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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.
Now before we all agree that they suck and start the conspiracy of how much MS paid them to switch back... Perhaps they have some valid points here. What can the Linux movement do to curb the switchbacks, and address some of these concerns?
Browse at -1 to keep an eye out for abuses.
"'you have no idea where open-source products are going, whereas vendors like Microsoft provide a roadmap for the future.'"
Perhaps someone should send them this: Open Office Roadmap
I don't think it could be any more clear or easier to find....
Get a web developer
Why? Because someone couldn't make open source work for them? I think they provided a fair assessment of some of the major obstacles to open source. The school district I work for is clamoring for a switch to MSO from Star Office 8. Why? Because we can't find people to train employees in SO8, which means our training funds from the state are wasted and because we are completely unsupported.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
...doesn't mean it's cheaper. I am kind of a open-source fanboy myself, but when it came time to either buy Photoshop or spend valuable hours learning to use Gimp, I also opted for the cash-heavy/time-light option.
My employer pays something like $40/hr (I think..I'm salary). So if I spent even 10 hours getting as good with Gimp as I already am with Photoshop, then the closed-source product is cheaper. But I do use all open source at home when time is less important than money.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
That it's office productivity software. You can generate your own road map.
*Version +1. Just like the current version, but with slightly more features and shiny icons!
*As above.
What are they worried about? That the OpenOffice roadmap might include:
*Given up on office suite. This version is a badger tracking application. Enjoy!
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Some valid points:
Doug Wilson is the Chief Information Officer, The New Zealand Automobile Association Incorporated
Since then he has been the CEO of a PC company (Gateway) and APL+, a software development company that was a Provenco subsidiary. He has also had senior roles at Microsoft and EDS.
Doug is currently the CIO of the NZ Automobile Association, a new role that was created last year.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Seems likely, seeing as this CIO used to work for Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/nz/presscentre/articles/2 004/feb_04_wilson.mspx
Excel, Access, FrontPage, PowerPoint, and Publisher are all just word processors? What about all the back-end collaboration tools?
If you think MSO and OO.o are "just word processors", just stick with Wordpad. It came with Windows.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Also seems to be the very same guy who won a laptop from the website publishing this story only last year. http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/E2D91FD29 42D4382CC25724400106374
I also have some experience with switching users over to OOo from Microsoft Office. Here are some pointers:
* Nearly all female users will refuse to switch and complain at every little difference. At a school, we decided that the school would provide OpenOffice.org on all teacher computers, if the teacher wanted to use MS Office they would have to come up with the funds somewhere else beside the Technology related budgets. All of the Male teachers (except 1) happily switched to OOo. All of the Female teachers (except the handful that had no experience with MS Office) chose to purchase MS Office on their own.
* Most people use a word processor by typing something in, highlighting text and changing fonts, spacing, etc. A well instructed lesson in Styles will lessen the impact people have when switching to OOo. It will probably increase productivity once they learn to use styles instead of micro-managing their documents.
* If you are seriously planning a deployment, test out users on a Linux Distribution. In my experience OOo works much better (and much faster) within Linux than it does in Windows. Also, I have (surprisingly) found that many people find Linux easier to use than Windows (using Novell's SLED 10).
* Show your users how to use the Help Documentation. It actually works with OOo.
If you are considering a switch, do not be too high strung. People will complain, but that is human nature. Also be sure to keep at least a few workstations that run MS Office, not for compatibility issues, but to have the user's show you how they do something within MS Office that they cannot figure out in OpenOffice.org (Most people think they are experts in Word, but usually aren't and this will weed out the idiotic problems).
"...but it was almost impossible to work out what open-source was actually costing..."
They kept getting a div by $0 error.