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OpenOffice.org 3.0 Wants to Compete with Outlook
jason writes "At the OpenOffice.org 2007 conference about a month ago there was a presentation on what to expect in the next major milestone for their Microsoft Office competitor. "The presentation mentions bundling Thunderbird with their Office Suite, and refers to it as an 'Outlook replacement.' This is all assuming that Thunderbird recently losing two of its main developers doesn't affect the decision, because I'm sure OpenOffice wants to ensure that Thunderbird will continue to progress before including it." This probably won't sway large corporations away from using Microsoft Office, but it could make it more intriguing for the smaller businesses that are looking to cut some costs."
Considering Sun refuses to incldue open source code into OOo without owning the copyright, this will be an interesting move. Although how will bundling Thunderbird help add functionality to OOo rather then simply installing the two separately?
One could say the same about any office product, but at the very least they share the "Recent Documents" and can launch each other's applications (which is quite a nifty side-benefit). I'm not seeing even that advantage to the Thunderbird bundling. Although I'm sure it will be useful for those not knowledgeable enough to be able to install both separately.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
How about a complete system?
Open Office System would include:
And, all of this would be compatible with MS Office, down to a UI switch that would allow the user to choose the MS style interface.
All of this would have MONO programmability for "macros". (Not the half-hearted programmability that MS offers, and sorry OO only pays lip service to.)
You do all of that, my org MIGHT think of switching.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
KDE4 will run under Windows.
I have been using Open Office and Thunderbird as direct replacements for Office and Outlook for over a year now.
My main tasks are product planning, design, presentations, and documentation for software projects. For these tasks, Open Office is fine - no complaints about missing pieces, and the diagram editor in Open Office is sufficiently better than the diagram editor in MSOffice as to not require a direct replacement for Visio (though Dia is pretty good if you need something Visio-like).
Thunderbird isn't going to make Exchange Server users happy, but that isn't the point. If you use a hosted mail service, as many small companies do, and if you use a shared hosted calendar, Thunderbird, plus a few plug-ins, especially Lightning, is an adequate replacement for Outlook in that context. All, or almost all the functions of Exchange Server and Outlook have equivalents in Thunderbird plus plug-ins.
A year ago, when I started using Thunderbird, it was with some reservations: No Plaxo sync, iffy Webmail integration, Lightning was shakey, etc. In the past year I have found enough plug-ins to fill those gaps. As of now, people using Outlook without an Exchange Server would be better served by Thunderbird.
Some people depend on particular features of the Office/Exchange combination, and that can't be helped, but the 80% that use that software to edit documents and read mail can switch without pain.
For many organizations, the fact they can do all this without buying software, signing up for maintenance plans, and subjecting their budget to the continuous pressure on commercial software vendors to lock in and up-sell, is enough to make the OSS alternative more attractive.
Not convinced? You don't have to be. You probably have an obsolete PC laying around. Put a Linux distro on it and try it.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Wellll, not quite. Take it from a hardcore OOo user. I've used it for my primary office suite for about 5 years in a company that is a pure MS shop. Generally, I do all my work while saving to .odf formats, then do a final export to .doc so people will be able to open it for comments and edits. While things have improved, there are still tasks that are much more clumsy than they need to be in OOo.
.doc. Imagine my horror when I opened the document up with MS Word and realized that all of my work had been for naught, BECAUSE OOo HAD DELETED THE IMAGES WHEN SAVING THE DOCUMENT AS MS OFFICE .doc!!!!!!!!!!
.doc, then opened it in OOo just to make sure that it wasn't MS Office misinterpreting the image placements. Nope, still missing.
.PDF, but then how would my boss be able to make comments and pass it back to me? A read-only format just doesn't work in that case.
For me, the most painful thing that I've run into recently is partially due to the abysmal documentation that comes bundled with OOo and partially a clumsy implementation. The manuals that are located on the Website really used as the native help system. They are FAR better than the extremely limited and misleading information included in the help files. For example, compare and contrast the two sources for how to handle images.
Recently I was using OOo 2.2, then 2.3 to work on a short 30 page whitepaper (including the appendixes) for work. I needed to insert just two image files to illustrate a point I needed to make. This is a task I've done plenty of times and it's never as easy as it should be. This last time, for whatever reason, was more than usually painful.
It took me the better part of a couple of hours to place and size not only the images, but the frames that surrounded them. Time and again I'd click on the image and get just the image and not the frame that bounded it. I wouldn't notice, re-size or move the image, then wonder why I still wasn't getting the text to flow properly around it.
After much mucking around, I FINALLY got them both where I wanted them, then saved the file as a
No, this wasn't a PEBKAC problem. I double and triple checked saving the document in Office XP format. I even saved it as
To say I was pissed would be an understatement. Oh, sure, I could have exported the file as a
Besides, this is the first time that I can remember that OOo has failed me in such a fundamental way. Lord only knows why, because I sure don't. It does mean that there's no way that I can recommend OOo for even a pilot project here. This kind of basic functionality simply MUST work. First time, every time.
Will I open a trouble ticket with the OOo team? Maybe, if I can figure out a way to duplicate the problem in a file that's not full of company confidential information. This is a HUGE issue. I can't believe somebody didn't stumble across it during the beta cycles.