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Google Pack Adds StarOffice
derrida writes The GoogleOS Blog has the news that Google Pack, their collection of applications, now includes StarOffice. 'It will be interesting to see why Google didn't choose to include OpenOffice.org, the primary difference between StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being that StarOffice includes some proprietary components like clip-art graphics, fonts, templates and tools for Microsoft Office migration.'"
StarOffice education license was free, at least in version 7.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
...my coworkers refused to switch to OpenOffice, even though it was completely free. The dealbreaker? lack of clip-art, templates, etc. It's more likely than you think. Most of us might not care about silly things like that, but most people that I've run into tend to rely heavily on clip-art and templates.
I took a small organisation to Linux and OpenOffice. The secretary/admin had only ever used MS Office previously. It was acceptable. There was a clear reason: money was very tight indeed. This certainly helped, it wasn't just ideology, there was a legitimate motivation rooted in the organisation's values of limiting overhead spend. There was a certain amount of confusion about small details of different operation of spreadsheets. The issue is, they are very similar but not quite identical. Most of the things she was used to worked about the same however - particularly filtering. However, pivot tables/data pilot turned out to be very hard to get used to. Mailing list label generation in Writer was another difficult point. I am terrible at this stuff myself and found it quite hard to teach. Well, hard to learn first.
Linux by contrast, the OS, turned out to be easy for everyone. It was indeed very stable. It turned out to supply lots of other free specialist software that we needed, and the people who needed it, not having run any proprietary equivalents in the past, just learned the new stuff and quite liked it. We created a couple of accounts for different people who work on different days, and they liked having the freedom to arrange their stuff how they liked.
Multiple desktops are one of the surprising things in Linux for new users. You must always teach them carefully and show people how to use them, and once they get used to them, they are something that is used all the time. What they really like is being able to leave one bit of work exactly as it was, move over to another workspace, do something else, and come back to exactly what you left as you left it. If you do move people to Linux, don't neglect to teach this. They will really come to appreciate it.
The big deal with calc turned out to be not the differences, which were a small irritation, but spreadsheets themselves. To get what we needed done, we ended up having to use array formulae. If you do this you will find that the average intelligent and computer literate person, even one who has worked quite a bit with spreadsheets, simply stops here. So we ended up with a spreadsheet that had a sort of mental 'off limits' tag on one of its worksheets. This works, I don't understand what it does, I don't want to know, if it goes wrong I will call up x and have him fix it. But this was a function of spreadsheets and arrays, not the way OO handles them.
There was a sort of side effect for our own admin. She left us, but before she went I watched a couple of other part timers being taught how to use the system, and the general account was, its a bit different, this is how it works, when you get used to it, its fine. But there was a definite increase in confidence that had come from mastering some new stuff, which at first had seemed rather forbidding, but had turned out to be adaptable to need.
If you do this, you have to understand you are asking people to do something unknown and a bit frightening, and absurd as it seems, something they really do not know whether they can do. I got the feedback a couple of times that 'I was so nervous about this, but I've actually learned it better than I thought I would'. You have to very much take the line that it just takes a bit of time, let them make mistakes, be instantly available when they need help, never get impatient. Pick the right time to explain just the right amount of what lies behind things. If you get them through the first few steps, the increased confidence will take them the rest of the way.
One of the most reassuring things you can say to people as they start is: you cannot do any damage to the system. Explain that they are signed on as a user, there's a backup of all the data, and nothing they do is going to damage anything. This is enormously reassuring.
All in all I would say, go for it. If you focus on the needs of the users and helping them, there's no reason it won't succeed.
Wait until it downloads, pause Google Updater, grab the temporary file from D&S\AU\ApData\GU\cache. It should be an exe once it is downloaded. Rename it to something meaningful and presto, StarOffice. You can install wherever you want.
I don't really see what makes it any more compelling than OpenOffice.org so far.
Warning, I didn't read the EULA, so proceed at the risk of Google Street View taking a picture of you running around your house in the underwarz.
This is not an illusion, a rip-off, or a ninja technique!
Star Office 8 at Amazon.com:
#1 in Linux sales.
#28 in Windows Office Suites.
Where it is sandwiched between Upgrade MS Office Pro at $270 and Word Perfect 11 at $30.
I'll wager you didn't know there were 28 runners in the Windows Office Suite-stakes.
#1 in Windows Office Suites and #1 in Amazon software sales is MS Office Home and Student 2007 at $110 with a three-seat license. Retail boxed. No academic ID required.
Pre-orders for Apple's iWork 8 for the Mac put it at #8 in Amazon software sales. MS Student Teacher Office 2004 for the Mac is #2.
MS Office holds 17 of the top 25 positions in Windows Office Suites.
OpenOffice.org 2.2 is #20 in Windows Office Suites at 49 cents on CD new and used.
The last time I looked, which was about a week back, Star Office 8 ranked around #650 in Amazon software sales. MS Works 8 around #50.
Its all about getting the Sun name and brand out there, making the name known by non-technical people; making it more accessible rather than it being viewed as the domain of the purely UNIX geeks.
I'll wish Sun the best of luck. But I don't think it is going to happen.
My biggest gripe was the small incompatibilities between .ppt and ooimpress; when presenting to an audience of hundreds you can't all of a sudden have text flowing off the slide or the .bmp come up black. If I wanted to share something (most everybody else still runs Powerpoint) I had to doublecheck the whole thing prior to doing the slideshow.
Few things irritate me more than a meeting that insists on .ppt, and which won't let you plug your own laptop into the projection system. But there is a solution for this: export your talk to .pdf using a mechanism of your choice (embedding all fonts of course), and display it full-screen in Adobe Viewer. I've seen the occasional startled-looking convention centre IT drone when I've made this request, but even the most blinkered of them are able to accommodate it.
OK so you don't get to use any movies this way, or animated builds, but you can at least build text in by using multiple pages which differ only by a single bullet point if you are that way inclined (Apple's Keynote can build a .pdf in this form automatically, presumably other presentation applications can as well). And on the plus side you get, pure, guaranteed cross-platform compatibility - something powerpoint has never been able to do even between different versions of MS windows.
definitively/definitely
Every business person I've talked to says freedom takes a back seat to utility, price, ease of use and ease of migration any day of the week.
Well, then you're talking to stupid business people. The kinds of "freedoms" that "free software" guarantees are not some ideological gimmicks, their purpose is to reduce costs and business risks.
Most companies aren't choosing Linux just because it is open source, that is merely icing on the cake [...] They are choosing Linux for its cost, stability, etc etc.
Linux has low cost, high stability, and (most importantly) low business risk because it is open source.
Now, as for StarOffice, the fact that OpenOffice exists greatly reduces the risk of shipping StarOffice for Google because it means that if Sun screws up on StarOffice, Google can switch to OpenOffice with few problems.