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.'"

Comments

Ask That Question Again

[photomonkey]

From the summary...

"StarOffice includes...tools for Microsoft Office migration"

I think that they suspect that they can wean people off some of the Office stuff rather than just forcing them to go cold turkey.

Re:Ask That Question Again

[watchingeyes]

Or perhaps they're planning on some future integration between Star Office and Google Docs (Star Office using Google Docs as a backend online storage option with on-the-go editing and collaboration features over and above Star Office's default set come to mind...).

Obvious

[LowSNR]

StarOffice includes some proprietary components like clip-art graphics, fonts, templates and tools for Microsoft Office migration. I'd say they just answered their own question. Google wants to court MS Office users. Is this a surprise in any way?

$69.95 U.S.

[krischik]

Did I miss something? I allways thoght that StarOffice is a commertial product - One you actualy pay for - $69.95 U.S to be precise.

So how does google do it then?

Martin

Re:$69.95 U.S.

[kaiwai]

Actually, its a free product in Solaris x86/SPARC - as for Windows, ever thought that *maybe* Sun approached Google and will use that as a way to get people to atleast *try* StarOffice 8 - then if they want support and so forth, to pay for it? 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.

For me, I hope Indiana/Sun hook up with Google and use the Google hype, and integration with Google and Indiana to push it further out there as an alternative to Windows.

Re:$69.95 U.S.

[dn15]

Did I miss something? I allways thoght that StarOffice is a commertial product - One you actualy pay for - $69.95 U.S to be precise.

So how does google do it then?

I present two possibilities for your consideration:

1. Google made a deal with Sun for promotional purposes. I doubt they were selling many copies to begin with but might make good advertising for the Sun brand.
2. They pirated it using BitTorrent and are now illegally redistributing it.

I'll let you decide which one is more likely. ;)

People don't want choices

[Asmor]

I'm going to give the summary the benefit of the doubt and assume the question was intended as why they don't include both OO.org and StarOffice.

The answer, of course, is that people don't want choices. Be happy that Joe Schmoe might even consider installing some weird program that's not made by Microsoft, don't expect him to decide whether he wants OpenOffice.org ("What is that, some website?") or StarOffice.

Google chose what they thought would be most useful to most technically-disinclined people.

Re:People don't want choices

[McGiraf]

OpenOffice.org ("What is that, some website?")

duh! every Joe Schmoe knows websites ends in .com

Re:Isn't it obvious?

[tha_mink]

'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.' Ahem...isn't that enough? Tools for MS Office integration being a must_have these days and all....

Staroffice without Linux...

[neapolitan]

My previous hospital (a very large tertiary-care facility) made the switch from Microsoft Office to Staroffice in late 2005. I had a decidedly mixed experience.

At first, I thought it was the coolest thing around -- can use opendocument formats and pdf. Unfortunately, the administration set them up on Windows 2000 workstations instead of switching to Linux. After several weeks of use, for the majority of tasks there was *no* difference (typing memos / patient letters, simple spreadsheet stuff.)

However, for anything more advanced (pivot tables) I found myself relearning stuff (StarOffice calls it a DataPilot). This wasn't too bad.

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. There were also many small incompatibilites with Excel importing.

Openoffice / Staroffice is also definitively slower than Microsoft Office on startup and for most tasks I used. After awhile most doc's / staff members griped, "I am just saving the hospital money that I would never have seen anyway, why do I have a headache using this generic stuff when we could just have the real thing?"

Don't get me wrong; I use Linux exclusively at home (except for one WinXP box for VPN to work through a Juniper client that is a pain under Linux). I use OpenOffice at home.

However, for the enterprise the average user doesn't care that the IT department will save a few hundred thousand dollars a year -- they just want what is better or faster, or lacking that, what they already know how to use. The average user also doesn't care about the open source philosophy that you and I do.

The hospital still uses Staroffice (at least when I left) and you could request a workstation to be equipped with Microsoft Office if needed. I wish that the hospital had gone with Linux workstations, with Citrix / virtualization of apps that are Windows only, which would have given the clear benefits of Linux (stability, no spyware installed, etc.) with Staroffice.

The short story is - Staroffice in itself was slower and (from the average user's perspective) not as good as Microsoft Office, the current standard, and was perceived as an inferior product. I *really* think that had this change been bundled with a switch to Linux on the desktop, which would have enhanced the user experience (no more popups / junkware slowing down the system) it would have been a great thing; but by itself it was not that useful. Again, just one user's experience, but this was a large corporation with thousands of workstations.

  - Anybody else have similar experience with ditching Microsoft halfway in the corporate setting?

Re:Staroffice without Linux...

[Budenny]

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.

It makes a huge difference...

[sykopomp]

...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.