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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.
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?
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
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!
> 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?
Why am I interesting in this debate? Because I had to buy Office 2007! I was holding out for the longest time, hoping that OO would finally allow me to do what I want. The days of Office pro being less than an hourly rate is long gone, just like the dotcom bubble.
>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.
I advise that you actually look at the tools that investment banks use. They in fact use Excel! Sure there is back end stuff, but traders and quants like Excel because it lets them very quickly come up with ideas and strategies.
>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.
I find it amazing that instead of actually doing a constructive argument you mock me. I could just as easily mock you since you did not even know that professional traders use Excel. Are you a quant? Do you follow the market?
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
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.