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OpenOffice.org V3.0 Sets Download Record, 80% Windows
thefickler writes "The newest version of OpenOffice, version 3.0, has set a download record in its first week of availability. Most surprising is the fact that over 80% of downloads were from Windows users. As one commentator noted, when it comes to a choice between almost identical software (e.g. Microsoft Office and OpenOffice), price is the determining factor."
while gentoo may have an openoffice 'overlay'(not a gentoo user so that may be the wrong term) most ubuntu users will have to download the deb manually (either from here or a third party repo (cant think of any for ubuntu) or wait for 9.04
oh and from TFA
Only 221,000 downloads by Linux users were recorded, leading John McCreesh, head of marketing for OpenOffice.org, to suggest a massive undercount. McCreesh said 90% of Linux users traditionally receive OpenOffice.org updates straight from their Linux distribution's vendor, which would explain the relatively low Linux count.
but that would still give windows >66% (assuming os x makes up 0%, which is possible due to neo office)
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Most Linux users get their software from their distro, so that's the reason for the predominance of Windows in the downloads. However, the conclusion reached by the author is arbitrary. There is nothing here showing that Office is "loosing" market dominance. All you have are OpenOffice download numbers, which don't prove anything about market dominance. Office isn't even available for Linux, so how is its market dominance changing from what it was before?
You'll be waiting a while. Ubuntu won't have OO.o 3 until next April.
Long story short: upstream delays made it miss the Intrepid feature freeze.
Your question is answered in the link, which says the numbers are skewed. Thus, this announcement is a bit of misleading marketing on the part of OpenOffice.
Semi-offical PPA for intrepid: https://launchpad.net/~openoffice-pkgs/+archive
It's in Gentoo; I have been using it for a few days...
Um maybe you need to read more carefully but the link in the GGP is actually to a scam site (piratebay.com), not the legitimate Pirate bay (thepiratebay.com)
For some reason, OO.o isn't providing a PowerPC build of OpenOffice 3.0 in English. You can get 3.0 in French or Japanese, but the latest English build is 2.4. During development of 3.0, PPC builds have been provided by a third party, but they seem to have stopped at 3.0rc4. I wonder why.
Nope - Firefox had roughly 8 million downloads in a single day, versus the 3 million OO.o 3.0 downloads in the first week.
That is one big advantage. Being able to export to PDF without spending a buttload of money on Adobe Acrobat or spending a lot of time to find a good Windows freeware print-to-PDF program is another advantage of OOo, and OOo 3.0 can also open and edit PDFs to some degree with the Sun PDF plugin, which is a huge feature. One last thing I have heard quite a few others praise is the ability to open almost any document file type out there right out of the box, now that OOo 3.0 has Office 2007 XML support.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Exactly, sending out a resume in an editable format is just unprofessional for anything higher than a receptionist position.
It will probably be available in the backports repo for 8.04 and 8.10. And there is a semi-official ppa repo for 8.10 now (google for it).
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
First off, we really shouldn't count Macs as part of the equation. I haven't checked recently, but for a long time, OOo's support for MacOS X lagged way, way behind. It was essentially unusable.
No, we have to count Macs. One of the big bullet points on the OpenOffice 3 release notes was its new native Aqua support on OS X.
If you are a dedicated ms-office user, and you really need 100% of the functionality of ms-office; then get ms-office - don't even think about anything else.
But, if you are like most of the population, and you just need a good office product, that is basically compatible with standard file formats, then openoffice does the trick.
JMHO.
Sounds like a more formalised version of this comment:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=219158&cid=17788090 [slashdot.org]
Somewhat, but with more of a focus on the consumer marketing approach. Think customer preference between Pepsi and Coke. Less technical focus. Less objective.
This approach recognizes that often the decisions of consumers are not based on logic, or on the best features, performance, price, etc. There are other factors that matter to them, that they rationalize in their heads that have a real world impact. I'm trying to quantify these factors for this specific case. The results should be the best estimation of real-world barriers between the two. Most current assessments simply compare the technical features, which, while useful for some classes of users, doesn't speak to a larger class of users who are more affected by other factors.
Check out the number of spam sites already, google for openoffice (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=openoffice), and you get sponsored links like these -
# OpenOffice.org 3 www.office-soft.net Get the Free OpenOffice Download the latest Version |
# OpenOffice 2008 - Free OpenOffice.org-Suite.com OpenOffice Latest Version. Fast & Easy - 100% Guaranteed.
This one is quite nasty http://www.office-soft.net/uk/
Click the link "You must accept the terms and conditions to download any program"
PRELIMINARY WARNING:
THE COST OF EACH SMS FROM THE USER'S MOBILE PHONE IS 1.5 POUNDS (VAT INCLUDED). UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED, THE DOWNLOAD COST SHALL BE FOUR SMS.
Please read these USAGE CONDITIONS carefully and, if appropriate, use the download service which shall imply the express and complete acceptance of each and every one of these USAGE CONDITIONS. Otherwise, please close this website.
ONE. PREMIUM SERVICE DESCRIPTION
1.1. Through this website (hereinafter the Website), users can download executables that contain the selected computer program from our servers to their hard drive (the SOFTWARE).
1.2. Netlink Network Corp. offers a PREMIUM high speed download service that is efficient and virus free. In exchange, the user shall first send three SMS under the conditions specified in clause 2.2 that defines the commercial conditions of the service.
TWO. USE OF THE PREMIUM SERVICE
2.1. In order to access the PREMIUM service, the user shall first send three SMS to 88889 as per the detailed instructions provided at all times in the download section of the Website.
2.2. The cost of each SMS sent by the user to said number is 1.50 pounds + VAT; therefore the total cost of access to the PREMIUM service shall be 3.60 Euros + VAT.
2.3. After sending the three SMS, and always in accordance with the detailed instructions provided in the download section, the user shall receive a code that will enable him to perform the high speed download through the PREMIUM service.
etc. The others are similar scams, they want you to give your email address, sent them money by credit card, or by SMS, and have bogus stamps of officialdom and verisign secured etc.
Of course, when the scammers want in, it means the project is a success.
Some differences between Word and WordPerfect:
1. Word handles word count differently to WordPerfect. WordPerfect counts all words, even those in footnotes. Word didn't for a long time (I think they might have fixed that now).
Word was unwelcome as a format in many legal courts in the US, because some types of filing have word count limits and users or Word consistently over-ran, thus filing documents that the court could not accept.
2. Word has a paragraph-based formatting engine, which is very different to the stream based one in WordPerfect. That's a huge difference - it's like saying that Word is a bitmap painting package, and WordPerfect is a vector one.
Those are two differences off the top of my head. I'd say that switching from WordPerfect to Word could well require training, especially if these kinds of differences were ones you used a lot in your work.
Here's one practical example I found many years ago:
Word has no concept of right-justification within a line unless you use tabs. WordPerfect does. If you right-justify in WordPerfect and then change your margins, paper size or paper orientation then WordPerfect just handles it for you - the text snaps to the new margin with no effort required on your part.
When I had to use Word, I had to learn the tab-based workaround. And I had to change the formatting of some kinds of documents I produced, as switching from portrait to landscape meant much more extra work as I then had to change all the tab stops on those pages too.
(I eventually solved this by creating styles with the tab stops in them, one for each page orientation. But that solution took time to arrive at.)
Whether your word processor is Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice.org's Writer, AbiWord, or something else - any heavy use will likely expose you to some feature that either has no direct analogue in other products, or that works differently in them.
If all you ever do is write one-page letters with no real formatting beyond basic text appearance, right-justifying paragraphs and indenting text, then what I've written means nothing to you. You're in the 80% of people who use only 20% of the features. (Possibly even 90%/10% these days.)
For the other 20%, switching word processors will always mean retraining to some degree, as they find these differences by trail and error.
Paste special?! It's on the Home page, in the left most section which is titled Paste. You just click the drop down and there it is.
So you just open the program and there's this big button called "Paste". How hard can it possibly be to find it.
Actually I find Office 2003 rather tricky to use now that I've used 2007. It took me around an afternoon to get used to the new interface and I would not want to go back.
I never said anything about how Microsoft Office 2007 was doing. I was only speculating that a significant amount of new OpenOffice.org users switched to OpenOffice.org because of Microsoft's UI overhaul.
What are you talking about? I have downloaded JDK:s and JRE:s from java.sun.com probably hundreds of times and never been prompted to install OO too. Is this a new feature or something?
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Uh, the gentoo ebuilds almost always download from gentoo mirrors. The only common exceptions are:
1. Non-free software with restrictions on distribution (java used to fall into this category).
2. Files downloaded REALLY soon after the ebuild is made. The gentoo mirrors are updated automatically but it can take a few hours before they all notice the new package in the portage tree. So, if you fetch the files quickly enough you might beat the mirrors, in which case the ebuild will eventually fall back to the upstream repository.
Go ahead and try fetching the openoffice source now - you'll find that it uses your gentoo mirrors. The gentoo mirroring system is fairly impressive - as soon as an ebuild goes into the tree the mirrors start noticing and begin retrieving the distribution files. When an ebuild leaves the tree the mirrors notice and purge the distribution files (probably after some delay). The gentoo mirrors also handle files that are manually pushed out.