to Firefox conversion is likely to be smoother than upgrading IE6 to IE7.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[xtracto]

Yep, I completely agree with you...

OSS is not bad, but being at least 403 linux distributions, at least 40 window managers and at least 40 desktop environments available for Linux and like xxxx different "stable" office application available developed by almost the same number of different people ON ITS FREE TIME it is impossible to make them interact in a COORDINATED way...

I think what OSS needs are standards, communication and structure standards its like KDE and GNOME try to do this, the sad thing is that for OSS people only do what they WANT TO DO, so if some constraints are needed in order to make their software interoperable with others then people will just not do it...

And that IS the difference with a closed propietary software, because over Redmond, all the developers MUST comply with certain development structure and standards.

For an example the simple COPY/PASTE copy paste? It took (although I am not sure if it is working now) like 5 years to make COPY/PASTE to work *kind of* correctly in Linux (X Window and KDE or GNOME) and of course NOT with all the applications.

What about Windows?? well, at least since WIN95 the basic copy/paste behabviour was tehre for all the apps using a simple edit box and the like.

Yeesh! if OSS developers can not play togheter in those little things what can any company expect when trying to create a "full blown software enterprise office solution" haha... sorry folks but we [OOS Enthusiasts (yep I am one =o)] are got a looong way to go.

my 2 c

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[brianiac]

Most OSS software is written with little to no thought to creating elegant code, writing it so that it will fit together with a larger system, etc.

Can you back that up at all? My experience is that people who do things for their own fulfillment (whether software, woodworking, or haberdashery) tend to take more personal pride in their craft than paid assembly-line workers. This is a generalization, of course.

Hey, speaking of inability to argue points well, can't you OSS fanatics respond to any criticism of your religion with something other than calling people MS apologists or fanboys or calling what they have to say propaganda?

Can't you respond to any criticism of your MS views without calling people OSS fanatics or mentioning OSS religion?

Your post has absolutely no useful or interesting information. You just denounce someone because they don't degree with you, and you act self righteous about it. It doesn't bother you to spew this waste of storage bytes and bandwidth?

*Ahem* Did you preview your own post?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[heffrey]

How can this be off topic? Oh yes, it's not an OSS eulogy......

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you touch yourself at night.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[rocker_wannabe]

Yes, Please RTFA!

from the article:

"Help from Microsoft in other areas may have influenced the decision. The company plans to work with Scottish police to develop an electronic document management system to help it comply with requests made under the 2002 Freedom of Information Act, and a document sharing system for police staff, Microsoft said."

Maybe using Microsoft products doesn't cause you a problem because you can play Solitare without calling technical support but some of us who actually have to make complicated systems work have good reason for despising Microsoft. If you think configuring LAMP is a PITA then you are a completely non-technical person who shouldn't even be posting on Slashdot. It's called "News for Nerds" not "News for non-technical people who don't like to be reminded that are supporting a corporation convicted of wrongdoing by the government".

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

:set ts=3

Holy crap, people actually manually set their tab width every time they open vi?

Uh, how about just stick it in your .vimrc (or equivalent).

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Delphiki]

Can you back that up at all? My experience is that people who do things for their own fulfillment (whether software, woodworking, or haberdashery) tend to take more personal pride in their craft than paid assembly-line workers. This is a generalization, of course.

Well, let's start by pointing out how bad your generalization is. First of all, there's a huge difference between building things for crafts and manufacturing things that are commodities. The difference in quality between the two things has little to do with the skill of the designer and more to do with the amount of time and cost involved. Comparing hand-crafted wood furniture made by a master woordworker to something I can go buy from a local department store in terms of quality is a worthless comparison. One cost orders of magnitute more effort to create, and would cost orders of magnitute more money to purhcase. On the other hand, I would be willing to bet that many more programmers hours have gone into writing and fine-tuning Microsoft Office than Open Office, and the cost of ownership isn't an order of magnitude difference in either direction.

In addition, all of the programmers I know are programmers because they want to be and like coding. We're not forced into slave labor by evil corporations. We take a lot of pride in our work.

Also, just about every good professional programmer I know is constantly trying to teach themselves knew and better ways to do things. On the other hand, huge numbers of OSS projects use backwards methodologies (such as insisting everything be done in C, or disallowing the STL for no reason other than they've heard it's bad). Plus many OSS projects are started because someone wants to write a piece of software that does a very specific task, than gradually expanded into a real project. But this eliminates the design phase (even if we allow that most OSS projects have one) which will not lead to improved software.

Can't you respond to any criticism of your MS views without calling people OSS fanatics or mentioning OSS religion?

I can, but why bother? You see, your whole original post was nothing more than attempting to wave away the oppositions arguments by calling them an apologist and calling their comment propaganda. I actually made some points, in addition to just showing my disdain for OSS apologists who don't care about facts when they don't fit their arguments. See the difference? No, I guess you wouldn't.

*Ahem* Did you preview your own post?

Yes, and I reread it again, and I still think my original post was an accurate critique of yours. I still fail to see how your original post, as well as now also your second post amounts to enough value to be worth the bandwidth you consumed sending it to slashdot. I consider the spam emails which are so convoluted that you can barely read them to be a more valuable use of bandwidth than anything you've said.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

The monopoly defined in the anti-trust suit against Microsoft wasn't Microsoft generally, it was the "Windows desktop operating system". That's why Microsoft can still bundle whatever it likes with Windows Server, MS Office, et al. Windows XP (and its successors) is the only thing that's restricted.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[evilpenguin]

I love it! We actually have a vi flamewar going in a Microsoft v. Open discussion!

Now I wish I used emacs so I could turn this into a emacs v. vi flamewar!

Seriously, I use and love vi. I wouldn't use it to sell newbies on *nix, Linux, or Free Software as an alternative to Windows.

vi is a great editor once you climb its serious learning curve. Oddities like the ed mode versus the visual mode actually turn out to be strengths, but let's face it, they are oddities created from mashing a cursor-addressible editor onto a TTY style line editor. vi is a Frankenstein's monster of an editor. And like that creature it is powerful and dangerous.

I always edit with vi (well, vim these days), but I'd start a newbie out with pico or kate or some such thing.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[hswerdfe]

even something as simple as LAMP is still a PITA to set up

give me a box with a blank harddrive, and I will install 'Gallery 2' a php/MySql program on an 'Apache 2' server, with Debain, Linux.
From Blank HD to serving pages it would take me 2 maybe 3 hours.

hardly a PITA as you say.
its all about the knowlage base in the admins head!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass half empty? No, it's half full idiot! HAW!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[jedidiah]

I would imagine that remote file access is pretty much orthogonal to whatever word processor you're using. If that's really their excuse then it makes 0.0 sense.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[mr_gerbik]

Yeah, I can't stand the fact that everyone feels the need to use hugely overblown packages to do everything. Your idea seems pretty elegant, and with a bit of regexp-ing could probably be seamlessly integrated with a TeX-based system too for beautiful output. ...

  You even have your choice of a wide variety of WYSIWYG web editors [geniisoft.com] if you need formatting capability.

Two comments deep and you have already gone from a simple text editor to a big piece of bloated software...

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Miaowara_Tomokato]

Why do pretentious Americans ALWAYS write 'ad hominem' when they mean 'personal'? Do you ALL get taught the same shite in your crapulous public schools?

Despite the trollish nature of the parent post, it does contain a valid question. Dictionary.com has a pretty good summary. It is a tactic frequently used in debate by the party with the weaker argument - rather than focusing their assaults on the ideas being discussed, they focus them on the person presenting those ideas. It's also a good indicator of when someone has lost the argument before it's over. Unfortunately the appeal to pathos is very effective in situations where people aren't equipped/don't care to evaluate the merits of each argument.

Oddly enough, this sort of argument is widespread during election years.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[scbysnx]

how is this off topic?!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[bugninja]

Unfortunately, if StarOffice isn't 100% compatible with MS Office, that is StarOffice's problem. If you're going to go Pro, you better know how to play in the big leagues. -- but read on please...

As for your browser based idea, here are my thoughts from someone who's working with offices and web based systems daily (particularly real estate - though you might be too, and have had completely different experiences).

Web applications are difficult in office environments where time is a serious factor, and security is even more important.

First, have you ever seen anyone submit a document online that they just spent 2 hours writing, only to have a session time out, an internet connection fail, or the website fail to respond? A smart tech would do a quick select-all/copy of the document before submitting, but most people simply don't, and hours of work are lost in an instant. (Happens in webmail environments and online real estate forms all the time)

So now you have to bloat the web form right? Add some JavaScript to copy the text to a clipboard before submitting, or maybe do the whole thing in a Java applet that can check its connection before submitting...or...or... Now you're just bloating and you don't have a choice.

Now your office screams - we want spreadsheets - we want to create fliers - we need macros!! That's a slightly more complicated web application.

I've written several web based applications, and many times, the customer asks - make it simple. I've never seen a project finish with the simplicity everyone had in mind when we began. Every time you turn around, someone needs a level of functionality you didn't think you'd ever need.

Don't get me wrong though, I've used options like OpenOffice in many situations where someone can't afford the $250 MS product, but needs to do a PowerPoint style presentation in a short period of time, or they have to open an MS Word document (which, more often than not, the word document contains tables and text boxes that don't come up correctly).

It is frustrating to work in an OpenOffice/StarOffice product in an MS Office world. I feel their pain - yet you cannot discount these OS products and StarOffice completely.

P.S. I'm copying this document to the clipboard before submitting because I've lost many posts on Slashdot (damn low wireless signal)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[jedidiah]

Pretty much any document I've seen around the office ever has been something that you could have generated with 1st Word or Pagestream.

For those that started computing yesterday: Those are two 15+ year old Atari ST applications.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Master of Transhuman]

"it was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station, he said"

In other words, a bunch of MCSE's couldn't figure out NFS.

This is a FUD piece written and distributed by Microsoft as usual.

Nothing to see here.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[mrBoB]

Honestly, can anyone name a "feature" of Microsoft Office that is so grand, living without it will bring the world to a halt?

Clippy

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Daengbo]

How you get from "it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place" to "cops are just moronic, club-wielding brutes that walk a beat," I don't know. Clearly you didn't read his post with a clear head.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Just install vi for Windows and teach them the importance of :q!, dd, :set ts=3 and other commands.

Do not forget HJKL -- nobody, and I mean NOBODY wants to learn HJKL. As a unix freak, it really keeps me up at night.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[wuice]

Maybe they're too busy fighting crime to fight the good fight removing Microsoft's stranglehold on the vertical monopoly. Maybe they just want to get work done.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Digital Pizza]

I'm just guessing here; I have no idea if any police station actually does this, but I can think of a scenario where Word templates are used in filling out standard "paperwork" forms. I'm sure that StarOffice (and probably OpenOffice too) can do this, but it's the kind of thing that I could see suffering from compatability issues with Word. Maybe that's why they had to switch back?

There are other word processor features such as tables, various types of formatting, and probably other things that I don't know about because I personally rarely use word processors anymore, that police may find useful in typing reports and doing other paperwork. Certain formatting may even be legally required.

The point is that it's assuming way too much that police officers don't need the formatting capabilities of a work processor.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, but when Mozilla publishes an article in the NYT it is cause for celebration and joy.

Tools.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[rihjol]

I thought I'd match his/her hyperbole of

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen.

It makes assumptions that police officers don't need or aren't capable of using sophisticated software. As if he/she were saying not to give them something too complicated, they can't handle it.

And suggesting that 99.99% of people don't use any features beyond plain text editing is pretty groundless.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Doctor_Jest]

So their dedicated IT department is out there fighting along side the officers?

Wow... they must REALLY be strapped for personnel. :P

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Daniel Phillips]

Maybe, just maybe, 90% of the market isn't completely wrong. Maybe the most successful company in history makes products that are slightly better than what amateurs put together in their spare time.

Nice troll. Maybe the company in question is a convicted monopolist that has so far kept control of a majority of the market by illegal means. Oh wait, it is not a maybe, it is established fact.

Maybe the products of this monopolist are actually slightly worse than what can be had for free. Maybe monopolizing tactics, including contractual tying, control of OEMs through cooperative advertising budgets (thinly disguised preferential pricing) and tying through technical means is really the main thing that keeps this monopolist's market share from eroding faster than it already is.

And maybe the developers putting together the competing products and offering them for free are not amateurs.

And maybe you are a Microsoft employee. Maybe you are getting worried.

It's a big old world of maybes, isn't it?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[_DangerousDwarf]

The other 95% were using Microsoft Office. So that answers why they were having so much trouble with StarOffice. They weren't. They were having trouble working with everybody else using Microsoft Office.
Actually they said it was harder and more expensive to administer.

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do.
And you know the software/hardware requirements of these police better then they do? How do you know what they do?

Why aren't they using a system like this? Because some idiot somewhere equates more-expensive with easier-to-use. It's the oldest story in IT, and it's always a tragedy.

This post will be modded off-topic like the other posts the refute you, so I don't really know why I bothered. I knew when I saw this article that the slashbots would be bashing the police department. But boy oh boy if they switched their word processor from offce to star office....you wouldn't be posting your nonsense.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[cp5i6]

Stop being an idiot

NFS in a production environment is a big no-no.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[TykeClone]

unfortunately a lot of corporations (my father's included) insist on using macros for a lot of things.

Not just corporations. In Iowa, the state mandates how to do municipal budgets and send each town clerk an Excel spreadsheet with macros to do some of the work.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[marcosdumay]

"Now I wish I used emacs so I could turn this into a emacs v. vi flamewar!"

No problem, I had. What's up with you guys. This :q! stuff is wothless... How do you expect a non thechie to use such terrible interface! Let's get it straight, :q is absurd, let's teach them CTRL-x-c, CTRL-x-s and CTRL-x-o. Now we have an interface that even granma would understand. We don't need no WYSIWYG stuff.

We can see /. burn now.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[LibrePensador]

Insightful, my ass.

A great deal of people working on open source today are paid to do so. They are motivated and passionate about what they work on. They are driven by technical and usability decisions, not trying to extract every single penny from every unsuspecting customer it can by holding their data at ransom.

Your post has all the great trademarks of the Microsoft shill engine. How many of you are just paid to post bullshit such as yours? Mix enough innuendo, some name-calling (slashbots, amateurs) and hope that no one is looking at the fact that the reason Microsoft Office worked better is because Microsoft Office does not interoperate with anything out there.

OpenOffice at least tries its damn hardest even if they are working with a close standard. I'll stop wasting my time with someone like you. [end of post].

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[cp5i6]

I've never read, heard, or seen a concept that couldn't be expressed in simple text typed into notepad.

just because I can run 40 miles to work doesn't mean I'm going to give up my car

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

If they'd just dump microsoft they could switch from smb to something decent and fix a lot of their problems.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and maybe your post is an accurate indication of your grasp of the IT industry and you indeed don't have any idea what the fuck you're on about.

Maybe you couldn't cite any relevant sources to support the claims you made in your post if when asked to. Or maybe you're just plain fucking wrong.

A big old world indeed.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[L7_]

they implemented HJKL into gmail!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily, I am much smarter than 90% of the market (yes, I can prove it). And I use Linux only. I guess that makes it a good possibility that yes, they have it wrong.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[NatteringNabob]

and maybe, just maybe, they got from 50% of the market to 90% of the market by offering a 'bundled with new computer' price that their competitors couldn't match because they didn't have an illegal OS monopoly. For the most part, Microsoft Office got to be the most popular office suite the old fashion way; by repeated and continual violations of the law until there wasn't a viable competitor left that could force interoperability.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Kowgod]

I don't see where you are getting your numbers from? 5% vs. 95%? From reading the article, it seems to me that it was nearly 100% OSS usage. In the article it says they are switching over 400 PCs and that the office only employs about 1000 people, including cops AND support staff. For OSS usage to only be 5% they would have to have 8000 computers in an office of only 1000 employees.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[temcat]

"Honestly, can anyone name a "feature" of Microsoft Office that is so grand, living without it will bring the world to a halt?"

They are different to everybody, but to me they are:

1) Proper implementation of the Normal mode where the text fits on the screen while you can zoom it to your liking. Yes Writer has "Web Layout", but not quite as convenient.

2) Comments. Please show me what exactly chunk of the text is commented and don't remove that info from the file, thank you. Please also preserve author's full name: there can be many reviewers with AB initials.

3) Interoperability with TRADOS translation memory software. (Now this isn't going to be implemented, because who uses TRADOS except a bunch of translators :-))

There are also diverse issues that have been reported by me via Issuezilla, but many of the issues from as early as 2002 are still there.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[tirnacopu]

This would be very useful for me: instead of instantly (no dialog screens to help me with the conversion) viewing a horribly wreck of what used to be my document in Word, why not grant the use the benefit of a doubt and ask: "Hmm, I can't do lists in a table cell, should I try to approximate what you meant or mark the badly imported text somehow" .. "I also can't import equations, but maybe a simple jpeg of the already rendered text would do" .. so on so forth. This goes for every other format, CSV, Lotus Notes, the long awaited Word Perfect etc. Please allow me to make some decisions, and maybe automatically submit bug reports based on actual data, crashdumps aren't very relevant.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a link to that? If it was in the article, I missed it...

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't used OO in a real world setting.

I have yet to find a real document, either a spreadsheet or a word doc, that opens correctly in OpenOffice. I'm delighted to see OO going forward, but it is not yet a drop-in replacement. I would fire a sysadmin who claimed it was.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[pfleming]

" I wonder if there was any reason that they were NOT saving files to Office/RTF format rather than native Staroffice format?" Because most people don't even understand what a "file format" is.

I would think that would have made it easier, not harder, to save to a compatible format designated by IT. Just set it to default to RTF/doc/whatever and forget it.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[16K Ram Pack]

Good post.

I switched from Word 2000 to OOo 1.1. I figured that I'd see how long I would last before I had to switch back. And I still haven't. I found the training no worse than switching from one version of Office to another. I had to work out that a few things were in a different place which meant a slight delay early on - which is now dealt with. The rest of the world can complain about the training costs from MS Office to OOo, but I'll take my not having to shell out a few hundred pounds every so often for features I don't need.

People send me word documents, I change them, send them back and they don't know better.

I do everything I want to do. I write complex documents with images, headers, footers, numbering, styles. If it didn't do what I needed, I'd switch to Word.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Chemical Serenity]

That's strange, at least 3 of the companies who subcontract our services use NFS in a production environment. One of them has been using it for the last 8 years or so. At no time has NFS been a 'no-no', nor has problems with NFS yielded any serious setbacks.

Thinking of something else? Or perhaps just talking out your ass?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[DaveJay]

No, actually, according to the article, the deployment of "solutions" (read: applets and things) in StarOffice, optimized for Open Source software, was causing problems of accessibility in other departments. According to the article:

"It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station."

Actually, in combination with the article's mention of other police stations still using microsoft products, I read this to mean that when officers wanted to open their StarOffice docs in police stations equipped with Microsoft Products, they couldn't do so unless they'd been saved as .doc files, and once returning to their home station the .doc importing was less than ideal.

If that's the case, it merely bolsters the case for this being an issue of microsoft interoperability as a prerequisite for success, and as the primary reason for abandoning StarOffice.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Master of Transhuman]

You stop being an idiot.

While Samba may be a better idea for a mixed Windows/Linux environment, if I change NFS for Samba, the point stays the same.

Their IT people were too incompetent to handle Linux networking, that's the bottom line. Which means they were too incompetent to handle Windows networking, which is at least as complex, if not more so.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Doctor_Jest]

Which could've been solved by using an open document format. Like I said before the article also mentioned the Freedom Info act or something like that.. open standards should've been the solution to comply with Information freedom. ;)

Ironic, wouldn't you say?

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[smithwis]

Wow, some one has some like minded mod friends. Anyone who modded the last few posts up is a REAL cool kid.

This is an absolutey fucking ridiculous debate. Let's take one apple(Large very succesful corporation and it's software) and compare it to a few oranges(random open source projects that conveniently fit whatever point you're making).

Look there is definately some shitty open source software. Coming as a .net developer I can speak with experience that Microsoft products are frequently backwards and shitty as well. Let's all just face it. This mountain that we software engineers have made is a stinking pile of shit .

But I digress, You, nor the person you're responding too, nor the silly mods have made any worthwhile points for the last couple a posts.

Ok, Mod me the fuck down biatch!!!

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[brianiac]

...written with little to no thought to creating elegant code ... little to do with the skill of the designer and more to do with the amount of time and cost involved

You assail the elegance employed by a huge group of programmers, then dismiss the craft as a simple commodity. You can't have it both ways.

Comparing hand-crafted wood furniture made by a master woordworker to something I can go buy from a local department store in terms of quality is a worthless comparison.

If your assertion is purely about the quality of the product, then no--this is the salient metric, the whole point of the discussion. This is equivocation.

...I would be willing to bet...

OK, but you can't really use gut feelings as evidence. If you wish to make a point, you really do need to be more specific.

...all of the programmers I know ... Also, just about every good professional programmer I know

This is anecdotal evidence, which carries the risk of generalizing on too little evidence.

huge numbers of OSS projects use backwards methodologies

A claim of this magnitude ("huge") requires several examples, but you give none. In fact, this is completely counter to my own experience. Many OSS projects, in fact, exist purely to demonstrate, showcase, or test new technologies.

• Saxon is the reference (pre-)implementation of XSLT 2.0
• Gecko, the Mozilla/Firefox rendering engine, is probably the most advanced/progressive implementation of X/HTML and CSS available
• mono is an open-source implementation of .NET
• fop was the first XSL-FO implementation available

Products that require high performance, OS or proprietary, may use lower-level languages. Device drivers are a good example of C code used in this way.

Plus many OSS projects are started because someone wants to write a piece of software that does a very specific task, than gradually expanded into a real project. But this eliminates the design phase (even if we allow that most OSS projects have one) which will not lead to improved software.

If the argument that you are making is that organic development is less effective than traditional design methodologies, that will inevitably lead to a discussion of the merits of Extreme Programming (XP), which I believe is beyond the scope of even this long Slashdot thread. Suffice it to say that many great minds have debated this issue already.

...your whole original post...

You seem to have confused me with the original poster. My previous post was my first foray into this discussion.

...who don't care about facts when they don't fit their arguments...

The trouble here is that you offer no facts at all. Your assertions are all based on limited personal experience and preconceptions.

...I still think my original post was an accurate critique of yours.

My observation was directed at your reply, which commited the same infractions you used to disparage the original poster.

I consider the spam emails which are so convoluted that you can barely read them to be a more valuable use of bandwidth than anything you've said.

And yet not quite worthless enough to ignore. Are we to infer that your time is worth less than spam? ;)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[killjoe]

How can you like linux but hate communists? According to bill gates every single open source developer is a communist.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[rooster9]

I just ate a big red candle.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a troll. OSS advocates need to learn how to use arguments... that is, if they have any.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[lwriemen]

Liebowitz is definately NOT an unbiased source when it comes to Microsoft. He has been on their payroll in the past, and is known to write in their defense on any monopoly issues.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[jc42]

This is exactly what so many IT professionals miss when they evaluate Microsoft's products. They just work for the users, plain and simple.

Hmmm ... You must be among a totally different population of Microsoft users than I've ever seen. In my experience, watching them using their computers shows a long stream of obscenities, complaints and general frustration unlike anything you'll see with any other consumer product (except maybe VCRs). To a person, they invariably hate their computers, and aren't shy of telling you about it.

I've frequently tried a few queries to find out why they use such awful computers. The answers can be summarized as: What choice is there? They are honestly ignorant of any choice. I've often asked how many other brands of computers they've considered or tried, and invariably the answer is "None". They think that "computers" are difficult to use and hostile to users, and there's nothing that can be done about it. They never even considering that the problems might be with the brand they've chosen, because they don't know of any others.

Maybe a few are aware of Macs, but of course those are only used by weird, artsy types who are mostly gay; real people wouldn't be interested in them, and they don't have any normal software anyway.

This belief system is so widespread that you see it all the time in the media. Computers are now the standard media metaphor for poorly-designed, difficult-to-use gadgetry. There are constant reports of "hacking" that does nasty things to computers' owners. And the reporters almost never mention that the computers involved are running Microsoft software. This is simply because, to the reporters, there is no other kind of software. Software comes from Microsoft. If there's a nasty virus going around, it effects "computers". And all software is user-hostile; that's just the nature of software.

So where do you find Microsoft users for which their computers "just work"? Do you live on some other planet maybe? Are you maybe watching Mac users and not realizing that they don't come from Microsoft?

(Actually, I have a Mac, and I'd strongly dispute their "just works" mantra. Yeah, it's better than Ms Windows. That's not great praise. ;-)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[ccp]

not to mention they will subsiduse it to make the whole deal sweet.

And a non-insignificat portion of said subsidies is going to subsidize new cars, swimming pools, and posh vacations to everyone that has a part in the procurement process.

Cheers,

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[heffrey]

And how is this a troll? Now I see how /. moderation works...

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Ravnen]

Most economists involved in extensively researching such cases are biased towards one side or the other: why else would they take an interest? The question is whether or not their biased arguments stand up to scrutiny. For interested observers, it's a matter of reading arguments from both sides, to see which are more logically coherent.

Being interested in this from the perspective of economics (I'm not interested in software advocacy), I'd like to read the views of opposing economists, if you know of any. Most of the ones I know of have written about MS Windows, not MS Office.

The most striking thing for me in this market is the dominance MS Office achieved on the Apple Mac, when Microsoft was still far behind its competitors on the PC (still DOS in those days). A coherent explanation of why this happened, if Microsoft's products weren't technically superior to the competition, is something I'd really like to read.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[jZnat]

OpenOffice has that lightbulb thing, and at least it doesn't overlay a useless message (e.g. "your quotes have been replaced with left-side and right-side double-quotes") unless you click it.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[LPetrazickis]

Do not forget HJKL -- nobody, and I mean NOBODY wants to learn HJKL. As a unix freak, it really keeps me up at night.

Oh, yeah? Well, my girlfriend uses HJKL! On both QWERTY and Dvorak! Because her laptop has busted keys! It scares me.:P

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[cp5i6]

What happens if a server that's part of the NFS environment goes down?

think it over why NFS in a prod env is a nono.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Girls have a natural proclivity for HJKL in the same way they have a natural proclivity for shower heads. But, since so few of them use unix, much less vi, even less get the chance to discover this cross-over skill.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[johnnyb]

This is nice, except that Microsoft Word isn't 100% compatible with Microsoft Word. In fact, there have been several instances where OpenOffice was more compatible with a specific version of Microsoft Word than newer Microsoft Words.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Chemical Serenity]

Well gee, what happens if a hard drive goes down? Or a router?

Smart people make redundant paths for everything important. NFS is no different. It's not rocket science.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[cp5i6]

Yes, although true redundancy for NFS is available only for read-only shares..

please try again.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Chemical Serenity]

Try again at what? My customers are happy and making money, using systems that are hardened against failure using technology that has a pedigree which likely stretches back more years than you've been alive.

NFS is a tool like any other. Don't be so quick to dismiss it simply because you haven't mastered its usage and learned where it's appropriate for it to fit, or allowed yourself to be blinded to its purpose because of some other shiny trinket that you've vested emotional capital on. (2c)

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Chemical Serenity]

You have only to check his comment history to see that this guy's an MS shill. The concept that NFS is useful and is in use by many, many corporate environments and is actively and successfully implemented must result in too much cognitive dissonance.

That, however, suits me fine. So long as people like him dismiss viable technologies and insist on trying to force organizations into the latest technology du jour, it'll give the people my company contracts to a competitive edge. :D

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[cp5i6]

Relate to the article. It tells how the scotland police find it difficult to share files that they all need to edit.

I'm already telling you that NFS has an inherent disadvantage because true redundancy ONLY comes when you have a read only environment.

A better technology would be DFS/AFS instead.

I pity your customers if they have a support guy that's just so stuck on technology that might not suit their needs.

For my home system I use NFS as it suits my need and I don't need the redundancy, but If I were to go into a production environment where the users are sharing say sensitive word documents that they would be editing day in and day out ... NFS is unacceptable.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Chemical Serenity]

You didn't relate your blanket statement about NFS to the article. You made a unilateral statement saying, and I quote, "NFS in a production environment is a big no-no". Trying to justify that inane claptrap by appealing to the article now is disingenuous. You made a poor statement and now are trying to backpeddle to cover up your mistake. It won't work on me, or anyone else that uses NFS daily to make money and get serious work done.

If you don't want to be shot down, lose some of the evangelical zeal you have. Absolute statements will only make you look absolutely foolish.

Additionally, it would appear that even MS (your poison of choice, is it not?) cannot provide the needed functionality without additional work. Perhaps if you'd read the article, you'd have seen the following:

Help from Microsoft in other areas may have influenced the decision. The company plans to work with Scottish police to develop an electronic document management system to help it comply with requests made under the 2002 Freedom of Information Act, and a document sharing system for police staff, Microsoft said.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[cp5i6]

once again you are deviating from the fact and trying to justify your failed beliefs. Shall I point you to various man pages that will explicitly tell you that NFS should not be used in a production environment where you need to both read/write and redunancy?

Perhaps it's too much to ask you to read back to all the posts I made relating to this topic. If you can find a single location where I mentioned Microsoft instead of other more robust *nix technologies like AFS/DFS, I might acutally relent and say that NFS is good for a production environment. (or even CODA as one of the other posters mentioned).

So Mr. I don't speak absolutely when I say "It won't work on me, or anyone else that uses NFS daily to make money and get serious work done." Once again I ask you to pull your head out of your ass and learn about other *nix technologies.

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[Chemical Serenity]

I wash my hands of you, troll. I've taken the time to read your posts, and your biases are dayglo.

You can believe me, or not, that companies are making a great deal of money using technology built around NFS. They still earn regardless of your assertion that it Just Shouldn't Happen(tm)... and as amusing as it is to hear you rattle on about what is and what should never be, I'd rather get on with producing the next insanely great thing.

*PLONK*

Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice

[cp5i6]

There seems to be one or two neurons in your brain that just seem to be misfiring to each other.

It seems that once you have no better argument to make you enjoy referring me to a mythical creature that obviously is just that a figment of your imagination

To further show just how much of an ass you seem to be, you seem to stick stubbornly to your belief that "NFS makes companies money" when I'd doubt you could find a single point to show me just actually how NFS would make any company money. (unless they're selling NFS).

And after everything else when you can no longer justify the point you're trying to make you revert yourself to a mere simpleton making childish and idiotic noises.

Just so you learn something from all of this. I am going to repeat that NFS is not a production able system if you require read/write and redundancy. Other technologies include, AFS/DFS/JFS/CODA.

In other news...

[sYn pHrEAk]

In other news, math skills of Scottish police reported to be at an all time low.

Re:In other news...

[DenDave]

I am impressed that the scttish police have been using computers! Oh wee laddie, is that a compuuutaah or er ye just happy to see meee!

Cops and Microsoft.. *bliss* a match made in heaven

Re:In other news...

[elrous0]

Scottish Police emailed reporters a written response, but the reporters couldn't open it.

-Eric

Re:In other news...

[doublem]

Oh, don't be such a prat.

Yes, yes, your has been modded funny, but I'd like to make a few points.

The police department in question needs to exchange data with other departments. These departments are largely using Microsoft Office.

"They only need a text editor with spell check" claims are, to be kind, absurd and ignorant. At the very least they most likely have a host of templates for document creation. I've had some experience with what happens when documents get mangled by changes to the underlying template. Given what I've seen of moving text boxes and munged tables, template problems could easily do things like switch the name of the victim and the suspect, depending on the template.

They cited costs as a major concern. I'm sure Microsoft gave them some deep discounts in this situation. Hell, they might even be losing money on this, but being able to use this as a case study for their advertising is worth losing some coin. It could very well be far cheaper to go back to Microsoft than to stick with StarOffice.

Remember, this is about StarOffice, NOT OpenOffice. The cost of the software itself was not Zero plus download time.

If you take into account having to maintain a library of duplicate templates, document exchange headaches, cleaning up cases where one application totally screwed over a file created in the other office suite and he cost of having to maintain a separate support staff, switching to MS Office suddenly makes a lot of sense. I'm sure a lot of support staff are going to be let go after they switch back.

2+2....

[Demanche]

How can a $300 software package be cheaper then free? ....me wonders...

Re:2+2....

[polysylabic psudonym]

Depends on who you buy the free software from.

Re:2+2....

[Drew Curtis]

Perhaps if your time is worthless. Actually, I suppose IT workers are so cheap now that it doesn't matter.

Re:2+2....

[VitaminB52]

How can a $300 software package be cheaper then free? ....me wonders...

The costs are not in the '$300 software package' (MS Office), but in the other packages that link to and (ab)use MS Office functionality, e.g. some applications that 'need' MS Word as a report generator.

As soon as the Scottish police upgrades to the next MS Office version, they will find out how cheap MS Office really is - then they will have to upgrade *ALL* these nice 'I-need-the-old-office-to-run' apps.

Re:2+2....

[Hope Thelps]

How can a $300 software package be cheaper then free?

I don't think Star Office is free. I think you're confusing it with Open Office.

Re:2+2....

[Col. Bloodnok]

a) StarOffice isn't free. You're thinking of OpenOffice.
b) Large organisations don't pay list price. This is software, Microsoft will have discounted it down to a point where they can regain the business.

Re:2+2....

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the price of the software is often just a very small part of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

Support may be most expensive, and if only 5% of them actually use StarOffice, they can hardly help each other. This is just one reason that support may seem more expensive to them.

I just got software for more than $3.000 for my new job. I think only the phone was cheaper. Even my table is probably more than $3.000.
$300 is nothing.

StarOffice and OpenOffice has many advantages, but the license cost is far from the most important.

Re:2+2....

[Saven Marek]

Here is the thing. it does not all come down to one price number vs another directly. purchase price is only part of the equation.

If you have a $300 package that does the job, it is cheaper than a free package that does not do the job. the latter is the same as not doing the job at all.

the latter is not an option, so the $300 package is the only option therefore it is cheapest way to actually do the work.

Re:2+2....

[guruevi]

RTFA They only have to pay 100$/seat for the Windows + Office deal.

Re:2+2....

[jimicus]

I think you need to look further than initial purchase cost.

If you RTFA, there's a very telling sentence:

Early this year, however, the agency reviewed its IT infrastructure as part of an effort to meet performance targets, comply with Scotland's Freedom of Information Act and work more closely with other law enforcement groups

OpenOffice is fine if all you're doing is opening up a letter or a simple form in Word format. But if you want to claim that it's faultless for all documents, I have many thousands of pages in Word .doc format sitting right here to prove you wrong.

Re:2+2....

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see, you understod what he was saying right? He hasnt english as his native language and I guess you have. Do you know why people speak english with you even tho its not there native language? Its cause you guys dont know any other languages, for example, I dont know any American that speak German.

Re:2+2....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he clearly speaks English as his native language and is just trying to be sophisticated. And even if he does, he clearly knows English well enough to know that you use the reverse style.

Re:2+2....

[dustmite]

Of course this is not a problem with OpenOffice per se, it's a problem of imperfect interoperability between OpenOffice and Word, i.e. the Word loader in OO is imperfect. But this shouldn't be a problem if all your documents are in OpenOffice format, and all your users use it - provided you don't need to exchange many documents with other organisations using Word. I have many large and complex documents created in OpenOffice (which is far nicer to use than Word), and because I have no need to ever load them in Word at all (they get distributed as PDF), the solution works well.

I've started playing around with the OpenOffice 2 beta and it's support for loading Word files has definitely improved (as has it's PDF export). Some of my older .doc files that I previously could not open in OO 1 I can now open perfectly. I hope it's good enough though to start being compelling enough to attract "converts". Converting to open formats costs money in the short term, of course, and will be a "painful" process for the world to go through, but the whole idea is that you save money in the long term, and ultimately it's necessary to move away from proprietary formats, because it's needlessly inefficient.

Re:2+2....

[I_M_Noman]

Its cause you guys dont know any other languages, for example, I dont know any American that speak German.

Was sagen sie?

Re:2+2....

[cheesybagel]

Microsoft Word itself is incompatible between versions. Newer versions of Word can never render old files as they looked when they were written. New files usually cannot be read by old versions of Word. The DOC format is quite likely the most imbecile document format known to man.

I doubt the Scottish police needs more than ASCII anyway. If they used a web based solution, then they would only need a PC with a browser to work and they could do it from anywhere, even in the field, as long as they had an Internet connection.

Re:2+2....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Its cause you guys dont know any other languages, for example, I dont know any American that speak German."

I'll take from this statement that you're not American since you refer to americans as "you guys". Right off the bat, you're chances of meeting an American are small.

"The United States does not have an official language at federal level; nevertheless, English is the first and/or only language of the overwhelming majority of the population and serves as the de facto official language: English is the language used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements.

Twenty-seven individual states have adopted English as their official language, and three of those--Hawaii, Louisiana, and New Mexico--have also adopted a second official language (Hawaiian, French and Spanish, respectively). Spanish follows English as the second-most spoken language in the United States, primarily due to the influence of recent Latin American immigrants and the fact that almost a fifth of its continental territory was originally part of Mexico, and it is a primary spoken language in some areas of the Southwest.

The primary signed language is American Sign Language (ASL).

As of 2004, the United States was the home of approximately 336 languages (spoken or signed), of which 176 are indigenous to U.S. territory." (Wikipedia)

But I guess sitting in your room all day spanking monkey's makes it hard to meet people.

Re:2+2....

[agraupe]

"I don't know one, therefore it doesn't exist." That's some excellent logic there, buddy...

Re:2+2....

[guruevi]

I think the American way is stupid (as European I can say that). In (world) mathematics the . is commonly used as multiply (x) sign, the , is used to separate the whole numbers from the partial numbers. And who says: I paid dollar three-thousand? You say: I paid three-thousand dollar, that's why the freaking $ sign is not supposed to be in front of the number!

Re:2+2....

[iamweezman]

RTA they didn't pay $300 for Office. They paid $108 for Office and W2k3. Add in the higher cost for good linux admins and compatibility and it really is as easy as 2+2.

old StarOffice vs new

[Sodki]

It should be said that the quality of that version of StarOffice isn't what we can have now with OpenOffice.org or the new StarOffice.

Re:old StarOffice vs new

[HomerJayS]

Even conceding that current versions of Star/Open Office are far superior to the version in question, Star/OpenOffice obviously still does not work and play well with MS Office. Given that 95% of the Scottish police stations use MS Office, interoperability is a primary requirement.

We can rant/rave all we want about how MS Office is MS Windows centric. But, until there is an OpenSource solution that offers 95%+ compatibility with MS Office, large scale market penetration is a pipe dream.

Re:old StarOffice vs new

[Nightspirit]

Isn't there a MS office version for OSX? That's hardly windows centric (although I recognize a native linux install does not exist).

Re:old StarOffice vs new

[foobar_fred]

1. Convince some small organization to switch from non-standard software widely considered crappy to our "standard" software
2. Post this "news" on /.
3. Soak in the sun of free PR
4. Profit

Did they get a cheaper deal from Microsoft?

[Paul Crowley]

The key question is, did their temporary move put enough pressure on Microsoft to get them a cheaper deal for Office? In which case, it's worth moving to OpenOffice even if you intend to move back...

Re:Did they get a cheaper deal from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Yeah, it would be nice if 100% of people who use word processors would use StarOffice or OpenOffice, or some other OSS alternative to MS Office, but the real hidden message is competition. Competition drives prices down.

Re:Did they get a cheaper deal from Microsoft?

[BioCS.Nerd]

From TFA:

The agency said in 2000 that it would see initial savings of at least £245,000 (US$439,000) from switching to StarOffice and Linux, and that the open-source deployment would allow it to bring productivity software to more of its officers. (Emphasis mine)

Hardly a temporary switch.

Re:Did they get a cheaper deal from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

And just another example of how the FOSS can help you to get your running costs down.

A poster news

[CSHARP123]

This will be a poster news for Microsoft, they go about everywhere touting this news and telling people open source/Free software are useless.

Re:A poster news

[emmetropia]

Whew, it's a great thing that no one does that for OSS at all, eh?

Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, it's Central Scotland Police, ie the police in the Central region, not all.
Secondly, they are migrating nearly *everything* back to MS. TheRegister have a better description here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/11/ms_lochs_d own_police/
complete with anglo-saxon mispronunciation joke ;-)
It's a shame, but maybe they are right. It's not easy to pay enough for good linux/unix admins on public sector wages.

Re:Corrections

[AliasTheRoot]

They made a good choice.

I am a Linux/Unix admin professionaly and I recently went from OpenOffice back to MS-Office.

The cost of "free" software is too damn high when you cant share documents properly. My CV kept causing everyone elses Word to crash, thats a cost I couldn't afford to pay as a jobseeker.

Re:Corrections

[Varun Soundararajan]

continuing on the shame part, Sun had dedicated a page for it citing it as a staroffice success, and i guess it was removed recently after this news. see the google cache here http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F% 2Fuk.sun.com%2Fsunnews%2Fsuccess%2Fpublic_sector%2 F102.html

Re:Corrections

[minus9]

What the hell did you have in your CV that could cause incompatibility between MS-Office and OpenOffice?

Re:Corrections

[I confirm I'm not a]

What the hell did you have in your CV that could cause incompatibility between MS-Office and OpenOffice?

I can't speak for the GP, but I've just installed AbiWord to open Word docs that won't open in OpenOffice.org. Nothing fancy about the documents; old CVs with tables and fairly minimal formatting. Word 2000 era maybe?

Of course, at the time I blamed MS Word ;-)

Re:Corrections

[ArsenneLupin]

My CV kept causing everyone elses Word to crash, thats a cost I couldn't afford to pay as a jobseeker.

Why didn't you simply submit your CV as PDF?

Re:Corrections

[Iamthefallen]

Because employers will often save the .doc file contents in a database?

Re:Corrections

[cheesybagel]

In most places I know, if you sent a CV in Microsoft Word DOC format applying for a UNIX admin job, you would get laughed out right at the door.

Why did you not just use PDF or HTML export?

Re:Corrections

[Bob Uhl]

That's why I wrote my CV and resume in LaTeX and generated a PDF: looks sharp, is readable everywhere and keeps me (relatively) sane.

Re:Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

So to re-iterate what you're saying, MS Office crashes while opening certain documents that StarOffice/OpenOffice has no problems with?

Re:Corrections

[cahiha]

I am a Linux/Unix admin professionaly and I recently went from OpenOffice back to MS-Office. [...] My CV kept causing everyone elses Word to crash, thats a cost I couldn't afford to pay as a jobseeker.

Professional Linux/UNIX admins would send their resume in PDF, ASCII, or HTML format. Furthermore, no company minimally concerned about security would open resumes sent to them in DOC format because of security concerns. And if a company insists on something they can open in Word, you can always send them RTF. To me, you sound like you are either making this up, or you are simply not very experienced.

Incidentally, Microsoft Word can crash even on opening Microsoft Word documents, depending on the versions involved. That's another reason not to use Word for resumes.

Re:Corrections

[slapout]

Wow. If you're so good that your resume can do that, you're hired!!

Re:Corrections

[stefanlasiewski]

In my experience about 25% of Unix shops will not accept a PDF, ASCII or HTML resume at first. ASCII resumes will get skipped over frequently, and HTML formatting is very problematic on different systems.

The hiring manager could deal with the PDF/ASCII/HTML just fine, but you often need to deal with a recruiter, HR, or a big automated resume system in the middle first, and they frequently want an MS Word-formatted resume.

Sometimes the problem is simple "Oh, I was only looking for Word docs and missed your PDF", but other times the automated system will only accept MS Word formated resumes.

For example, UC Berkeley migrated to a new Peoplesoft resume system in 2003. The new system only accepted MS Word formatted resumes for 6 months. You could input everything by hand using a webform, but only if you removed large chunks of your resume. UCB has had a long association with Unix.

I know of two Fortune-50 companies who will only accept resumes in MS Word format, and they have many AIX & Unix systems.

Re:Corrections

[Hiro Antagonist]

This is sad but true. I'm also a Unix sysadmin, and when I send out my resume, I make it a point to offer it in more than one format -- usually Word97, PDF, OOo, and HTML. Never had a problem with this method.

What I'm surprised at, is that his CV can crash Word. I run OOo 1.4, and I've *never* had a problem with Word users being able to read my documents.

Re:Corrections

[maw]

You sound like someone who's never had to look for a job.

Re:Corrections

[Omnifarious]

That's why my CV is in straight, hand-edited HTML.

Re:Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazingly enough, some people don't want jobs as UNIX admins.

Re:Corrections

[marcosdumay]

"It's a shame, but maybe they are right. It's not easy to pay enough for good linux/unix admins on public sector wages."

If so, why can't they just use OO on Windows, and save the MS Office license?

Re:Corrections

[Piquan]

Regrettably, there are a few niche apps used by recruiters, headhunters, and the like. They require a resume in Word. As in, the "candidate" record has a Word COM object as part of it. It HAS to be Word; send them a PDF or text, and they'll copy/paste it to word, where it looks terrible.

I keep mine as a TeX file that I build to PDF for sending to Unix folks, but also I keep a Word version to send to headhunters and HR folks.

Re:Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, I just look for them with different companies. And I don't look for them by sending in my resume.

Just part of the Scottish Police Force

[Anonymous Coward]

Central Scotland Police are, as the article states, one of eight forces in Scotland. They also cover a relatively small area and employ "about 1000 officers" - compared with 7500 for the largest Scottish Police force, Strathclyde Police.

Re:Just part of the Scottish Police Force

[eglass1]

The article in the Register notes that they were the only Linux shop though; all the others were already MS.

I hate these excuses

[polysylabic psudonym]

I work as a software designer for an Australian government department. They use the same sort of excuses for sticking with MS. In that case at least, it's lies. They stick with MS because it's executives that make the decisions and they get information from only two sources: MS sales staff and noisy linux zealots from within their own staff.

The zealots come off as zealots and are thus dismissed as having nothing useful to say.

The MS sales staff have "consultant" in their job title and are thus deigned (by the senior execs) to be experts on all things computerish.

Of course to those of us who grok operating environments and who don't grok executives and consultants see said executives as fools and their reasons as invalid.

Oh well.

Re:I hate these excuses

[PunkOfLinux]

Yep. When will people learn how to make their own decisions? Probably not until the school system is fixed.

Re:I hate these excuses

[Lonewolf666]

Ouch. The MS sales staff have "must sell MS products" in their job description and should thus be considered even less trustworthy than the zealots, when it comes to choosing software vendors.
If your executives don't get that, they deserve to be called PHBs.

Re:I hate these excuses

[J23SE]

Umm... the people at the organization were using it for 5 years. Don't you think that these executives got many complaints and many reports about the ups/downs of using OSS during these 5 years? The Linux zealots already won once, against the same boneheaded executives.

Remember, these guys actually gave it a chance. Why don't you admit defeat, that maybe an organization may be better off with an MS product... otherwise, your assumption that idiot executives always make all the wrong decisions always comes off sounding arrogant, idiotic, and like a linux zealot yourself.

Re:I hate these excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

.au govt had an ICT consultancy firm (G) write a reasonably competent pro/cons on opensource software with little overt bias about 2 years back. BOM (weather service), and some parts of CSIRO have taken up OSS, with savings and success money can't buy, that had to be quickly glossed over.

The most glaring omission was failing to mention governments OSS takeup was behind private sector takeup, which would have benchmarked unfavorably. Google is also a pain - proving there is no 'legal issues' or 'reliability/scalability issues'.

Going back to the police, the fact that they won a sweetheart cutprice licence, to swing things, really means their little trial saved lots of money, and the title should read MS gets their foot in the door by massive software discounts.

Ultimately, Firefox and OpenOffice should be installed on all govt desktops, as the marginal cost is SFA, and it will improve productivity.

Re:I hate these excuses

[Fringex]

I gather you are one of the zealots who is ignored quite often.

See?

/ignore

Re:I hate these excuses

[Registered Coward v2]

Of course to those of us who grok operating environments and who don't grok executives and consultants see said executives as fools and their reasons as invalid.

Which is proably why they'll never listen, and since they maek the decisions you're stuck with those decisions.

The key to selling anything (including a move to OSS) is to understand what the other person needs and to explain why your idea / product will meet those needs.

I've seen many people with good ideas unsuccessfully try to implement them because they lacked the skills to sell them. They assumed that everyone shared their POV and, if they didn't, they were by definition idiots that were too dumb to understand.

That biggest hurdle to wider OSS adoption is often not MS but the OSS community - or as Pogo said "We have met the enemy and he is us."

For those of you wondering why...

[domipheus]

.. this costs less, is well be cause of this:

TIME = MONEY * 3

In this sort of situation, the extra time it takes to convert documents to different formats, and keep those formats updated, totally outweighs the point of moving systems in the first place.

This should be a lesson to organisations, if you want to go open source; do it right - and change all systems at once.

Re:For those of you wondering why...

[bersl2]

Or at least change an entire component at once. What is this, a 1/20th-ass effort?

Re:For those of you wondering why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we all know how much longer it takes to press "Save As" instead of "Save."

Or, just set the default format to MS Word.

Re:For those of you wondering why...

[Lumpy]

Um yeah, right. how about some realisim.

if you pay yout IT staff $50,000.00 total for a year to operate and you switch to OO.o guess what.... it will STILL cost $50,000.00 a year to operate. Nowhere did I see that time increase all my costs.

I shot down a PHB like you 3 years ago when I started switching the backoffice to Linux. he was running around the confrence room yapping about how time is money and starting to convince the managers until we shot him down in flames by simply saying...

"It cost us more TIME to upgrade the Microsoft products than it did to switch the backoffice to Linux and OSS as well as train the IT staff. So please explain to us why we need to stick with microsoft using what you just said. And please explain how it costs us more when the IT staff are on salary and a fixed operating budget?"

He shut up, the Directors gave me the go-ahead to continue the conversion.

if you talk in abstracts then time=money. when you talk in reality money= operating costs and time is a non issue. if it takes your IT team 3X more time to convert from MS servers and SQL to OSS servers and SQL your operating costs never changed, you lost no money (only a fool takes what is running down to change to the new.) and every IT staffer has free time in his day anyways (dont lie, you are reading slashdot on that free time) and usually enjoy a nice challenge like this anyways.

Time does not = money in the corperate world of IT unless you stat paying overtime... and typically IT is not hourly.

Re:For those of you wondering why...

[domipheus]

This is not the corporate world , it is a police force, where time costs a hell of a lot more.

Re:For those of you wondering why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right. so you are telling me that the police and police employees are paid more than at corperations?? last time I checked Municipal IT were paid much less than corperate IT. and Cops typically make less than the corperate Drone.

nice try, lumpy is very correct. The cop on average in the USA makes $27-47K the corperate drone makes on average $32-62K and dont even try the bull-shit about their gear, that is a ONE TIME expense not a cost that changes because of the time in use.

so please, elaborate on your claims with something other than a foaming incomplete statement.

Re:For those of you wondering why...

[domipheus]

? when did i say anything about that. If a report does not get to the fiscal on time because it is not in the right format, not only does it cost money in 1)police time, 2) legal charges, 3) detainee fees but it makes you look really quite incompetent.

What one time expense? if your main centre is operating different systems and formats to the branches, its going to be slow to get data. My god man read the story.

Re:For those of you wondering why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um yeah...the perfect no-risk solution!

Hmmmmm...

[DanielNS84]

I'm reminded of the "E-Learning" system at Best Buy...I think if they switched to Open Office and had a short but mandatory training module before they started working with it on how to use and convert any applicable proprietary formats to be compatible with all the Microsoft things they could save money on licensing. Unless Microsoft drops their prices WAY down for corporate customers they have plenty of money to implement an OSS solution and integrate it to be just as easy to use.

Re:Hmmmmm...

[BVis]

I'm reminded of the "E-Learning" system at Best Buy...I think if they switched to Open Office

You're not serious. Best Buy? Using that commie Open Source stuff? What color is the sky on your planet? I'd be very shocked if anyone in the entire BB organization (past a few blueshirts in the stores working there until they get another job) could even say they'd ever even heard of OSS. Just mentioning the concept you suggest to anyone of consequence in their IT would probably be enough to get you fired; after all, if you're talking about not using something from Microsoft when you could be, then you must be anti-Microsoft, and therefore cannot work towards making customers buy Microsoft products.

Re:Hmmmmm...

[DanielNS84]

I was actually using BB's learning system as an example for the scottish police...but yeah I would love to have Best Buy switch to all OSS but I know it won't happen.

Re:Hmmmmm...

[BVis]

Upon a second reading of your post, I see what you were trying to say. Forgive my venom, please.

Money buys

[Docrates]

You know there are tons of Microsoft money and lots of people who's sole job it is to convince governments that $400 worth of software is cheaper than free right?

And then we have the whole chicken|egg problem: staroffice is expensive to maintain because you have all those perky support calls from people that try to make it work with MSOffice... so what does the Socttish government do? they add more MS Office to integrate better, instead of adding more Staroffice or Open Office (or any other open-standards based office app)...

I wonder what the taxpayers would say if this was explained to them...

Re:Money buys

[Anonymous Coward]

The taxpayers don't give a ####. They would experience the same problems when they would suddenly use Star Office.

Re:Money buys

[ScentCone]

You know there are tons of Microsoft money and lots of people who's sole job it is to convince governments that $400 worth of software is cheaper than free right?

You don't need an MS salesrep to convince the people that have to write their operational budget that day-to-day living with an application for which you can't hire reasonably priced local support, or for which interaction with another large user base engaged in (literally) mission critical activities is no bargain. Inertia plays a role, here. It's the same reason they still drive on the wrong side of the road, I suppose. Great whiskey, though. Ach!

Re:Money buys

[Anonymous Coward]

The Scottish have a government?

Re:Money buys

[blane.bramble]

It's the same reason they still drive on the wrong side of the road, I suppose. Great whiskey, though. Ach!

No, we still drive on the correct side of the road, despite what Napoleon thought. Oh, and it's Whisky not Whiskey.

Re:Money buys

[ScentCone]

No, we still drive on the correct side of the road, despite what Napoleon thought.

I once rented a car in St. Lucia, and nearly killed myself shifting gears with my left hand while on a jungle switchback on the side of a volcano. I guess it left a bad taste in my mouth! Speaking of taste in one's mouth:

Oh, and it's Whisky not Whiskey.

At least, as an unwashed Yank, I didn't refer to people in Scotland as being "Scotch." I understand that's a hanging offense. But you can understand that here in the US we make Bourbon "Whiskey" (see here for evidence I'm not crazy), and that threw me off. By the way, my favorite non-Kentucky-made Whisk(e)y is Lagavulin. I hope that doesn't make me even more of a primative heathen.

Tell me about Scottish police

[roguerez]

In a recent newspaper interview with Glasgow head of police, he blames popularity of heroine for increasing crime figures.

But he didn't think of stopping officers using it to do something about these crime rates.

Microsoft must have a hell of a sales team...

[mikeophile]

If they can talk the frugal out a Scotsman.

/part Scot, the stereotype is well deserved

Re:Microsoft must have a hell of a sales team...

[SlashDread]

Wholly Dutch. Your Scottisch cheapness is naive filantropy compared to ours ;-)

Re:Microsoft must have a hell of a sales team...

[AngusL]

I can't believe you wasted a whole half second of my life reading that. Lawsuit! (Made in Scotland, From Girders)

I don't understand

[suezz]

why it is up to openoffice to try to read microsoft's documents. you know its a free download go get it and install it so you can read the people's documents that are created in openoffice.

openoffice uses open standards for file saving and microsoft doesn't - this isn't rocket science people. just run them side by side until you totally switch to open office.

Re:I don't understand

[Himring]

My company uses MS Office. On my own I installed OpenOffice and have tried to use it. I have found it to be a pain. I find myself opening .docs and .xls with word and excel instead of OO. Mainly because OO is slow. It seems to take OO 5 to 10 times as long to open a .doc file as Word. I'm sure there are reasons for this. Also, the formatting, menus and bothersome popups to save the document in the open format (which maybe you can turn off) do nothing but slow down work.

If I'm having frustrations with it and I *want* to use it, just imagine how our 1000s of users will react who don't....

Re:I don't understand

[ssj_195]

why it is up to openoffice to try to read microsoft's documents.

Because Microsoft Office's formats are the defacto standards, and Microsoft have made no effort to support OO.o's format (despite open standards and even a reference implementation, although the latter would be of limited use to them). It's not really fair, but that's just the way it is - in order for an Office Suite to be of use, it must unfortunately be compatible with Microsoft's (closed) formats.

you know its a free download go get it and install it so you can read the people's documents that are created in openoffice.

Very few people currently use Open Office, and even then a sizeable proportion will probably use it for importing and exporting MS Office-formatted documents. As a side-note, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

openoffice uses open standards for file saving and microsoft doesn't - this isn't rocket science people. just run them side by side until you totally switch to open office.

This is fine in a completely sealed environment, but becomes impractical when people external to your company send/ require MS-formatted documents, as is very often the case.

Having goverments not only switch to, but stipulate that any one who deals with them must supply/ be able to receive open formats is probably about the best thing we can hope for.

Re:I don't understand

[jimicus]

just run them side by side until you totally switch to open office.

That doesn't solve the problem of people from outside emailing you Word documents - particularly if those people are on a corporate network where they can't install any random bit of software.

Re:I don't understand

[therealking]

Because Microsoft Office's formats are the defacto standards, and Microsoft have made no effort to support OO.o's format (despite open standards and even a reference implementation, although the latter would be of limited use to them). It's not really fair, but that's just the way it is - in order for an Office Suite to be of use, it must unfortunately be compatible with Microsoft's (closed) formats.

Who ever said life was fair?

You zealots need to get off your open-source high horse and seriesly look at your products from a user standpoint. 90% of opensource projects have terrible UIs, terrible documentation, and terrible end-user(non-technical people) support.

Blurting out BS answers like "Well you should have compiled with -Xe7 -E3 -Y you moron! RTFM!" only furthurer distance yourselves from wide spread acceptance.

Open-source products need to work, with out special farting around, throw in the CD and click install. Then click the icon to make it start up and run. Thats it. MS products do that 95% of the time, OS projects do it maybe 30% of the time.

Re:I don't understand

[Cyblob]

From a Scottish Linux Geek: Its back to calling them the 'Pigs'.

Re:I don't understand

[The-Bus]

So you're saying, download an application that can't read the current leader application, then use that, even though it's not the same? And then at some point everyone will stop using the leader application, eventhough this new competitor offers no practical advantage?

IMO the best thing Microsoft can do is to try and clamp down on piracy, and hard. When it becomes, for the common user, impossible to borrow Office from their uncle who has a copy, and they have to either buy it (and pay $300) or look for an alternative, then that will happen.

As it stands, we all know that an EXTREMELY large percentage of home and office users don't have a legitimate license for the program.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

here I thought MS programmers were techinically knowledgable and able to implement a diferent format themselves. I guess I was wrong.

MS Showcase

[Anonymous Coward]

Its there in the text if you RTFA.

"Early this year, however, the agency reviewed its IT infrastructure as part of an effort to meet performance targets, comply with Scotland's Freedom of Information Act and work more closely with other law enforcement groups. Following the review, and a follow-up study in March, it decided to switch back to Microsoft."

"Help from Microsoft in other areas may have influenced the decision. The company plans to work with Scottish police to develop an electronic document management system to help it comply with requests made under the 2002 Freedom of Information Act, and a document sharing system for police staff, Microsoft said."

So its a showcase, they get their freedom of information system (but only if built around MS stuff), Microsoft gets a switcher-backer to advertise with. Overall the Police force saves, and MS gets less money, but MS gains a nice PR show.

And why was this obscure department one chosen:

"The agency's decision is something of an embarrassment for Sun, which played up the deal with Central Scotland Police as a StarOffice success story. It devoted a Web page to it at http://uk.sun.com/sunnews/success/public_sector/10 2.html"

So its no different than the other convoluted deals. Do you recall when Windows 2003 suddenly spiked in success as domains switched from being hosting on Linux to Windows? But it was just a large ISP switching domain names on hold, once the deal expired, they switched it back.

unfortunate

[akhomerun]

as unfortunate as this is, i couldn't really care less about an individual organization and what they do software wise. the scottish police make up about .0000000000000000000001% of the world's population

and no matter what open source nuts say, office 2003 has more features than the best of what openoffice has to offer.

Re:unfortunate

[nudeatom]

Yup, Office 2003 has shed loads of features, most of which never get used by your average user. As long as spell check, tables, and "fancy" fonts are available, most of my users would be perfectly happy. Oh yeah, and a spreadsheet to store reams of data on!

Re:unfortunate

[achilstone]

Actually I think you will find that the scottish police force make up approximately 0.000246% of the total world population a not unsignificant sum on the world scale of things.

Assuming 6 1/2 billion people and 16000 Scottish police officers (excluding admin).

Re:unfortunate

[dustmite]

office 2003 has more features than the best of what openoffice has to offer

OK, since you seem knowledgeable about it and you brought it up: Please list ten such features (and subtracting one from the list for each feature OpenOffice has that Word doesn't, e.g. built-in PDF export, word auto-completion, a styles system that actually works properly, etc. ... and for some of us, "non-proprietary file format" is also a feature).

Re:unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the *PRIMARY* benefit of using MS Office is that when you share your document with others, "it just works" without having to do format conversions or taking extra steps because most people are already using MS Office.

I believe this will vastly outweigh all the 10 features the other guy can possibly list.

In a perfect world, document editing and sharing would be achieved by using open formats but the fact remains that MS Office has the biggest marketshare. And with MS Office documents using OLE to mix Excel + Word + ..., it is going to be very expensive for companies to switch.

Microsoft now faces a similar problem because so many people use older versions of MS Office and they need to maintain seamless compatibility. I might be mistaken but I think MS Office 2000 has the largest marketshare. And I don't think MS Office 2003 will have similar marketshare as previous versions of Office at the time a new release is published.

If OpenOffice can achieve 100% compatibility with MS Office by not only reading, but writing to MS Office file formats, then you'll see a vast migration. Even if it is with MS Office 2000 file formats.

Re:unfortunate

[dustmite]

I believe this will vastly outweigh all the 10 features the other guy can possibly list.

Sure, I understand that. But he/she claims that the reason people choose Office is that it has vastly more features than OO. You are stating (and I agree with you) that the reason people choose Office is that no other software properly works with Microsoft's proprietary formats but you'll need to work with those formats".

All I'm saying is, claims such as "Office has lots more features than OO" should be backed up, and if they can't be backed up, then admit the truth (as you have stated it - we're all 'locked in') and retract the claim.

Re:unfortunate

[akhomerun]

sure i can. office comes with MS access, outlook, and publisher, all programs that OO has no equivilant to. i'd say that gives office an advantage of 150-250 features, not to mention 100% compatibility with the office suite that everyone uses.

there's so much MS bashing that goes on, but the truth is they make a damn good office suite (even if their OS isn't so good) and they've earned the ability to charge major bucks for it. no matter how much everyone bashed MS, office is reliable, and even though proprietary, it is a standard, and even though word files could be a bit more modernized, they still work and that's important. in business it's just too impractical and time wasting to deal with the open source community and having to upgrade everyone's system every time theres a .01 release just to get the bug fixes and features and compatibility that you need.

how dare you...

[bvdbos]

...post this on /.

It's like swearing in the church (as we in Holland use to call it). Actually, in my company I've made the same calculation. I use some program's which only work with MS Office and it would cost me more to have them rewritten then to buy the 10 licenses for ms-office. Also, the employees would have to learn openoffice/staroffice which is easily done, but the time it will take to give support for questions like "how do I change my stylesheet", "how does this work..." etc will cost me even more then the licenses alone...

Re:how dare you...

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, not only in Holland but in ALL of the Netherlands this is an expression! *gasp*

Re:how dare you...

[djupedal]

will cost me even more then the licenses alone...

2005 scenario 1: Keeping MS...paying license fees
2005 scenario 2: Switching to OO...answer questions alot. Not paying fees

2006 scenario 1 MS: ...still paying license fees
2006 scenario 2 OO: ...still not paying fees and questions are all answered.

2007 scenario 1 MS: ...still paying license fees
2007 scenario 2 OO: ...still not paying fees, and questions were all answered two years back.

2008 scenario 1 MS: ...still paying license fees
2008 scenario 2 OO: ...still not paying fees, and questions were all answered years ago.

Did anyone read TFA

[guruevi]

Central Scotland Police has signed a three-year deal with Microsoft that will see the force standardise on Microsoft Server 2003 and Windows XP (SP2). The deal was struck under the Office of Government Commerce's (OGC) agreement with Microsoft to offer preferential rates for public sector organisations, and will cost the force less than £60,000 per year. 60000 pounds = +/- 60 pounds/workplace = +/- 108 USD It is not because they could not read the other documents, it is because MS offered them W2k3 + Office2k3 for a mere 100 dollars! Where can I get their software that cheap?

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[pointbeing]

Central Scotland Police has signed a three-year deal with Microsoft that will see the force standardise on Microsoft Server 2003 and Windows XP (SP2). The deal was struck under the Office of Government Commerce's (OGC) agreement with Microsoft to offer preferential rates for public sector organisations, and will cost the force less than £60,000 per year. 60000 pounds = +/- 60 pounds/workplace = +/- 108 USD It is not because they could not read the other documents, it is because MS offered them W2k3 + Office2k3 for a mere 100 dollars! Where can I get their software that cheap?

Our corporate license for Windows XP + Office + Server CAL + Exchange CAL is less than a third of that per user per year.

Volume licensing. Increased support costs for migration to OSS would be considerably higher than the If you want to know how MS maintains its foothold in corporate America, that's how.

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[Jarnis]

You need to be a large organization, and threaten to move to OSS (or have already done so).

Then you get a killer deal - for a few years. Let's see 3 years from now what the yearly cost is after that. Maybe 200$/seat. Or more. But hey, at that point people calculate that moving (back) to OSS is (slightly) more expensive than paying MS again for another contract.

Free/cheap samples or initial contracts are nice way to milk a customer to max later on. MS can think long-term - they are willing to dump some short-term profits for long term wins. They'll milk the difference back over the next 10-15 years - probably several times over.

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[cornelius1729]

Where can I get their software that cheap?

On any warez site!

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[DocSavage64109]

Not only that, but what does MS really lose? Even selling their software at substantially less than market value, they are still making 90% profit.

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[Kjella]

"Central Scotland Police has signed a three-year deal with Microsoft(...), and will cost the force less than £60,000 per year. 60000 pounds = +/- 60 pounds/workplace"

Our corporate license for Windows XP + Office + Server CAL + Exchange CAL is less than a third of that per user per year.

So in three years, you'll be paying 3*1/3 = the same or somewhat less? If so, why not say so?`Anyway, they must be making tons of money off someone. Any corporation can "maintain a foothold" simply by selling with so low profit, noone else wants to touch the market.

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[pointbeing]

So in three years, you'll be paying 3*1/3 = the same or somewhat less? If so, why not say so?

Sadly, I didn't read TFA. Didn't realize they were getting three years for $108.

I'll go sit down now ;-)

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[pointbeing]

So in three years, you'll be paying 3*1/3 = the same or somewhat less? If so, why not say so?`Anyway, they must be making tons of money off someone. Any corporation can "maintain a foothold" simply by selling with so low profit, noone else wants to touch the market.

Gee - I thought I was wrong and I wasn't ;-)

Grandparent says $108 per user per year. We're paying about a third of that but have almost 70x the user base.

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

That's about what we pay for XP and Office on the desktop at this Fortune 10 company...

When you're buying 150,000 seats... you get to make a deal.

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[Jeff DeMaagd]

While IMO excessive, the profit margin isn't that great.

The last time I saw any figures, for every copy of Windows or bought from Microsoft at retail, about 85% was profit. When heavily discounted for computer makers and large organizations, the profit margin is considerably smaller.

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[DocSavage64109]

That may be for the average copy being sold, but consider these as extra sales that they wouldn't normally have. That way, you don't have to count any development expenses against these copies. Really, all they have to spend to provide this software is a few dollars for having the cds pressed and packaging.

Re:Did anyone read TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I get their software that cheap?

http://showcase.itcs.umich.edu/pages/microsoft/pri celist.html

Police moving to MS

[MECC]

Good news for any 'hacker' they're thinking of tracking down.


"Suddenly, all information on the suspect disappeared from their computer systems..."

Re:Police moving to MS

[hotdiggitydawg]

If any of the aforementioned 'hackers' are reading - how about doing everyone a favour and giving Clippy a rap sheet while you're in there?

Re:Police moving to MS

[binkzz]

I'll change my name to John Smi\0th: They'll never catch me!

Anyone else surprised to see this on slashdot?

[skrowl]

Normally, to see a story with good news from Microsoft on Slashdot is like seeing a story with good news for the Bush administration on CNN or MSNBC. With all of the "Small niche thing you've never heard of chooses linux" stories they run here, was anyone else surprised to see this story picked up by slashdot?

Re:Anyone else surprised to see this on slashdot?

[Zebadias]

To be fair /. has had stories on bbc using linux as there back end and the govements of countrys with huge populations switching to open software, hardly a small niche I would think.
Z.

Overkill?

[Kjella]

The Central Scotland Police is removing Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice productivity software from about 400 PCs (...) It retained Windows on its desktop PCs but ran the StarOffice applications from a central Sun Unix system and 30 Linux servers installed at branch offices.

400PCs/30 servers = 13 people per server? Not counting the Sun Unix box. Also 400PCs = 1000 employees? I doubt 600 people don't need to do any paperwork. Plus the other 95% of the officers who didn't work using StarOffice. I see many reasons to go back, but none really compelling though, if they've been using it for 5 years. I'm sure the kinks would be mostly worked out, the users fairly well trained, but they still want to go back?

Kjella

StarOffice - OpenOffice anyone?

[namekuseijin]

that would go from the current license costs for StarOffice to zero of OpenOffice, while still remaining mostly compatible with M$Office. besides, i'm pretty sure they're running an obsolete version of StarOffice from 2000...

cops definetely don't know math nor IT.

Re:StarOffice - OpenOffice anyone?

[Joehonkie]

Yes, except that then they'd have to shell out for a support contract, because OpenOffice doesn't have that. With MS they are probably getting support as part of the deal as well. And don't forget the cost of training and maintaining user skills and help desk personnel to support an office suite that isn't in common use yet. Just because it's /. doesn't mean we have to pretend that open source is cheaper because all of the software costs magically dissapear after you pay for the license.

Re:StarOffice - OpenOffice anyone?

[mumblestheclown]

Ah yes, another post that basically says "if they switched away from my particular computer bias, they must be illiterate (or at least innumerate) idiots"

Maybe, just maybe there are smart people out there who have come to the not unreasonable conclusion that initial acquisition cost isnt the whole story.

Re:StarOffice - OpenOffice anyone?

[dbIII]

cops definetely don't know math nor IT.

And IT types can't spell! It would have been a career public servant (ie. moves from one department to another with promotion) who made the decision most like advised by some type of IT professional - and it looks like the choice was to standardise on what the majority was using, which may have actually have been a condition of the cheap MS deal. I doubt very much that a single one of those StarOffice users had a say in it. Even then - it's a glass typewriter, there isn't really a lot of difference between any of the office applications within their type.

*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

First time I've ever posted here, and I really knew what to expect from this thread, but I had to say this.

We all automatically assume that the police organization doesn't know what it's doing, doesn't know how to perform cost-benefit analysis, and all are just a bunch of non-tech-savvy pawns. They made the switch to OpenOffice *5* years ago. You don't think that's enough time to give something a shot and evaluate it? You don't think that's enough time to see how much something is going to cost or impact your organization? You don't think that they had people working on it and trying to honestly switch to OSS? Unless you work there, I think your post is way out of line (as well as a lot of others in this thread).

I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but why can't you see past your own point of view? OSS isn't better just because it's free or because it's not Microsoft. Sheesh. Give these people some credit for at least trying something new.

Re:*Sigh*

[Kookus]

Actually I blame Microsoft for not moving office to linux.
That alone would help a ton of places make the switch...
but I guess microsoft as it is today wouldn't like that would they?

Re:*Sigh*

[Delphiki]

Yeah, damn Microsoft for not making a product that wouldn't make them a profit and would serve no function other than to help their competition.

Re:*Sigh*

[nokilli]

I'm not disputing the accuracy of their cost-benefit analysis.

I'm simply pointing out that the reason they reached this conclusion wasn't because they were using StarOffice, but because everybody else was using Microsoft Office.

The costs were in getting StarOffice to work with Microsoft Office. The article makes it sound like it's the fault of StarOffice. It isn't. It's Microsoft who throws up the barriers to prevent OSS from working with their software, not the other way around.

If everybody else were using StarOffice, no way would they be switching to Microsoft Office.
--
Why didn't you know?

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that the other groups were within the scope of this project.

Therefore, it's up to StarOffice to work nicely with Microsoft Office.

Also, if I were to make an organizational change, I'd start out with a pilot group. That pilot group would have to be able to work with the rest of the organization.

Re:*Sigh*

[EraserMouseMan]

Linux & Star Office too costly? Nope, that's not the problem. That software is free. It's the Linux zealot contractors and employees who do not practice what they preach. They tout the benefits to FOSS then turn around and bill the police department every month for their time.

Maybe if the entire Linux community (not just the software developers) offered their products and services for free Linux would be cheaper than MS.

Re:*Sigh*

[dstewart]

If everyone else were using sticks, no way would they be switching to stone tools.

Re:*Sigh*

[Craig Maloney]

Actually I give them credit for trying something new, but I wonder if they ever thought to upgrade StarOffice past 5.2. 5.2 was not the best of all programs, and the OpenOffice.org project has marked improvements over the old system. If they didn't upgrade, I can see why they decided against StarOffice.

Also, if this is the case, then it's not a battle of OSS vs. proprietary software, as 5.2 was not OSS. Granted, it's the basis for the OSS versions, but I think it'd be more fair to level the "OSS is better/not better" argument against something that is OSS. (Again, this is assuming they never upgraded to StarOffice 7).

Re:*Sigh*

[jimmydins]

First time I've ever posted here, and I really knew what to expect from this thread, but I had to say this.

i've seen you post here before you anonymous coward.

but seriously, i can understand the switch. i am the only person in my office using openoffice.org (meaning 10% of our 10 person office), and i have run into problems interacting with others in the office who use microsoft's office. simple formatting issues sometimes come up, and macros in excel dont work as well in openoffice sometimes... this probably would have worked for the cops if they had switched the entire force to staroffice, but not just 5%. it really needs to be all or nothing to avoid being tripped up by mundane details.

Re:*Sigh*

[MWelchUK]

I think they switched to StarOffice, hang on I'll just check in the article again...

Ah ha, a little detective work has confimed that they switched to StarOffice.

It really doesn't supprise me that they didn't gain any advantage they were still running windows on the desktop. The most sucessful open source switches have moved to thin-clients connecting to a Linux terminal server. This gets the actual desktop machines to appliance like status, they can be swapped out when they go wrong without any lost information - all accounts and work reside on centralised/partially centralised servers...

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

So they were right switching back to Office. If 95% of the departments are using Office and it works well, if that doubles the work because every templates for their report/DB must be created on Office and StarOffice, and if the OSS contractor charged as much as Microsoft, why on earth would they use StarOffice!?! You must put yourself at their place, and forget about the OSS/M$ thing. From their point of view, they have two competiting office-style applications. Both have their advantages and their disadvantages. They have to decide based on that, not based on a "hatred for M$" or a "love for the OSS". Even if M$ Office and StarOffice did interact really well, that would still probably not be a good idea to have to support two different softwares. It's more complicated than saying "M$ sucks, OSS rules!"

Also, remember, it's the police, they have confidential information to keep, so, even if they wanted to ask the help of the community, they could not. ("Dear OSS Community, we are having a problem loading the profile of John Smith, social security number 123-456-789. Here is the file, can you check why it's not loading correctly? Thanks!") It is easy to sign a contract with a NDA with M$ (and to sue M$ if there is a leak), but it is harder to do the same thing with a community.

OSS is really great, but not always... (i am so gonna be flamed for just thinking that OSS is not always the best!)

Re:*Sigh*

[gravis_23]

Actually this Police Force division switched to "StarOffice" 5 years ago, which isn't OSS (not yet anyways). But good point none-the-less.

Re:*Sigh*

[DogDude]

Maybe if the entire Linux community (not just the software developers) offered their products and services for free Linux would be cheaper than MS.

Cool! I'm glad you think so! If you would, please show up at our store (you can find the address on the website), and install Linux on all of our PC's along with an open source point of sale system, and an open source accounting package. It should be a seamless transition. Sunday mornings are the best time for us. Looking forward to seeing you then!

Re:*Sigh*

[EddyPearson]

Anonymous Coward: You speak with wisdom way beyond you name ;)

I'm in full agreement here, much respect to the Scottish Coppers who got into a bit of a cashflow problem, so instead of saying "Well, the answer is simple! We spend less money keeping police on the street" thay actually sat down and thought, "How can we cut costs without taking coppers of the streets?" and like millions before them, they realized that when ur paying over £100 per license for a product you perhaps use 8% of (at most!) its not good economics.

So they tried StarOffice, and in the end they decided it would be better to switch back to Microsoft. This, is one of those occasions where (not by any fault of its own, personally I blame the invasive Microsoft proaganda that states "its our way or the highway") OSS has FAILED.

No hard feelings, do better next time.

Re:*Sigh*

[ccbailey]

Hey, you should seriously ask if you're actually interested. Someone might just take you up on that offer. Hell, I might if I lived in North Carolina...

Re:*Sigh*

[kalidasa]

No, they made the switch to STAROFFICE. StarOffice is not free as in beer.

Re:*Sigh*

[Felinoid]

They did switch to Open Office to save money and if they actually did lose money they would have noticed it the first year.
It's normal to re-evaluate software every year. They should have spotted the problem the first year.
The fact that it took them 5 years to find a problem leaves me to doupt there ever was one.

The cost of maintainning two diffrent software pacages (Open Office and Microsoft Office) is unfortunatly going to show up every time someone trys a diffrent product and somebody will use that as a reason to dump the alternet product when dumping the Microsoft brand product would have the same effect plus a net cost savings.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

But...???

Re:*Sigh*

[civilizedINTENSITY]

They never used OpenOffice. They used StarOffice.

Re:*Sigh*

[bubkus_jones]

Would people necessarily switch from Windows if MS Office was available for Linux?

Re:*Sigh*

[jim_v2000]

Maybe if the entire Linux community (not just the software developers) offered their products and services for free Linux would be cheaper than MS.

I can see it now...the street corners of America littered with Linux IT professionals holding signs that say "Will support Linux for food".

Re:*Sigh*

[DogDude]

I seriously would, but I've looked into open source for our store pretty extensively, and I haven't seen anything that would come close to filling our needs. Plus, we're a real, live small business where every sale counts towards getting everybody paid, so there's very little room for mistakes. I can't imagine a transition like this going smoothly, quite honestly: we have existing (generic) hardware that it all would have to interface with. We have credit card processing integrated in with the pos system (ie: not one of those CC terminals that you see everywhere). We have our point of sale system talking to both our back end accounting package, and the web site. It would be a *huge* job, which is why I thought it was so ridiculous when that guy suggested that *somebody* should do it for free. Nobody's gonna do this amount of work for free unless they were a bit "off" in the head. Keep in mind that we're pretty much a tiny business. This police dept. installation would probably make ours look rpetty trivial by comparison.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

It was StarOffice.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

No. They tried StarOffice five years ago. Not OpenOffice. There is a huge difference, and I can't blame the Scottish Police for skipping StarOffice. It really sucks, while the current stable OpenOffice is far closer to MS Office and the upcoming 2 seeems very, very promising.

OpenOffice is not mentioned once in the story at InfoWorld.

Re:*Sigh*

[Brento]

Cool! I'm glad you think so! If you would, please show up at our store (you can find the address on the website), and install Linux on all of our PC's along with an open source point of sale system, and an open source accounting package. It should be a seamless transition. Sunday mornings are the best time for us. Looking forward to seeing you then!

Be careful what you ask for. I went through a consulting gig cleaning up after something just like that. The business owner got a friendly neighborhood geek to install a complete Linux setup at his small office. Two months later, after countless support calls for things that truly weren't related to Linux (crashing hard drives due to El Cheapo equipment, crashes from bad drivers, etc), the geek threw his hands up in the air and decided he had better things to do with his free time, and started charging $$$ for support calls. The business owner realized he had the same support costs whether he was using MS or Linux, and decided to switch back to what he was comfortable with.

Buyer beware: there's nothing wrong with relying on free software, but you can't rely on free consulting for your business. It dries up sooner or later. Whenever you need human labor, it's going to cost money, and no small business network is labor-free.

Re:*Sigh*

[rawg]

OSS isn't better just because it's free or because it's not Microsoft.

Actually, yes, OSS is better because it's not Microsoft and because it's Free. But OSS is not perfect. It still have many problems and compatibility issues. But it is better than MS.

I used MS Windows and their software and had nothing but problems. The constant crashing made me switch to Linux.

Linux worked great, never crashed, but I spend all my time configuring it and not doing my work. This lead to productivity problems. For this reason I moved to the Apple Mac.

The Apple works even better. It does not crash, I don't have to configure anything, it runs all my software from VIM to iVideo, and I have plenty of time to get my work done.

Now I just need to keep myself off SlashDot.org.

Re:*Sigh*

[Lally Singh]

Denial is ugly when you see it in full effect. Most /.ers take the idea of open source software not working as the deepest heresey.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

um the article said it's all about interoperability.

SY makes up around 5% of the police agencies in the UK, and it's too much trouble to share documents if every other department uses something else. New requirements for sharing information make it impossible to do anything but what the romans do. It has nothing to do with whether or not it was good enough for Scotland Yard. They are outnumbered ; )

Never mind that a simple "Save As" allows the star office users to save word files, and opening word files is transparent. All they need to do is not use VBA from the office side. Naturally this is impossible since there is always a "Power User" that has to make life impossible for everyone that doesn't use his office suite.

If the situation were reversed, and only 5% used office, they'd be switching to Star Office because said power user would be using the Star Office goodies.

l8,
AC

Re:*Sigh*

[Delphiki]

It would make it more likely, even if not very much more likely. And considering most Linux users attitudes about closed source software and especially Microsoft, I doubt they'd sell enough copies to turn a profit. Okay, I'll admit that maybe it's only the most vocal Linux users who scream at the top of their lungs to anyone who will listen about Micro$oft, but even so, considering Linux's small marketshare on the desktop and the fact that no matter which framework Microsoft used to write Linux native Office that someone (either KDE or Gnome users at least) would complain, I can't see Office for Linux as being a good business move.

Re:*Sigh*

[Delphiki]

Have you ever used it? It's definitely an inferior product to Office for Windows. Also, OSX has a higher desktop marketshare than Linux and all OSX users use the same GUI toolkit.

Re:*Sigh*

[seriesrover]

A brave, yet accurate, POV. Well done.

Re:*Sigh*

[incom]

Amazing how many mod points get spent on MS stories these days, and mod up MS propaganda like this, with billions of dollars you can even rationalize paying people to conduct /. subterfuge I guess!

Re:*Sigh*

[LibertineR]

Actually, yes, OSS is better because it's not Microsoft and because it's Free.

That is exactly the crazy mentality that holds back OSS from becoming what it needs to be. That is as dumb as suggesting that tap water is better than a cold beer because it costs less. NO! Stop it! If you want to compete with MS Office, find a way to develop software that does something better! Until that happens, the rest of these arguments are a joke.

And dont be the asshole who tells me that water is really better for me. Just dont go there.

Re:*Sigh*

[sydb]

No, it's like suggesting that tap water is better than a cold beer because you can brew your own beer with it, make your own wine with it, make coffee with it, wash in it, water plants with it, make ice cubes with it, or maybe just drink it straight.

All you can do with cold beer is drink it. It's a quick fix. You are restricted to what the brewery has provided you. You are not Free with cold beer.

You can do many, many things with tap water. You are Free with tap water.

How many times do you people have to be told? Over and over again.

Re:*Sigh*

[Neoprofin]

It's always easier to attack the person than to attack their argument, I guess.

Re:*Sigh*

[maxpublic]

No, OSS has an advantage because it's - get this - *open source*. As in, we can both look at what's going on underneath the hood (no surprises) and change it to do whatever we want. "Free" doesn't even enter into the equation.

Max

Re:*Sigh*

[Quikah]

most people just want to drink a beer. How many time do YOU people have to be told?

Re:*Sigh*

[Daniel Phillips]

They made the switch to OpenOffice *5* years ago. You don't think that's enough time to give something a shot and evaluate it?

There's a bit of cognitive dissonance here. I too started using OpenOffice about 5 years ago. Compatibility with MSFT formats was shaky. For the last year or two it's been great, arguably better at supporting Microsoft's own formats from earlier generations than Microsoft's products.

Not to mention free. So I am having trouble believing the stated reasons for this organization becoming a closed Microsoft shop.

Re:*Sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

1. StarOffice is not open
2. StarOffice sucks.
3. OOo 1.2 does suck, but OOo 1.9x (2.0 beta) rocks. It handles M$ file formats very, very well. Macros are not fully compatible but I'm sure that is not much of an issue in this case. Heck, even OOo Base isn't that bad.

If they're dumping StarOffice for M$ Office and didn't even try OOo 1.9 first, they ought to sack the IT consulting outfit they're using.

Oh, and where the heck can you find M$ Office that cheap?

Re:*Sigh*

[manno]

I've actualy found that OO.o 2.0 doeas a great job of staying compatible. With MS Office, and other old formats like Lotus for instance. I'm very happy with OO.o.

Re:*Sigh*

[bay43270]

I'm simply pointing out that the reason they reached this conclusion wasn't because they were using StarOffice, but because everybody else was using Microsoft Office.

Actually your point was that cops don't need sophisticated word processors. You said they should be using text editors instead. You reached this conclusion by trivializing their job responsibilities based on your knowledge of their industry (which you probably got by watching Dragnet).

I imagine arguing is a lot easier when you can change your central argument at any time, but keep in mind that all your previous posts are still here. We know what you said.

Re:*Sigh*

[manno]

That's not to say that I think they decided to ax Star Office Willie nilly, I'm just saying I've been very pleased with OO.o 2.

I honestly believe that the key to MS's success is software pirates. Not that that this idea is new, but think of how many fewer people would buy Star Office, or download OO.o if they didn't have the option of obtaining MS Office for free? If their only option to get MS office was to spend the $150 for the lite version, or the $400 for the full. It always gets me upset when people have me set up their PC and ask me "Where's Office?" the idea being that MS Office just comes free with every computer. What's even more upsetting is when I explain to them that it's an extra $150 for MS or OO.o for free. I usualy get the:

Well Tom, Dick, or Hary has a CD I'll just get it form them. OO.o isn't even an option, they would rather have nothing than try something new. I can understand the fear of change I suppose, but the illegal part bugs me.

Office productivity software isn't like the OS you can switch the 2 apps for ~ 80% of the users, and they wouldn't notice a thing. We can only hope that in addition to making it illegal to play DVD's that you purchased legaly on your Linux PC, that MS, and Intel's DRM plans end software piracy. Then finaly the cost advantage in the SOHO market will tilt towards Open source, and truely free beer alternatives.

Re:*Sigh*

[aneeshm]

If you want Stallman-style free beer , you can go here . ;-)

Re:*Sigh*

[incom]

You don't see the hypocracy in that statement?

Re:*Sigh*

[L7_]

why would you use 'open source' software for that anyway? you're using commercial products right now (generic hardware and accounting software), the best bet would be to scrap everything you have and replace it with a single client/server application using a web interface.

Re:*Sigh*

[Kookus]

it's not a good business move if you treat office and windows as the same company. If you split the company up, it makes perfectly good sense to make your product versatile enough to be put on multiple different platforms.

Take apache, java, mysql, perl... the list keeps going and going... for example.
another thing people have to realize is there's a difference between using linux and being pro-open source. These are not mutually inclusive attributes of users. I don't use linux because it's open source, I use it because it's more versatile. Would I not use a product because it isn't open source? Hell no. Does writing programs for linux require that they be open source? Hell no!
You want examples, here's one i know you youngyins can relate to: World of Warcraft. Is that open source? nope. Does it run on linux? Yep. If you play world of warcraft, and you love linux would you play it on linux? give me a break with your i'm not going to run office because it's closed source hipocritic ideology. (the last rant is more directed at the other replies that i dont feel like writing individual responses to.)

Re:*Sigh*

[DogDude]

1. A web interface is too slow.

2. A web interface makes it very tough to integrate with hardware.

3. There's no reason to re-invent the wheel (something open source people have a hard time understanding). My business isn't software. It's pet supplies. Unless I can get a *huge* competitive advantage, that would be a tremendous waste of time and money.

Re:*Sigh*

[sunwukong]

No, it's like suggesting that tap water is better than a cold beer because you can .... water plants with it .... or maybe just drink it straight.
All you can do with cold beer is drink it.

Obviously you haven't drank enough beer to realize its secondary functions ...

Re:*Sigh*

[Adammil2000]

Now the product and the labor have to be free? I guess that ends everyone's careers in the software industry. Off to work in the Walmart warehouse for us...

Re:*Sigh*

[16K Ram Pack]

I recently had to quote for a job for someone. He wanted some laptops with office on them.

I priced them up and found that the cost without MS Office, but with OpenOffice.org instead was a BIG saving.

However, he wanted MS Office because he wanted to be 100% compatible. Not because MS Office had any more features, just for compatibility.

Re:*Sigh*

[sydb]

If you read the post in context maybe you wouldn't waste your time with pointless replies.

I was pointing out a fallacy in LibertineR's argument, where he hasn't understood the meaning of the post he was replying to.

In an argument, a winning tactic is to actually understand your opponent's position. It wins because you either argue against it more effectively, or you realise that you agree! For agreement to happen, you have to approach the argument as a battle of ideas, not a battle of wills. May the best idea win.

Favourable outcomes are not possible if you don't make the effort to understand and instead twist your opponent's position beyond recognition.

Re:*Sigh*

[kbouwman]

Amen, This happens alot here. The argument is often made in the geek community that 90% of software users never use more than 10% of the features of program like Microsoft Office. No source data for this statistic is ever given. My opinion, based on my limited but attentive personal experience, is that 50% of MS Office users collectively use 90% of its features. The reasons for choosing one program over another go way beyond how much it costs and who produces it.

Re:*Sigh*

[BlueStraggler]

And most people who just want to drink a beer, drink Bud Light. And, just to stretch the analogy a little further, real beer drinkers will scoff at them, drink infintiely better beers, and wonder how the masses manage to stomach such awful piss.

Re:*Sigh*

[Neoprofin]

I would, except that my statement is not limited to insulting the arguer, but is also the argument against him; that his arguement is inferior to making a statement about the actual issue.

Re:*Sigh*

[EraserMouseMan]

As a software developer I find it sort of hypocritical that the entire OSS industry expects to get the software developer's labor for free but its perfectly okay to charge consulting fees for the brainless work of installing and maintaining it.

Seriously, don't you see something wrong with that?

Re:*Sigh*

[4of12]

The costs were in getting StarOffice to work with Microsoft Office.

And that's why MS Office keeps a special advantage in the market due to its de facto standard that it owns and controls.

Unfortunately, the cost of creating interoperability with MS Office is borne entirely by users seeking to use something different.

And, in anther way, too, since there is essentially a free training program in MS Office that only partially carries over to, say, OO.o

If you're working for the Borg, you've got to use Borg tools. People adopting great new stuff have to be

• price conscious,
• technically adept,
• strongly principled
• less need for interacting with the Borg.

For the Scottish police, the price consciousness seemed compelling until it became clear how important it was for them to interact with the Borg. It's not like they can afford to have supertechnicians everywhere to handle incompatibility issues or stick-in-the-mud philosphers on IT issues.

Re:*Sigh*

[johnnyb]

My guess is that the argument was not based on trivializing their job responsibilities, but understanding how poor of a tool Office Suites are to the jobs that they are routinely given. In 99% of the cases, the Office Suite is not the right tool for the job. But it is used anyway, simply because that is what businesses provide.

Unfortunately, the market momentum is toward office suites, rather than towards better tools. For example, a much better general-purpose tool would be an XML editor with extensive templates and stylesheets. These don't exist because the market is so used to doing things the Office Suite Way that they don't understand the point.

The problem is that the tool (in this case, the Office Suite) has made people look at the problems in the entirely wrong way, simply because that was the primary tool available. Therefore, we have tool upon tool built on an erroneous model.

Saying, "perhaps it is the foundation that is cracked" is not always popular, and not even always true, but is worth considering.

Re:*Sigh*

[Quikah]

My reply had nothing to do with LibertineRs post. I was replying directly to your argument that water is better because it is Free. As an end-user wether something is opensource or not makes ZERO difference to me. I just want to use the software that does what I need. My point is that whethter something is OSS is irrelevant to me. Saying a piece of software is better because it is Free is not a solid argument to 90%+ of the population. A piece of software is better because it does what I need it to do better.

Re:*Sigh*

[Adammil2000]

You're welcome to write as much software for free as you like, but why do you care what other people do for money? I assume you're not writing OSS software specifically to destroy capitalism in the IT industry.

Re:*Sigh*

[sydb]

My reply had nothing to do with LibertineRs post.

That's right, you didn't read, or respond to, my post in context.

As an end-user wether something is opensource or not makes ZERO difference to me.

As an end-user it makes a lot of difference to me. Oh, well. We're different and we have different priorities. To me, a piece of software is better because I know it will be maintainable for ever, free from the whims of a vendor, is likely to receive incremental improvements indefinitely, is built with quality in mind not marketing and if push comes to shove I can learn how to make it do what I want it to do. It also matters to me how I feel when I use software, and I feel good when I use Free Software, because I know I'm partaking of something special.

But realise I'm just humouring you. Fundamentally, you should read people's posts in context, otherwise you don't know what they're saying.

Re:*Sigh*

[EraserMouseMan]

You and I actually agree. I was just pointing out a mentality that many OSS zealots seem to have. They love free software (Linux, Firefox, etc.). Who doesn't? But they work from the inside in their respective companies to promote OSS. Their most effective selling point, many times, is that it is cheaper than the M$ solution. Let's be honest, corporate america really doesn't give a rat's rear-end about the advantages of "openness". It's all about reducing costs. The shareholders love Linux because it suposedly reduces costs, not because it is open.

So if the low cost is driving OSS's popularity, it kind of sucks that the volunteerism part is only relegated to the brilliant developers. Meanwile IBM contractors are charging $100/hr to install and maintain the stuff.

I guess it just seems odd to me. All these Linux zealot contractors out there are making a killing off of someone else's volunteer efforts.

Does anyone else raise an eyebrow at this, or is it just me?

Re:*Sigh*

[Quikah]

You know, if you weren't such a pompous asshole I probably wouldn't have replied to you in the first place.

I know exactly what you were saying and the context. You are saying that OSS is better because it is Free. LibertineR mistakenly translated Free into costs less. I am not replying to that, I am saying that the basic idea that Free == Better which you made in your post is not true for a large number of people.

Re:*Sigh*

[sydb]

I may well be a pompous asshole, but why do you persist in flogging this dead horse? Your post was not appropriate.

Not only that, I've shown you why *for me* and *many others* free sofware is better What do I care whether or not everyone else agrees? I can't think of anything worth talking about where everyone agrees. Some people are always going to be wrong, aren't you?

freedom of information act

[Anonymous Coward]

those damn hippies, dont they understand? using linux is more important than having freedom.

oh forgive me stallman. using linux is freedom. how stupid of me to disagree with the 'open source community'.

God Editorial Mistake!

[Evil W1zard]

Obviously he meant to say "lead to greater deficiencies" not efficiencies!

tight?

[mergatoriod]

And I thought the scottish were proud of being tight? go figure!

Star Office Problems.

[jellomizer]

There are still some major problems for Star Office.

First it normally defaultly saves in Star Office Format not MS Word format, yes this is an easy change but people when they are done just hit the save Icon and they are done, they don't want to go threw tens of choices and find the document that everyone else uses.

Second Individuals has invested time in MS Office. From those High School Computer Class to College Classes, CS101. The education system for computers are so dumb that they teach people how to use Microsoft Word but not a Word Processor. So almost everyone who enters the Work field know Office.

Third Speed. Open Office has had a speed problem from day 1. Yea Office isn't a speed daemon but it is fast where the users feel it is important, boot up and typing and saving.

Forth Interface. Open Office is setup with a good interface for Linux but not for Windows or Mac. This is actually very important to know the OS you are porting to and follow the OS's Interface guidelines. If you don't the application looks 3rd party and just doesn't feel right.

Fifth Work Flow. Open Offices goal is to create all the functionality and compatibility of Office but it forgot to get the work flow. Watch a non technical person use Office and you will see that their ways of solving problems may surprise you. They avoid using Style Sheets and just go for the Font Drop Down, except for hitting tab they will use the space and they never ever use hot keys for anything. The menus are off limit to them (The same with the windows start button) If they don't see it it must be an advanced feature that they shouldn't use.

Open Office is good for techs but not for normal people

Re:Star Office Problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forth interface

I didn't know that MS Word changed its macro language from VBA...

Re:Star Office Problems.

[naelurec]

Major problems?

1. Not saving as a Word doc? Perhaps the major problem is Word does not open Star Office format? There are lots of people now using Star Office/OpenOffice.org -- I'm guessing it is the 2nd or 3rd most popular office suite. Besides, its free -- so if people receive an OpenOffice or Star Office document, they can download openoffice.org for free and open it.

2. I agree, teaching how to use an application instead of how different types of software should work is a HUGE problem. Perhaps an Office -> OpenOffice.org tutorial is needed (not sure if it exists) that outline the differences.

3/4. This seems better addressed in OOo2 -- though in defense of OpenOffice, atleast it is the same version available on a wide variety of platforms. MS Office is only available on Windows and Macintosh and even at that, they are not the same version and have different feature sets. In addition to this, Microsoft generally create new interface guidelines (widgets, icons, etc..) with new versions of Office that do not integrate seamlessly with the rest of the desktop.

5. One reason why people go for the font drop down in MS Office is because using style sheets in MS Office is a PITA. Not only is it hidden but awkward to use. Sure, use of style sheets might be foreign to an MS Office user, but it is such a HUGE productivity enhancer (consistency in formating, dynamic creation of table of contents and other indexes, etc..) that it makes it worth learning that workflow.

Besides that, logicly, I believe the OpenOffice.org interface is laid out much more soundly. For example, if I want to format a character or paragraph, I can go under "Format". But if I want to format the page, in OpenOffice.org it is consistent and under "Format" -- MS Office? The file menu! Sure MS Office users are use to this inconsistency (among a huge list of others) but for some reason, I'm guessing a new user would find the OpenOffice.org workflow and layout easier to master.

Out of all of your "major problems" I think #2 is the biggest problem. As classes are tailored for a specific version of a Microsoft product (taking a look at your local community college's class offerings will confirm this) and other classes assume specific knowledge of Microsoft Office, it is no surprise that this is what people are most comfortable with. Unfortunately, as you mentioned the default methods of document creation in Word are, to put it kindly, horrible. The fact it does not promote separation of content and layout via stylesheets or even provide an adequate stylesheet system is a HUGE productivity drain on businesses -- much more so than the difference in acquisition or support cost.

Re:Star Office Problems.

[crimoid]

"Open Office is good for techs but not for normal people"

The 400+ grade school students who attend the school at which I work would disagree with you.

Until very recently they were all using the MS Office suite. We wholesale converted them to OpenOffice and none of them skipped a beat.

To them software is software, and OpenOffice was just as good as MS Office for their needs.

Re:Star Office Problems.

[the phantom]

Gods, I wish they would let me do that here (or at least turn a blind eye). I run a computer lab for 400+ elementary school students, running Win98 boxen. I install OpenOffice, and three weeks later, IT comes in and takes it away. So I install it again. Rinse, Repeat.

Re:Star Office Problems.

[forkazoo]

Okay, just to flip around the argument a bit...

There are still some major problems for MS Office.

First, it normally defaultly saves in The most current Office Format not something backwards compatible with old copies of Word, yes this is an easy change but people when they are done just hit the save Icon and they are done, they don't want to go through tens of choices and find the document that everyone else uses.

Second, Individuals have invested time in older versions of MS Office. From those High School Computer Class to College Classes, CS101. The education system for computers are so dumb that they teach people how to use a specific version of Microsoft Word but not a Word Processor. So almost everyone who enters the Work field know an out of date Office.

Third, Speed. Office has had a speed problem from the day they invented Clippy. Putting animated characters over the work are slow things down where the users feel it is important, boot up and typing and saving.

Fourth, Interface. MS Office is setup with a good interface Windows, but not for Linux or Mac. Running MS Office under Wine makes it feel completely out of place because it is not using a native toolkit.

Fifth, Work Flow. MS Office's goal is to create all the functionality needed by office workers but it forgot to get the work flow. Watch a non technical person use Office and you will see that their ways of solving problems may surprise you. They avoid using Style Sheets and just go for the Font Drop Down, except for hitting tab they will use the space and they never ever use hot keys for anything. The menus are off limit to them (The same with the windows start button) If they don't see it it must be an advanced feature that they shouldn't use.

MS Office is good for MCSEs but not for normal people.

Re:Star Office Problems.

[jellomizer]

If you teach the 400+ Grade School students how to use OO and do things the technical way. If you don't remember back in the 80s and early 90s Basic Programming was part of computer class, for 4th and 5th graders, and almost all the students did OK in it. Now Basic Program is considered advanced and using a Word Processor is where all compter literate people should be. So if the students start using Open Office and are taught to use it they will switch pritty easy because at that age their minds are a sponge but when they get older like durring highschool their brain is stuck on what is right and wrong and if they knew that using Office was the right way in the past using OO is now wrong.

Re:Star Office Problems.

[Cyno]

computers are good for techs and children, but not "normal" people, aka adults.

Re:Star Office Problems.

[BlueLightning]

I'm not sure what part of the school you're in, but if IT is interfering with your job perhaps you should try to work with them to get OOo set up, and if they won't listen, complain to the school administration.

Don't forget...

[AaronLawrence]

Don't forget that while the users may have relatively small needs, just wanting to type some reports and add a few headings, it's typical now for IT to build in some simple workflow. Such as automatically filling in this and that field, adding standard headers of different kinds, getting things on/off servers, connecting to a database for some tables, etc.

All that stuff is typically written in VBA for applications. And none of it works the same on StarOffice.

Re:Don't forget...

[Danga]

All that stuff is typically written in VBA for applications.

It's VBA or VB for applications, come on now.

A tiny bit of a person...

[jtcedinburgh]

0.0000000000006 of a person, to be precise.

I make that one of PC Murdoch's hairs.

John (a true Scot)

Still?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Even conceding that current versions of Star/Open Office are far superior to the version in question, Star/OpenOffice obviously still does not work and play well with MS Office. Given that 95% of the Scottish police stations use MS Office, interoperability is a primary requirement.

You know, I used to be the standard-bearer for that argument, but as of OO 1.9x, interoperability with MS is getting pretty damned good. Particularly the word processor.

Anyone having trouble with it still is usually using Linux and hasn't gotten their true-type fonts working correctly.

Re:Still?

[HomerJayS]

TFA cited an application deployed by the other police stations (not running StarOffce) that needed significant retrofitting to be usable by the StarOffice users. It is this type of interoperability issue (not fonts/formatting) that is the major hurdle to OS solutions.

There will always be issues with embedded MS specific object/controls etc. MS has convinced the powers that be in most organizations that they cannot live w/o these 'features' that will tie them forever to Windows.

Re:Still?

[Kjella]

You know, I used to be the standard-bearer for that argument, but as of OO 1.9x, interoperability with MS is getting pretty damned good. Particularly the word processor.

Well, I doubt anyone will jump from StarOffice (read: commercial and with some level of support) past OpenOffice to run their police department on a beta OpenOffice version. Granted, it's getting there but it's not released yet. OpenOffice 1.x got a foot in the door, but it takes more to outdo MS Office, which is in fact quite polished.

Kjella

Re:Still?

[Momoru]

Anyone having trouble with it still is usually using Linux and hasn't gotten their true-type fonts working correctly.

I don't know...I installed OpenOffice on my mother-in-law's new computer to save her the expense of Office...showed her how to use it and open her files etc... It ended up being a never ending headache for me getting calls about how it wouldn't display her office files right, or how she couldn't figure out how to do something. In the end she ended up sneaking a copy of MS Office on there without me knowing. I could never pin down exactly what her problems were, it may have just been resistance to change, but she sure hated OpenOffice.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted, it's getting there but it's not released yet. OpenOffice 1.x got a foot in the door, but it takes more to outdo MS Office, which is in fact quite polished.

Lies. MS office is far from polished. Established perhaps, but the product is far from perfect. MS word is so clunky and slow that I use Notepad or write most of the time instead.

Re:Still?

[Mr. Underbridge]

I don't know...I installed OpenOffice on my mother-in-law's new computer to save her the expense of Office...showed her how to use it and open her files etc... It ended up being a never ending headache for me getting calls about how it wouldn't display her office files right, or how she couldn't figure out how to do something. In the end she ended up sneaking a copy of MS Office on there without me knowing. I could never pin down exactly what her problems were, it may have just been resistance to change, but she sure hated OpenOffice.

My questions would be 1) when did you do this? 2) what version?

This *used* to be a problem for me. I do some fairly complicated stuff in files, but outside of MS-specific plugins, I have no problem.

For many users - maybe your mother in law - using computers was kind of a hard thing to learn. They sure as hell aren't going to go through that learning curve twice. It isn't much of a curve, but there are a few things that OO could do to make it easier.

Re:Still?

[Vireo]

You know, I used to be the standard-bearer for that argument, but as of OO 1.9x, interoperability with MS is getting pretty damned good. Particularly the word processor.

Anyone having trouble with it still is usually using Linux and hasn't gotten their true-type fonts working correctly.

I'm always wondering what kind of documents the people saying that "interoperability between OO and MSO is pretty good" are talking about. One-page letters? Grocery lists? Most of the documents I'm dealing with contain inserted images, figures drawn with the built-in drawing utility, tables, styles, templates, equations and whatnot. Using a recent OO version, I can generally access the text and images, but that's about it: forget about page layout, most equations and drawings, etc.

For very simple documents, I guess interoperability is OK, but for anything else, it's simply not there yet. That's not to say OO isn't good: by itself, it's a great software suite. I just think that touting its compatibility with MS Office is a sure way to generate disappointment.

Re:Still?

[Mr. Underbridge]

There will always be issues with embedded MS specific object/controls etc. MS has convinced the powers that be in most organizations that they cannot live w/o these 'features' that will tie them forever to Windows.

You're right. That's a primary reason why I don't use them, and (if possible) discourage their use. Vendor lock in is bad, and if one tool you have only works with about 3 others, you have a crappy toolbox.

Re:Still?

[TheAcousticMotrbiker]

Bzzt, wrong

At least in my case:

Things still broken:

Headings and numbering when importing, editing ,exporting Word docs

Setting excel spreadsheets to print all on one page (settings sometimes get lost)

Many word templates (esp. those with images in them) look slightly different in OOo, even if all you do is printing them
(ooffice --print filename.dot)

Re:Still?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Most of the documents I'm dealing with contain inserted images, figures drawn with the built-in drawing utility, tables, styles, templates, equations and whatnot. Using a recent OO version, I can generally access the text and images, but that's about it: forget about page layout, most equations and drawings, etc.

I'm a scientist, so I can assure you I deal with equations, figures, pictures, etc. all the time. The newest version of OO - 1.9 - deals with equations from MS Equation and images too. Not sure what you're using for your drawings. I'd recommend common image formats and the conversion will be fine - if you use less supported proprietary standards and expect them to work outside Word, well, that's not very realistic when the plugin was probably made for Word and Word alone.

The layout looked fine too for me. I agree that, with the myriad of vendor plugins that exist for Word, that guaranteeing interoperability won't get you far. But as a user you can make sure your documents open fine in either by avoiding more rare plugin formats.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy it. We just had a presentation two days ago, and the powerpoint was done up in office, then run on openoffice. Basically every slide was missing half it's information due to formatting errors.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I used to be the standard-bearer for that argument, but as of OO 1.9x, interoperability with MS is getting pretty damned good.

Wow, it only took them... 10 or so years to become "pretty damned good" compatible with the industry standard document format. Amazing OSS!

Anyone having trouble with it still is usually using Linux and hasn't gotten their true-type fonts working correctly.

That's because true-type fonts don't work in Linux.

Re:Still?

[RogerWilco]

Maybe I'm behind the times, as I've only used up to Word 2003 and OO.ord 1.1.4, but I find both very inferiour in handling Equasions, drawings, references, headers, styles, multipart documents, etc. compared to WordPerfect and LaTeX. I prefer de old-style equasion editor in WP to the new Word-like one however. I wish WP would still make a version for Linux...

And yes I am a scientist too...

I just want to do stuff like
----------------------

p = m . v (43)

Equation 43 in Chapter 4.1 (page 30) shows the formula for impulse as given by J.Doe et al[20] for...
---------------------
Preferably in a document where each chapter can be in a different subdocument file, but still have all the references working and up to date.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Japanese fonts are still pretty pathetic, and unless that gets fixed quickly my wife (being the Japanese member of the household) isn't going to let me get rid of MS office any time soon. Actually the fact that MS Office completely took over the japanese word processing market must have something to do with the fact with, dare I say it, it does the job pretty well.

While I'm on the topic, Emacs in japanese  is a fucking joke, XEmacs is apparently much better on *nix systmes but Mule for Xemacs didn't work last time I checked on Win32. Pity as otherwise it's by far and away the best programming editor around - I use it in work and find a workaround the nihongo issues.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because true-type fonts don't work in Linux.

Freetype moron.

Re:Still?

[marcosdumay]

I am also behind the time, but the GP was talking about OO-1.9, that is very different from 1.1.4, and yes, OO-1.1.4 equations suck. On OO-1.2 equations suck a little less, and since the GP says that 1.9 is so fine, I'll give it a try and see if I can stop writting presentation on LaTeX.

But if you need stuff like numbered equations, numbered images and numbered tables, you shouldn't have any hopping of abandonning LaTeX. Even more because being a scientist, you'll need citations, and LaTeX handle all this on a wonderfull way.

Re:Still?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not a scientist if you're using a word processor to type equations, etc. LaTeX baby, or TeX is even better. Seriously, nobody should be using word processors for typing academical papers.

The real reason...

[matt me]

Of course, the Scots could have used OpenOffice for free, but a top official was quoted as saying "functionally, it's a superior product, but we just prefer the MS-style clipart".

Can just imagine their posters "Wanted. Bank robber." And then it has a clipart pic of some guy in a stripey shirt holding a bag labelled "swag".

Then they must have saved a fortune

[Poromenos1]

in loading times with StarOffice. I really really avoid .doc files because of Word loading times. The new Office loads relatively quickly, but the older versions have made me avoid it whenever I can. Not to mention that I hate having to load all that functionality for stuff that even WordPad can do.

How was copper wire invented?

[jtcedinburgh]

Q: How was copper wire invented?
A: Two Scotsmen fighting over a penny...

Well, I'm all Scottish and I just wanted to point out that, as a race, we have the proportionately highest incidence of philanthropy of any nation on the planet*. Look at folk like Carnegie. Don't get me started on inventions, for which we are also, as a race, reknowned... ;)

John (haggis eating**, kilt wearing***, bagpipe loving**** Scotsman)

* Source: John's International Survey of Racial Philanthropy, August 2005;
** McSween's;
*** Only at Weddings or when abroad;
**** I lied about loving bagpipes. They are no less than weapons of mass distruction disguised as musical instruments...

Re:How was copper wire invented?

[Ixalon]

Well said! I work for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and I can confirm that more money is donated to charity per head in Scotland than any other region in the UK. Not sure about the rest of the world.

It's the important distinction between being tight and being frugal. Scots tend to be careful with their cash, investing wisely. This doesn't mean we're not generous.

Re:How was copper wire invented?

[elrous0]

Well, all I know about Scotland is what I've learned from Danny Boyle movies. So, I'm forever doomed to think of the Scottish as a bunch of heroin-addicted, money-grubbing punks who are good at running from zombies.

-Eric

Re:How was copper wire invented?

[Dogtanian]

Well, all I know about Scotland is what I've learned from Danny Boyle movies. So, I'm forever doomed to think of the Scottish as a bunch of heroin-addicted, money-grubbing punks who are good at running from zombies.

Well, having seen Trainspotting, you'll also know what we do to American tourists. (^_^)

Understandable

[squoozer]

While it is a shame the they felt the need to revert (well 5% of them did) I can fully understand why they have. I have only briefly used SO but I use use OO all the time and AFIAK they are all but identical - it they aren't just ignore me.

OO is great. It's amazing that they have put together sure a comprehensive set of tools in such a short period of time but, and here's the rub, it's not as good as MSO. I'm sure it will be in a couple more years but that's a long time to wait with tools that aren't quite as good especially when the TCO of better tools is probably only slightly higher. Don't get me wrong I love OO (my company uses only open source) but you need to be someone that will put up with cutting edge and the problems that causes.

The biggest problem though has got to be the fact that MSO can't open OO files. What a pain in the neck that must be. OO can work some fine magic exporting to MSO file formats but any non-trivial document is always just slightly out compared to what would have been produced in MSO. Some people don't care about formatting but enough want their document to look right that they will abandon OO for MSO simply because they see it as less work.

Re:Understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

They were using a 5 year old version of star office.

Open Stuff

[nuclearpenguins]

I honestly don't see the huge issue here. Sure, I dig open-source stuff, but not if it means nothing else is going to work with it. That and these guys are payed by the government, they can't afford to hire more people to teach them how to use software that 95% of the world doesn't utilize. Real Software: 1, OpenSource: 0.

Office! Hooray!!! (Negative comment warning)

[Anonymous Coward]

My boss once installed the latest Office for his Powerbook/Mac OSX. After installation, Office wouldn't startup. Why?

One corrupted font file.

Hooray!!!

The important part:

[Assmasher]

"and the need to interoperate more smoothly with other departments running Windows."

Aka, dominance brings it own appeal.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make

[wubboy]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Or, more to the point, you can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think.

The Microsoft Heresies

[Morrigu]

I'll probably get strung up on a length of Cat5 by enraged slashdotters for writing this, but there's a reason why people who have used MS Office products tend to continue using them: they're well-designed, and they work well enough for most purposes. I'm not talking about accountants and actuaries who try to shoehorn Excel + VB macros into acting like a Real Programming Language for financial calculations, but the mere fact that you have fax templates, that you can copy and paste easily from one app to another, and that you can run a decent little database using Access if you want. That as a manager running an office, you can put "skilled with MS Office applications" in a job ad for a secretary and find someone who can at least click through menus and generate the documents you need. That the applications look professional and clean and they come with a support number for a company that will not go out of business anytime soon. That the company will at least attempt to help you fix your problems and whom you can blame if something goes horribly wrong. ("It's not my fault, it's that damn Microsoft app!" you say to your VP who's pissed at the monthly reports being late again.)

OpenOffice is pretty good, and I use it exclusively on my work laptop running Ubuntu, but my choice in running Linux and other open-source applications is all about my freedom to use, redistribute and modify the application as I see fit, unencumbered by restrictive EULAs and software patents and all the baggage that goes along with shrink-wrapped commercial software. I'm willing to take the time and effort necessary to re-learn how to copy formulas instead of values in a spreadsheet app, where the default save locations live in the word processing app, and how to turn off the @#$(*! assistant. Most people don't care that much, and are willing to spend the money to use something they're familiar with and that is a de facto standard instead of taking the harder path. And don't get me wrong, it is harder to use even something as pretty and polished as Ubuntu + OpenOffice for a user familiar with Microsoft products, although it's a damn sight easier than it was 5 years ago.

Most people are lazy, and want to get things done as simply as possible. Big software companies take advantage of that, both at a personal and a corporate level. There's a reason why Microsoft is the gigantic software behemoth that it is, and that's because it understands this and understands how to sell products to individuals and organizations. That doesn't mean that its software is technologically superior, or more fun to hack on, or more free to use; but it makes people buy more stuff from them.

Re:The Microsoft Heresies

[BenjyD]

I would have to agree with you on that. MS Office is not an especially good piece of software, but office workers can hack together functionality that saves them hours of work using it without being programmers.

It's not that people are lazy, really, it's just that compared to workers' salaries, software really isn't that expensive.

Re:The Microsoft Heresies

[papadiablo]

I wouldn't call a desire to have things be simple to do laziness. The more complicated something is, the more likely it will get messed up, and the longer it will take to perform it. This isn't about laziness, it's about productivity and efficiency.

Re:The Microsoft Heresies

[miffo.swe]

I dont know what planet you live on but well designed? Access was a very good example since its so incompatible its not even compatible with itself. I have supported some Access databases and its pure vodoo, sacrifice a chicken and hope for teh best style code.

The reason people use Microsoft is because everybody else does it. If they had a real choice Microsoft would be long down the list of preferred companies. There have been numerous competitors with viable products who wore stomped to peices by Microsoft, not by real competition but shoddy business practices. Its funny how people tend to forget that.

The fact that Microsoft has succeded in killing the competition is not a proof of the merits of alternatives. Its more a proof of how much of a leg up Microsoft has with its installed base.

Another way to look at it

[HangingChad]

A couple years ago it was news when an organization switched to OpenOffice.

Today it's news when an organization switches to MSFT Office.

Haiylp! Haiylp!

[jtcedinburgh]

"popularity of heroine"

Yes, the entire Glasgow police force has its hands tied protecting the very popular heroine from the Hooded Claw......

Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

John

Which Office is the best? The one you know.

[asciiRider]

I make close to 40 dollars an hour. If I spend 10 hours learning OpenOffice, any savings are washed out. Will it take me 10 hours to leran? No... but what if I have to spend 15 minutes working around a difference? How about 2 minutes fixing some document that didn't translate well? Add em all up, and the savings is gone. Now perform these calculations, but use Doctor salaries. Use attorney salaries. Or executive assistant salaries. Do the math. The cost of software is really insignificant in comparison to people-time.

Most slashdotters advocating open source on the desktop think they are battling a monopoly or vendor lock-in. From a business's perspective, the best software is ALWAYS the software you know, the software with which you are most productive.

Re:Which Office is the best? The one you know.

[gbjbaanb]

In this case, its not about doctor salaries, but administrative staff. So, say ten dollars per hour.

No, its not an argument against you, those same admin staff will take a bit more than 10 hours to train - you're talking an entire week, with a trainer.... so MS Office is still far more attractive, not only in terms of cost to the organisation, but also to the staff who get to put 'I know Word' on their CVs when they look for another job.

Re:Which Office is the best? The one you know.

[AnyLoveIsGoodLove]

Ahhhhh..... but very few slashdotters live in the world of productivity outside vi. People want to get work done, and if cost 300, so be it. The math even works out for low office drone, let alone the lawyers / accountants you suggest.

Delightfully racist...

[jtcedinburgh]

Well done. Are there no beginnings to your talents? ;-)

John

No

[Steeltoe]

REAL Cops use ed!

Re:No

[operagost]

REAL REAL cops use "copy con file.txt"!

Re:No

[spike2131]

Bah, real Cops just scrape ones and zeros on a chunk of magnetic rock.

Re:No

[twiddlingbits]

REAL cops catch criminals and could not care less about the word processing software. They use a PENCIL!

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

REALER REAL cops use "cat > file.txt", you DOS weenie!

Re:No

[Master of Transhuman]

The REALEST cops beat the text into the file with their nightsticks.

To open a file, they shove their nightsticks in it.

Re:No

[tzot]

So the joke goes like this:

Q- How does a cop open a StarOffice document?
A- Points the gun at the screen and shouts "Open! This is the police!"

...right?

Re:No

[Master of Transhuman]

I'd say it'd more likely the cops call for backup, riddle the screen with bullets, THEN demand that it open.

Then when Internal Affairs wants to know who busted the computer, they throw one of their own to the wolves and claim it was "just one bad apple in the barrel."

No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been saying for years that the number one thing the entire Linux world has to accept is the importance of the ease and reliability of interoperability. Users place a very high value on this, much more so than FOSS developers do.

Talk to institutions who are just learning about FOSS, and the first tweo things they want to know is, "Is it REALLY free?", and "Will it work with everything I have now?" (meaning both HW and SW). IMO, this just proves they're rational; if FOSS developers ignore this fact of life, then they're handing MS the biggest, easiest win possible.

In other news, criminals using keyloggers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a while and the cops will be pwned by petty criminals exploiting the raft of vulnrabilities for M$haft.
Cost to learn new interface - somewhat costly
Cost to constantly repairs holes in security, often after the horse has bolted - priceless.

Honestly if you think not paying someone to admin your systems and security is a saving and that Microsoft will automagically be secure - well just you wait.
It will be funny when all the cops Windoze boxes are part of DDoS Botnets, then maybe they'll reconsider.

uhm... yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, youre a genius, can i hire you to run my IT department?

"the Microsoft software would cost no more"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

...if Steve flew over with a massive discount,
or (only) if they were pirating it? ;-)

Well, it would only seem cheap until they'd get caught - or, wait a minute... then they'd be the ones to catch, erm, themselves.

They'll feel locked in and have to pay the [b|B]ill either way...

Re:"the Microsoft software would cost no more"?!

[NIN1385]

Learn something about how a computer works, download a FREE distro of SUSE and install all the FREE software that comes with it. Then, if you still feel this way... you can sit here and tell us how windows is supreme dick sucker of the world.

Until then, get a life, get a girlfriend, and stop wasting your time as well as ours you fucking loser.

Get a job...

oh ya this makes sense

[suezz]

"early this year, however, the agency reviewed its IT infrastructure as part of an effort to meet performance targets, comply with Scotland's Freedom of Information Act and work more closely with other law enforcement groups. Following the review, and a follow-up study in March, it decided to switch back to Microsoft."

ya freedom of information - now people will have to pay to see the information that they are entitled to. makes sense to me. wonder if any of those other agencies are american. hmmmm!

if I was a citizen anyway I would wonder why is my governement buying proprietary software when good open source alternatives exist like openoffice.
all agencies should be running open office and not spending a dime on anyting else.

somebody should be like an american and sue them so they don't have to buy office just to see information that they are entitled to see.

also the article is incorrect in saying they are switching from open source - they are not - they are switching from staroffice which isn't open source.

Re:oh ya this makes sense

[Joehonkie]

Why do they need to be sued? How can they "not see the information" just because it is in Word format? MS supplies a free viewer under Windows, and there are many open source or free apps on all OSes that can open the MS documents. If people are trying to claim that OO/SO has such great interoperability features (and a lot are, and thet is probably a valid point), that makes your position even less solid.

Re:oh ya this makes sense

[MSDos-486]

Right they have to pay to see police docs. First of all i dont think thats a major problem considering most people have MS Office or MS Oficce compatable apps. And if not i know there is a free veiwer out there some where that lets you look at them

Re:oh ya this makes sense

[MSDos-486]

And yeah know you can also print them out. You know on that paper stuff

Re:oh ya this makes sense

[suezz]

not sure what you mean about OO/SO but I assume you mean open source software OSS - if it so compatible and there are so many viewers out there why is this department switching then?

"MS supplies a free viewer under Windows" thats just it under windows - why should the general public have to buy windows to view the documents.

also it is hard to do compatibility when the company keeps their little patented formats to themselves.

I think all governments need to be sued that use any proprietary system like microsoft's that require the general public to look at THEIR information. It's called freedom (as in speech and the press).

Re:oh ya this makes sense

[YrWrstNtmr]

"OO/SO" = OpenOffice/StarOffice

why should the general public have to buy windows to view the documents.
also it is hard to do compatibility when the company keeps their little patented formats to themselves
I think all governments need to be sued that use any proprietary system like microsoft's that require the general public to look at THEIR information. It's called freedom (as in speech and the press).

Oh please. Construct a system using only totally free software: Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox.
Now go to their website, and show us specifically which documents you cannot look at/read/print with this no-cost system. Call/write, and ask for case files on some crime.

Until you can show a specific document that requires some software to be purchased, then you're just blowing smoke.

Oh grrrraaate

[xpeeblix]

Tha's jus' fookin' graaaate. Afta all, is jus a wee bit o'a monopoly, eh?

Its the little things...

[ratboy666]

My wife finds MS Word far easier to use (compared with OpenOffice.org).

1 - tables (MS Word, you just draw them)

2 - drawing (MS Word, the tools are at hand)

3 - mail merge.

4 - help

5 - loading speed

Jen /uses/ OpenOffice.org -- but she does have a point. MS Word is easier to use.

And, Jen did give OpenOffice some cred: fonts appearing in style in selections was a very welcom feature.

Ratboy

Re:Its the little things...

[pvanheus]

Ok, then your wife might like OpenOffice 2. I'm playing with the beta now, and

1. tables - you just draw them

2. drawing tools - on hand (just like in MSWord)

3. mail merge - still not quite what i expect from MSWord. OpenOffice wants you to use a table from a database file for data, whereas with MSWord i can use an Excel spreadsheet as a datasource. and while OpenOffice Base seems fairly straightforward, small details (like lack of auto-increment for ID field in newly created table) will confuse Access users.

4. help - ok, but a bit obscure in places - for instance when looking for help on Mail Merge ;) (its much better to look at the Mail Merge Wizard help than to look at the help entry for mail merge which just suggests a brief procedure which in my install didn't work)

5. loading speed - Writer starts in less than 4 seconds on my PC (that's without Quickstart). that's basically comparable to MSWord.

A bit of history here... I needed to do some technical writing a year or so back, and I found that MSWord beat OpenOffice by a long way for useability. Looking at the new beta for OpenOffice 2, I'd say they've caught up a lot. Of course, there are ways (e.g. scriptability) where OpenOffice is significantly better than MS Office, so this 'catch up' game isn't just about being 'as good', its about being better. ;)

Peter
who has better things to be zealous about that MSWord vs. Writer

Geezzz

[TarryTops]

Man, reading that post of the guy talking about "math skills on a alltime low". Are you sure they made the calculations correctly? People replace software to hide/conceal their own ineffective sucked up selves! It 's indeed tragic.

compatibility?

[stinky wizzleteats]

greater integration with other departments.

What? MS Office isn't compatible with itself. 2000, XP, and 2003 aren't forward or reverse compatible with each other. We used to use Word for really heavy audit report documents - headers/footers, huge style sheet, etc. You could open a document in 2003 written in 2000 and literally get different embedded images for all the illustrations.

This smells like a decision made by management, not IT.

Re:compatibility?

[wfWebber]

In that case, opening a document like that won't get any better when you try in OpenOffice. Also, having IT make a descision about which Office suite best suits the clients needs might not be the best thing.

Re:compatibility?

[stinky wizzleteats]

In that case, opening a document like that won't get any better when you try in OpenOffice.

The idea is to use OpenOffice to create the document in the first place. Why would you create documents in a format that you know will cause compatibility problems later on? (to say nothing of unintended information disclosure, etc.)

Also, having IT make a descision about which Office suite best suits the clients needs might not be the best thing.

No, we can't defer to the professionals on a decision like this, can we? That would be like letting an architect design the building.

Re:compatibility?

[Wile_E_Peyote]

No, we can't defer to the professionals on a decision like this, can we? That would be like letting an architect design the building.

Actually, it would be more like having the architect who designed your parking garage also design design the cars that are parked there.

IT Professionals (myself included) do not know what is best for end users. End users know what is best for end users. A software company I used to work for had an un-official stance of "users don't know what they need". They are now very close to bankrupcy.

Re:compatibility?

[man_ls]

Office 2000 marked the beginning of forward-compatability of Office with itself.

Word documents saved by later versions, implementing features not present in the older version, can be opened by the older one, and it will simply skip over the parts it doesn't understand.

Trouble begins when people use the version-specific features to do large portions of their markup. This is what results in glitchy formatting when you open between versions.

Opening 2000 documents in 2003 can have some trouble with complicated markup, because 2003 has a more strict rendering engine, which the older, inferior product couldn't always make quite up to the standard of.

Reverting?

[jtcedinburgh]

You know, I just read that as:

"Scottish Police Pervert to Microsoft Office"

And suddenly it all made sense...

Re:You can lead a horse to water, but you can't ma

[BlackCobra43]

My Fair Lady lied to us!

Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[hey!]

Having worn both hats, geek and suit, I have to say you can't make this kind of decision purely on technical OR non-technical criteria. You have to use all your knowledge to do what's best for the organization.

Personally, I'd have taken this deal if I were the IT director, and I'm borderline Linux zealot. You take Ceasars salt, you do Ceasars bidding -- and if crucifiction doesn't appela to you, you look after his interests. MS offered them a deal that's a no-brainer. Just do the math.

They have about 1000 officers plus support staff. Don't know how many licenses this is but MS offered them a package deal at £60,000, which divided by the staff works out to £60/body/year. So it's as close to free beer as makes no difference, especially if this saves a staff position a year dealing with the fact nearly everyone else uses MS. Let's say that financially, it's the same as getting the software for free.

Add to this that the deal includes software they need to comply with legal requirements, software they estimate they'd have paid £100,000 to build custom, and now they're far ahead. It's the same old story, fortunately less common today than a few years ago: the app I need isn't available on Linux. In a couple of years when the deal runs out, the free alternatives will have closed the gap more, either forcing the market price of MS software down, or making it even more feasible to switch over if that really makes sense.

From MS's standpoint, this is very smart move. This deal is exactly what I'd have offered. MS wasn't making any dough from these guys anyways, an since its marginal cost for duplicating the software is nil, the limitation on dropping their price is that they don't want to encourage people to switch just to get the deal. That level is probably close to zero at this point in time: for most organizations, the TCO savings of F/OSS isn't attractive enough to switch once the you factor in sunk costs, conversion/training costs, and short term opportunity costs.

So, MS walks away with 60K in their pocket per year, which is not much but it is better than zero. They also get the priceless publicity of a high profile organization going F/OSS and giving up.

It's a natural and, unfortunately, effective competitive strategy in a business where the marginal cost of a product is zero. I expect that as Linux and OpenOffice get better and better we'll be hearing a lot more stories like this.

Re:Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[g2devi]

The problem is vendor lock-in.

Any IT director that's lived in the IT community longer than 10 years know how easy it is to be locked in and how painful it is to switch. A good IT director doesn't want a uni-vendor environment, even if it leads to inefficiencies. When the vendor holds you over a barrel or your vendor loses out to something better and winds down (one of the two always happens given enough time), you're ready to switch to one of your other vendors or you have a good bargaining position.

And relating to the price of the custom built software, you're forgetting one word, *custom*. People use spreadsheets to do things that spreadsheets were never meant to do. People use MS Access for things that it was never meant to do. And this shows up in the process as a hidden cost. General purpose apps generally don't serve people as well as customized apps. With the right custom apps you can more than make up the price of the custom apps.

Re:Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[hey!]

You make good points. However I don't think lock-in applies here.


Any IT director that's lived in the IT community longer than 10 years know how easy it is to be locked in and how painful it is to switch.
  A good IT director doesn't want a uni-vendor environment, even if it leads to inefficiencies.


I agree lock-in is bad, but you can't necessarily call having a good long term deal with "lock-in". It's just a deal. If I had to define "lock-in", I'd say it is a hidden cost of switching or using another vendor's products. For example, if you make an agreement to get Office cheap, but it turns out they can soak you on Windows -- that's lock in. If Windows and Office are both part of the deal, I don't call that lock-in. It's just part of the package.

Furthermore I don't call the general difficulty of switching products lock-in. That's just life. You have to make decisions and if you make the wrong ones, you pay.

In any case I can't agree you avoid lock-in at any price. That's not realistic. You just don't want to do what most people do which is to throw up your hands and trust your vendor because you can't figure out how much things are really going to cost.


And relating to the price of the custom built software, you're forgetting one word, *custom*. People use spreadsheets to do things that spreadsheets were never meant to do. People use MS Access for things that it was never meant to do. And this shows up in the process as a hidden cost. General purpose apps generally don't serve people as well as customized apps. With the right custom apps you can more than make up the price of the custom apps.


Hmm. I'm not 100% clear on your point here. My understanding is that the specific sofware they needed to meet the new freedom of information regs was included. Now this part did smelll a bit did sound a bit fishy -- they made it sound like the missing piece was SharePoint. If so, then there are certainly good open source portals, so maybe they got an apples to oranges cost estimate (e.g. comparing the cost of configuring SharePoint vs the cost of developing an portal from scratch). Or it may be an apples-to-aples comparision: configuring a portal to do everything from scratch vs. copying somebody else's configuration.

You never can be 100% sure without being on the spot.

In any case I can't agree that custom software is always best. You have to look at the total lifecycle costs, the specific advantages you think you can get, versus vendor related risks. It's not simple.

Re:Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[Anonymous Coward]

And just what do you call "lock-in" since you are pretty much aliasing all the common definition into something else?

Re:Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[miffo.swe]

The catch is that they hadnt gone F/OSS at all. Only the branch office servers was linux. If you switched your firewalls at your branch offices to Borderware and added samba have you then gone "BorderWare" even if all else is not Borderware?

I concede it was a smart move but it should be duly noted that the press has gotten it awfully wrong as have many people here.

Re:Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[smallpaul]

So, MS walks away with 60K in their pocket per year, which is not much but it is better than zero. They also get the priceless publicity of a high profile organization going F/OSS and giving up.

They have also set a precedent and established the true value of their software in observer's minds.

Re:Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[cow-orker]

What are you talking there? 60K is not the same as nothing, no matter how you spin it.

So, the options were: a) pay 100K now, no recurring charges and b) pay 60K every year.

To me this reads as if option a) wins just one year down the road and continues to get cheaper afterwards. They signed a three year contract, which amounts to 180K. Even depreciated for one year this is *more* expensive than the custom development of said application.

If you're making an argument, at least get the math right.

Re:Nah, it was a smart move on all parts

[sgtrock]

All good points. The good news? Microsoft's pockets, while unbelievably deep, are not bottomless. Every time they sign one of these sweetheard deals, the pressure goes up for them to drop prices across the board. The risk for them is that people will begin to expect a MUCH lower cost for software overall.

Trust me, in the long run this is a bad deal for Microsoft. Of course, I will stipulate that "long run" is probably measured in tens of years. :)

One More Problem...

[Rocketship Underpant]

"go threw tens of choices" ... "Individuals has invested time in MS Office" ... "everyone who enters the Work field know Office" ... "Forth Interface" ... "Open Offices goal"

A Sixth Problem: Spell-checking and grammar checking don't seem to work properly. :)

Re:One More Problem...

[whitehatlurker]

Forth interface

Unh, no really - it has a FORTH interface ... try it

3 5 9 + * .

Well, okay, maybe not.

Ach, laddie!

[Junior J. Junior III]

Why dinnae they switch to ScotsOffice? Microsoft, Open, whatever Office you use, if it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!

Re:Ach, laddie!

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's CRAP!

you mean ..CRRRRRRAAP!

Re:Ach, laddie!

[WillAffleckUW]

Why dinnae they switch to ScotsOffice? Microsoft, Open, whatever Office you use, if it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!

So, roll yer own distro of OpenOffice and i'll do the Haggis extensions fer trackin down Nessie.

Technical reasons: puzzling

[Tune]

That and these guys are payed by the government, they can't afford to hire more people to teach them how to use software that 95% of the world doesn't utilize.

That argument doesn't make sense in this case, since they've been using StarOffice for 5 years. So they (somehow) figured out how to operate the software and just were not content with it. ...Either that or they never used any office software at all. I suppose notepad does a pretty good job as a typewriter too. If they used StarWriter, I can't think of real interoperability issues. (Writer is better at reading/writing (legacy) MSoffice files as is MS office.) No business critical reason either for having excel or powerpoint on every police officer's desk. And MS Axes does an equally lame job in report-filing as does starbase.

So, in this case, the only plausible reason for choosing either is in marketing, branding and lobbying.

Re:Technical reasons: puzzling

[MSDos-486]

Thats assumeing you stay witht the same work force. People come and go.

Re:Technical reasons: puzzling

[Tune]

Thats assumeing you stay witht the same work force. People come and go.

That's assuming your work force doesn't entirely consist of Scottish police officers.

--
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
probably parked.

Re:Technical reasons: puzzling

[MSDos-486]

What do you mean

Re:Technical reasons: puzzling

[Tune]

Hmm. sorry.
It was a joke hinting at the loyalty of Scottish police officers. They'd never rotate to non-police jobs and would *never* work on English soil.

Hmm. It may not be funny afterall. sorry

--
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.

Headquarters

[stud9920]

Do they call their headquarters at Edimburg "England Yard" ?

Re:Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??

[BradySama]

Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??
Maybe here? I personnaly perfer Novell's (SuSE's) OpenExchange, easier to set up and install. Been using it at the office for over 2 years now.

Not necesarily true...

[cnelzie]

I would take a public sector job as a Linux/Unix admin. For one thing, I would be more or less guaranteed not to lose my job, government jobs are notorious for being extremely solid, especially in critical areas.

    Granted, the pay might not be necesarily as high as it would be in the private sector, but the hours would be very steady, allowing for one with the inclination to pursue other avenues of income.

    Anyway, if I heard that my local government was looking for a Linux/Unix Admin, I would seriously consider applying for the position.

Re:Not necesarily true...

[dstewart]

http://jobsearch.usajobs.opm.gov/jobsearch.asp?q=u nix&salmin=&salmax=&paygrademin=&paygrademax=&FedE mp=N&sort=rv&vw=d&brd=3876&ss=0&FedPub=Y&SUBMIT1.x =0&SUBMIT1.y=0&SUBMIT1=Search+for+Jobs

Re:Not necesarily true...

[cnelzie]

Those are some nice jobs, if I was willing to move, I would be all over those. However, I am not interested in moving, since I own two homes in the area, have friends and family in this area and enjoy what I have right now.

    If things were different, I would be all over those in a second.

*.RTFs

[potpie]

I never understood why they can't just save things as RTFs more often. Is it because that would require the use of a complicated *gasp* pull-down menu? If they're so worried about compatibility, why not just use RTFs for things that don't use images? And I'm just assuming the police don't use wordart as frequently as my 6th grade class did. And why is there such a bias against the TXT format? If all you're concerned about is the information in the document and pictures aren't necessary, why does it have to look pretty?

Re:*.RTFs

[Lodragandraoidh]

My corporate machine has Microsoft Office.

That being said, all of the documents I produce are saved as .rtf format. This way my coworkers can use MS Word to view it and manipulate the layout - while I get peace of mind that I will be able to recall the document regardless of what machine and software I am running 10 years from now.

My real desire is to get them to start using XML as the standard format (not the proprietary MS XML spec either), and to automate revision control and publication of the documents on the web.

Rome wasn't built in a day...

$1.00 a copy

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft probably offered them 1 dollar licensing agreement just to get the press.

UK police use of IT

[Tim Ward]

You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do.

You've spent how long exactly sitting in a UK police station watching policemen use computers? Your experience does not coincide with mine.

Re:UK police use of IT

[Cyno]

So... they don't know how to open and save yet? ;)

Re:UK police use of IT

[chudnall]

You've spent how long exactly sitting in a UK police station watching policemen use computers? Your experience does not coincide with mine.

So, you've spent a lot of time sitting in UK police stations watching policemen type, eh? What were you in for? :)

Anti-competitive actions cause Microsoft 'win'

[OwlWhacker]

If Microsoft played fair, and opened up its file formats and protocols, things would be much different.

It goes to show that where you have a monopoly that has users locked in, you have to remain locked in unless everybody else decides to switch at the same time.

Well, Microsoft can use this as an example of a switch from Linux to Windows, but Microsoft should be ashamed that its 'win' is based on anti-competitive actions.

office suite?

[bmgz]

What the hell? it's 2005 godammit! I have run a totally productive office purely with web apps. The only reason everybody has openoffice installed is when sum shmuck hasn't emails us a word doc. We only email pdfs.

This is an impossible task

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the lecture on logic in high school?

How is he supposed to prove that office 2003 has more features when you want him to compare it with office, while removing from OpenOffice's count any feature not found in Word. That's asinine.

Re:This is an impossible task

[Anonymous Coward]

W. T. F.!? Please put down the crack pipe and pay close attention, here is an explanation for you: The OP claimed that Office 2003 was better than OpenOffice because it has more features than OO, i.e., has more features that OO presumably doesn't have. Are you still with me? OK, now, the only way to test this claim is to count the number of features in Office 2003 that are NOT in OO, then count the number of features in OO that are NOT in Office 2003, and then subtract the one number from the other to determine which one has, in total, the greater number of unique features.

Basically the claim that is implied is that the better software is the one with the larger number of unique features. So if we have:

n1 = number of unique features in Office 2003
n2 = number of unique features in OpenOffice

then the one with the larger number "wins". So if "n1 - n2 > 0" were true it would thus prove the OP's claim --- note the subtraction in there?

(Sorry if this was obvious to the entire rest of slashdot ... I know, this is really really elementary stuff.)

My students can set up a LAMP in 17 minutes

[pogson]

That's 12 minutes to install a CD of Linux and five minutes to install the AMP packages. A typical php script can be installed in ten minutes or so from local files. Time is less for a boot from a live CD which is feasible if the dynamic stuff is stored on the network.

I typically install LAMP even on desktops so webapps can be run locally. The browser is just another GUI.

There is no way that other OS should be mentioned on the same page as Linux for web services. Linux wins hands down.

The folks locked into that other OS are to be pitied. It is not that Windows is wonderful, but that they have been allowed to establish and maintain a monopoly by illegal means. If they were so good they would not have to use illegal means. Look at the "final agreement". They are allowed to set quotas to distributors at the 50% level and servers aren't even covered. They are allowed to punish distributors that ship PCs without Windows. What a sham when DOJ helps the criminals in their wrongdoing.

Here's how my police use it

[elrous0]

I really don't understand why a police officer -- or anyone else for that matter -- would require more than the grandparent poster suggests. Rather than just making assertions ("You're arrogant and you have zero clue") why not educate us.

Well, I work IT in a law enforcement agency, and so I can speak to that. The parent is right, you don't know what the Hell you're talking about.

Police use Word to fill in reports, forms, etc. that could definitely not be formatted using Wordpad. They also have to save that form data, which could not be done with a web form or Acrobat Reader.

They also use Word to interact with Excel and Access databases. When you're sending out a notification letter to 180 victims in a given county, you better believe it's a helluva lot easier to use Word's mail merge than typing each name individually in Wordpad.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, the police not only use Word, but a whole bunch of other software as well. And you should be glad they do.

-Eric

Re:Here's how my police use it

[HansF]

I'm not impressed.
Really, you could automate that much better using web forms.
If you have to do a mailmerge in word everytime you want to send something out, you're just wasting taxpayers' money.

You're blaming grandparent for not knowing what he is talking about, but what do you mean with :
"They also have to save that form data, which could not be done with a web form..."
Can you kindly explain what's the point of filling out a webform wich can't be saved ?

Re:Here's how my police use it

[ShieldW0lf]

Well, I work IT in a law enforcement agency, and so I can speak to that. The parent is right, you don't know what the Hell you're talking about.

Police use Word to fill in reports, forms, etc. that could definitely not be formatted using Wordpad. They also have to save that form data, which could not be done with a web form or Acrobat Reader.

This would be trivial to do with a web based application.

They also use Word to interact with Excel and Access databases. When you're sending out a notification letter to 180 victims in a given county, you better believe it's a helluva lot easier to use Word's mail merge than typing each name individually in Wordpad.

This would not only be trivial to do with a web application, it would be better suited as a web application.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, the police not only use Word, but a whole bunch of other software as well. And you should be glad they do.

Trust me, I'm a carpenter, and you definatly need wood, hammer and nails to fix this problem.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue wasn't if it could be done with a web application.

The issue was if it could be done with Notepad/WordPad.

At least keep your argument straight.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[YomikoReadman]

Well, I work IT in a law enforcement agency, and so I can speak to that. The parent is right, you don't know what the Hell you're talking about.

I'll do you one better. Not only am I a cop, but I work in the IT field as well. There's nothing that couldn't be handled using a web forms application, and better than what you can do with any office suite.

On the topic of software used by police departments, I think some of it has purpose. Training tracking is good, and e-mail is a good tool for inter- and intradepartment memos. If you can't find a better way to do mass mailings other than Word's mail merge, then you need to go back to school. As for Excel and Access databases, please. MySql is a database. SqlServer is a databse. Postgres is a database. Access is a really fancy spreadsheet, and is absolute crap. Please don't give it any credentials by calling it a database.

Ultimately, from the look of things, you have zero real experience in IT, and need to go spend some time in large scale corporate IT. Once you've done that, take your lessons learned, and apply them to the small scale you're currently working with.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be confused. Another example of stellar law enforcement logic?

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading the whole thread. It started with the premise that a web application would be cheaper, easier to use, and more efficient. Someone did later suggest that notepad would be enough. Disagree with that if you wish (and I do), but remember that all the comments in this thread are in the context of that original premise. Just for the record, no one has yet been able to point out a single requirement that would indicate that a web-application would not be a superior solution.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

You can both be right. Police in different countries, (heck, police in different towns) have a different way of doing this. Big police may have the leisure and money to have custom-made web application and those things. Smaller police from smaller town will probably buy one copie of Office for each of their cops (i.e. 2-3 copies! ;) ) and then that's it. Because of the time-money factor, people cannot always use what is the best, they must fallback on generic application (StarOffice and Office) instead.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[elrous0]

Can you kindly explain what's the point of filling out a webform wich can't be saved ?

They not only have to save it, they have to be able to go back and recall/modify/reuse this data later. And, yes, you could probably do something something like that with a webform with enough time and money.

So what I'll do is offer my cash-strapped agency two alternatives:

1. Set up a huge webserver with SQL database support, hire a PHP/Perl/etc. programmer to design appropriate scripts, convert all our existing forms to webforms, convert all our existing Access databases so they can be used with the new scripts, hire full-time security staff to protect this database from assorted hackers (since much of the information in these police reports and records is VERY confidential stuff), debug, test, deal with assorted headches, make sure every officer is using the lastest version of Firefox (so we can at least add on a form spellchecker), deal with the fact that officers will complain that they can't even change fonts on a webform, repeat debugging issues, deal with hackers, repeat ad infinum. -or- 2. Use Word so the officers can save their form/report data right on their hard drive and interact with their Access and Excel databases with ease. -Eric

Re:Here's how my police use it

[drsquare]

OK, you get on with writing a web-based word processor. In the meantime, the real world will keep on using what's already made and what already works. Bear in mind it has to be cheaper and more functional than Star Office which has already been tested and rejected after extensive testing.

And when you make a mistake in a web browser form, or accidently hit ctrl+w (right next to s), the browser closes and your information is lost. No undo, no auto-save, scrollbars independent of the page scrollbars, and about a million other things.

Can you kindly explain what's the point of filling out a webform wich can't be saved ?

Exactly. You've just destroyed your own argument. Well done. Saves us the mental effort of doing it ourselves. I used the extra brain processing cycles to think about what to have for tea. I think perhaps a Pot Noodle or Microchips.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[civilizedINTENSITY]

A Web-based solution would deal with the stated reason for migrating back to MS despite TCO: being able to access documents while at other departments (that didn't make the migration.)

Re:Here's how my police use it

[tomocoo]

FCKeditor is a web form that provides an interface that looks just like any word processor like undo, formatting, etc etc and generates html code from input. oss too.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Actually it was about if text was sufficent, or if a word processor was necessary. The move from text to notepad or wordpad (which isn't even text, but RTF) was missing (what I consider to be) the relevant point. Emacs would work as a front end to whatever database system they are using.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[cayenne8]

"convert all our existing Access databases "

Well...WOULD highly suggest they move from access to a REAL rdbms....like Oracle or Postgres....

Having a bunch of little individual access datastores all around is a nightmare to manage...and easy to mess up. I'd think critical data like the cops handle would be trusted to a more robust data system.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[jim_v2000]

"There's nothing that couldn't be handled using a web forms application, and better than what you can do with any office suite."

Only if the web app craps out, the server goes down, or connectivity is lost, then everyone is screwed rather than just one person's machine.

go spend some time in large scale corporate IT. Once you've done that, take your lessons learned, and apply them to the small scale you're currently working with.

Why the hell would you use a large scale solution for a small scale problem? All that's going to happen is you're going to end up paying more for IT and increase the areas where problems can go wrong. At least with MS Office, most of the issues that arise don't require too much knowledge to fix. Fixing problems with a large scale solution requires someone with an IT background.

Just because you can use the latest, greatest, quickest, openest open source program out there doesn't mean that you should if it ends up being less convenient for the end user.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[HansF]

So your saying you don't allready have a fulltime security staff to protect your distributed very confidential data stored on various places and files in a windows context?
I'm sorry, but if you truly consider this secure and practical, I suggest you stick with it.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Access is many things, however calling it a Spreadsheet would not be just. Access has a treasure trove of capabilities and relational operators that make possible a varity of small scale Intranet applications, as well as being much more portable and reliable than a full on DBMS when the situation requires a small data store. All it's lacking in terms of functionality is perhaps indexes, which would improve it's ability to deal with large data sets. When you've got an application with only a dozen people on it, you can't really argue a convincing case for not using Access.

It's idiots like you, who fly the flag of OSS without understanding that applications such as MySQL have a scope and domain, and we can't seriously start bandying them around as the be-all and end-all to user problems unless they bring something the other applications don't.

This was demonstrated clearly here with Star Office. Star Office touted word compatability, but really it's been the same old crappy import/export system as well as the usual armada of unfixed bugs for the best part of the century. Is now how we'll gain ground on Microsoft in the marketplace? I sincerely hope we can do a lot better than that.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Daengbo]

Right. Since the police station in question is moving to Sharepoint, I don't think that they're really worried about having their server fail and people being left in the cold.

Let's face it. The stated tasks would be much better on a central server, whether a web app or not, and they are going to be on one. This argument is inane.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[FCP]

"All [Access i]s lacking in terms of functionality is perhaps indexes, which would improve it's ability to deal with large data sets."

Access has indexes. They're not optimized for really big data sets, though, as everyone who has had an Access app grow out of bounds has found out.

I've had plenty of good uses for Access when I needed to cook some data quickly, and I've used it for applications that were a bit too big for it, too; the ending was never happy in those cases.

I've carried around a fairly nifty little "commitment management" Access app for a few years now, but I just consider it a prototype. I shudder at the thought of having to maintain it as is for an actual workgroup. On one job, I blew it up into a SQL web app with good results, but of course I didn't take that with me. Sharing the Access database instead would have been awful.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Zwack]

I'm seeing a lot of arguments against web apps that bascially say "if your server/network feels you're screwed" which is true...
But...
If you have an organisation that is geographically distributed in multiple offices (or police stations if you prefer) then how do the offices communicate with each other? If they are using central servers to store their documents (and given that the article states they had problems opening their documents in other departments I guess they are) then if the network/server craps out they are JUST as screwed. Sure they can save it locally and then resave it later to the central location, but I'm not sure that that is much better. A redundant server farm with a concurrent database would resolve that problem. Redundant network links/routers/switches would solve most network problems. These are not new problems and there are existing solutions for them. Cost may well be a disadvantage but if you want the benefits you'll have to pay.

My guess (and I don't work for a police force) is that the police need to fill in some standard forms, they need to share information with each other, they need to communicate with the public. Some of this can be, and possibly is, done by using web forms (if they use a word template for a form they could convert it into a web form fairly easily) some of it makes more sense for them to use something more general. While Police Journal logs can be done with web forms easily enough, a letter to one or more citizens informing them of something may well be best done in a word processor. Yes, it might be possible to do it in a plain text editor, but a web form is not always suitable.

The only way to find out would be to go to the relevant staff, find out what they do and how they do it and ask them what tools might help them. Then provide them with those tools and see if they work, if not then find out why not and fix them. Remember that there will always be corner cases that either need new tools or more general tools. Why waste 2 man weeks inventing a specialised tool when a general tool can be used to do the same task in 15 minutes.

In some cases the small scale problem should be left to the general tools. But in some cases you need to do the small scale solution right so that it doesn't become a large scale problem.

Z.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Blakey Rat]

I'm holding you to this one:

What's a better way to do mass mailings other than Word's mail merge? Seriously, what is your happy easy solution that's better and everybody loves it?

And in what way is Access NOT a database? Do you even know what the word "database" means? Hell, Access wouldn't even have to be relational to be a database. (It is relational; but that's not required to be a DB.)

Sure you're a cop and you work in the IT field, but you're also a open source zealot and it shows.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[dubl-u]

Really, you could automate that much better using web forms.

No, *you* could automate that much better using web forms. You're a programmer. But your average secretary can't.

That's why limited but special-purpose tools like Office are valuable. There are some tasks that suck to do by hand, but aren't worth the time and expense of a trained programmer. Especially in a bureaucratic organization where the programmers are in another building, on another budget, have a two-year backlog, require a two-month requirements analysis process, and in the end will build you something that still isn't quite right.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[dubl-u]

This would be trivial to do with a web based application.

No, not really. And this is exactly the kind of literal-minded, half-assed, thoughtless requirements analysis that makes so much software suck.

I make web applications for a living, and to duplicate what these guys can do with Word is far from trivial. Why? Because using a tool like Word gets them functionality for free that is a lot of work to code. Some examples:

• rich text - a word processor has a ton of features for rich text, including bold, italics, and lists like this one
• images - a picture's worth a thousand words
• change history - knowing who did what is hugely helpful, and a lot of work to code
• document transfer - if somebody needs to share a document, give control to somebody else, save a copy for reference, or just show it to somebody, that's easy with a document: you can email it, put it on a floppy, CD, or USB key, or put in on a network drive
• printing - any word processor gives you great control over printed output; web sites need to render everything to PDFs for that and making a web interface for controlling all that would be a bitch
• widely understood - people learn how to use Word in high school now, not for whatever custom interface you build in a browser
• richer UI - web apps are making some progress, but GUI apps can still have a much better user experience

And as I pointed out in another post, modifying the web app requires a real programmer, whereas any secretary can futz with forms in MS Word or change the mail merge.

I love web apps, but using your psychic powers to say that people you've never seen doing work you don't know about can get along fine with a trivial web app is just asinine.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even know what the word "database" means?

None of these are databases. Access is a "Database Management System", not a "database".

Re:Here's how my police use it

[WhiplashII]

Emacs would work as a front end to whatever database system they are using

But then, Emacs is well on its way to becoming sentient and taking over - I'm not sure I want cops relying on it...

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

A normal tab delimited file can also be a "database".

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if the web app craps out, the server goes down, or connectivity is lost, then everyone is screwed rather than just one person's machine.

Great idea! Now you have critical data spread over, let's say a dozen, individual machines. Each machine is being directly maintained by someone who is unlikely to be focused on the maintenance of that machine. Backups are rarely done.

Excellent. A dozen points of failure instead of one. What an improvement.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[YomikoReadman]

No, the problem is idiots like you who don't have clue in the world about what a real database is. Oracle is a DBMS, Postgres is a DBMS, SQLServer is a DBMS, MySql is a DBMS. I love the way you only pick the glaringly obvious OSS solution there, by the way. Are you aware that Postgres is also OSS? How about the fact that SQLServer is not OSS? If you haven't heard of Oracle, that just lends fuel to my argument.

The issue in this instance is that they implemented and outdated Non-OSS version of StarOffice, did so in 5% of the target audience, and pronounced that it's inability to work with the rest of the infrastructure cost them more. Well, guess what dumbass? That's not how you test and implement a new architecture. You find a test bed for it, and see how well it works with itself. Whether or not it can interact with the architecture you're replacing should be a non-issue; here it was touted as the root of all evil.

I understand perfectly that applications have a scope of use and a domain that they're suitable for use in. Access is completely useless, even for the scope and domain it's targeted for. It's been forever plagued with problems related to data integrity and database corruption. I'd rather use a real DBMS and scale it back than work with that lousy overblown spreadsheet POS.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[YomikoReadman]

Sure you're a cop and you work in the IT field, but you're also a open source zealot and it shows.

So the fact that I hate Access automatically makes me an OS zealot? I mentioned those 3 DBMS because they're inexpensive solutions. Postgres and MySql are both OSS; SQL Server is not, but it doesn't cost nearly as much per license as Oracle. FWIW, I'm an Oracle DBA. I prefer it over all of them, but since cost appears to be an issue in this case, I left it out. There goes your 'open source zealot' BS.

Getting back to how Access is a retarded POS, find me a DBA with a good knowledge of data structures and orthoganol design who will agree with you about Access. If you can, then I'll gladly show you an MS zealot.

What's a better way to do mass mailings other than Word's mail merge? Seriously, what is your happy easy solution that's better and everybody loves it?

Off the top of my head? Go ahead and pick a webapp that automatically generates emails. Mail doesn't get sent out on it's own; you can configure any of those to print out a stack of form letters without having to deal with mail merge in Word.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL is the WinME of Databases

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Blakey Rat]

What kind of fine distinction are you making here? As far as I'm concerned, when I'm sitting in front of Access, I'm working on a database. For the original poster to say it's NOT a database is, I dunno, some kind of delusion.

(The original poster didn't say it was not a "database management system", whatever the hell that is, he said it was not a database.)

Re:Here's how my police use it

[KarmaMB84]

I certainly hope they wouldn't be using Access databases, but Access can be used as a frontend to remote databases including SQL Server or other ODBC sources (potentially even MySQL). In fact, they could probably just use Access forms to generate reports rather than Word.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Blakey Rat]

Getting back to how Access is a retarded POS, find me a DBA with a good knowledge of data structures and orthoganol design who will agree with you about Access. If you can, then I'll gladly show you an MS zealot.

I think that pretty much any DBA would agree that Access is, indeed, a database. I'm making no claims about how good or bad it is, I'm just saying that it IS a database, despite your claiming otherwise. (I don't know what your criteria is for something to be a database, but by any reasonable criteria, Access fits.)

You didn't say Access was a "retarded POS" in the original message, you said Access was not a database. Go back and look it up. And don't try to make yourself look less foolish by trying to retroactively edit your message.

Off the top of my head? Go ahead and pick a webapp that automatically generates emails. Mail doesn't get sent out on it's own; you can configure any of those to print out a stack of form letters without having to deal with mail merge in Word.

The huh? How does this answer my challenge in any way? Most mail merges are for normal USPS mail. Are you saying that a webapp will somehow print envelopes for USPS mailing? I don't even want to think about what kind of weird-ass javascipt or other hackery is needed to make web browsers print correctly on envelopes.

How about maybe linking to one of these webapps instead of just vaguely suggesting they exist? What if I'm in a healthcare business who can't send patient information over the web, what then?

Re:Here's how my police use it

[SA3Steve]

Access is used much more than you may think. There are a ton of people who make a living just making Access databases for companies. A lot of times they change the UI very dramatically and it doesn't look like Access to the end user.

Access does wonders for creating small database programs quickly and efficiently. Does it scale to the same level as SQL Server, probably not. However, to claim that it is useless is ignorant to the insane amount of uses is is currently having this very day.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[YomikoReadman]

If you need to generate reports, there are better ways than Access for that, too.

Crystal Reports, Oracle Reports, and there's always the option to write a report engine from scratch in C# or Java.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[YomikoReadman]

You didn't say Access was a "retarded POS" in the original message, you said Access was not a database. Go back and look it up. And don't try to make yourself look less foolish by trying to retroactively edit your message.

Right after you do. Adding information doesn't change anything; I implied that it was a retarded POS in the same breath I called it an overblown spreadsheet.

The huh? How does this answer my challenge in any way? Most mail merges are for normal USPS mail. Are you saying that a webapp will somehow print envelopes for USPS mailing? I don't even want to think about what kind of weird-ass javascipt or other hackery is needed to make web browsers print correctly on envelopes.

I'm really sorry that I have neither a link, nor the time to handcode an application to fit your needs. However, I assure you that they do exist. As to printing envelopes, that's what windowed envelopes are for. I trust you've gotten form letters from your credit agencies, correct? I can assure you that those weren't done using Word mail merge. As for healthcare businesses, I get plenty of mail from Tricare that is in no way printed using mail merge in Word, nor do I receive it electronically.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[GreyWizard]

Are you saying that a webapp will somehow print envelopes for USPS mailing? I don't even want to think about what kind of weird-ass javascipt or other hackery is needed to make web browsers print correctly on envelopes.

Dude, I'm not sure how things work on your planet but here on earth most mail merges get printed on sticky labels of the sort they sell in 8.5 x 11 inch sheets at a place like Staples. These are then affixed to envelopes. Printing in the right dimensions from a decent web browser is easy to do using Cascading Style Sheets.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Blakey Rat]

So... you can't back up your words. Since you can't find a link, which would only take a few seconds on Google if such a product existed (I looked also; I couldn't find anything except tips on Word, Excel and Act mail merges), and since you talk about handcoding an application (surely tons more expensive than using Word and Excel out-of-the-box for only the cost of Office), I hereby declare you're full of crap.

I get plenty of mail from Tricare that is in no way printed using mail merge in Word

How do you know? Unless you work at Tricare, I don't see how you could comment on how they do their mail merges.

In any case, you're probably right... for large companies, I bet that writing a mail merge program for their specific use would be beneficial. But there's nothing wrong with doing it in Word... it works, it's stable, and the results look just as good as any other computer document, and better than a lot. And it prints on envelopes easily, regular envelopes that are cheaper than windowed ones.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Blakey Rat]

Dude, I'm not sure how things work on your planet but here on earth most mail merges get printed on sticky labels of the sort they sell in 8.5 x 11 inch sheets at a place like Staples. These are then affixed to envelopes.

Where I work, all our mail merged addresses are printed directly onto envelopes using IBM's Infoprint 1120 envelope feeder attachment. Of course you can use sticky labels as well, but either way, Word works fine... right? The original poster I'm debating with seems to think somehow that Word has problems doing mail merge, or produces substandard results.

Printing in the right dimensions from a decent web browser is easy to do using Cascading Style Sheets [w3.org].

Can you point me to a site that does that? I find that most CSS sites print very goofy, as if the browser was stripping the CSS before sending it to the printer. (Obviously, in theory CSS can do it, since you can specify page measurements all in inches, but I've never seen it happen in reality, nor have I see a webapp that prints envelopes like the original poster thinks exists.)

Re:Here's how my police use it

[16K Ram Pack]

The thing is that recording information in Word for forms is one of the most backward things about the corporate use of Office.

The problem with such input is that it is rarely validated. It's the narrow use of a computer as a glorified typewriter.

Record the report into a proper computer system. Something that means people can run reports against it to get crime statistics, and then use a tool to do printing as you need it.

I've worked in places that did form filling with Word, which them often involved someone manually going through all the forms because, unlike in a system, codes input into Word don't get validated, so you can't get a computer to find it for you.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[16K Ram Pack]

You are storing important police data locally? So, what happens when the hard drive gets trashed?

That local webserver in a server room gives much more protection.

And who on earth needs to change fonts for the purpose of a police report?

Re:Here's how my police use it

[cosmol]

The fact that you think that printing from any kind of web-based environment is a non-trivial task is laughable. I can think of many ways this could be achieved without using javascript or hackery that you think is necessary.

Personally, if I needed to have people print stuff at their desks from a web environment,I would find a pdf library for php and use that to create formatted documents. Coding such a solution would be a cakewalk for any half-respectable webmonkey.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[ShieldW0lf]

I make web applications for a living, and to duplicate what these guys can do with Word is far from trivial. Why? Because using a tool like Word gets them functionality for free that is a lot of work to code.

Well, you must not be very good at it then. I make web applications for a living too, and I could do this stuff in my sleep.

rich text - a word processor has a ton of features for rich text, including bold, italics, and lists like this one

This is not an advertising piece, it's a technical form. There is no need for any of this crap. Police documents and reports should not be formatted willy-nilly, they should be standardized and easily machine readable. Giving these capacities to police departments is simply a bad idea.

images - a picture's worth a thousand words

Are you seriously trying to tell me that you can't put images into a web application?

change history - knowing who did what is hugely helpful, and a lot of work to code

If you're using forms and a database, this is beyond trivial. I throw it into every web app I build because it takes so little effort that it's worth it just in case.

document transfer - if somebody needs to share a document, give control to somebody else, save a copy for reference, or just show it to somebody, that's easy with a document: you can email it, put it on a floppy, CD, or USB key, or put in on a network drive

Yes, you're right. The internet really isn't a very good infrastructure for document transfer. I can't believe you actually put this on your little list.

printing - any word processor gives you great control over printed output; web sites need to render everything to PDFs for that and making a web interface for controlling all that would be a bitch

Or, of course, you could use a combination of a modern browser, X(HT)ML, XSL and CSS. The 90's are over, get with the times.

widely understood - people learn how to use Word in high school now, not for whatever custom interface you build in a browser

I know, it's very challenging to use an application that is custom tailored to your problem domain, especially when you use it on a daily basis to earn your living. And we all know that only PHDs get training in using browsers and web forms.

richer UI - web apps are making some progress, but GUI apps can still have a much better user experience

If you were talking about a fat client application, you might have a point. But you're defending Word. It might be a rich UI if you're a copy editor for a magazine, but if you're a cop knocking off some reports, it's a barebones UI where you need to do all the labourous formatting yourself and full of extraneous crap that is irrelevant to what you're using it for.

And as I pointed out in another post, modifying the web app requires a real programmer, whereas any secretary can futz with forms in MS Word or change the mail merge.

Well, if you're the sort of hack whose work I'm always fixing, that's true. If, on the other hand, you've actually put in an administrative interface and used suitable abstractions, they should be able to update the thing in every fashion they are likely to need with hand-holding included.

I love web apps, but using your psychic powers to say that people you've never seen doing work you don't know about can get along fine with a trivial web app is just asinine.

My father is currently a police officer, and I'm a professional internet application developer. I didn't need to use my psychic powers for this one. Besides, using them tires me out, so I try to save them for extracting useful information from upper-management types, as that is where they are most needed.

Thank you for your little arguments. They were mildly entertaining. Do you have any more?

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

"This would be trivial to do with a web based application."

Umm, its common in many police, medical, and legal offices to have 2 computers on the desk. One with web access (which you use for research, email & the like) And another with no web access (which you use to get actual work done)

In many instances, network security is SO VITALLY IMPORTANT, that NOT having it connected to ANY open network is seen as the only way to be safe.

Perhaps it could be done with a web application, thats wonderful, but i would rather my local police station use MS office rather than some word-processor hacked into IE (cmon, you know thats what theyre going to use)

I know "web-based application" doesnt necessarily mean that the data is being transferred over the WWW, I also know what an intranet is, but the point still stands, it adds a layer of vulnerability that some people just cant afford.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Please explain what you can't do with Access that you can do with MySQL.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Anonymous Coward]

I was refering to the fact that you used the word "database" incorrectly (as well as the OP), after asking, "do you even know what the word 'database' means?" which you don't yourself.

Microsoft Access is not a database, it's a computer program. The database is the thing you edit.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[Jarlsberg]

And creating a PDF via PHP is totally free:

http://www.fpdf.org/

Re:Here's how my police use it

[YomikoReadman]

So... you can't back up your words. Since you can't find a link, which would only take a few seconds on Google if such a product existed (I looked also; I couldn't find anything except tips on Word, Excel and Act mail merges), and since you talk about handcoding an application (surely tons more expensive than using Word and Excel out-of-the-box for only the cost of Office), I hereby declare you're full of crap.

Since you want to be an asshat about this, any reports engine in the world can do that. For mass document generation, mail merges are the WORST way to do it, and any IT professional who says otherwise should be shot. Don't take this to mean you should never; there are instances where it's good. However, for anything of scale it's total crap.

How do you know? Unless you work at Tricare, I don't see how you could comment on how they do their mail merges.

No, I don't work at Tricare. However, I do work with contractors who, in the past, have worked on contract for them, and guess what? The system they use to track patient information, which includes a method of mass printing mail, doesn't use Word, Access, or any of that crap.

As to regular envelopes being cheaper.. yea, they probably are. However, if you're working for an organization that is small enough to use Access as your database, and Word's mail merge is a good way of generating form letters, then I suppose that's fine and dandy. Most places which I've worked for generally don't worry about that, and apply best practices.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[elrous0]

You are storing important police data locally? So, what happens when the hard drive gets trashed?

We go to the most recent of multiple backups, of course.

That local webserver in a server room gives much more protection.

Yeah, and it also opens the site up to the entire world, meaning a multitude of additional security headaches.

And who on earth needs to change fonts for the purpose of a police report?

I know most people have an image of law enforcement agencies as being comprised of a bunch of morons typing away on keyboards. But, believe it or not, some of us also produce publications, newsletters, fact sheets, flyers, etc. just like any other modern organization.

And even a basic report needs to different font sizes for headers, references, etc.

-Eric

Re:Here's how my police use it

[elrous0]

So your saying you don't allready have a fulltime security staff to protect your distributed very confidential data stored on various places and files in a windows context?

Of course we do, wiseguy. But protecting a webserver in addition to the work that already goes into protecting the internal network is going to require additional personel. It's hardly a trivial difference. And that's not to mention the aforementioned additional maintenance and upkeep, the programmers to set it up, etc.

We're not the FBI, you know. We don't have money to throw away on multi-million $$ sofware contracts.

-Eric

Re:Here's how my police use it

[GreyWizard]

The original poster I'm debating with seems to think somehow that Word has problems doing mail merge, or produces substandard results.

Whatever. I'm responding to what you said, which was: "I don't even want to think about what kind of weird-ass javascipt or other hackery is needed to make web browsers print correctly on envelopes." That is a statement made from ignorance of which you have since been disabused. You have my permission to admit as much without retracting everything else you've said.

Can you point me to a site that does that?

I made no claims about any particular sites doing this. I only said that it would be easy. Do your own googling or read the CSS specification and implement it yourself. I'm not familiar with the Infoprint 1120 but if it's reasonably sane you could probably get a CSS application to print in the correct dimensions without much trouble.

I find that most CSS sites print very goofy, as if the browser was stripping the CSS before sending it to the printer.

That's because the browser is stripping the CSS before sending it to the printer. Style sheets are normally linked with media="screen" and I believe this is the default if no media attribute is specified. Using media="print" will make the rules in the specified style sheet apply only to printers and using media="screen, print" will make the rules apply to both the screen and printers. Try it. It's easy and if you're using a compliant browser it works.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[yuri benjamin]

You think the cops don't have a computer on their desk connected to some nation-wide crime-busting database?
They do here in New Zealand, which is hardly the most developed country in the world, so surely the good ol' US of A would have something similar.

Re:Here's how my police use it

[yuri benjamin]

find me a DBA with a good knowledge of data structures and orthoganol design who will agree with you about Access.

My brother-in-law.

If you can, then I'll gladly show you an MS zealot.

Uncanny! He's that too!

I declare you the winner!

made similar recomendation myself

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry to the open source advocates, but in a similar situation i made the same recomendation, go to MS office. if only 5% adopt OpenOffice and 95% use MS Office, there is just enough incompatibility to make it a supreme pain in the ass. if you can get 95% to use OpenOffice than that is a completely different story. OpenOffice only opens simple MS Word Docs properly, anything advanced looks like absolute crap in OpenOffice. And no one wanted to field endless questions about how to reformat docs everytime a different department sent them something. BTW - the company was not entertaining the idea of everyone moving to OpenOffice.

HAHA opensores losers!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!

You must be new here.

[ninja_assault_kitten]

Any time someone/something switches to a MS product away from an non-MS product, they must have been doing it because they're either clueless. There can be no other possible option. Even a product was completely inferior as Star Office.

Now carry on with your business elsewhere, and remember, Linus is lord.

That's because your students are educated

[Safety Cap]

Installing and configuring complex software is not something the average person can do. It takes technical aptitude, knowledge and some experience to get it right.

Microsoft historically has gone for the easy way out by hiding the complicated functions below a pretty "Click 'OK' to automatically install and configure your firewall" MessageBox, which is fine if you're writing a document, but not so good if you need to tweak out your server for maximum functionality and security.

You can see this mentality in everything they do. From Visual Studio with it's horrible automatically-generated code, to their AD permissions 'wizard', they are all about one thing: selling widgets. And the number one rule is selling a mass-market product requires convenience over functionality or security.

LAMP is built for the do-it-yourself/tinkerer crowd, and therefore the average person will never be able to install, configure, or maintain a LAMP environment or application.

Re:That's because your students are educated

[MirrororriM]

LAMP is built for the do-it-yourself/tinkerer crowd, and therefore the average person will never be able to install, configure, or maintain a LAMP environment or application.

Perhaps you've never heard of XAMPP?

Re:That's because your students are educated

[jmrSudbury]

Why are we even discussing the setup and configuration of LAMP? The police officers using Star Office don't have to set anything up. They just have to use the software. Average users don't have to set anything up. Nor can they even reinstall windows on their system. They call people like me to do it for them when their system becomes riddled with viruses and stops working. I am sure the Tech department of the Scottish police had educated people to setup the systems to get them working. The problem came when trying to share the documents. There may have been other troubles, but they don't seem to me to have been issues directly related to Star Office. Difficulty in configuring the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station does not seem to be a Star Office problem. If they had switched 100%, I doubt that the network problems would have existed. A homogenous setup is much easier. That is what they are choosing.

Re:That's because your students are educated

[coolGuyZak]

And the number one rule is selling a mass-market product requires convenience over functionality or security.

I just headpalm-ed myself so hard that I gave myself a concussion...

While I agree that convenience sells, there is no excuse for having a system that doesn't present at least a modicum of security by default... As MS has found out over the past few years. You should be ashamed for even thinking of such a statement, much less posting it.

I'll be back later guys, I need to stumble over the ER.

You miss the point.

[Zombie Ryushu]

Look, I do care how advanced MS is. I do care that OSS is under threat from Closed software of extinction. What matters is that our Police and Governments are using this closed source software. OSS Software will make it to MS's level of interoperability eventually but in this instance we should be trying to give OSS as many victories as possible because if OSS fails we will be living in the enslaved societies that RMS writees about. The average consumer doesn't understand his civil and Human rights are under threat by these closed source software companies. It may be MS, or it may be something else.

The point is that F/OSS needs victories by any means nessessary. The longer these Closed source companies stay in control, the greater the threat of large scale curtailing of Freedom of speech, expression, fair use, and other things will come under attack.

This is a threat that F/OSS needs economic power and Market Share and Mindshare to Neutralize. To get Marketshare and Mindshare F/OSS needs to produce more powerful applications beyond anything end Users could possibly get with MS, and device drivers far beyond what MS can produce. To do that we need strong F/OSS developers to push F/OSS Software as far as is can possibly go, to its limits and beyond. If F/OSS is weak, the ideals F/OSS will perish and Humanity will pay the price.

I'm not concerned with what a completely blind consumer public thinks because the consuming public is selfish and doesn't understand. It wants what it can get its hands on. They are the mob, and right now, the mob is happy with Closed Source, but I trust F/OSS in the hands of average people, rather than Closed in the hands of Closed average people because Closed source companies will become Tyrannies given the chance.

You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[mgkimsal2]

You know, I used to be the standard-bearer for that argument, but as of OO 1.9x, interoperability with MS is getting pretty damned good. Particularly the word processor.

I'm late to the thread here, but it seems that most people with the 'OpenOffice is nearly there' argument haven't really seen MS Office being used in medium to large organizations.

The MS Office integration with the network system (AD/Exchange) and now Sharepoint make the technical menu imitations of OpenOffice nearly irrelevant.

From a website, I can click a button, open a spreadsheet *in the browser* (not a full browser takeover, just embedded in part of the web page), make changes/updates, then save the document, and it'll save back on the network drive (or wherever it came from) seamlessly. If live realtime document collaboration of any Office doc was able to be embedded in IE already, I wouldn't be surprised.

MS has moved beyond the reach of OpenOffice for the next few years because they've taken multi-domain integration to the next stage, way ahead of the fragmentation that exists (almost by definition) in the open source world.

I'm writing this as someone who has pretty much used LAMP for about 9 years, and uses Linux on my desktop daily for the past 3.

Now, if someone was to take the novell openexchange system and define new protocols such that Firefox/Mozilla could do realtime openoffice document embedding and communication with the openexchange server, throwing in an embedded gaim client using a jabber protocol for good measure, and made this cross platform, that would be a serious contender. I'm afraid that won't happen for a few years, until a bunch of OSS developers get a glimpse of what's going on in the corporate world. Unfortunately, that may *never* happen, as many of them wouldn't get hired in the first place.

In short, Microsoft is staying ahead of the competition now by offering extremely tight integration among their core products, and it's only going to continue to go down that path. Not saying it's a bad thing - it's really the only way they *can* go, and I think it'll serve them well easily for another 3-5 years. That's about as far as I'll make predictions. :)

Re:You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[Mr. Underbridge]

In short, Microsoft is staying ahead of the competition now by offering extremely tight integration among their core products, and it's only going to continue to go down that path. Not saying it's a bad thing - it's really the only way they *can* go, and I think it'll serve them well easily for another 3-5 years. That's about as far as I'll make predictions. :)

Well, you're right. I work in one of those organizations as well, and yes - I lose the convenience of the integration because I have to download, edit, save, and upload where an MS user won't have to.

I'm not concerned about using OO for evangelism. Personally, I already know that the sacrifices of convenience caused by not using MS's tightly integrated suite will be made up when I don't have to deal with all the other MS related hassles.

Therefore, to me it doesn't matter if OO loses that functionality, because I don't care that I won't convince the rest of the office to switch. All that matters to me is that someone using Word can send me a document, I can edit it, send it back, they reopen it, and can't tell that I *don't* use word. That's what I mean by interoperability. If that didn't work, I'd have to switch away from linux and back to MS hell. Or go with Vmware, which has its own issues, or crossover (same), etc.

Assuming we're not using specific 3rd-party plugins to Word - and we don't - I can successfully work in an MS workplace without MS software. OO is there now, and it wasn't there two years ago. This, to me, is a major victory.

I do think you make a good point about Novell doing something about browser ingeration and such.

Re:You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[mgkimsal2]

Well, you're right. I work in one of those organizations as well, and yes - I lose the convenience of the integration because I have to download, edit, save, and upload where an MS user won't have to.

And when you add that small 'convenience' factor (that you're OK with giving up) across thousands or tens of thousands of users, you get a huge savings, in training, increased efficiencies, etc. It's little wonder people stick with MS with innovations such as that - and I'm being completely serious here. It wasn't until I saw the day to day goings on in a 2200+ person company that I realized the efficiencies that MS integration can bring.

That's not to say that OSS packages don't offer some advantages in some arenas - they do. And here is where MS still has the name brand/familiarity advantage. It's their game to lose, and they still might if they don't continually keep on top of things.

Frankly, without some major hardware changes in the next few years, I don't see that much more integration that can be done to keep ahead of where OSS will eventually catch up to. BUT, seeing to the future is a difficult job, and no one knows exactly where the future will bring us.

Back to your point - *you* can successfully work in an MS office without MS software. But at what price to the employer and the rest of the workplace? It's not just your measured productivity that goes down when it takes you an extra couple of minutes to download/open/edit/save/reupload a document - the others you are communicating back to lose out as well. I'm speaking mostly to internal corporate workgroups here - perhaps there are other situations where this isn't as big of an impact.

Anyway, thanks for the response. I do wish some of the larger companies - Novell, IBM, etc. - would throw resources at this issue of office suite integration with external tools (browsers, LDAP, calendaring, etc.). There's no technical reason why someone couldn't come up with a good solution to this in, say, 1 year's time. My only fear is that Sun would try, and screw it up, by insisting Java be thrown in, then just writing a bunch of design specs on how a Java(tm) solution for the problem *should* look, and people then saying how awesome Sun is for providing leadership. We need some leadership, but we need practical work done as well. Don't get me wrong - Sun's done great work by giving us the base of OpenOffice, but what sort of external application integration work has happened in OpenOffice in the past 5 years (or ever?) Little or none. That's not Sun's fault, but another company could take up the cause and hasn't.

I really don't understand if most people don't see the integration possibilities which MS has already demonstrated or what. I do know I had discussions with people years ago (2000?) about replicating the IE-only WYSIWYG embedded HTML editor. Most OSS zealots I talked to about it either didn't understand what it was, or said that was pointless/useless/stupid/whatever. Being in the web application development space, I saw a HUGE need for this. Eventually Mozilla/Firefox caught up, mostly, but it took *years*, and was yet another reason for people to build IE only apps, which we're only now seeing a push away from (in some circles anyway).

Is this *only* a case of "it doesn't affect me, so I won't write software for it?" Don't throw back the "write it yourself" mantra. Plenty of OSS is written by individuals who don't have a direct need for the software - this is done by corps like Sun, IBM, Novell, etc. So why aren't they devoting more to this space? Do they fear a backlash from MS?

Anyway, done ranting for now... :)

Re:You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[Mr. Underbridge]

And when you add that small 'convenience' factor (that you're OK with giving up) across thousands or tens of thousands of users, you get a huge savings, in training, increased efficiencies, etc. It's little wonder people stick with MS with innovations such as that - and I'm being completely serious here. It wasn't until I saw the day to day goings on in a 2200+ person company that I realized the efficiencies that MS integration can bring.

And I've also seen the effects of virii and spyware that allows MS to bring a company to its knees. Not sure where the savings offset is there, but I'm pretty sure that if your userbase is competent, you win with non-MS OS's, even without these integration benefits.

Back to your point - *you* can successfully work in an MS office without MS software. But at what price to the employer and the rest of the workplace? It's not just your measured productivity that goes down when it takes you an extra couple of minutes to download/open/edit/save/reupload a document

Yes, but my measured productivity goes up so much from using Linux vs. Windows that it absolutely swamps that convenience difference. As a fairly proficient user, I save more time by having actual shell scriping abilities and other benefits of a functional command line. Given same, I can also do the dl,edit,save,ul cycle a lot faster than most (the dl/save/ul part takes me easily under a minute). Therefore, my system is a definite time saver for me. I don't recommend it to others because it wouldn't work for most.

the others you are communicating back to lose out as well.

I don't see how, as far as they're concerned they can't tell. Given OWA, I even still have full exchange functionality, so my OS choice is invisible to my coworkers. Got my samba tricked out and everything.

I do wish some of the larger companies - Novell, IBM, etc. - would throw resources at this issue of office suite integration with external tools (browsers, LDAP, calendaring, etc.).

Novell is, they bought Ximian for just that reason.

Most OSS zealots I talked to about it either didn't understand what it was, or said that was pointless/useless/stupid/whatever. Being in the web application development space, I saw a HUGE need for this.

So you're right and they're wrong because....? You won't win many arguments invoking the z-word. Integration is a double (at least) edged sword, because it also means complete vendor lockin, and that's not a benefit.

this *only* a case of "it doesn't affect me, so I won't write software for it?" Don't throw back the "write it yourself" mantra. Plenty of OSS is written by individuals who don't have a direct need for the software - this is done by corps like Sun, IBM, Novell, etc. So why aren't they devoting more to this space? Do they fear a backlash from MS?

It's not as easy as you make it sound. For one, there is no single company who can do this - developing standards - arbitrarily, so it takes a coalition which is actually buiding. The things you talk about are all actually being developed. So it's a matter of time.

Second, MS is a moving target and intentionally so. What Novell et al. need is not just an integrated suite - honestly, that's pretty much done as of 3 years ago minimum - they need a suite which mirrors MS's piece for piece. And what MS will do, if they even succeed at completely mirroring all the closed stantards MS uses - is change the standards. They did it to Word Perfect all the time and that was a single, standalone product. When you're talking about communication between a number of products, their potential to break OSS integration is limitless. And they will do that, because it's what they always do.

Re:You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[WhiteWolf666]

KDE can do these kinds of tricks.

Sadly, KOffice is no where near OpenOffice.org

What we need is OpenOffice.org rewritten for QT, and the implemented using KParts.

That's like 20 years of programmer time worth of work, though.

Re:You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[WhiteWolf666]

Here's what you are looking for:
http://dot.kde.org/1075705744/

In particular, we're waiting for
Will "integration" include support for important low level KDE features like the Kiosk framework sometime?
First of all, the KDE NWF and KDE vclplug have to be stabilized. Then I can integrate KIO and KDE dialogs to OOo and continue with further efforts, be it KParts, Kiosk or other KDE features. I am afraid it won't happen before 2005.


Sure, its not gnome, its KDE only. But that's the beauty of KParts and KIO. Click on .odt (or .doc, or whatever OpenOffice.org supports). Load document into the same browser window. KDE-style openoffice.org widgets pop-up. Save directly to HTTP (or HTTPS or anything that KIO supports, including crazy things like FISH).

Experience full KPart integration with Kroupware, and any QT app on your desktop.

Be Happy.

KDE is doing all the network stuff you can dream off, and they are *way* ahead of MS. Just look at the KIO framework. It's fascinating.

You could open/save a document from HTTP://, FTP://, HTTPS://, FISH://, CAMERA://, or any other number of KIO protocols, and you can even easily implement your own.

I'd make you a list of which ones are avaliable on my machine, but its really too long for me to copy and paste easily. Think things like SVN+HTTPS://, SVN+SSH://, WEBDAVS://, or whatever ;-)

Re:You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[jiushao]

Unfortunately this misses the depth of the features in Office. The shared files also feature merging, conflict resolution and unified modification histories (together with a special mode to review the differences between revisions), and this is just things I remember off the top of my head in Office 97. Later versions apparently include things like fine-grained ACL's for parts of the documents and such also.

To some part it is easy to miss how deep Office features run, the typical free alternatives offer the 10% of functionality that is used 90% of the time, it is just that most real world use situations of Office (in a corporate environment) will use one single feature out of those 90% which they dont want to do without.

Overall it is not a coincidence or dumb luck that Microsoft Office is the success it is, there really are no alternative that actually manages to provide even a fraction of all the in-depth features. On the flip side KDE really is doing a lot of nice fundamental work which will allow a lot of useful functionality easily, and this really if more important than spending forever trying to get OpenOffice to feature-parity with Office (which I actually consider to be a nearly hopeless project that wont actually change anything even if it succeeds).

Re:You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

no it isn't.

kde.openoffice.org.

It won't be long until you can run it on windows either.

Re:You haven't experienced Sharepoint then...

[dereference]

I was agreeing with you, up until the point you said:

Overall it is not a coincidence or dumb luck that Microsoft Office is the success it is

You're right; it wasn't coincidence or dumb luck, instead it was illegal business practices. Why do so many people here seem to forget that Microsoft cheated to get where they are today?

Somewhat ironically, I agree with most of your posting, that Office is indeed too far ahead to catch. However, you really lose lots of credibility when you can't admit that it was not something as grand as "innovation" that got them there. They got a nice head-start from their illegal (and dare I say unethical) behavior.

Change the setup then people wont complain...

[jzarling]

It takes only a few seconds to alter the default Save as file formats. Set them to thier nearest M$ equivalant, and Im betting only in the rarest of cases will you have compatibility issue with Word/TXT documents.

Im betting the move was not so much a cost savings measure, but more of a "the old man aint happy with it",

Will it be on the exam?

[dbIII]

I make close to 40 dollars an hour. If I spend 10 hours learning OpenOffice, any savings are washed out

Think of all that money you lose when you sleep!

In the office where I work there is a secretary who is asked several times a day "can you PDF that for me?" - the person then goes over, shows where the document is, and the secretary uses a printer driver based on ghostscript to convert it to PDF, probably close to a minimum of a two minute operation for two people considering the secretary has to switch from the current task. If the user had openoffice they could click on the "export to pdf" button which is in plain view at all times, an operation of several seconds at the most. Those ten hours saved could be racked up fairly quickly.

I've seen the above argument about valuble time used by those that don't want to learn something because you think it won't be on the exam - it's time to put away childish attitudes, step back, and look at it in other ways. There are plenty of tasks in a workplace that are useful but do not grant instant gratification. Unfortunately you can't know if it is going to be an improvement without actually learning something about it.

use Doctor salaries

A doctor that does not spend time on reading to keep up with their education is a rare and dangerous thing. If you have to spend 10 hours learning OpenOffice then your job depends heavily on office packages producing exceptional presentation and you certainly should spend the time - even if it does nothing useful but give you insights on other ways to do useful stuff with your existing package or a way to recover damaged files for your existing package that your existing package cannot.

From a business's perspective, the best software is ALWAYS the software you know

Don't seem to see a lot of dbase or lotus123 about these days. Sometimes you need to sit back, look at how things are done and think about why, how else it could be done and what the consequences would be. For example - drink cans always used to have straight sides and were made of steel - sometimes the most unexpected things that look a lot more expensive at first can save a lot of money.

In this case in Scotland it looked like a major requirement was interoperability with MSOffice - so a deal which gives cheap copies of MSOffice solves that while just dumping StarOffice on a few people without addressing the issue with all people involved does not. Collaborative writing of documents is something that probably wasn't considered enough - with proper planning that could have been dealt with even if the packages had major format difference - system integrators do that sort of stuff all of the time.

It looks like the real problem was that StarOffice is not MS Office but it was treated as if it was.

Re:Will it be on the exam?

[AutopsyReport]

A doctor that does not spend time on reading to keep up with their education is a rare and dangerous thing. If you have to spend 10 hours learning OpenOffice then your job depends heavily on office packages producing exceptional presentation and you certainly should spend the time - even if it does nothing useful but give you insights on other ways to do useful stuff with your existing package or a way to recover damaged files for your existing package that your existing package cannot.

Actually, doctor's spend their time educating themselves on important and critical things, not tasks like learning how to use another word processor.

There's absolutely no need to know how to use OpenOffice if your job duties do not include it -- and since you stuck with the doctor example, 10 hours is a lot of time to dedicate to learn a piece of software that likely would never be introduced in the workplace... considering your work weeks are upwards of 60hours + conservatively.

Furthermore, most office employees are familiar with Microsoft Word. If you have to introduce every new employee to OpenOffice, it's a repetitve and time-consuming task. Most companies rationalize it's better to pay the upfront cost for MS Word to keep the time being spent on the things that matter most -- which does not include training someone on an open source application.

Re:Will it be on the exam?

[dbIII]

and since you stuck with the doctor example, 10 hours is a lot of time

A doctor is extremely unlikely to need all the features in an office package that would require 10 hours to learn it - I think my point above was missed. If it takes you ten hours then you are covering a lot of details which only make sense if "your job depends heavily on office packages producing exceptional presentation" as I said above - ie. secretarial work which medical staff can pass on to be dealt with by others once the actual words are in the file. The doctor will write it once, the secretary has to work out how to do a mail merge in whatever package to send it out to a group of people, or whatever. The doctor over the course of their training will also have used more than one word processor (there are even eneough differences between word97 and word2000 to catch people) so is unlikely to find the differences in menu locations a big deal and will be using most stuff in seconds.

Furthermore, most office employees are familiar with Microsoft Word. If you have to introduce every new employee

People are taught MS Office software by rote in school, just like they are taught a lot of stuff by rote which never should be taught that way. As a result people are using visual memory to navigate a path through menus. The disadvantage of this is that even a new release of MS Office screws all of this up because the way to access some things moves. The consequence of this is that you really should retrain people who use it extensively when the new release comes out instead of watching them stumble with it (and refuse to read the manual because that's too much like school!). Also you have the situations like the person who thinks they can use MS Word, has been using it for 5 years, and still thinks a 5MB letterhead is normal when asked to do a standard letterhead for the company and take care on it. Although I hated it when I went through it years ago and found it boring (inserting pictures is for power users is beyond the scope of this course!), training in Office packages beyond the High School level is beneficial and should be done even if you are moving to a re-release. Most people don't actually read the manuals so we need to train them if we want them to use the software effectively. The doctor example above, at least the ones I know, would skim the manual, look at half a dozen pages, and that's all they need to know about it - most people don't write macros or use a lot of the other features and really only want to use two types of charts. Some may need to know more - two medical specialists I know set up the IT infrastructure at their practices to the extent of assembling all of their boxes from components and running their own cable - really because they wanted to do it their own way because they learned stuff that was not on the exam, and didn't want to pay someone to come out from the city to do things they could do simply themselves. In those two cases they set up the software for the secretarial staff - so they had to know a bit about the office packages - but not enough for ten hours learning the stuff - the differences aren't that large, and it doesn't take all that long if you actually RTFM.

Re:HA!!!

[ShoobieRat]

Agreed. Looks like yet another company climbed on top of the Linux-Wall and took a look at the whole picture.

Wow...

[ShoobieRat]

That's all I'm saying. I'm surprised this news was allowed in here...This kind of stuff isn't favorable in Slashdot.

Yet another company chooses to make their own decisions, rather than fall to blindfold propoganda! Cool beans.

Re:HA!!!

[iggymanz]

funny, I've been making my living for the last 6 years with projects going away from Microsoft and Unix(tm) to Linux, and not a one has gone the other way. We're bound to see a percentage of cases where that happens, but is that the case in the majority of enterprises that have chosen to use open source? Buggy software can be written as either closed or open source, the license of a software has nothing to do with quality. A solid requirements gathering process, management of developers, discipline, version control, regression testing, use of user feedback & bug reporting, these are some things that make good software.

It was not a migration at all!

[miffo.swe]

Apparantly the network was linuxservers at branch offices with MS Windows Desktops running StarOffice. To top it off expensive Sun servers running Staroffice stuff was in the mix. This was not what i would call a Linux migration in the first place! It was more of a Sun -> Microsoft migration.

Even more astonoshing is the fact that Microsoft apparantly promised to help develop an application that according to the Scottish would cost £100.00!

They only paid £60.000 for the licenses so i would say they got a VERY sweat deal on this. Can you get any cheaper than to get paid to use a product?

Read this article for some facts:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/11/HNscotti shpolice_1.html

Not so hard to understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone who did some consulting about 4 years ago on technical architecture to a police department, I can see how this would happen.

You see (how can I put this delicately?) ... police officers are "kinda flakey" when it comes to things like copyright. ie. they don't earn shedloads and they like to pirate software they can use at home. MS products are cool and sexy in this department because they are expensive retail.

Also, as someone else pointed out, they are completely beholden to their PC support people - who are frequently MS drones.

I well remember having the drones in to back up the MS salespeople and insist, nay insist, that MS products could completely replace a huge IBM mainframe application (and associated database) that has evolved over the last 30 years (and has 30 years of data in it).

"Migration? We can rewrite that in Access in 10 seconds flat. Scale? Just scale out. Integrate? Nah, just partition the data for common queries"

They had absolutely no clue, but they (the MS weenies) had the ear of the senior officers because they were the "go-to-guys" when the chief superintendents laptop broke.

It was very difficult to get past this, and we basically had to persuade the PC guys that "yes, you'll still have jobs; no, we like you really; no, we're not pulling out PC's"

Only 5%

[jmrSudbury]

You seem to have forgotten your history. It was about marketing and putting their office products in with every system sold that gave Microsoft market share. "Oh, it comes with the computer, so now I don't have to buy Word Perfect." The users did not know about vendor lockin. They could not forsee forced upgrades. THe police may be congratulated for giving it a shot, but how much of a shot was it? They had trouble with integration with Microsoft Office products. Big surprise. The pilot project should have compared only within the 5% versus work outside the 5%. Which section, per capita, was better, cheaper, and easier. Add to that list any other criteria for which they were looking. Trying to make the sections mesh will not work. That has been proven time and time again as OSS pilot projects have 'failed'. Perhaps the problem is not the software but the politics that hamper a true test. If they had switched 100%, then where would the integration problems have been? They could even go to OpenOffice and use an open document standard, so even if they have AbiWord at home, they can still open the files. Vendor lockin is an annoyance.

Yeah...what losers them police are

[shintaro]

They should spend all their time with instructions like

"I had to use the approach documented at http://xxxx/linux/kernel/0306.3/axer.html but with a few slight modifications. These steps will get it working by apparently putting the app into compatibility mode. A hack, but a working pointer is better than no pointer at all! "

Yeah them criminals can have the city, we're working out how to get this doc to print.

(The above comment was adapted from a real forum post)

RTF's are freaking HUGE

[everphilski]

I had a Microsoft Word document delivered to me that was corrupt (it would read fine and edit fine ... but I couldn't PDF it for distrobution) so I tried RTFing it ... the file was an order of magnitude larger (went from 25mb to in excess of 300mb)

If you are heavy on the style and images (in my case, engineering reports) RTF's suck.

-everphilski-

What's the title got to do with it?

[burySCO]

This article is titled "Scottish police pick Windows in software line-up", but the article is about the choice between two applications. It doesn't seem to be about choosing to run windows vs. a different O/S. (The article says they were running StarOffice from Solaris/Linux servers but on windows machines... were they really running x-emulation software on windows to communicate with the solaris/linux hosts or did they have the user component of Staroffice running on those windows machines?) The fact that the author chooses a title this misleading makes me wonder how much of the rest of the article is "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" I'm afraid

Re:What's the title got to do with it?

[gbjbaanb]

However, what about the bit at the end - "were moving our incident management system to Linux". Does anyone know which system that is?

how about OpenOffice?

[Anonymous Coward]

speaking about low cost, open standards, and interoperability - why are they not using OpenOffice?

MS Office bundled for free

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Dell Pentium/133MHz desktop in 1995 and it came with a free copy of MS Office Pro (?) 95 and a CD with a boatload of other software, including Visio (before it was MS Visio). Very nice, but I still stuck with WordPerfect for quite a while afterward. When MS Word started showing up at work more often than WPWin, that's when I switched, kicking and screaming... :-)

Re:MS Office bundled for free

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Dell Pentium/133MHz desktop in 1995 and it came with a free copy of MS Office Pro (?) 95

If you bought the PC then MS Office wasn't included for free. It came bundled with your purchase so you bought it along with the PC. Saying that Office was free is like saying "Hey! I just got a free set of tires from Ford when I bought this new pickup truck!" No, the tires were not free they were bundled as part of the pickup truck that you just paid money for.

Re:MS Office bundled for free

[Ravnen]

It wasn't listed in the invoice? In my experience, computer sellers always try to convince customers buying PCs from them to add software bundles and other things, but except for very cheap software and some operating system, these bundles are always optional items.

Re:MS Office bundled for free

[lwriemen]

Go back to the 1990s. It was bundled, but if you chose not to get it, there was no price break. (Just like with Windows itself.)

When Microsoft got into trouble in the first antitrust case, it switched it's per-processor licensing agreements from the Windows OS to Microsoft Office. It later got in trouble for this, but like in the Windows case, the damage was done. i.e., the monopoly was in place.

Lotus and (whoever owned WordPerfect) sometime around 1995 were offering their office suite for under $100 when Microsoft Office was $300-$400. Some PC vendors tried offering the alternatives, but this went away in less than a year. (Probably due to Microsoft pressure.)

Re:MS Office bundled for free

[Ravnen]

I don't have experience of the market in those days, so I'll take your word for it. However, this still doesn't explain why Word and Excel were dominant on the Apple Mac years before they were market leaders on the PC, unless Apple bundled them (I don't know, but this would surprise me if it happened). If it was not simply a matter of being better products, why were WordPerfect, Lotus, et al. unable to compete with Microsoft on the Mac? The most convincing argument I've heard is that they failed to appreciate the importance of the GUI, which is why the transition from DOS to Windows on the PC undermined their business models.

As for the prices, I've read economic analyses which show the prices for Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect were higher than those for Excel and Word, respectively, until 1995. By 1995, Word and Excel had achieved 70-80% market share, so the moderate price reductions by Lotus and WordPerfect (for products which were still more poorly rated than Excel and Word) weren't enough to stop their decline. Steep price falls to 1-2-3 and WordPerfect only came in 1996 and 1997, and they never achieved technical superiority. With tiny market shares and technically inferior products, it's easy to see why low prices weren't enough to save WordPerfect and Lotus, but only starved them of the income needed to develop their declining products.

By the way, can you provide a link documenting a switch by Microsoft from per-processor licensing of Windows to per-processor licensing of Office? The original anti-trust case against Microsoft (over abuse of Windows to undermine Netscape) was filed in 1998, long after WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 had collapsed. A licensing change after 1998 couldn't have had anything to do with Word and Excel gaining market dominance, since this had happened some years earlier: by 1997, both products had more than 90% market share in revenue terms.

Re:MS Office bundled for free

[lwriemen]

You might want to look at http://reactor-core.org/in-microsoft-we-trust.html It's obviously constructed out of bias, but presents factual information.
Here's the per-processor announcement for the OS, http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/Pre_96/July94/94387.tx t.html as you can see it's 1994. This antitrust investigation was started by the FTC in 1990.
http://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/cyberlaw/ microsoft/state_suit.html section 11 details the case against Microsoft's bundling of Office.
NOTE: I never said Microsoft Office overtook Lotus and Wordperfect unfairly (although there has been comment on Microsoft using hidden APIs in their Office software to their advantage). Liebowitz's analysis is true in this respect. Microsoft just unfairly closed the market once they overtook the competition.

Re:MS Office bundled for free

[Ravnen]

Thanks for the links. I still don't see anything about per-processor licensing of MS Office (as opposed to MS-DOS and MS Windows), or economic (as opposed to legal) arguments, but it's still helpful background information. At the same time, there are some obvious major problems with the arguments on http://reactor-core.org/in-microsoft-we-trust.html . The first is the absence of economic theory, the second is the lack of hard data to back up the points being made and the third is lack of sources (which in an academic paper would alone be fatal).

I never said Microsoft Office overtook Lotus and Wordperfect unfairly (although there has been comment on Microsoft using hidden APIs in their Office software to their advantage). Liebowitz's analysis is true in this respect. Microsoft just unfairly closed the market once they overtook the competition.

In that case, there was a miscommunication. I tend to agree that Microsoft didn't unfairly overtake 1-2-3 and WordPerfect (based on what I've read), and I don't know enough about the tactics Microsoft used to maintain its dominance in the office-suite market to hold a meaningful opinion about whether or not they were unfair, or likely had a significant economic impact.

l will bet the users didnt make this decision

[bxbaser]

Im sure this decision had nothing to do with usage.
The person who makes the decisions decided to switch back.
When do actual users have anything to do with purchasing decisions ?

Or better yet when are actual users allowed to have anything to do with purchasing decisions?

Of course this is just mere speculation on my part.

Re:l will bet the users didnt make this decision

[fishbowl]

"Or better yet when are actual users allowed to have anything to do with purchasing decisions?"

When they are successful in their careers. Until then, they usually just complain that the successful people making decisions above them are idiots.

Don't bleat on about Choice ....

[endeavour31]

/. is really circling the drain regarding enlightned debate.

It is so tiresome to see everybody screaming about OSS providing freedom to choose software tools - but it is only good when the choice is excersized in favour of Linux. The instant a choice is made to MS (god forbid) the hue and cry appears condemning those regressive bastards as idiots or dupes.

Don't offer choice if you are pushing an agenda. It is their choice, they tried something different - and it did not work out for them. Lets stop getting the knickers in a twist simply because someone went against the /. orthodoxy.

Policy?

[netringer]

Is it really "Policy" meaning "Police?"

I guess I should Google that.

You guys who invented the language sure do talk funny.

Re:Policy?

[netringer]

OK, I Googled it.

"Policy" here is a typo. There is a Scotland Policy, but they aren't the Police. They work on policies.

Carry on.

80/20 rule

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

Microsoft follows the 80/20 rule. They sell you the eighty percent solution and deliver twenty percent of what you really need, plus a whole lot of bells and whistles to keep the bean counters happy and help look busy when your boss passes by.

But what you're mostly doing is fighting to make the software do what it's advertised to do, playing with the bells and whistles, or doing by hand what the other 20% of what the software actually did get 80% right, or undoing the stuff it did wrong.

Microsoft seems to write their software under the assumption that life is a context-free grammar.

Seats/people

[hummassa]

Hi Kjella.
I work at Minas Gerais State Assembly (our State legislative house). We have 3000 employees and approximately 700 workstations. Why?
1. Many employees do not need to do paperwork.
2. Many employees have paperwork as a small part of their jobs, and can share a workstation (police officers, especially foot-soldiers would be most certainly part of those). Here, we do have drivers, office-boys, security people, building maintenance people, computer maintenance people, in this category.
3. Many employees have rotating times, and so they can share a workstation (repeating the item 2). Again, we have people like the tachigraphs, that rotate their shifts.
When I wander around (and I do so a lot, because I have 7 different in-house-bred programs to maintain and I many times I have to go to the users' workstations), I often see people doing the non-computer-involving part of their work.
OTOH, we *do* have a lot of servers: web servers, intranet servers, database servers, storage servers. I think there are 15 or so servers, at least, in our network. Some of the data is compartimentalized, so there is a lot of stuff being processed.
Got it?

One word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Notepad.

Oh no...

[rrgmitchell]

The Leith police dismisseth us!!

It's not just Office, it's Sharepoint...

[pdxaaron]

Per The Register article here, they are moving to Sharepoint, which is a big step up functionality-wise from Office, and is a whole world of functionality from what StarOffice could offer.

Document and team collaberation, automatic versioning, task managment, Document consolidation, Sharepoint may turn out to be Microsoft's killer app for businesses. Sets up easy, and can be rolled out to non-technical users thoughout the business to create and maintain their own departmental sites. I

Two words

[Smid]

Police Corruption

Why the web obsession?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You're missing the point. A desktop app can do everything web forms can do. And what's more, it doesn't permanently erase your last half hour's work when you accidentally hit escape while reaching for your coffee, and it doesn't become completely unusable because someone knocked a cable out of the router downstairs.

I don't know why so many people around here are advocating web forms so much lately. I'm sure there are niches where they are useful, but for most tasks they're just inflexible, ugly imitations of real software. One of the ACs around here just claimed no-one has given a single reason a web-based solution wouldn't be superior. I've just given you several, and I'm still looking for a single reason why it would be.

Re:Why the web obsession?

[akeru]

Yes, a desktop app can do everything web forms can do. What the hell kind of browser are you using that you lose form data when you hit escape? That "reason" is so absurd as to be laughable; ESC does nothing to form data in my browser. Repeat NOTHING. And if it's a specific web app that that "permanently erases your last half-hour's work when you accidentally hit escape", well, your complaint would apply equally to a desktop app that did this. Your second point is a minor issue at best. The web form does not become "unusable"
  in the case of a network outtage, simply un-submittable. There is an important difference. In the case of the applications being discussed, you would be just as inconvenienced by a network outtage in both cases as the results of the form would be just as unusable in both cases. The desktop app has one minor advantage in this case in that you might be able to save the form data and re-submit it later when the network is back up. Of course, my browser spins for a while and pops up a dialog when trying to submit a form through a non-existant connection, meaning, as long as I don't close the page, I can re-submit the data when the network is up again. Both of your points are simply red herrings. There are situations where desktop applications are more suitable than web forms, but the described situation of "filling out forms and communicating with databases" is not one of them.

Re:Why the web obsession?

[johnnyb]

I believe newer Mozilla's (or perhaps a Mozilla extension) provides the ability to save form data for later use.

bribery

[kongit]

I wonder how much microsoft paid them to switch.

Microsoft Already Won That War

[blueZhift]

This isn't really any big surprise. Microsoft Office became the defacto standard a long time ago, so not using Office automatically puts you out of step with the majority of businesses. Even if StarOffice and OpenOffice had 100% compatibility, they would still not be Microsoft Office. Whether by ethical means or not, Microsoft won the market, so until such time as PCs are no longer in use or we no longer need tools like Microsoft Office, competitors don't stand a chance no matter how good they are. Indeed, Windows itself is not the secret of Microsoft's power, that would be Office.

The problem is not functionality neither is speed

[rawwa.venoise]

EU has approved for some time that all public institutiosn should publish documents in a open format. This is a nice thing but the true fact is: Word and the .doc format are not open. As long as EU refuses to force Micro$$ to sell the Office with support for a common file format no compatibility can be achieved with other suites like OpenOffice or StarOffice.
I know it sucks to have some nice law proposal to be approved and know in realitty that all the European institutions are using closed format. And this is not only a problem here. So if you want to send a complain or to fill some documents you need to posses a "legal" Office.
This is IMHO a institutional monopoly, forced by all goverments, since they failed to achieve a common format for trading information. So for people in Linux and Mac, our "institutional" goverments are simply saying: XXXX you ...

Ps: Sorry for the XXXX but no crap language here ;)

Word processors are OVERKILL - use a WIKI instead

[bad_outlook]

It's what I've done at my past two gigs, instead of ppl passing around Word documents everytime there's some small change, I publish all of my proopsals and docs on an in house Wiki. For software dev, I think it's all you need to share ideas, forget about printing out for a client; it's not needed in this capacity. I long for the days of 'dumb' terminal replacing the 2000$ computers every employee 'has' to have. Just a dumb term with a broswer, some AJAX action on the server - email handled through a Hula like client/server, devs open shells to the server(s) to do coding...ahhh...

Why presentation matters

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

OK, I'm also your typical Slashdotter, about 30 and a professional programmer. I also have a strong interest in design and presentation skills, and currently produce the publicity materials for a large, local not-for-profit organisation. Some of that is external, but a lot of it is just keeping a few thousand members of our club informed about which of the 50+ hours of activities we're organising this week they might be interested in.

None of this information can't be represented with ASCII text in Notepad either. I know: we send out plain text e-mails as part of our publicity. However, we also provide a web site, and printed matter, each of which is carefully designed to convey the content as efficiently, accurately and accessibly as possible.

We've been doing this for quite a while now (think decades) and we've collected a lot of feedback about the results you get via different media and different approaches to the presentation. The one thing that is absolutely clear, above all else, is that presentation matters.

If we provide a conveniently scannable diary of the current season's events, attendance at those events will go up. If an event is inadvertently missed off the scannable diary, even though all the details are present on a page of its own elsewhere, attendance will be poor.

If changes are made at short notice (same day) then a separate e-mail to all members is justified to highlight the surprise. But if you send a separate e-mail for every notice rather than combining the general reminders into a weekly digest, people start sending (usually polite) replies asking for a lower volume of mail.

If key information about activities we're trying to highlight is placed early in our brochure for the season and on the front page of the web site, the details will still get through, even if most of them are hidden in a box on page 15. But if you put too much in big letters and pretty colours, people stop reading, because they can't prioritise and then scan what's really important to them.

This is made even more challenging because different people have different interests, and consider different information more important. You have to make sure each interest group can find what they're looking for, without blinding them with what the guy next door wants to see.

Different people also process information different ways. Some people like a flow diagram to show them which activities depend on having done which others already. Others like a paragraph of text, or a table.

I'm rambling a bit now, but I hope the point is clear: with a large amount of content to provide, you will be much more effective if you can guide your reader quickly to the information they need, without encumbering them with the information they don't. That may mean highlighting some of the content, or even presenting the same content in different ways for different people.

You just can't do that as effectively with plain text as you can with a more thoughtful visual design.

not about money

[jayloden]

For companies and organizations that switch to Open Source, it's rarely about just the money. The bottom line is that while Linux and OSS can be "free" the problem is support. It's not as easy (or cheap) to get a *nix admin as opposed to a Windows admin, and most places aren't even looking to hire anyone new. They expect that their current IT staff will handle the new system - and they don't. A Windows IT staff is not prepared for a whole new system without extensive training. Training costs money. Basically, it will still cost you to switch to open source, even if you use free software.

However, what Open Source does offer you is absolute freedom. Freedom to modify the source and extend the software to your needs, flexibility to adapt the system to your environment. It also gives you a safety net, knowing that no single vendor or company holds the fate of your system. Even if all the vendors go out of business, you can theoretically use the source code to maintain the appplication yourself or hire someone to do it, etc. You're not locked in or tied to the fate of a third party.

In situations like this one, where the switch is made purely for monetary reasons, the end result is often unsuccessful. If you're going to use OSS, the reasons have to include ethical, moral, idealogical, or practical (based around your flexibility needs, etc) concerns. If financial is the only reason on your list, then you're very likely to fail, because you'll be expecting the OSS to work exactly the way your previous system did and when it doesn't, you'll have no reason to stick it out.

Open source isn't for everyone, and not for every situation. Deploying it for the right reasons and with the right backbone of support and knowledge is key to success.

*Sigh*-Broken Models.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the "Bazaar" model, needs some "Cathedral" help. Oh the Irony.

StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[goombah99]

Exactly. MS word may be dull, unispired, and poorly designed with layers of complexity. But it does its job well and is not hard to use. Star office is slow, has an clumsy layout. is unattractive, and is even more complex.

I've tried it and hate it. It's why I use macs: linux office apps suck. My office mate is a dieshard roll-your-own linux user and has been using star office as long as it has been around. He still truggles with it's byzantine menus. My other office mate is also a pure linux user and he gave up on it. He only uses TeX. He found remebering laTex is actually a lot easier and more consistent and powerful than remembering the star-office menu confusion.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what is it you do? I found most people can't figure tex out to save their life.. yet your office mate uses it on a whim...

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[DaFallus]

I completely agree. Every linux office suite I have installed on Windows runs horribly slow and I've even had OpenOffice completely crash my linux box on numerous occasions by simply trying to save a document in MS Word format. On the other hand, MS Office hasn't crashed my Windows machine once.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have been hallucinating. Linux does not crash.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[jedidiah]

Never had that problem and I've been running versions of StarOffice (Win32 & Linux) since it was still owned by that little German company.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[maxpublic]

linux office apps suck

Not sure why'd you say this, since even the brain-dead can master OpenOffice. It's no more difficult to use than the comparable MS products.

Max

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Blakey Rat]

Maybe, but that doesn't mean OpenOffice doesn't suck. Even the brain-dead can learn to drive a Geo Metro, but Geo Metros still suck. Understand now? Gooood.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[laffer1]

Perhaps but the cops used to use MS Word.. switching from MS products to open office is not intuitive. The menus are not the same. In the cases they are, the behavior is different. The same is true if you tried to switch to word perfect which more closely tries to be be Word. I actually think Lotus WordPro is easier because the interface is so different that you have to look at it.

Users hate behavior changes when switching. Thats why some can't use firefox or switch from windows to Mac OS X or Linux + KDE or Gnome.

Remember lamers memorize "screens". Each new screen is a completely different concept. Some cops are very intelligent and others have AOL at home.. if you know what i mean.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have something else wrong -hardware- to cause that. I use Fedora redhat and have no problem with openoffice 1.1 or 2.0 beta.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[LibrePensador]

"I've tried it and hate it. It's why I use macs: linux office apps suck. My office mate is a dieshard roll-your-own linux user and has been using star office as long as it has been around. He still truggles with it's byzantine menus. My other office mate is also a pure linux user and he gave up on it. He only uses TeX. He found remebering laTex is actually a lot easier and more consistent and powerful than remembering the star-office menu confusion."

Bullshit. OpenOffice 2 matches the menu layout of Microsoft Office. Come up with better excuses for your lame FUD.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[oddfox]

Have you taken a look at Abiword or Gnumeric lately? Really good office apps for Linux, they're what I use when I'm not in my Windows-land, and I have yet to have compatability issues with the simple .doc files I create in Word 2003, or even the spreadsheet I use for budgeting originally created in Excel 2003.

Clean interfaces, sweet performance, and none of the bloat that OpenOffice.org brings (Even though I have it installed, just because, I guess).

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Kojacked]

"Bullshit. OpenOffice 2 matches the menu layout of Microsoft Office. Come up with better excuses for your lame FUD."

Well if you read a couple of posts back...
"It's till beta though."

You Microsoft haters would crucify Microsoft for comparing a beta product to what's shipping now. Hypocrite!

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

ever heard of abiword? you can't tell me THAT would be hard to use

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[maxpublic]

OpenOffice doesn't suck

You're exactly right, OpenOffice *doesn't* suck. Thanks for playing!

Max

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Star office is slow, has an clumsy layout. is unattractive, and is even more complex.

There are differences in the details of the interfaces (not everything is in the same places as MS Office) but other than that the functionality (especially the functionality most users are likely to use) is 99% the same. They both take around the same sort of resources to run. If you locked it to write only in Word format you'd be compatible 90% of the time.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

He still truggles with it's byzantine menus.

I could say the same of MS Word, especially its tendency to hide menu options.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. Openoffice may be beta but it's still a lot better than MicroSHIT. If I could I would crucify Microsoft. Buch of ASSHOLES!!!!!!! "Do you actually want to keep your data, or can I convieniently delete it all for you. Please, please please? Nevermind I will do it anyways. That will be $150.37. Fuck you very much!"

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

And MS Office 12 has an interface that makes all other office software interfaces look and WORK like they're from the stone age.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[BlueLightning]

intuitive

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[tcampb01]

Exactly. MS word may be dull, unispired, and poorly designed with layers of complexity. But it does its job well and is not hard to use. Star office is slow, has an clumsy layout. is unattractive, and is even more complex.
I've tried it and hate it. It's why I use macs: linux office apps suck.

You tried it and hate it? Did you try it for more than 6 minutes before you gave up because every menu option wasn't EXACTLY where it is in MS Office?

StarOffice, OpenOffice and NeoOffice/J (on the Mac) are extremely similar to MS Office in functionality and ease of use. Was it the $399 non-discountable price tag what attracted you to MS Office as opposed to the $79 StarOffice or the $0 OpenOffice?

For a $399 cost difference I think I can afford to learn the few subtle feature & menu differences.

Re:StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to think the price of software is it's TCO. You have to realize that people's time is money too. And don't forget that the cost to companies not only includes the salary of the user but also the fringe benefits and overhead which typically are equal to the salary itself. Then there are people who work with that person that have to adapt too. Finally there's the tech support training as well. If you start using new products your tech support has to learn them two. So the const of MS word is trivial if it costs people more than an hour or so to learn it.

MOD PARENT UP -- +5 INSIGHTFUL

[fmaxwell]

It amazes me when open source fanatics are so arrogant as to suggest that anyone preferring a closed source product must either be stupid or receiving bribes from Microsoft. However, that's what happens any time that there's a Slashdot story where an organization chooses a Microsoft product over an open source product.

I have both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office on my systems at home. I have found OpenOffice to be a really competent package that I heartily recommend to many home users. On the other hand, there are things about MS Office (such as the spreadsheet graphing capabilities) which are superior. I've also found the subtle formatting differences that cause widows, orphans, and page break problems when switching between the two packages. I can easily envision a department, agency, etc. regretting a switch to OpenOffice if they exchage documents with others using MS Office.

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- +5 INSIGHTFUL

[Kelson]

Does anyone else find it funny that the post asking people to mod its parent up has gone up to 4... but the parent post hasn't been moderated up at all?

Re:MOD PARENT UP -- +5 INSIGHTFUL

[endeavour31]

I, for one, find it typical of /. and find it even more intiguing that your post got moderated higher as well:)

Shit the cops are reading slashdot!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I take back what I said about piracy.. Downloading music is illegal!! I love Bush! Just say no to hacking!

Re:The problem is not functionality neither is spe

[Creepy Crawler]

You mean "FUCK YOU"?

If you have dumb filters, "FUK YUO".
F.U..| YOU.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Shame...

[brsmith4]

Thank god I run beowulf clusters for a living... No chance of an MS switch there (as I also write the policy).

But in any case, the Scots needed the Right Tool for the Job(tm) and they went with MS Office (which IMHO, is a very comprehensive and useable piece of software). In the end, its a practical decision just as using Linux and OSS on our clusters is strictly a practical decision (most scientific codes were originally written for big Unix iron and were easily ported over to Linux). More power to them if they managed to get a better deal.

What does unix have to do with it?

[Some Random Username]

Its not easy to pay enough for good windows admins on public sector wages either. A good windows admin costs just as much as a good unix admin, people just like to hire shitty windows admins instead. You can get a shitty unix admin with no clue just as cheaply as a shitty windows admin with no clue, but everyone seems to want to hire competant unix admins.

Stop perpetuating the myth that unix admins are more expensive than windows admins by comparing highly skilled, experienced unix admins with freshly rubber-stamped MCSE's with no clue what they are doing, its rediculous. The truth is not defined by MS's marketing department.

Versioning, Sharing and multichoice spreadsheets.

[oliverthered]

When I tried moving over to Koffice or OpenOffice I found that there were 3 very important missing features.

1: I could find no way to share the documents so I can't work efficiently on the same document with aa group off people.
2: The documents don't support versioning which is pretty important if your writing anything more important that a sick note.
3: Under Excell a call can be muti-choice and presents the feature as a dropdown. I tend to use them a lot when I'm sending out spread sheets as surveys or test documentation where I want to limit the user to a set of predefined options.

1 and 2 can be got around by using something like SubVersion but it's not nice and easy, and doesn't support offline editing and versioning very well.

Reference

[XSforMe]

Please finish up your drink before reading it:

Enjoy!

Tradition

[furukama]

Oh my, William Wallace where have you gone?

Re:Tradition

[chawly]

And what, pray, has he to do with the subject in hand ? We're talking work tools here - not doing the nasty to the English. One should, in my opinion anyhow, do the nasty to the English whenever possible - but this imperative has little to do with the suject in hand.

Man bites dog

[Jerry]

which is the reverse of normal events, ergo it makes the news. Dittos for the Scottish police wp change.

Because so many people and businesses are converting to Linux and FOSS it's not news any more, so stories about that movment are rarely published anymore.

---
per capita death rates of Americans in DC and LA are greater than American soldier combat deaths in Iraq, so when are we pulling out of DC or LA?

Not surprised at all

[rongage]

When you try to do something even mildly advanced in OOo (like using Avery Labels in Landscape instead of Portrait mode) or even something as simple as printing a #10 envelope, OOo often falls down, badly.

When these issues are brought up to the developers (via their bug reporting system), the report is either ignored outright (in the case of the envelope printing) or the report is dismissed as a "feature enhancement" request and not a bug.

Come on people, you can't ask people to submit bug reports only to ignore or dismiss those reports.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that this agency indeed had submitted bug reports and were summarily ignored and/or dismissed. Hint time folks: this tends to piss people off, especially decision makers!

Re:Not surprised at all

[t35t0r]

Indeed, you cannot print stationary with OOo, nor can you track changes to word/odt documents. This comes in handy when you are collaborating on a paper and you give it back to someone who needs to see your changes.

Staroffice, and others

[phorm]

We've used several "office" applications here in schools and I must say this:

Staroffice was terrible when we brought it in. Hard to use, with incompatability errors and a generally unpleasant interface. For quite awhile it propogated a mindset that anything that wasn't MS Office was frightening

Openoffice.org on the other hand (and perhaps more modern StarOffice versions), is very nice, better interface, decent (and improving) compatability, etc. Kids picked up Impress faster that I have, and design some *very* kickass presentations with it. The built-in PDF export facility from the document editors is nice too...

For those that prefer a slightly nicer interface than OO, depending on your version I've found quite a few people enjoyed Abiword as a replacement for the just word component of office.

Seriously, even as an OSS advocate I really disliked StarOffice, but there were/are better alternatives out there.

Re:Great news

[symbolic]

Anecdotes like this will become very useful during the next anti-trust suit filed against Microsoft. What you are seeing is the result of vendor lock-in. When people are forced to avoid competing alternatives that are every bit as capable, but lack interoperability because of proprietary document formats, they are effectively locked in to using the products from one vendor. This is something the first suit failed to address, but hopefully the next one will.

Anyone know what Israel runs?

[glrotate]

just for comparison?

Java?

[Richard Steiner]

Neither StarOffice 3.x, 4.x, or 5.x for OS/2 was written in Java. It's native software, though it did use a cross-platform GUI toolkit.

Re:Java?

[theurge14]

I was thinking of the Java version of Lotus Smartsuite that Lotus put out in 1997. My memory is hazy when it comes to my OS/2 days.

It didn't last long, from what I recall. I vividly remember it took forever for WordPro to come up.

Flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I have to go fetch the /. article that proves the existance of the practice occurring on /. ?! I really hope that a meta-mod with half a brain finds this. Btw, I am *not* the same poster as the parent, I just don't want to get karma bitten by the corporately payed mods today ;)

Re:Flamebait?

[dustmite]

I agree, so I'll take the chance, and repost the GP without the -1:

Your post fits the profile of a 'paid-astroturfer-post' "to the tee". (1) spelling errors for believability, (2) a claim to be a Linux admin for credibility amongst the /. audience, (3) claims of severe interoperability problems with OSS and of the indirect cost of OSS being high, (4) specifically attempt to induce fear of OSS - could cost your job if you use OO, wooh!!

Basically you pretend to advocate other alternatives but you really only advocate Windows etc. ... samples. from your other posts:

"I don't see many great differences. My end users working in marketing or whatever prefer Windows/Office. They do think differently than us geeks, and aren't willing to spend hours dealing with archaic command lines. Windows performs admirably there."

"Mr Gates is the biggest ... philanthropist in the world"

Unfortunately most people seem to be too naive and trusting to believe that slashdot is crawling with paid astroturfers and, yes, moderators too :/ They also mod one another up to keep giving each other karma though, and mod down specific 'dissenters' ... I've watched occasionally and seen some VERY suspicious moderation patterns.

They don't own their data

[spinel]

It does not sound like many police need an office suite but the real issue is who owns the data. Any rational person will realize that if you use Microsoft products and protocols they own your data and can hold it hostage for more money in the future. I think OOo 1.9+ would handle almost any need the police could have for an office suite but it should be used only where needed. The first thing they should do is require Microsoft and all other vendors to support and use open formats and protocols for any program used by the department and of course on a larger scale the goverment. If Microsoft meets that requirement then you can talk about other issues. Of course FOSS and/or other legacy vendors should be held to the same open standard. As it is they are subject to cyberterrorism anytime MS wants to raise prices or just assert their power. It sounds like they could have handled this better by switching everyone to OOo and the new open office standard formats. Then all the data could be safe, secure and open.

Re:They don't own their data

[chawly]

Yes well, that's all very well and all very jolly. There is just one tiny detail that has been forgotten. We're talking about policemen here, and Scottish Lowlanders at that. As a Scotsman myself, I have to say that the next advances in computer user thinking are not coming from these ladies and gentlemen. Believe it. This being said, there remains the traditional /. summing-up, "Nothing to see here, folks. Move along please." Sorry, but that's the way of it. Cheers !

Uhm.....

[Premo_Maggot]

Why not just use wordpad?

Re:Uhm.....

[dtfinch]

Abiword is much better.

Re:Uhm.....

[Premo_Maggot]

Yes, because it comes installed on winblows by default.

That means 95% were doing fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

So let me get this straight. Your argument is this:

95% of users were using Microsoft Office
5% of users were using Star Office
The 5% using Star Office were having problems integrating with the 95% who were using Microsoft Office.

Therefore, Microsoft Office is to blame.

Ok, this is a rather simple philosophy 101 argument which is invalid. It makes PERFECT sense for those 5% to switch back to MS Office rather than the other 95% to switch or whatever other hair-brained scheme you think they should implement.

I know most slashdotters are open-source supporters and anti-MS but come on, seems like some of you could at least use some common sense once in a while. Microsoft has done a lot of good things for a lot of good people and they've made money in the process. Last I checked, there's nothing illegal or even immoral about that.

Flame on.

microsoft bribes?

[proton]

Microsoft office:
+15,000 bribes
-0 complaints from others for not being able to read MS office files.
-5,000 MS government subsidized licenses
-10,000 crashes in windows XP
sum +-0

staroffice:
+0 bribes
-5,000 complaints from others for not being able to read MS office files.
-0 licenses
-10,000 crashes in windoze XP
sum -15,000

hmm?

Re:microsoft bribes?

[timmyf2371]

Where do you get the 10,000 crashes under Windows XP from? I don't seem to remember having any application from the MS Office Suite crashing while using Windows XP.

Re:microsoft bribes?

[Blitzenn]

" Microsoft office:
+15,000 bribes
-0 complaints from others for not being able to read MS office files.
-5,000 MS government subsidized licenses
-10,000 crashes in windows XP
sum +-0

staroffice:
+0 bribes
-5,000 complaints from others for not being able to read MS office files.
-0 licenses
-10,000 crashes in windoze XP
sum -15,000
"

Can't you see? He is a windows lover. He is pointing out that it is cheaper to run windows, because everyone knows the brides don't exist nor do the subsidies. So he is using purposefully and obviously subversive math to prove, in a round about way, that windows is better. Sneeky windows lovers are the worst.

Or maybe I was thinking of Corel suite...

[theurge14]

...God I really should just stop posting.

#$%@#$NO CARRIER

Star Office in 2000

[Anonymous Coward]

They were using Star Office from a release in 2000? (StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000) The only wonder is that they didn't switch sooner! That package sucked (IMHO). No wonder they went to M$. I loathe Office with a passion, but if it were to appear that my only two options were office or star office - easy. If my options also included Open Office, well then; MS be damned. Star Office is just a Sun hack of Open Office. "Future versions of StarOffice software, beginning with 6.0, have been built using the OpenOffice.org source, APIs, file formats, and reference implementation. Sun continues to sponsor development on OpenOffice.org" http://about.openoffice.org/index.html The version the coppers were using wasn't even based on OO yet. No wonder they didn't like it. They weren't even using a hack of Open Office - they were using a Sun product.

Other languages than English

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't say this holds for all other office suites but AFIK MS Office is the only office suite that support spell checking and grammar for other languages than English. The problem is that most Office suites tend to be English centric and use a dictionary approach, MS Office uses a published API.

The dictionary approach does not lend it self to languages that use inflections, Russian has 16 if I remember correctly Icelandic has 8. In a dictionary system you would have to have all forms of the words in the dictionary, this would mean that in Icelandic there would need to be 8 instances of all nouns and verbs (actually the verbs would have to be in 24 forms since there are 3 forms of every inflection) and so on and so forth.

In Iceland it's possible to buy a spell checker for Icelandic for MS Office and this spell checker can make very good guesses as to the spelling of new words it doesn't recognize since Office only has to use an API to call the spell checker. With a dictionary approach this would mean that you would need to buy a new ditionary every time the language changes. Languages can change fast at least Icelandic lends it self to creating new words by putting two or more words together as a word and the spell checker would need to know what to do with this.

TeX?????

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm sure you can find a lot of windows administrators who know how to install and maintain a TeX-based system. This is bound to save them a lot of time and money.

Now, pass the pipe, please!

Word Resumes ONLY!

[drewzhrodague]

Very frustrating for me as a UNIX admin, and user. ALL, and let me put that in bold, ALL recruiters and HR people will only handle .doc resumes. Not a single recruiter or HR person I have ever dealt with (in 10 years) would accept a PDF, ASCII, or other formatted document. I find that fucking retarded, but it's something that we have to deal with if we want to eat.

Don't believe me? I have documented my job search. The best is when they send a blank email with a .doc attachment of the job description. That pisses me off too.

This is why OpenOffice needs Scottish Gaelic

[WillAffleckUW]

If a poor nob nae kin wri bou a pizant wi sgain, how kin the nob gi his scuttin port i da hopper?

Tha plus ih don ha up-kilt cam add-ons fer da lassies ...

good point

[Anonymous Coward]

But which browser are we talking about? I highly doubt firefox does this, so only this 'other thing' remains; ultimately it boils down to "is a document rendered in a sandbox or can it interact with installed software"? Personally I think *not* implementing something like activex (in firefox) is a really good idea; thus the logic driving the spreadsheet (in the html page) has to be either on the server side (cgi) or javascript code; maybe both to allow efficient client-side ops (like sorting a table).

Another solution might be to create a specific extension and install it together with firefox; but connecting the DOM tree with anything outside the browser is a big security risk.

Re:The problem is not functionality neither is spe

[rawwa.venoise]

you got the point ;)

Try Coda instead of NFS :)

[DaedalusHKX]

(nt)

Nevermind

[Kowgod]

2 things:

I misread the quote at the end where he lays out the 5% vs 95%.

wrong companies

[cahiha]

Maybe you are applying to the wrong companies. My current company will not even accept Word-formatted resumes, and I have never had to submit a resume in Word format. Also, I have never found a recruiter that was useful, either when I was looking for a job or when I was trying to fill a position.

Far more useful than recruiters are professional contacts, alumni associations, and personal contacts.

Re:wrong companies

[drewzhrodague]

Heh. I live in Pittsburgh, 1989 is still years off in the future! This is a reminder for me to get out of this dinky little backwater.

Re:Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think http://www.kolab.org/ does a pretty similar thing

The Problem is...

[16K Ram Pack]

You'll never get people running government departments to get too worried about saving money. Basically, it's not their money, so it doesn't really matter. It's also why large corporates mostly won't go to OpenOffice.org.

The best hope for OpenOffice.org is small businesses looking to save costs, and as they expand, they use more and more OOo.

Re:*Cough*

[POWuhuru]

Respectable enterprises use Microsoft products. If and when they cant use the said products they pick up the phone book and call Sun, IBM ,Novell etc. For government and affiliated agencies at any level to try to cut costs by resulting to OSS shmarks of big time BS. They use Tax money and they better use it well. Start at Microsoft and if possible never look back PHB. A Microsoft Apologist. {mod -5, muahaha}

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Re:The problem is not functionality neither is spe

[Creepy Crawler]

Heh, no sence in being prudish. Its not like weve never heard of those words anyways..

To hell with people who have "sensitive" attitudes about todays curses.

Re:Versioning, Sharing and multichoice spreadsheet

[BlueLightning]

Just out of interest (as a developer but fairly infrequent user of OOo, KOffice and MS Office) how do you share a document directly in MS Office? I would have thought you'd be sharing using a web server or Windows file share.

Perhaps you could consider submitting feature requests for these items to bugs.kde.org and the OpenOffice team? They sound like worthwhile features that should be implemented.

Re:Did u hear about pdf format?

[Anonymous Coward]

My CV kept causing everyone elses Word to crash, thats a cost I couldn't afford to pay as a jobseeker.

I am jobseeker too, I made my CV in OpenOffice and exported it to pdf format, I didn't hear from anybody that he had problems with opening my CV.

The question is:

[Trejkaz]

Who still uses StarOffice? The rest of us switched to OpenOffice years ago.

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[account_deleted]

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Don't insult our intelligence.

[jotaeleemeese]

This is exactly what so many IT professionals miss when they evaluate Microsoft's products. They just work for the users, plain and simple.

I just spent a couple of days fixing a WXP machine that for some reason decided to stop working.

I had to reinstall Windows XP, drivers, etc.

No hardware failure at all.

In the other hand all my personal machines running different flavours of Linux have been working with no problems for the best part of 2 years. Even a newish IBM laptop with Fedora.

In a corporate environment Windows mostly works, but that is because you have scores of dedicated administrators patching and patching and patching.

For other OSes we patch every 6 months save for must have security exploits.

Don't give me that shit that Windows works, it is just untrue.

Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

I earn $150/hour, if it takes me 2 hours to learn something new that is harder to use it's not worth my time. Welcome to the real world school boy.

Cost more to whom?

[Tune]

In all business cases, supporting two competing, parallel systems is going to cost you more, regardless of what they are.

I think the confusing is with the word "you". If referring to a single company/entity as with competing teams within IBM, (relative) cost is higher then going for a single solution (though quality may be greater too, depending to project size and budget).

The sentence can also be read as referring to the end user, who in terms of price will probably benefit from competing parallel systems. Or at least, so say the rules of free market.

In principle, having a monopoly is most efficient - at least from the monopolies point of view. State monopolies are at the base of communism, corporate monopolies are what made Ford and AT&T great. Still, monopolies just don't seem to last and in the mean time they have a fierce stiffling effect on innovation.

Hence, in macro economic terms, competing parallel systems are commonly valued as a good thing.

Re:Cost more to whom?

[mauriatm]

To answer your question on "whom": the business who must support multiple options. ... Not sure how, but if it wasn't clear, the OP was referring to the administrative side, not the end user side. Specifically on this case, the IT cost associated with supporting 2 office solutions.

Hey, don't stop posting...

[Richard Steiner]

Even if you get something wrong (as I've done more than once here ), it's an opportunity to have your memory refreshed by someone else, and other folks here can learn from the exchange as well.

I still use StarOffice 5.1a for OS/2 once or twice a week, so it's basic nature is probably a little closer to the top of my mind than most people's... :-)

Re:Versioning, Sharing and multichoice spreadsheet

[oliverthered]

It's been a good few years since I tuched Microsoft apps , but from what I remember in Excell protect and you can share a worksheet from one of the menu options (or via VBA), then when you send out copies of the workbook for clients or co-workers to send back with their ammendments you can see a full history of any changes.

OpenOffice also seems to lack things like good TOC generation and automatic revision history which are also 'killer' features found in Microsoft Office.

I was really supprised when I couldn't find the featuers in either KOffice or OpenOffice (Koffice will generate TOC'x but their crap to the point of being useless)

missed this one point...

[xpyr]

In the past, when the agency deployed a new police application on StarOffice and Linux, the application had to be customized to work with the open-source software, Stirling said. It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station, he said.

There's the main reason. Star Office had to still be customized to work with the open source software. It didn't work out of the box like Microsoft Office does. And they also found it harder to configure so that they could access the files from any police station. There's the main reasons for it. Which some of you ignored.

But I do agree on a web based form would have been alot easier once implemented. You could then put in search functions making information easier to find. You don't need a word processor to do it.