Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Portable OpenOffice.org 2.01 Released

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the good-ideas-are-good-ideas dept.

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."

42 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? by trezor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And some people are paranoid.

    Get some sense of proportion. It's a link. It's actually a link to a product you have to buy. And do you honestly believe that there still are people on this planet using computers that haven't heard about MS Office yet?

    Christ. Talk about overreaction.

    --
    Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
  2. Portable Microsoft Office by putko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
    1. Re:Portable Microsoft Office by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful
      That presumes people are willing to run their business-critical apps on someone else's remote server. That looks good on paper every time someone proposes it, but Gmail is about the closest I've seen to it actually succeeding.

      I think it may be a while before someone edits CorpFinancialsAndCustomerList.doc at a rented terminal.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    2. Re:Portable Microsoft Office by no+reason+to+be+here · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If Microsoft runs an online service
      Isn't that a pretty big 'if' at this point, still?

      then the browser (modified, perhaps) will be all that will be required to run Office on any computer
      I somehow doubt that M$ are going to put out an online version of Office that is accessible through Firefox/Seamonkey/Safari/Opera/Konqueror/etc. At the very least online Office would require the latest and greatest version of IE. If they do go the WebApp route, I wouldn't be surprised to find Redmond charging for special client-side software to access the online apps. They could easily get business to buy into it, too, by saying that it makes the WebApp service more secure.

      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.
      I see part of the attraction of this project is that it's not just a portable office suite, but also you get to keep your files. All of the proposed online Office ideas I've heard (including an online OO.o) usually have files saved on a remote server accessed over the Internet as a feature. I personally, and I think many others besides (especially many businesses and professionals), would prefer to keep their files stored locally.

      --
      my pet machine
    3. Re:Portable Microsoft Office by slapout · · Score: 2

      For many, the connectivity issue is a big if. There are a lot of places where you can't get a connection. And what about bandwidth requirements? Will dial-up users be out of luck? I'd rather carry the flash drive.

      --
      Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
    4. Re:Portable Microsoft Office by jonnythan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Portable Microsoft Office by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    6. Re:Portable Microsoft Office by gi-tux · · Score: 3, Insightful
      They could easily get business to buy into it, too, by saying that it makes the WebApp service more secure.


      And then when you read the fine print, you see that there is a clause that says that Microsoft now owns all rights to any data that is produced in this application. And for it to truly be portable, the data would have to be stored on their server as well, so how could you argue with the fine print after you discover it. Your document would simply disappear if you started to argue with them. Because they own the server, the application, and control the data.

      --
      I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
    7. Re:Portable Microsoft Office by jkauzlar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  3. Portable Firefox by bitkari · · Score: 5, Informative

    The perfect partner to Portable OpenOffice might just be Portable Firefox.

    This is very useful for me as I'm otherwise forced to use IE on the university computers. Neat.

    1. Re:Portable Firefox by SirDaShadow · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Portable Firefox by anpe · · Score: 2, Informative

      In fact there's a full Portable Suite here : http://portableapps.com/suite

  4. Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? by Prospero's+Grue · · Score: 4, Funny
    Why is Taco linking to Microsoft Office's home page? Is there a backhanded deal between Slashdot and Microsoft to covertly promote their software?

    Yeah, that must be it.

    "This OpenOffice story, which focused on a feature it had that MS Office didn't, was brought to you by Microsoft."

    "Microsoft. We're gonna mess with your heads."

    --
    The opinion above is fiction. Any similarity to real opinions, including facts and logic, is purely coincidental.
  5. Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? by cHiphead · · Score: 2, Informative

    actually this entire submitted news item honest to god feels like a ripoff of my comment posted here a few short hours ago... STRIKINGLY similar.

    Cheers.

    --

    This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  6. Suite! If I could only work on a beach in Hawaii by digitaldc · · Score: 4, Funny

    Office? We don't need no office, that is so 20th century. All we need now is a laptop, flash drive and a big umbrella.

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
  7. Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? by kalbzayn · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe he's trying to bring Microsoft down by constantly slashdotting their site and making everybody believe the Microsoft is even more unreliable than it really is.

    Let's all go click on it now.

  8. It's all been done before. by RacerZero · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:It's all been done before. by Skater · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think I have a couple of those laying around somewhere. This isn't really the same thing, though - as far as I know those were ROMs, whereas the USB drive can be changed. So, when you find a bug and it's fixed in a later version, it's easy to correct it without finding a new cartridge or something. Also your USB drive can store data.

      I see the connection you're making but I don't agree it's the same thing. It's FAR better.

  9. Big achievment? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The full suite is 144 MB installed. it is only portable if you have more than a 128 MB stick.

    1. Re:Big achievment? by FridayBob · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's simply outrageous!! How dare the set such ridiculously high hardware requirements! Why, I'm sure that because of this, at least half of all readers who would have been will to try this out are now not even going to bother. The fools!

    2. Re:Big achievment? by pixelite · · Score: 2, Informative

      when they say portable, i dont think they meant in the sense that it is small, but more along the lines that everything will stay on your media (usb memory): the application, the data, user preferences. That way you can take it with you to any computer, always having all of it with you, thus making it portable. Besides 1GB usb mem isn't that expensive.

      --
      >>Sig under construction
  10. Translation by estoll · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From the article:
    "This is exactly the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about selling as many licenses of their work as possible"

    Translation:
    "This is exactly the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about how many people find their software useful."

    --
    http://www.askthevoid.com
    1. Re:Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can see that your comment could be modded "funny", but "insightful"?

      For the mod who thought the comment was insightful: the comment should be translated as

      "This is exactly the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't mind if people copy their software."

      Please mod me "obvious".

  11. My system on USB by Nichotin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
    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 /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.
    This is ideal for me, as "all" the machines I use that are not mine, can boot from usb.

    --
    Dvorak on Doomtech
  12. Portable web server? by johnw · · Score: 2, Funny

    Can they do a portable slashdot-proof web server?

  13. Windows Only? by Hakubi_Washu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

  14. portable MS Office suite soon by Randall311 · · Score: 2, Funny

    "I don't imagine we'll see a portable Microsoft Office suite any time soon."

    why not?

  15. Author AND reference by Wubby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, did anyone else notice that the author of this peice, VeryVito, uses himself as a reference. The "some say" link is to his own blog. Come on, if your going to plug yourself, be open about it!

    Oh, and the portable apps site seems to be 403. Slashdotted, maybe?

    --
    Sig
    Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
  16. As the links seems dead now: by ledow · · Score: 2, Informative

    As the links seems dead now:

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableoo/

  17. MS Office does not need to be portable.... by bpuli · · Score: 3, Insightful

    it is already on every PC out there.

    --
    BP http://www.card-central.com
    1. Re:MS Office does not need to be portable.... by RosenSama · · Score: 2, Informative

      Lots of Dell computers no longer come with Office for "free". The come with Corel WordPerfect and Office Basic is $149. This is also what is costs to upgrade from Windows MCE to XP. That's a lot of money considering what computer you can get for $500.

  18. Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? by menkhaura · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I believe I read "lightweight" referring to OpenOffice... oooh the hangover

    --
    Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
    Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
  19. Integration by robyannetta · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'd like to see the Firefox team and the OpenOffice.org team get together and collaborate on integration of the two.

    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.
  20. Down from 206MB by CritterNYC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's at 144MB down from 206MB with nothing left out. The JARs are compressed to max with 7zip. The DLLs and EXEs are UPXed. We're working on recompressing the included PNGs (which may buy us another 5MB or so) and a few other things along those lines.

    --
    Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
  21. Damn Small Lunux on USB by sgt+scrub · · Score: 2, Informative

    The perfect portable "app" is the USB version of DSL. http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ You can buy the drive with everything preinstalled directly from them.

    --
    Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
  22. Which begs the question by el_womble · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!
  23. Site Down, Working On It by CritterNYC · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sorry about the 403, the site didn't handle a full Slashdotting as well as hoped (being on a shared web server, it was slamming the PHP resources). It's actually run on the Drupal open source content management system (Apache+mySQL+PHP). I'm working on having my host get it back up.

    Until then, you can view the Google Cache of the older Portable OpenOffice release and get the new release from the SourceForge Portable OpenOffice.org project page

    --
    Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
  24. Re:linux thumbdrives by oni · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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/

  25. Re:World is round indeed! by kimvette · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  26. Portable Open Office...It's Called CD rom by xoip · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  27. Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? by menkhaura · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  28. More portable apps! by Mr_Whoopass · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are a lot more applications that work from a USB key that don't advertise that fact. I will share with you what I currently use on my 1gb USB key and the locations you can download them. Most of these are freeware or relatively cheap shareware. Please help the authors continue their work if you use any of these and make a small donation at their sites if available.

    Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
    This one will run from your key, but it does write to the registry which portable apps should not do. Then again, they don't advertise this as a portable app. Once you use it on a machine and configure it, it will remember your settings on that machine of course. Handy if you are locked down at work from installing software but you need it occasionally.

    Bulk Rename Utility - http://www.jimwillsher.co.uk/Site/Software/Softwar e_Intro.php
    a utility which allows the rapid renaming of files and folders, based upon flexible selection criteria. Download the zip version for portability.

    FeedReader - http://www.feedreader.com/
    This project is currently dead, but it works from USB wonderfully.

    FoxitReader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/bbs/index.php
    A PDF reader that works very quickly (kind of like Adobe used to about 6 years ago).

    Miranda - http://www.miranda-im.org/
    A powerful and flexible multiprotocol IM client with loads of plugins. Download the zip version for portability.

    mIRC - http://www.mirc.com/
    Everyones favorite IRC app. Has always been portable.

    PortableFileZilla - http://portableapps.com/
    Portable FileZilla is the popular FileZilla FTP client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your server list and settings with you.

    PortableFirefox - http://portableapps.com/
    Portable Firefox is the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser packaged as a portable app, so you can take your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords with you.

    PortableNVU - http://portableapps.com/
    Portable NVU is the easy-to-use NVU web editor packaged as a portable app, so you can edit your website on the go.

    PortableOpenOffice - http://portableapps.com/
    Portable OpenOffice.org is the popular OpenOffice.org office suite -- including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database -- packaged as a portable app

    PortableSunbird - http://portableapps.com/
    Portable Sunbird is the handy Mozilla Sunbird calendar and task manager packaged as a portable app, so you can take your calendar and to do list with you.

    PortableThunderbird - http://portableapps.com/
    Portable Thunderbird is the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your email, address book and account settings with you.

    Snippy - http://www.bhelpuri.net/Snippy/
    Snippy is a small utility that captures an area of your screen to your clipboard to paste into other applications.

    AleJenJes Countdown Timer - http://www.gonebowlin.com/freeware.html
    It is a simple countdown timer where you enter the starting time in hours, minutes & seconds and it counts down to zero. Not needed often, but handy as can be for those few instances you do need one.

    Unit Conversion Utility - http://www.jimwillsher.co.uk/Site/Software/UCU_Int ro.html
    Unit Conversion U