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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."
Because Outlook doesn't spread enough viruses as is?
Jesus. How about they compete with Word first, eh? Calling Thunderbird an "Outlook Replacement" just shows they have no idea what people use Outlook for. Outlook Express replacement, sure.
The great thing about Office is all the damn pieces work together. Excel is friendly with Access, Access is friendly with Word, Everything is friendly with Outlook. To beat Office, you have to have an Office suite that works like that. Not just all the pieces in one package.
There is not one single thing in OO that doesn't have an OSS equivalent stand-alone application that is at least as good. Bundling a mail client with the rest of your apps doesn't suddenly make you competitive, especially when your whole user base could have already installed that mail client if they wanted it.
There are OSS projects that are actually making a push toward doing the things that Outlook does (like Kontact). But Thunderbird is still lagging behind Evolution imho, and neither of them play all that great with any of the groupware servers out there, open or closed.
I used to try and push OO on people, but I've completely lost faith in it. I keep thinking, maybe they'll get their crap together, but then they do stuff like this.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Changing the names of the various apps in OOo would have a bigger effect. The number of times I've had someone think that Calc was windows calculator replacement, rather than a spreadsheet is far too high.
When it can sync with exchange servers without having to use webdav I think it will be a contender, until then I don't think so. Still, nice to have it included in the office package I guess, but does it really make a difference?
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.
As many people have already noticed, people don't choose to use Outlook. Somebody else choose to use Exchange, and that means you're using Outlook. There's no way a third party could attempt to compete, since Exchange uses totally proprietary hooks and methods.
Personally, I think it'd be better to focus on something like a Visio replacement. Use Dia as a starting point, etc.
RFC2119
...bundling Thunderbird is a good idea in the sense that they won't try to fit more stuff in the saturated market of email clients. On the other hand, should email client and schedule integration be a priority? From my point of view, Microsoft is using Office as a tool to turn Windows itself into an all-purpose environment. Sun's efforts will probably be restricted to improve OpenOffice, and OpenOffice alone. They might risk turning it into a bloaty 300 Mb mess that people will ditch in favor of KOffice, Evolution or Office 2007 in the case of Windows users.
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.
Apparently the OpenOffice team is not listening to what users want. Most of us don't want a "bundled" Email client to add to the bloat.... we already choose the Email client we want to use. I don't want an IM client, web browser, or music player bundled into it either!!!
This is what they should be concentrating on:
1) Faster. Fast loading, faster opening documents, faster saving documents, faster menu response.
2) Smaller. Higher efficiency. Smaller downloads.
3) More stable. Better code. Less crashing.
4) More compatible. With more types of files (for example, docx, wp, svg)
5) Better documented. End user docs, help, and developer docs.
Please this is so wrong, who needs yet another mail client?
How about first finish cleaning up the OOo code?
Then make Impress make slides look nice! Graphics output is so ugly I have to be ashamed when I use Impress, drawings in Powerpoint look so much nicer. Why cant they make good anti-aliasing of curves? What is really stupid is that when I export my slides as pdf they look really nice! Oh boy... but no, first they want to add a mail software into an already really slow office suite, THANK YOU!
And group scheduling, public folders, notes, etc ?
If not its replacing Outlook express, not outlook. And there are tons of decent competitors at that level now.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Without any kind of SEAMLESS intergeneration with ACTIVE SYNC you stand ZERO CHANCE of prying Outlook from my hands. Sure I use Open Office but dumped Thunderbird after giving it more than a fair chance.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
You must be new here,
Anyone who doesnt know that uses digg.
Lightning works, but just barely (I say this as someone who uses it every day). It doesn't integrate with Thunderbird well enough (e.g., dealing with invites by email). It has a kludgy screen layout in TB. Its reminders don't fire reliably. Contacts are not well integrated with events, and the recurrence system has some problems. It needs a lot of fit and finish work. I say this as someone who LIKES it, and used to use Outlook. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't prepared to fiddle with extensions, risk losing data, etc. TB+Lightning is also definitely not an Outlook replacement, since it lacks many basic features such as mail and calendar archiving, journaling, complex task management, more than basic contact management, etc.
Here's hoping that OOo will help support TB and Lightning (with the Mozilla reorganization, the calendar side is up in the air), and bring the two closer together. Without stronger calendar support, there's no way to displace Outlook.
.sig withheld by request
If you think Outlook is used mostly for email, you're mistaken. The whole point here is that Outlook is NOT just a mail-client. The whole synchronized agenda thing is a central pillar and maybe more things that I don't know are in there. Managers and administrations are intertwined with all the features Outlook has, so please, stop the FUD that's only an emailclient.
I wish open office would send incremental patches instead of making people download 70 to 100 megabytes when security or bug fixes come out. Slag Microsoft for being an abusive monopolist, but at least they know how to minimize the download sizes when patching. Maybe it is related to Open Office's architecture and how it has to load damn near everything even if you are just using one piece of it (slowing it down and sucking memory). That is, maybe they need to solve their performance issues first. I use OOO and don't have MS Office installed. But the patch thing really bugs me. Fortunately I have high speed internet. However I think there is still a huge number of people on dial up in the United States (if not a majority). Huge downloads like this basically prohibit those people from using the product. They will use unpatched pirated versions of MS Office, or something they can buy for cheap instead. And even if they can buy OOO on a CD they won't patch it until it is not a huge bandwidth burden.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I think that the problem with Open Office is that Microsoft Office has no real competition, hence it can afford to ignore everybody else.
The problem is very simple, when it comes to using Operating Systems there is very effective competition to Windows, namely Unix, Linux (and its many variations), BSD and MAC OS. While many of these systems are low cost to own, they do provide Microsoft with an incentive to provide a better operating system.
However, Microsoft Office has no real competition. Some people will say "but what about Open Office", but the problem is that while it may be free, there is no incentive for anybody to develop program other than for the simple joy of it. Unfortunately developing a office tool today is not like developing an operating system, as you have to offer dictionaries, grammar tools, paper formatting and tool integration to support every country in every region of the world; something you either buy or pay for a lot of work to be done. The problem is that the commercial alternatives to Microsoft Office have all but died out (Word Perfect etc..), hence the market share for Microsoft Office is probably greater than that of Windows.
The solution is that somebody needs to take Microsoft on where it hurts, i.e. offer a proper Office suite that costs less than Office. Unfortunately the only company that is any position to do this is Apple, but having been hurt by Microsoft when Explorer was withdrawn for Mac OS after Apple launched Safari, I doubt whether they would even attempt to tackle this problem as Mac without Office would be a problem for interoperability with documents in the future. There is of course Star Office, but that is just a commercial version of Open Office.
So the solution is that we get total bloatware and zero innovation. While I have not used Office 2007 yet, I suppose that like 2000, XP and 2003 there is little innovation over 97, which was actually quite a good piece of software.
For your information, I do use Thunderbird as my home email client along with Open Office on my Home PC. But believe me, if I was running a small business, I would have no option but to pay the "Microsoft tax", even if I was not using Windows.
I personally think that the only reason that Microsoft does not sell Office as part of the operating system (which for many people it could be described as, especially when it comes to Outlook) is that not only do they make most of their money from Office, but if they did they would suddenly find being themselves being prosecuted for anti-trust by the EU and US.
Openoffice 3 is scheduled for release in September 2008 (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Roadmap#Ongoing_OpenOffice.org_3.0). You may like Outlook or not, but there's /no way/ /anyone/ writes a replacement for it in less than a year.
/not/ using Outlook because it is such an incredibly cool mail client (which it isn't); they use it because it integrates mail, contacts and calendars with each other and with Exchange. I mean, you can take Thunberbird, add conversation capabilities and polish the UI a little more and then you'll have the *mail* part of Outlook, but you do *not* have the whole thing.
People are
The MS Office universe is as successful as it is because of the following:
- Word, Excel and PowerPoint are a "classic office suite" and are nicely integrated with each other
- Outlook integrates mail, contacts and calendars with a server (Exchange) and is interacts nicely with the other Office apps
- Access is a crappy database which causes more problems than it solves. Not much to see here. Most people would be better off with excel sheets they mail to each other.
The Status of OpenOffice is IMHO the following:
- Writer is pretty much equivalent to Word. Some things are actually nicer, others are worse. It definitely needs some polish though (there are hundreds of minor nuisances). And they should definitely get rid of the retarded light bulb shaped assistant. It's even more stupid than clippy, but at least it's not animated.
- Calc is close to Excel, but not as close as Writer is to Word. It's usable for most things Excel is used for, but not a replacement yet.
- Impress sucks. It's not even close to PowerPoint. It's usable for presentations consisting of bulleted lists, but if you want anything more, oh my.
- Base vs Access - I have almost no experience with Base, so I can't say much about this. But the concept is the same as Access, so I guess it sucks at least as much.
- There is no replacement for Outlook.
- The integration between the individual programs is *years* behind what MS Office has to offer.
What they *should* do instead of trying to push Thunderbird as "Outlook replacement" is this:
- Polish Writer some more. I use Writer almost daily and have the feeling that it has the potential to be *better* than Word in most tasks. They should *not* try to be bug-by-bug, stupid-feature-by-stupid-feature compatible to Word; people who need that kind of compatibility are not going to switch anyway. Maybe bring it a bit closer to a DTP program (more and more exact controls for layouting and styling, especially for longer and/or structured documents).
- Work a bit on Calc. I mainly use both Excel and Calc for things such as "making lists" or "summing numbers" or maybe to write a small macro, so I don't really care.
- Do something *really cool* with Impress. PowerPoint is far from perfect and presentations are getting more and more important every day. I know I can do "everything" using LaTeX and Beamer, but sometimes you just want to do something *quickly*. And Impress disappoints me every time.
- Get rid of Base. Both Access and Base are crappy concepts anyway. Databases should run on a server.
Then they could still write an Exchange replacement, and only *then* Outlook can be truly replaced.
Just my 2 cents.
- A copy of Office Pro costs less than your hourly billing rate, and you have no interest in this debate, so why are you posting?
- You should not be using Excel at all. You should be using a proper financial modelling system connected to a relational database, e.g. Business Objects with various add ons. Again, for the level of investing that this necessitates, the cost is unimportant to you.
- Either you employ somebody else to do this stuff anyway, or you have to adhere to corporate policies, and so your desktop is locked down by IT and you don't have a choice of tools.
Alternatively of course you are just someone playing at investing. In which case your opinion is not particularly valuable. Given how expensive professionals have been getting it so wrong lately, anyone who trusts the financial models of an amateur without access to proper business modelling tools and data...deserves to buy a share in this wonderful toll bridge I just bought that links England and Wales.Pining for the fjords
All i can say is brilliant!.
Although, the choice of Thunderbird is a little annoying. I was having a chat not that long ago (actually the day OO 2.3 came out) with a friend and we both came to the conclusion we both use ms office because the number 1 thing we use is outlook.
Now, if OO 3 had a viable outlook alternative (notice the use of the word viable) then i'd never have to fire up outlook ever again. OF course, by viable i mean something that has at least the calender - i use evolution at work with exchange and it works "ok" when its not crashing, but if OO had its eyes on thunderbird and upping its functionality levels then more power to them i say!. My life would be complete!
I do use t-bird at home for everything, but its so hard to do that in a job given that lack of (useful) calendering. Now, evolutions outlook (owa) connector may be quite annoying really but there is work underway for a real connector to exchange for evolution and if that library (http://sourceforge.net/projects/openchange/) could be used in t-bird - then brilliant!.
Im of course getting ahead of myself, one step at a time eh?
ok replacement.
first, we need scheduleable TASKS, and we need them to be linkable with EMAILS and emails be THREADED, and also tasks linkable with events (meetings and whatnot) AND CONTACTS (emails and cards).
current thunderbird with lightning addon doesnt cut it unfortunately, it just can function as a "reminder" service, not a complete scheduler/planner/organizer/communication client.
Read radical news here
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
Also, what's up with having more than 8 bit colours? You don't need those extra bits to get the gist of a picture; the recipient of the 8 bit picture will recognize whatever is on the picture just as well as if it was 24 bit, right? Right? :) )
(Good comeback
These arguments about Microsoft Office, Outlook, OpenOffice, etc. sound ridiculously outdated. Come on, do you really think people will want to install, maintain, or run any of that bloated, complicated crap in the future?
OpenOffice is a good stop-gap replacement for people wed to old paradigms, and I'm glad its' there, but people: get over it.
What I cannot understand: how exactly does anyone expect Thunderbird to compete with Outlook as a contact manager? Sure, I use it for e-mail, and I can see how calendaring and task management could be integrated nicely, but no one seems to be addressing Thunderbird's address book, which has zero usefulness outside of e-mail. Does anyone do anything useful with the Thunderbird address book?
TANSTAAFL
iWork is great. Sure, it only duplicates Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, and I'm sure it doesn't have every single last feature that Office has, but I think Apple is creating a strong competitor in iWork. Using it is certainly a lot less frustrating than using Office...
Brought to you by the numbers π, e, and 0x1B.
Shifting back to the issue of Excel. When I worked for a forex trading company, we built an execution and order management suite for Excel using VB, at the request of our hedge fund clients. It had the following features:
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.