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OpenOffice Five Times As Popular As Google Docs
CWmike writes "Confirming recent comments by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, an independent report released Friday found that OpenOffice.org's free office suite is five times more popular than Google Docs. This was according to a survey of 2,400 adult Internet users conducted between May and November. Microsoft's share was 10 times that of OpenOffice.org. Microsoft hopes to cement that lead with its upcoming Office Web, as well as online versions of its Exchange and SharePoint products to be announced on Monday. OpenOffice.org may provide some resistance, however. The latest version, OpenOffice.org 3.0, had a strong first week in October, with more than 3 million downloads. After one month, OpenOffice.org 3.0 had been downloaded 10 million times." And reader Peter Toi informs us of the open source release of yet another office suite, Softmaker Office. Its claimed advantages are its compactness and speed (making it suitable for netbooks), its excellent MS Office filters, and the fact that it can be installed to USB flash drives.
Just what I need after the news that OOo may get ads.
As soon as it has full ODF support.
having used all three, i find the oo (especially the last version) to have the features, availability and deployment options i need and a price i don't disagree with.
Softmaker Office looks like a freeasinbeer release of the 2006 version to promote sales of the 2008 version. There's no link to sources on the site, anyway.
Perhaps they haven't hear of http://portableapps.com/
Or, more likely, they have but are just pretending...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
It has most of the features of Microsoft Works 97. With less fonts. The UI is clunky and slow. Granted it is great for being web based however compared to Office or Open Office it is way behind. Also I think people like their documents to be on there system and be able to disconnect from the internet all together sometimes just so they get their work done without the internet whispering in your ear "browse me"
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The CEO of ClickStream, the independent company that did the research, used to do the exact same market research WHILE HE WAS AT MICROSOFT. Though they claim Microsoft didn't pay for this research study, they do say that Microsoft is a client for other studies...I'd hardly call this independent.
http://www.clickstreamtech.com/about.html
Most people are accustomed to internet outages, whether the fault of their ISP, broken backbone, or individual sites. So, they are naturally reticent to use web-based utilities in favor of applications hosted on their local machine.
Until the 'net is bulletproof, on-line apps will never usurp local utilites and apps for critical applications--or even "casual" applications.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
So first off, current incarnations of MS Office are considered the clear market leader. That's a fair observation. A traditionally installed local application manipulating files in a traditional way is popular.
OpenOffice.org is making inroads as a free alternative. More people are starting to find it a viable alternative for many circumstances, and opt not to explicitly buy MS Office. It behaves fundamentally the same way, and does basically the same stuff. Incidentally, I'm happy as it is a cross-platform application, but I think a greater portion of the userbase doesn't think about the source code or the cross-platform, they just didn't have to give money for it.
Then Google docs comes along. In terms of a strong brand to back the concept, it doesn't get much better than the word 'Google'. They find that despite the strong name and potential ability to fulfill at least the basic needs, people aren't excited about using it. The reason seems self-evident, people are more comfortable with traditional software models for this task. They feel they 'own' the software and have the most control over it. They may or may not back up to online storage, but they want to use a local application to edit it.
MS feels this means issuing their own webapp therefore would cement their lead. I think Google's failure indicates that such an offering is moot. People don't want subscription based software if non-subscription software can do the same thing or better. I've seen people throw out how it comes out cheaper in the long haul than buying the software every time, but it ignores the obvious, that people don't buy every iteration. I know people still using their copies of Office97 because they never had a reason to move. MS and many other companies hate this, but it is a simple fact.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I tried it. They have versions for Windows and Linux, apparently not for Mac. It's not open source. They have a trial version that you can download for free and use for 30 days. The trial version is crippled: can't save to any other format besides their own proprietary .tmd format. They also offer a non-crippled 2006 Windows version for free -- but not the 2008 version, and not for Linux. The download page wants your name, country, and email address, and tells you that you'll automatically be subscribed to their email newsletter. It doesn't say that you can opt out of the newsletter. However, down below the form where they ask for this information, it says, in microscopic type, "Leave empty if you do not wish to register." It works if you simply click through to the download without filling anything in. They have the Linux download packaged with installers in rpm, deb, and shell flavors. I downloaded the deb version, but it wouldn't install on my machine, because my machine is x64. I copied the deb to an x86 box, and it installed fine. It made menu entries for itself in the Gnome Applications/Office menu. The first time you run it, it wants to set up a documents folder for you, which defaults to ~/SoftMaker. (I find this kind of thing annoying, and believe that it discourages people from developing good habits for organizing their files.)
I'm a little bit baffled right now as to why anyone would choose it. They claim "compactness" as an advantage, but the download is 80 MB, which doesn't seem very compact to me. (The 2006 Windows version is smaller.) Their web site says, "The Microsoft Word-compatible word processor that is so easy to use that you will wonder why you bothered with Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org for so long," and then lists some bullet points. One is "Fast, powerful, reliable." Actually it didn't really seem any faster than OOo. On the machine I tried it on, the startup time was basically the same as OOo. "Reads and writes your Word documents seamlessly (Microsoft Word .doc 6.0 to 2007)" AFAICT the only advantage over OOo would be if it can read OOXML. (Although OOo can't write OOXML, I can't see why anyone would care; if you save in an older Word format and give the file to Word 2007 users, they'll still be able to read it.) The price is $80 US. Although that may be a lot less than full retail price for Word, it's a heck of a lot more than OOo. And of course I'd have to live with all the usual hassles of proprietary software. I won't get an x64 version unless they deign to compile one for me at some point in the future. I won't be able to upgrade without paying money. Sorry, I'm just spoiled -- apt-get and OSS work fine for me.
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I like it, a lot, especially the very fine equation editor - it's top-notch, although I am used to the style in Open/StarOffice.
However, what I don't like that much is: it does not allow for creating of .pdf files, and it asks me for registration every freaking time I start it. It was supposed to be free as in beer, I thought!? Also, and this is minor, but still: the default document format is proprietary. It does allow you to save in .odf, which I think every non-MS office suite SHOULD do. It just would be nicer if this was their default format. I don't like the idea of yet another proprietary office format around.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The boot time may not be 20 seconds on our machines, but the guy who wrote it might be running old hardware or a bloated box.
Anyhow, here is a real world example of the perception problem from a small office I support with a custom app.
I got OpenOffice accepted at an office with old Dell p4s - don't recall the speed of the processors - and I'm a software guy anyhow, so I didn't make much point of checking before installing OpenOffice on the machines. I do recall that there was plenty of ram for XP machines under their use scenario.
The customer had upgraded to Office 2007, but was having massive problems including unexplained resource locks that would take down machines and lose all unsaved data (this was a number of patches ago, so the MS product may have improved stability since this happened).
Open Office worked fine for everything they needed, but the boot time was at least three times that of the MS offering on those specific machines. Luckily, the controller wanted stability first - but her employees still grouse about her being a cheapskate. Even after using OO for a while they think of it as second tier and the only specific complaint they can back this attitude up with is that OO is slow.
I know their usage pattern and the only slow thing is the suite's boot time, and only then when compared to the older version of Office they were all used to using. So transitioning the customer to OpenOffice was actually harmful to the suite's reputation among the rank and file, and this issue comes up when the controller has to give out bad reviews to employees. Apparently some have cited having to use shitty software as a reason they cannot perform their duties well.
Now any manager in their right mind would think that those employees need to get new jobs, but MS penetration of the market has made it difficult to find rank and file that view OSS as anything other than a 'cheap' alternative, and small companies are not usually willing to part with long time employees over software issues.
Last week my mom signed up for a gmail account. A few hours later she called me up. "I sent someone an e-mail about about my car and then there were all of these ads for my model of car? Why are they reading my e-mail; I don't like it."
If someone feels uncomfortable with letting someone lean over their shoulders why they send an e-mail, they are going to feel even more uncomfortable letting them peer at their spreadsheet.
As a writer over at The Register put it, Google fixes problem no one asked them to fix.