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Portable OpenOffice.org 2.01 Released
VeryVito writes "Portableapps.com has released Portable OpenOffice.org 2.01 -- the complete office suite you can run from a USB drive for complete access to both your files and your office apps -- anywhere you go. More than just a neat idea, some say it's a perfect example of "the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about selling as many licenses of their work as possible." I don't imagine we'll see a portable Microsoft Office suite any time soon."
Remember those application cartridges for the PC Jr. Yea yea laugh it up I had one. And all those other quasi computers with application cartridges?
Sure this is better but it has been done before.
Parent poster has a point. It is nice to have your own stuff on a usb drive. Pretty handy for school systems where you are not allowed to touch the local file system, but executables on usb drives can be run. /linuxrc in the initrd worked out for me, but there are probably better ways of doing it too ). Grub installs just fine on the usb drive.
I have taken this a step further, though. I have installed gentoo on my usb drive. It is very simple, just have all the usb support in the kernel, then make an initrd which makes the machine wait for a little while for usb mass storage devices to settle, before it tries to mount them as root ( "sleep 5" in
This is ideal for me, as "all" the machines I use that are not mine, can boot from usb.
Dvorak on Doomtech
I second this. Not only that, but now I can have Firefox at home the way I want it and all I have to do is install portablefirefox on the usb and copy c:\program files\mozilla firefox and the profile in %appdata%\mozilla to their respective folders in the usb and viola! All settings, extensions and bookmarks are transfered to the usb key to use on my laptop.
Well, I understand most people use Windows, but i use Linux, so I'd need my "portable" apps to be multisystem, either by being truly compatible or including both compiles. When will such a thing surface? Browser, email, calendar, office... These "portable" apps (OOo, FF, TB, etc.) are nice, but in the end, a small suite, coded in Java or as a bootable system (though that's inconvenient), is more likely to be of use to me...
I don't think you have any experience dealing with executives from an IT standpoint. You'd be surprised. Execs will sit down and edit their documents wherever they damn well please, thank you very much.
Besides, there's nothing fundamentally different between running "mission critical apps" from a losable, stealable, USB drive than an online service.
If Microsoft runs an online service, then the browser (modified, perhaps) will be all that will be required to run Office on any computer (with internet connection).
Any computer will have a browser (and connectivity), therefore MS Office will be omnipresent. You won't need to carry it around on a flash driver.
No, you won't need to carry around a usb key, but you might need a really long network cable to connect to the internet, since not everywhere has wireless (let alone free wireless). Plus, what happens when your internet is down?
Even with a T-1 connection, what type of response time will there be if there are 50 workers running Office remotely? How about 100 or 250? It would have to scale much better than terminal services does and still provide the "user experience" that people demand.
Of course, requiring the use of a modified Microsoft browser to run Microsoft Office which would probably require an upgrade to Windows Vista or beyond would be just the way to permanently lock people into Microsoft products, upgrade paths and revenue streams. All the more reason to use OpenOffice.org, portable or not.
That may truly give Microsoft's Office a run for its money.
Comments?
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Why can't I get from WalMart or Amazon a portable, opensource office suite on a USB key?
Sell it for $5 more than the cheapest equivalent capacity stick, or about the same as a branded stick and let the profits go to the developers.
$50 for 512MB portable office is cheap, especially if all a noob has to do to install it is plug it into a USB slot and double click the application. My poorly wired consumer brain is reluctant to shell out for software on a CD, if only becuase they're slow and you know their practically free to make. I'd probably buy an office on a stick because I know if I didn't like the software at least I'd still have something that I still have some use for.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
If Microsoft runs an online service, then the browser (modified, perhaps) will be all that will be required to run Office on any computer (with internet connection).
First of all, the only reason Microsoft would consider such a service is subscription fees; you would pay continuously for such service. The portable OpenOffice solutionh only requires that you pay once (for the thumbdrive) and then use it forever.
Secondly, what happens when Microsoft upgrades their on-line service and it forces you to reformat the document yet again to make it print right? Not to beat a dead horse but I have enough problems with documents created on different versions of Office printing correctly between versions. With the OpenOffice solution on a thumbdrive, I would be carrying the same software that I used to create the document with the document itself. I can be pretty confident that it would print the same.
What bullcrap!
The last install of Open Office 1.1.? I did for a client involved a 70 Megabyte download from the Web. The last time I reinstalled Office 2000 for a client from CD, it required downloading 60 Mbyte service pack and then another 33 Mbytes of critical updates on-line.
The entire install file for OpenOffice was smaller than the updates for Microsoft Office. "Lightweight" in my book!
I'm waiting for the bootable 1GB thumbdrive with a mini-distro of Slackware
Ask and ye shall receive (sort of).
http://www.projectblackdog.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX
:(
wow. This is in no way similar to the C=64 - it appears to have been superior in every way. I wish we had those here in the US in the '80s. I never heard of it until now. I thought I had it good with a C=128.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Ok...anyone who uses a usb key has a cd rom drive. Save the money on the hardware and burn a few CD's of Open Office. Better yet, buy a printed them from me:). Carry it with you Give it to your friends and family. Just get it out there.
btw...If you want professionally printed OO 1.1.4 in bulk, I've got'em.
I'm not whinning about OpenOffice being lightweight or not in relation to MS Office. An application that takes more than half a minute from click icon to ready to work, eating a couple hundred megs of RAM and maxing out an Athlon 64 3200+ CPU in the process is not lightweight by any book. Abiword is lightweight, kword is lightweight, but OpenOffice is definitely not.
Besides, you download/install once, but (depending on your job) you fire it up every so often.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Good point, and don't forget that Google and Sun seem to have plans for a web-based open-office application. Actually, I'm not sure that's quite true, but I don't think Google and Sun are going to let Microsoft get a jump on this one.