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NZ Outfit Dumps Open Office For MS Office
(Score.5, Interestin writes "The NZ Automobile Association has just announced that it is dropping Open Office and switching back to MS Office. According to their CIO, 'Microsoft Office is not any cheaper, but it was almost impossible to work out what open-source was actually costing because of issues such as incompatibility and training.' In addition, 'you have no idea where open-source products are going, whereas vendors like Microsoft provide a roadmap for the future.'" About 500 seats are involved. MS conceded to letting Office users run the software at home as well.
Hey ass wipe. Microsoft threw in home usage rights for free! They don't do that. You don't buy software for work and then get to use it at home for free. You'd have to buy it for home use as well. And how many Microsoft Office certified employees does your school district have? I'd be zero. You're just expecting to get free support from people who have used the product before. FYI Office 2007 is nothing like Office 2003. Major learning curve.
Users...do complex things, from presentations, to databases, to collaboration, to complex spreadsheets, etc etc
I can imagine there are complex things some large organisations may want to do, but you haven't listed any of them. Maybe I'm setting the bar too high, but I'd say everything you listed is basic use of an office suite. Since when has banging together a quick powerpoint presentation been challenging?
Unfortunately that road-map was not present at the strip club that the Microsoft sales rep took their CIO out to. Strangely the MS Office roadmap was, along with about three litres of something called 'Night Train'.
As is usual with deals like this one, the CIO phoned in an order to switch back to MS Office about two days later and wasn't seen again until the following Thursday.
... IMO OpenOffice is probably easier for MS Office people to learn than the new "improved" Office..
(Though a project that aims to reskin the OO interface to have the same menu placements and keyboard shortcuts, not unlike GIMPshop for gimp + photoshop, would be a pretty good idea IMO...)