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StarOffice 8 May Be MS Office Killer
UltimaGuy wrote to mention an eWeek article that seemed topical, given the recent discussions about the OpenDocument format. They're running a piece discussing StarOffice 8's killer position as an alternative to Office. From the article: "However, whether StarOffice 8 can succeed as a wholesale or partial replacement for Microsoft Office will depend on the organization thinking about making the switch. Several improvements in StarOffice 8 are aimed directly at improving compatibility with Microsoft Office-formatted documents, but converting complex documents between the two suites' formats will in some cases require tweaking to preserve document appearance. In addition, while StarOffice 8 can be extended through macros and scripting, much like Microsoft Office can, these extensions won't migrate to Microsoft Office without being rewritten. However, StarOffice ships with a Macro Migration wizard that will aid in the migration of Microsoft Visual Basic macros to the StarOffice Basic macro language. There's also a Document Analysis wizard that helps determine where trouble spots might lie in the transition to a StarOffice format."
Same headline as usual I see. Everything "may" kill the leading product, but the chances of it happening are slim to none. The reason they're the leading product is the average person trusts them, the average person has no idea what star office is and won't care. If they're lucky they'll get 10% market share, if they arn't they'll llive for a few years and then die hopelessly.
I like muppets.
MS XML will keep MS Office on top for years to come!
In the end, it's not going to matter how open ended and interoperable StarOffice or it's file format is, it's going to come down to what's more convenient at the present time. For companies, this means swap everything over to StarOffice, (possibly) retrain their staff, as opposed to waiting out for Office 12, upgrading to it and having everything work the same.
However Microsoft has already alluded that users of Office 12 may need to be retrained anyway, so SO8 and O12 may be on a fair playing field, and actually come down to quality of software, something Microsoft has been paying a lot more attention to recently.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
Companies will keep their installed versions of Office and won't even care of upgrading to Office 12 ?
I like competition, in fact I like it alot (go Yankess!). Anyway, no single program is going to kill MS Office. Or any MS product as widely used as Office. Maybe a second version, maybe a third but it is going to take time.
There are just too many people using it (MS Office) right now, and as we all know people can't handle change. This might be the start of the downfall of MS Office but it is in no way the killer.
First they need to get popular. Then that popularity needs to spread among Information Services people. Businesses need to show an appreciation for the product and want to share that appreciation. They will tell others businesses and that will spread the word.
But programs like this need to learn how to walk before they can run with the big dog.
I've used every version of word since 5.0, WordPerfect 5.x and 6.x and now OpenOffice, plus others.
.doc file format. I use OO at home, but I don't expect my Corporate Overlords to bother switching. Ever. They would have to think too much about something they regard as beneath their notice - that, and the admin staff would likely scream bloody murder. They'll allow a retraining on 'new features' of Word, but if you try to explain that 'gee, this would be a perfect time to try a new/better/free/different/similar alternative to Word, since the file formats a re new...' you'll get absolutely nowhere - they 'know' word, and that is powerful motive for maintaining the status quo
It shouldn't take more than 15 minutes of looking at the menus - which are almost identical for most end-user functionality anyway - to grok OpenOffice.
Inertia keeps MS Office in place - the vast majority of the functionality of Word, for example, is either unused or not-understood anyway. I am asked *weekly* how to insert tables, align text, etc., by people who have never used anything else but Word for their entire professional careers. Say 'mail merge' and you get blank stares from most users, IME.
Yah, it has fine functionality - my only substantive gripes with Word are the price and the opacity of the
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Come on, they've been calling it an MS Office killer since it's release. It's not going to kill MS Office, especially when it's ability to read office doucments.
You guys need to understand, "open standards" mean squat to the users, they are only important to the techie types. Most people are NOT looking for an alternative to MS Office and aren't not going to be swayed with out something really amazing
Gadget News at Gizmo.com
So: FreeBSD is going to kill Linux, Linux is going to kill Sun, Sun is going to kill Microsoft, Microsoft is going to f-ing kill Google, and Google is going to ... kill evil?
:P
My, America *is* a violent place these days, isn't it?
I am going to tell you something: MS Office WILL fall. So will Windows. History tells us it will happen. The only questions are when and how.
It's a safe bet that "when" is not anytime in the near future, so "several" to "many" years soonest. So is StarOffice 8 an MSOffice killer? No. And Sun knows that. So on to the "how."
What they hope to do is get into just a few businesses. Openoffice.org for the home, StarOffice at work. They will get better at compatibility. They will get the name out there. Empires don't topple in a millisecond. It takes chinks in the armor. Google is a chink. Firefox is a chink. AIM is a chink. Linux is a chink. And StarOffice wants to be one too. None of them was a threat 5 years ago. Now they are all forces to be reckoned with. Anyone trivializing the role of StarOffice needs only think back a few years ago and remember what these other things were then.
- Mozilla mostly sucked; there was no Firefox.
- Google was the best search engine, but was definitely not the main one: Yahoo, Hotbot, and Alta Vista ruled.
- AIM - actually, all of IM - was barely used. Only ICQ was really established.
- Linux was still 2.2 and was pretty much unusable by non-techies.
StarOffice 8 may not be the nail in the coffin, but it IS significant. It's the first useable drop in replacement with commercial backing. And in a few years, we'll see where it's at. If that's not news, I don't know what is.
The bottom line is: Star Office can never beat MS Office, because it emulates MS Office. To send MSWord and PowerPoint to their well-deserved place on the ash heap of history, will take a replacement that shoots higher. It's not good enough to match the MS Office feature set and be cheaper. The cost of the software is trivial, compared to the lock-in that comes from familiarity alone.
For an Open-source office replacement to kill MS, the word processor has to be better than Pages and InDesign combined. The presentation program has to be better than Keynote. The spreadsheet has to be better than Lotus Improv. Not better by a little bit, either: they have to completely blow MS's products away. They have to make the deficiencies of MS's products glaringly obvious to anyone who spends a couple of minutes comparing them.
Until the Star Office guys aim that high, they won't make a dent in the monopoly.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You know this reminds me of a cartoon one of my philosophy profs showed me in university:
There's a church with some grafitti on it reading:
God is Dead
-Nietzsche
and a gravestone reading:
Nietzsche is dead
-God
Oddly, I'm not sure I believe StarOffice is going to kill MS-Office any time soon.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
Office is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet. When I can edit documents online from a web page and it looks and feels like an application then you know no one is going to buy MS Office ever again. The real question is who is going to build the AJAX suite and what pricing model will they use.
We've all known for years that "Applications Are Not Possessions". You can't own "Word". You can have a CD with a copy of Word on it, but you can't own it. You can put that CD in a nice shiney box and fool people into thinking they can own data... but they can't. No one can own data.
For year's MS has fooled people into thinking they were buying products when they were actually buying data. Software building is and will always be a service. Let me repeat that for those who don't get it. You can't own data, making data is a service. There's even a word for making a service look like a possession, it's called "Productizing." MS got rich by taking something that was infinately reproducable and selling it like a commodity. Great marketing.
AJAX will kill that. When people realize they can pay $15 a year for the service of word processing online, Word dies and the people who make $15 a year on a million customers win. Send me the royalty checks.
For home/student use the Office Suite is quite cheap (I've seen Office 2003 for around $100 at Staples for a three-home user license). Microsoft is competing with stealing by pricing Office very low. Even for SMB and Enterprise users, sticking office isn't that much--on the purchase of a new machine Office Small Business (Word, Excel, PPT, Publisher and Outlook) costs about $190; I suspect enterprise customers are paying less than $100. At that price it's not worth looking at alternatives that are "nearly as good".
Other than not supporting Microsoft, what's the benefit to the alternatives.