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Is OpenOffice.org a Threat? Microsoft Thinks So
Glyn Moody writes "Most people regard OpenOffice.org as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious rival. Microsoft seems to feel otherwise, judging by a new job posting on its site for a 'Linux and Open Office Compete Lead.' According to this, competing with both GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org is 'one of the biggest issues that is top of mind' for no less a person than Steve Ballmer. Interestingly, a key part of this position is 'engaging with Open Source communities and organizations' — which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to 'engage' with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge."
Microsoft makes money, so obviously they would use this as a competitive advantage.
Actually, I more prefer Abiword and Gnumeric over OO.o. They are quick and snappy and suit my needs. Plus, Gnumeric is the backend to editgrid.com, which means that if I upload a spreadsheet there with graphs and stuff, it preserves it.
...its GUI is more like Microsoft Office pre-2007 than Microsoft Office 2007 is, and I have never gotten used to the 2007 interface.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
So I got a netbook for my wife for Christmas and the Dell 10v I got for $266 comes with Microsoft Works--which unfortunately does not, well, 'work' all that well. My wife hates Google Docs (which I use basically for everything that's not work related now) so I installed OpenOffice figuring that it would be about the same. Umm, yeah, it opens shit but the functionality of the software fucking sucks.
Prime example: I open a CSV file on the web. Firefox doesn't already know that CSV should be tied to OO? Shouldn't that have occurred at install time by OO? No, ok, I'll set it up--done. Takes a long fucking time to open OO. I mean a LONG time. It opens, sweet. I select all the fields and go to resize them all with a single click but--nothing happens. WTF? I try again. Nothing. I look on the menu bar quickly--nothing. WTF?
Listen, I'm glad that it opened my CSV and I'm glad it is free but for people to seriously consider it a contender, it better work like I expect it to work and everyone else expects it to work--and that expectation is based on experience with Office. Oh and BTW, Google Docs opened that same CSV and I was able to resize the fields as I expected.
Competitor, maybe, but threat, no.
Is that while it currently is no threat, they are preparing for the future. Whether or not the threat actually does arise or not is irrelevant, as MS has the money to throw at this minor inconvenience, to attempt to stop it before it becomes a major threat.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
OpenOffice.org is a threat? I do not think so and here's why:
1: It looks aged compared to its counterpart from Microsoft
2: Still takes a while to load and looks ugly!
3: It's not as featured as Microsoft Office. Those who profess that the 80%/20% rule is what
matters do not have a clue on how human beings behave.
4: Most educational institutions and workplaces still accept Microsoft Office as the "default"
office suite...even for editing simple documents.
5: Its development is just too slow! Compare that with Google's Android. If OpenOffice
development was at just half the speed of Android, things would be different.
Odd... I use OO to manage over 1,000,000 items for an online retail business, and the majority are stored in csv files. Works fine for me.
Typically MS would engage with its open-source competitors (ie figure out how it could outsmart them) shortly after those competitors gained market share, so they'd by then be in the back foot. Not a good place for a company such as MS to be in. From their point of view it would make more sense to do this now for OpenOffice, while people are in the main still using MS Office. I guess they've learned from their mistakes /shudder
J
The problem is they continually flip flop, one week they are seeking open source interaction and the next week they are attacking it and it's supporters. It all seems to be driven by nothing more than the current marketing image they wish to present. Although it does seem that M$ leans more to open source when they get screwed over by some patent dispute.
Really for them to put a foot forward they actually need to release their own branded version of a recognised open source software package and adhere to the requirements of the licence, even should their version substantially vary and they choose to host and make it available.
So what will it be, VLC, Firefox or maybe something Ruby. I think OpenOffice,org or a Linux distribution is way, way to far a stretch for them, they just lack that kind of mental flexibility and out of the box thinking.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Of course, these two products compete directly with their two big cash cows. OO may not seriously compete today, but these things change and Microsoft can't get complacent. Is it any surprise that they would take any competitors seriously? I think they are smart enough to know that both Linux and OO are strong products and you really only need a few leaders out there to use these things successfully before others start slowly migrating these products into their environments, and what was once guaranteed profits start to trickle away slowly. Even if companies target areas to use these free products in less critical areas this hurts them. I know in our organization we could easily replace some of our 1500 servers with Linux where right now no matter how light the load or low priority the system is we dump W2K3 or 8 on it. We couldn't do it on all, but easily on some and nobody would even notice. The only thing that stops it is fear of the unknown.
Would it be any different if WHOEVER_MAKES_WORDPERFECT_RIGHT_NOW did this too? Microsoft is not going to reach an "accommodation" with anyone trying to directly steal their business from them anymore than Apple is going to reach an accord with clone vendors, Japanese car companies are going to wink and nod at Chinese manufacturers trying to import cheap cars that use their designs into the US and Japan or any other scenario where an incumbent would "just welcome" competitors.
Be glad that Microsoft wants to fight in the marketplace first and foremost. 10-15 years ago, if you suggested that Microsoft would fight more or less above board rather than letting slip the dogs of war and running a scorched Earth campaign, you'd have been called a fanboi.
Well, I was all set to read a real world review of OO.o to understand the shortcomings. Well, right up till sentence 3. You lost me there. Can't be a very competent review with that kind of language.
Firefox doesn't already know that CSV should be tied to OO? Shouldn't that have occurred at install time by OO? No, ok, I'll set it up--done.
In OO's defense, It seems that most of the time, CSV is not associated with any app, which is probably a good thing because CSV doesn't always imply "spreadsheet". True, some people want their computer to make all their decisions about which app to use for what. But those people usually also end up with a boatload of adbars in their browser and spyware and viruses on their harddrives. And they wonder why their computer doesn't work.
"Won't that be grand, the computers will start thinking and the people will stop." - Walter, from Tron (1982)
You're hired.
Show me something that MS doesn't consider a threat. I mean really, MS' goal has always been dominance of the market for their products, never accepting something less unless forced. A corporation (or person for that matter) in that position must always see everything as a threat. As evidence I offer that they continually push their OS monopoly to help their other products sometimes doing so in an illegal manner so as to shut out competitors rather than compete on the merit of their own products. Sometimes it works, like using the xbox to run directX (which anyone would do in their place, it only makes sense) or for web browsing, other times it doesn't, like for the Zune where their OS monopoly couldn't help them very much.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
N.B. OOo suffices for most of my business correspondence; I prefer (La)TeX/LyX for the more scientific documents.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
I've been in IT for over 20 years now; and until 7 years ago, Office was my mostly used application. Nowadays though I hardly ever use Word or Excel, I've used Powerpoint more often though. At a hospital I consult; we changed to OOo and after changing the default save format option to the corresponding Office equivalents; the users hardly noticed the difference.
These days the only application used in offices is the browser, and Firefox has already won the battle and the war on that front.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Check the tables at the end of this Comes exhibit, its Linux/OO (when it was still StarOffice) in every region. Because the target is future developers and government contracts, obviously.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
For years, Microsoft has raked in money with Office. It's been THE leading revenue generator for ages with $4.4 billion in 3Q 2009. Office and related business products bring in more money than their Server/OS division. However, that number is trending down to the tune of almost 500 million from the same time last year.
Maybe it's just the recession. Maybe it was the Vista impact. However, the decline is noticeable.
Source: MS Annual Reports and Earnings Releases
The iPhone is the way, the truth, and the life. No one can call the Father except through the holy handset.
...or something will be after the baby boomers die off and gen X and Y are in control.
Seriously, once the people who grew up with computers have the votes and money and all the free time in the world to write angry letters, Microsoft should be very scared. Our parents couldn't adapt to new OS's, but we can. We don't need Microsoft.
Fucking up CSV files -- that sounds like they've duplicated Office functionality exactly. What else do you want?
I think the main threat is coming from a poor economy. People are much more willing to try out free products when money is tight.
OO may be slow and ugly compared to MS Office, but people rather eat than go hungry in order to buy a Microsoft product.
"Takes a long fucking time to open OO. I mean a LONG time."
unless you compare it to the full Microsoft office on the same machine it is not really a fair comparison.
"I select all the fields and go to resize them all with a single click but--nothing happens. WTF? I try again. Nothing. I look on the menu bar quickly--nothing. WTF?"
OO does not duplicate all the functionality and gui of MS Office, it is a slight learning experience as it is a different product. But i for one have had more "wow, this such a better and more intuitive way of doing things" then "where have they put that" moments using OO.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I have OpenOffice installed on my main PC (XP64), because I don't need much more than the ability to open docs sent to me or that I download. Works fine for what I ask it to do.
But, my wife, who is an MS Office expert, can't stand it. It is just too limited and clunky compared to Office, she says. So, for her PC, I fork out the $$ and buy Office. Oh, and MS Office is on our shared MacBook.
For the "serious user" market, OO is not currently a threat to MS Office. But for the casual, "use it once in awhile" market, it is. Now, given Microsoft's history of competing against incumbent, entrenched players by targeting the bottom end of a market and improving over time with increasingly competitive but still cheaper technology, they are probably very sensitive to seeing OO become the easy choice for the entry-level user.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
You installed OO on a machine that wouldn't even run Office, then complained about start up times. You then played with the software for 5 minutes. It didn't do what you wanted. You didn't find a menu item and you moved on probably without even consulting documentation or Googling. It's possible that OO is lacking the functionality you wanted to use. Who knows. You didn't bother to find out, so why should I. Regardless, I'd say the problem is behind the keyboard in this case.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
They are quite consistent. They support Free Software when they talk, and atack it when they act.
Nothing different from what you should expect, since FOSS is competition and have quite a powerfull "PR department".
Rethinking email
To the point of competing with the worst tabloids out there. Who ares if M$ thinks OO is a threat ? It sure is so what's the news ? "OMG M$ admits OO is a threat.. wow! OO is super powerful now. See!"
none
Which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to 'engage' with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge."
Newfound eagerness to 'engage'?
Seriously, has everyone who writes posts about Microsoft been living under a rock for the last 5 years?
As far as this competing role goes... “Know thine enemy better than one knows thyself” -Sun Tzu
I've recommended OO for a fair amount of home users who are casual users of office productivity software. For those folks it's _okay_ and fits their needs. Albeit the OO suite isn't lickety-split fast in terms of launch and whatnot for "Joe Six Pack" you can't beat free for someone who's looking to type up a quick letter, create a quick budget spreadsheet, or whip up a simple school presentation.
That being said, I've also tried implementing OO for my business users, in cases where their new PC's didn't come pre-loaded with Microsoft Office. I would preface their introduction to OO by mentioning that most of the familar menu commands and navigational elements were practically identical. A few weeks later I had no choice but to ante up and purchase full versions of Microsoft Office. Power users in a business environment required elements outside the scope of "Joe Six Pack." Anything from VBA to macros to other features weren't available or else didn't work as expected. And yeah, having budgeted expense goals had me wanting to purchase more Microsoft Office licenses like I'd want a hole in the head. :-/
And I know there are navigational and feature issues upgrading users from Office 2003 to 2007. I know with a mixed version environment opening documents is a PITA, and saving documents can result in formatting FUBAR's. Frankly I am dreading when I myself have to make the jump. That is almost as daunting as trying to migrate my power users at work to OO. Still all things taken equal it apparently will be awhile until OO is really an equal competitor, although it's closer than it was back in the days with Sun's Staroffice 5.x and whatnot.
Perhaps Microsoft is just keeping OO in its rearview mirror to protect its interests. Although the hints of Microsoft's covert infiltration into FOSS circles (while supposedly doing so for collaborative purposes) reeks of insidiousness. Now the cat's out of the bag I wonder how many FOSS projects will welcome them?
First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.
We've moved to stage 3 pretty quickly.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Isn't that what soldiers do with the enemy?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What if after all is said and done, (brace yourself) it was revealed that (steady, don't let this shock you)Microsoft was a company in it for the money!? (Gasp!)
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I didn't read your entire post, but, MS Office can't properly handle CSV either. If you have an internationalized Windows and in the language settings of WINDOWS (not of office or anything!!), you have somewhere ";" instead of "," as "separator", then MS Excel can't read a CSV that uses "," anymore! It's called COMMA separated list, and yet excel can't read it and uses your localized settings, so that people with a computer of a different language can't even exchange such files with each other!
Come on, it's called CSV, why doesn't MS Office always use comma's then.
They employed one person to take a look at OO?
Yep, definitely a threat to their core business model. Not.
No sig today...
With people who have it as their stated goal to destroy you, people who hate and despise you and see you as the greatest evil on earth? People who have created viral legal agreements with the intent of reaching that goal?
The FREE SOFTWARE CROWD COMPLAINS THAT MICROSOFT DOES NOT SPEAK WITH THEM IN FRIENDLY TERMS?
Wow. Just wow.
CSV doesn't always imply spreadsheet... However spreadsheet is one of the better ways of viewing the file. If you are double clicking on an icon of a document to open up an app. a CSV file should go to a spreadsheet as it is the best way to view the file. The other uses of a CSV you normally need to load the app then import the CSV as you not trying to view the document but use the information in it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
OpenOffice Word Document Table Parsing Heap Overflow Windows XP (Service Pack 3, [++]) 3.0-9358 3.0-9358 3.0-9358 51 Upgrade to OpenOffice 3.1.1
That was just one of the vulnerabilities Foundstone sees. I would have more examples, but we scrapped OpenOffice off the network about a month or so ago, as OpenSource software is forbidden at our company for legal reasons. Apparently someone reinstalled it.
There is no "inside knowledge"! That's the point of GPL!! If Microsoft is looking for some, that'll be a long search!
Windows, Office, and X-Box. Even if you don't think OO is much of a contender, the fact is that it's threatening 1/3 of their income-producing capability. It's in their best interest to fight it now.
Do you have ESP?
Sounds pretty normal for Microsoft.
I use IBM's Lotus Symphony package, myself. Good support, and it "looks" far better than OpenOffice (which sometimes makes all the difference when you're trying to convince someone to use it. That, and it's got native Mac, PC, and Ubuntu versions.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Agreed.
I understand the desire of many slashdotters to have Free software.
I don't understand the desire of many slashdotters to see For Profit software companies fail. (or to point out with fear or mockery that they are trying to make money).
Can't we all just get along?
Can't be a very competent review with that kind of language.
I'll keep that in mind for when I write a review of OO for Wired or the New York Times. In the mean time, since this is Slashdot, I'll keep posting exactly like I have for the last 12+ years. Thanks!
open office sucks.
eat a big, giant, turd-covered dick in your moms basement.
Well, right up till sentence 3. You lost me there. Can't be a very competent review with that kind of language.
You dislike the word "functionality," too? I understand where you're coming from, I fucking hate that word.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Can't be a very competent review with that kind of language.
Yeah, exactly. George Carlin was the world's most incompetent comedian.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
So out of 93000 employees, they have 13 dedicated to looking at OpenOffice and Linux? Yeah, sounds to me like they are covering their bases more than anything else.
Takes a long fucking time to open OO. I mean a LONG time. It opens, sweet. I select all the fields and go to resize them all with a single click but--nothing happens. WTF? I try again. Nothing. I look on the menu bar quickly--nothing. WTF?
Lameness of your writing aside, that's complete fud. On my 5 year old laptop on a cold start after reboot, OO calc loads in 6 seconds and about 3 after that... that's a LONG time? That is ridiculous.
In addition, selecting multiple columns and resizing by dragging or by double clicking works like a charm, so I'm guessing you are just trying to spread FUD, because you were dumb enough to pay for office.
I've been using open office for years and it does everything I need it to do and then some... You people that think otherwise haven't not really used it, and I feel sorry for you.
It didn't do what you wanted. You didn't find a menu item and you moved on probably without even consulting documentation or Googling. It's possible that OO is lacking the functionality you wanted to use.
1. I gave one specific example so my post wouldn't be 1000 words. I don't have time for that at 8 AM on a work day.
2. If a piece of software is a "threat" to Microsoft Office, then it better function like people who use Microsoft Office every day expect it to function. Resizing all the cells at once is B A S I C functionality, not some out of the way item that should be buried four levels down in the tree.
3. The general public (and I don't fall into that category) won't even give it as much time as I did.
4. As far as PEBKAC, get real.
When I switched to a Mac as my primary machine, I decided to move away from MS Office on my PC and try OpenOffice. It was ok for some casual things, but when I started creating more serious documents (like my resume), I ran into many issues. Formatting was not always consistent and printing did not always match what was on screen. Often times, there would be display problems, like incorrect screen redraws when scrolling. These are important on any platform, but were particularly annoying on OS X where display/output consistency has traditionally been a stong point.
Another issue, although not OOo's specifically, is that .doc is still the format required by many sites and the filter used by OOo doesn't always produce correctly formatted documents.
Now I realize that these issues may be specific to the Mac port of OOo, but they were enough to deter me from it. I tried very hard to avoid MS Office (even tried iWork, but lack of .doc was a killer), but until other file formats (like OpenDocument) become more accepted, it will be hard for other products to be competitive.
From the job description
"2. Be a Perception Change Agent"
And you'll continue to be considered an obnoxious fool that's no better than a screaming fanboy because X isn't exactly the same as Y. We wouldn't expect anything more from a unskilled windows user.
Hmm, I wonder if you would have considered me a Linux fanboi back between 1997 and 2002 when I was Linux only? Maybe you'd consider me an Apple fanboi that I use OS X on my desktop? That would be cool. I could be a Google Chrome commercial: "Fanboi for PC, Linux, and Mac."
Pay up GOOG.
I work at a medium size non-profit, and a couple of years ago I tried to get all of us to change to oo.org. I still use it for all my own use instead of ms office but everyone else rebelled and I had to drop it as an idea.
Like I said, it's been a couple of years now, and when we tried it what basically killed the whole thing is its problem doing mail merges. Arguably it had a BETTER interface to databases than any office product, but the problem is that everyone here has no technical inclination except for me and it requires thought. Plus back in version 2 it was buggy and it wouldn't match up formatting correctly. At lot of the research I did at the time pretty much seemed to indicate that the oo.org staff didn't care much about getting mail merges to work and it wasn't much a priority.
Maybe someone here can bring me up to date on any progress in this area. I hope that at some point oo.org can provide a really simple mail merge "wizard" (I hate that term) that works with spreadsheets that the plebeians can understand along with a database interface that can give programs like Crystal Reports a run for its money...
Correction: George Carlin was the most fucking incompetent comedian.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
is this Slashdot? noone condemned the article because he said pacific instead of specific?
I stopped using Google Docs after I lost all updates to a document (changes were not saved) due to shoddy internet connection
There are really only three limitations - that people are used to a different program, if you want to run macros from the other program or if you want to import information created in the other program. Beyond that the differences are effectively cosmetic.
I don't understand why anyone thinks either suite is special. It's a simple word processor not a desktop publishing program, a simple spreadsheet with a basic and confusing to use graphing package, and a toy single user database. The graphing is so bad that engineering students that grew up on MS Excel produced far worse results in more time than the previous semesters groups that were using graphing in MS Works for the first time - consistent over around 300 students and I had to eat my words of "they all know how to use Excel".
It's really like comparing an orange car to a blue one of the same model - the things still drive the same way and get the same fuel consumption. The only people likely to have any trouble with either of them at first sight are those that will sit and wait for somebody to show them things instead of RTFM and trying it out. I have a few people like that but they have great trouble with MS Excel as well (and ask questions like - "somebody sent me this zip thing, how do I get the spreadsheet out?").
It's slow because it's based on Java (and I'm saying this as a 10 year + Java programmer).
When you're at the very top, and your business model has come to depend on having 80%+ of the market share, even a small competitor can be a real threat. Even if Openoffice were to capture just 10% of the market, it would be a huge blow to Office's profits (and Office is one of MS's real cash cows, along with Windows). This isn't like IE and Firefox (MS doesn't make money off IE, it certainly does off Office).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Most people regard OpenOffice.org as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious rival.
It is not about the performance of the product, it's about performance-per-dollar. And the question the customer should ask himself is is not "does this product do everything" the question he should ask is "does this product to what I need it to do." And the issue is not the present but the future, not about whether Microsoft Office is "better" than OpenOffice now, but whether OpenOffice gains more momentum and continues to improve.
Can a low-priced inferior product overtake more expensive better-quality products in the marketplace? Yes. Microsoft should know, that is pretty much the entire history of the company.
Should Microsoft worry about OpenOffice undermining Microsoft Office market share? Yes. Can they do anything about it? Probably nothing except lower their prices.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
It would be nice, but most of the For Profit software companies don't seem interested in getting along. They're competing.
As for myself, I don't think Linux needs world domination on the desktop, it does need interoperability though. Because interoperability (through truly open standards) is what gives people choice. That said, I would be happy with 20-30% Linux and/or Ooo on the desktop.
By "truly open standards, I don't mean the OOXML farce that was pulled through the ISO. Rather I mean something like the internet RFC's. Royalty-free, unencumbered, fully laid-out specs that anyone can follow.
C|N>K
OO does a better job, but, still not correct. GNUMeric does no better. They all fundamentally do the wrong thing. Here is what they do wrong. Lets say I have the following CSV: Smith,Joe,E,121 Mockingbird Lane,Metropolis,BS,(330)555-1212,0023456789
Now, the last field there is an ID number. The zeroes are significant. All of the above spreadsheets will import that as a number and drop the leading zeroes. FAIL!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
That would be cool. I could be a Google Chrome commercial: "Fanboi for PC, Linux, and Mac."
Pay up GOOG.
Actually, Fanboi runs on all operating systems and even embedded devices.
CSV file should go to a spreadsheet as it is the best way to view the file.
Wrong! See my earlier post about how spreadsheets (all that I know of) incorrectly munge data on import.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
1. I gave one specific example so my post wouldn't be 1000 words. I don't have time for that at 8 AM on a work day.
It was nothing but an example of user error.
2. If a piece of software is a "threat" to Microsoft Office, then it better function like people who use Microsoft Office every day expect it to function. Resizing all the cells at once is B A S I C functionality, not some out of the way item that should be buried four levels down in the tree.
I just opened OpenOffice 3.1 Calc, a piece of software I rarely use. I entered some data into the first row, selected all the columns and was able to resise all the columns at once. This is exactly the same thing I would do in Excel. If you just select the cells, it doesn't work. Perhaps you're just use to that working from whatever version of Excel you're using, but it's quite clear to me that you simply didn't try very hard.
3. The general public (and I don't fall into that category) won't even give it as much time as I did.
The general public don't know or care how to resize all the cells at once.
4. As far as PEBKAC, get real.
Dude, you just didn't try to solve your problem. You assumed that an obscure formating trick that works in one Spreadsheet works exactly the same way in another. It's not Open Office Excel. It's Open Office Calc. It took me less than 30 seconds to solve your problem. Mind you I'm running on a Core 2 Duo, not some netbook that can't even run MS Office. This wasn't some weird I'm an Excel user who can count the number of times I've played with Calc on 2 hands, so this is hardly some unintuitive obscure reference I'm telling you to dig up.
Definitely PEBKAC.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I work for a reseller of Microsoft (and other vendors') software and have attended many MS presentations about Office vs. OOo vs. Google Apps. Microsoft is marginally worried about Openoffice in some geographies (mainly France where the government freely gives out OOo disks at the taxpayers' expense) but has a clear objection handling routine for everywhere else. Basically, Microsoft urges companies to to try Openoffice so that they can learn how dated and incompatible it is with the business world in general. They also push organizations to try Evolution instead of Outlook for the same reasons.
You'd be surprised how many emails we get out of the blue stating "we're an all Linux shop but we want an Exchange server with Outlook licenses for compatibility reasons. How much for a server and 100 seats of Office?"
Anyway, Microsoft's real fear right now is Google Apps. Everybody, even Google, knows how inferior Apps is to Office, but the sexy Google name greases the runway to bring this cloud-based office solution into more and more workplaces. Microsoft is fighting tooth and nail to prevent every single switch from Office to Apps. Openoffice is hardly on Microsoft's radar compared to Google.
That's what right-click is for. Oh. Sorry.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to 'engage' with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge.
There are many reasons to acknowledge a threat, and I'm not sure getting up close and personal is the tree that they are barking up here.
If Microsoft were to go around saying they they had no threats worth considering it would look like they have little competition and bring them under greater scrutiny from a monopoly policing point of view. Also such hubris would look iffy to current and potential inverters - investing in a company that is, or seems to be, resting on its laurels is not a good long-term strategy especially in a market where there are alternatives currently available (whether they are acknowledged by said company or not).
Ignoring the more cynical interpretations above for a moment: knowing the competition is important to any business. Whatever your opinion of the strengths (absolute or relative to other products) of OO.o it is a competitor in that particular market and MS would be foolish not to recognise that and be seen to be appropriately aware of the situation.
I do it by consistently NOT buckling to my employers (and others) demands. Have some fucking back-bone.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Ballmer is the software industry's Richard Nixon - paranoid, incompetent and untrustworthy. The difference is, he can't be unelected.
So Microsoft intends to compete with open source on open source's turf. In what way is this news?
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
The point he was making, is that even something as light-weight as Google Docs (a "cloud" document writer) has the functionality OOB + working as expected, while apparently, Open Office, a local desktop office suite (that has been around for several years longer now), does not.
He shouldn't have to go digging through out-dated documents (all too common with open source applications, provided any exist at all) on some "obscure" website to figure out why.
Personally, I view Open Office the same way I view Adobe products. Both could be great, if they weren't done half-assed.
TBH, even the crappier more recent versions of Word Perfect put out by Corel blow the doors off of Writer.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
A bigger problem for Microsoft is that businesses are finding the entire office suite software to be limiting, outdated, and expensive. Have you tried using Word, Excel or PowerPoint to create web content? Sure, you can export and tie in to other tools and databases, but the page centric approach of these tools is different from what people are beginning to prefer. Now everyone wants content that is readable on a mobile device or via feed.
Even in a traditional office setting the requirement for documentation is being replaced by Wiki. Sure, there's something to be said for printed manuals, but many places are finding it easier to store their documentation (especially fast changing ones) in an online tool that can auto-create paged documentation. Spreadsheets? Yes, I still have managers requesting documentation in a spreadsheet format, even if I store it in a wiki or in an automated tool. E.g., I use a monitoring tool that provides up-to-the-second information on hardware and software but some managers still prefer a static Excel spreadsheet. But that's changing because even the dinosaurs have to answer to the higher ups when it comes to cutting needless work (well, at least I can hope). And Powerpoint? Slides and business meetings seem to go hand in hand. Maybe the sales folks will continue to use it. Except when I get a request to specifically put it in PowerPoint, I'll either just bring up the web page live or use a PDF.
Can't be a very competent review with that kind of language.
Yeah, exactly. George Carlin was the world's most incompetent comedian.
Are you trying to say that reviewing stuff is exactly the same as being a comedian? If so, I think you're completely wrong.
Yeah, it's a threat, whether you think so or not. I manage about 50 workstations, all Macs, and until recently we've been buying Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac with every new workstation. Since OpenOffice 3.1 came out, people are using it more and more, mainly because that's what they are using at home on Linux and Windows workstations. We no longer purchase Microsoft Office for Mac since OpenOffice is becoming the preferred office suite.
There's definitely a shift beginning to happen away from all things Microsoft when it comes to home computers. More and more people are being exposed to alternatives to Microsoft, simply through the products available from Apple, applications in the "cloud", set top appliances for home entertainment, alternative firmwares for things like wifi routers, and yes, even Linux distributions like Ubuntu that have steadily been improving the end-user experience over the past several years. Microsoft is not the end all be all company it once was, people are looking at alternatives, especially if the cost is significantly lower up front.
As much as I'd love to see everyone running Ubuntu and OpenOffice, I realize it's not going to happen overnight. But it is starting to happen in places I would have never expected just a couple years ago. This is the threat Microsoft perceives. If this shift gains momentum, it will begin to significantly impact their bottom line in a matter of years.
As for your experiences with OpenOffice, a couple of changes to Firefox would have it automatically opening .CSV files in a matter of seconds. Long load times? You are on a sub $300 notebook. Go purchase Microsoft Office 2007, or download a beta, and compare the two instead of blindly faulting OpenOffice for poor performance. It's probably the cheap machine at fault here.
In the end, you used TWO competing products to Microsoft Office, for free (minus your time). And you think Microsoft doesn't have anything to worry about? Have you purchased Microsoft Office for the netbook yet?
I know! When you're funny you tend to get laid more often.
open a PDF with MS office and edit it, I can't seem to get them to open like they do in openoffice.
openoffice is a bit sluggish to open but definitely has more functionality than MS office these days -- for instance, no retraining workers to use the ribbon interface on a new machine since openoffice works like they expect it to.
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"...has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software..."
DUH! How could this be more obvious?!
Why is Microsoft demonized for operating a business in a matter that tends towards profit? ANY company will try to "beat" their competitor. It might not mean making them go out of business, but it will surely mean competing. Any marketer will tell you that competition is battle--it's not a passive (pacific) thing.
Were people really expecting Microsoft to start just releasing a FOSS version of Office or contributing to Open Office?
2. If a piece of software is a "threat" to Microsoft Office, then it better function like people who use Microsoft Office every day expect it to function.
Why? Office 2007 doesn't function the way that people who use earlier versions of Office expect it to function. I have Office 2007 on one of my home PCs (I've had it for over a year). I use Office 2003 at work. On a regular basis I come across basic functionality that it takes me 10 or more minutes to figure out how to do in Office 2007 because it doesn't work like earlier versions of Office. I often give up and transfer the project to OO.o because it is easier to figure out how to do it.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Your post makes it clear that you don't know what the word "Free" means in a FOSS context. And no, we can't all just get along, which is the whole point. We FOSS developers would love it if Microsoft had a goal of getting along with FOSS software (think standards), but this example is one of thousands that Microsoft will do whatever is in their power to make sure that we can't all just get along. You are doing the equivalent of asking the wife who is getting beaten by her husband why they can't both just get along. It is a phenomonally ignorant question to ask the wife, and it is equally ignorant to blame the FOSS supporter and/or developer.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This is exactly the attitude that is holding FOSS back.
The idea that it's always the user's fault, and that if something didn't work for them, the software couldn't possibly be wrong, ever.
I've had the same with Eclipse, it's not a bad piece of software for free, but compared to Visual Studio it's just stupid. The windows installer is actually just a zip file you unzip to where you want and create your own shortcut. The different plugins and addons just don't play well so you have to make multiple copies of Eclipse if you develop with some different technologies or face functionality not working right. The intellisense is really have arsed, and doesn't flow well always when typing code such that pressing enter to line break at the wrong time will actually insert a piece of intellisense code you didn't actually want because you didn't do away with it in the first place, simple but useful features like bulk increase/decrease indent are hidden, tab does the indent increase but what does the decrease? You have to search for these things and you simply should not have to when it's competitor, Visual Studio, just does all these things fine out the box.
Large parts of the FOSS movement really need to look more strongly at usability, take users complaints seriously and evaluate what can be done to solve them rather than simply blaming the user. Even if the competition doesn't do what the user wants (i.e. Office), that's still no excuse. If it wants to push out Microsoft it needs to do better than Microsoft, Microsoft is for the most part the default so it has to give people reasons to want to move away from Microsoft, not give reasons to stay with it.
It's not like usability is even that hard for the most part, I write software for non-technical people for a living and it doesn't take much more than a sit down with a few users to find out what things they dislike and how they would prefer it to work for such changes to make a world of difference to people using the system. The changes aren't even necessarily that big, it just takes a little communication with the users that's all and quite suprisingly it's rarely the case that users have conflicting views on how something should be done, or where they do that both methods can't be made available or in the worst case, reasonably provided as an obvious, easily changed user setting.
To answer the headline, no, whilst Microsoft invests in improving usability and FOSS often just calls usability the user's problem, the likes of OO.o unfortunately won't be a threat.
'Conlin recounted how Microsoft developed a program called EDGI (Education Government Incentive) to respond to Linux and fight low cost or no cost competitors in these developing areas, to keep Windows pre-installed and stop the shipping of naked machines (machines without an OS). Microsoft, Conlin related, has represented that this a charitable program but internal Microsoft documents reveal it was exclusively a way to prevent these developing countries from using Linux instead of Microsoft products'
They really don't care. It's one of these anti-trust protection measures...
It's really like comparing an orange car to a blue one of the same model
Not the car analogies! Okay, I'll bite. Let's say MS Office is an orange 2007 Chevy Malibu and OO is a blue 2002 Chevy Malibu. Same make and model, one looking a bit older cosmetically with features located in sometimes-unexpected places.
I am one of the drivers who likes to gauge my gas mileage I'm getting. So I want to reset the trip odometer. Well, I nearly get into an accident because that old 2002 Malibu requires we to open the glove compartment, hit a yellow button inside while my other hand is required to simultaneously push in the wiper lever!
Of course I'm being a smartass, but that's a similar reaction I got from my OO testers trying to perform mail merges. And that's that car analogies are tiring...sigh...
We use OpenOffice in our business and it works just fine. Our users run the gamut from novice to expert.
Most of the complaints in this thread are primarily about aesthetics. We don't use MS Office for anything anymore. There is a copy installed on one of the machines, but it has not been used for a couple of years now.
Yes it is different from MS Office. Yes, there is a learning curve, just like MS Office. Yes, it will perform just as well as MS Office for the vast majority of users out there.
Is it a threat? You betcha.
That summary was the most biased, paranoid rambling that I've ever seen. You might as well followed it up with a paragraph about how Microsoft uses those little plastic strips in $20 bills to track you when you go through airport scanners, so they know whether to equip your plane with chemtrail equipment before redirecting it to land in the secret tunnel between Washington D.C. and Area 51.
Comment of the year
Firefox knows more than you do. For example it knows that the csv extension should not automatically be tied to OpenOffice, since you may not want to run Open Office just to view a .csv file. Neither Firefox, nor any other software, can save you from your own ignorance. In other words, you're fscked.
WTF! Didn't anyone tell it that it is from Microsoft, and it "just works"? I'm curious, does anything work after you get your hands on it?
It opens in no time for me. Maybe you are using Windows and need to get a real OS? See also this posts subject line.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I wrote a novel during Nanowrimo this year, and I've been using OpenOffice Writer to format the text into a nice looking book layout. I've previously been a Word 2003 user for about five years, and I have to say that I really don't find anything problematic with the transition.
I've got Writer on an Eee 1005HA-V with 2GB of RAM and it seems to load acceptibly quickly, and whilst the interface is a little different to Word 2003, there's nothing particularly missing or broken that I've encountered as yet: some features are actually better (multipage zoom out, for instance). Doing nice looking book layout is about the same level of hassle that it is in Word, and it seems to perform around about as fast for the task. When I run Writer on my quad-core desktop it screams along doubleplusfine.
On the basis of my experience, I'm really left kinda skeptical at the level of bad experience other people report with Writer. I previously tried OO version 2.x and discovered it sucked rather radically, but version 3+ seems a perfectly useable tool. Perhaps when I get to writing a technical document or textbook in Writer, I'll bump into problems, but I just don't see it for now.
I messed around with versions of Word past 2003 a few times in various workplaces, but none of them ever provided any functionality I really needed, and just shuffled the other stuff around in the interface to irritating effect.
Given these thoughts, I think Microsoft should certainly be worried: I'll probably never install Word again.
Seriously, every young generation says this about their parents' generation.
Once you grow up, you realize that every generation has tended to adapt - quite well and willingly - to many new technologies.
OpenOffice isn't the real threat, as internal documents directly from Microsoft show. Linux is seen as such a threat that there is a special program aimed at keeping it off the desktop. This program is known as EDGI - Education Government Incentive.
..
..
..
A cross-group team has been working for the last two weeks on a proposal to have a more planned response process to defend against Linux
It is important to note that there are two major issues that need to be solved.
1. How to best help developing countries jumpstart the establishment of an effective educational infrastructure that can leverage the benefits of technology
2. How to effectively win against the no-cost/low-cost competitor in large government deals (i.e. "Don't lose to Linux"). This proposal is squarely aimed at the second issue, although there is considerable overlap between the two
Funding
Since these opportunities are largely tied back to winning in a specific competitive environment (Linux and StarOffice) we are proposing a $50MM (approx. 5% of VTW Education revenue) fund
I have to admit that the office of Microsoft is superior to the Open Office one. But has home users don't need Photoshop, home users don't need a better office package than Open Office. Microsoft Office is interface has better usability, what result on more productivity and happy users.
-Woof woof woof!
Give it more memory to start faster.
http://www.openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/memory/
At the company I work at, we only have a limited number of Microsoft Office licenses for those higher up in the company, and we don't have the money to buy more. All machines have OpenOffice.org on, and I can't spend an entire day at work without someone complaining that they hate OOo and want MS Office. Usually their reasons are unjustified (quote: "OpenOffice is just shit") but sometimes I get a serious reason (recently, it's rendering and creation of graphs and charts and the creation of complex formula) has been described as terrible.
So, in short, people hate OpenOffice.org whether they have justified reasons or not. Microsoft don't really need to worry, but if they lowered prices, those who deploy OpenOffice.org across the company may reconsider their options.
(also bringing back the pre-2007 menus as an option would be nice as I've had a huge number of complaints about that)
1) Opening Office documents - check.
2) Creating letters - check
3) Creating organized lists using columns (what most users call 'spreadsheets') - check
4) Creating actual spreadsheets - as long as they aren't too complicated and don't need to be opened in Excel, check
5) Creating presentations - as long as they aren't too complicated and don't need to be opened in PowerPoint, check
6) Everything else - crapshoot.
But let's face it, for home use or even most business use OO works just fine. My wife, who works in an accounting department, hated OO Calc for the first month but after she became accustomed to the menus she was all smiles. I even have a game at work where I try to open everything in OO. So far, in the IT dept of a world-wide corporation, in two years I have yet to find a document I can't open.
OpenOffice can tell Windows it's capable of reading CSV files, but not install itself as the default for opening CSV files. Then when you double-clicked it, you'd get a nice little dialog that reads something like, "there is no default program for this file format, would you like to use the following program? * OpenOffice". I believe that's what Excel does.
Comment of the year
STFU and get back to work!
As one firmly in the Camp *Nix, I do prefer free SW as in $0 because well, I like getting free stuff and especially good free stuff. I have not, do not & will not begrudge organizations that choose to make a profit creating software. I would like to add a few comments though: Commercial organizations often have an agenda which conflicts with best interest of their customers. These same entities often muddy the waters a bit when it comes to the use of the word "create," often using it in lieu of "beg", "borrow", or "steal." They also have a tasty habit of bringing politics to the table as means to give themselves an unfair advantage over their FOSS counterparts. This is not healthy competition. FOSS organizations are almost always nearly transparent. You see the code, you see the dialog. Anybody that wants to can look at the code, can look at the comments, can read the threads between users and contributors. It's pretty tough to have any sort of hidden agenda in this type of environment. Nothing wrong with somebody trying to build a business (& profit) around the creation of value as long as they're actually creating value, don't stifle healthy competition and have the best interest of their customers in mind.
I sometimes wonder if Fanbois run on their favorite operating systems. Then I realize:
Mac Fanbois would be friendlier and more animated.
Linux Fanbois would be much more reliable, open and respect others freedom to choose.
Amiga Fanbois could multitask meaning discuss more than an OS that has been gone for 15 years.
Windows Fanbois would randomly stop talking due to crashing.
iPhone Fanbois could not do more than one thing at a time.
Android Fanbois would still be strange.
-- $G
are fully ready to compete against Linux and participate with Open Source Communities....
You installed OO on a machine that wouldn't even run Office, then complained about start up times.
In fairness, OpenOffice is slow to load. Sorry, but yeah, it is. They're working on it, and it's supposed to be much improved in 3.2.
"which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to 'engage' with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge.""
Sweet jesus that's one hell of an extrapolation from a job posting.
I don't know. Why don't you ask MS that? This fight wasn't started by the OSS community, which was largely born out of necessity as much as altruism. It's closed-source guys like Microsoft that have been waging this war since the mid-1990s. Maybe you should ask them why they can't just "get along".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Try Softmaker Office 2008, it can be downloaded free of charge before December 31. Maybe you'll like it better than Works. It has better overall Office compatibility than OOo.
Another example of Microsoft just not getting it (and certainly not getting the 'cloud'). Google Docs is, by far, the biggest threat to Office Microsoft has ever seen - and it's only going to get worse for them.
Blow up my plane? Nuke ten of your airports.
OpenOffice needs better programming support. The stuff people do with Visual Basic and all the scripting crap should be completely transparent in OpenOffice. It could be so much easier than it is for Microsoft, but it isn't. A compatibility mode where scripts from Office run would be nice (but I haven't found it yet), but an environment where scripts can be better integrated, perhaps with a better Perl API than currently exists.
Personally, there's one thing that I've needed OpenOffice to do that it can't, and that's export proper .xls files. As long as I can run OOO and my coworkers can't tell what I'm using when I export them files, it's all gravy. But when the .xls file isn't opened by Excel properly, that's a no go. I've gotten fed up with each version that can't do it. My simple test: on one tab, put a value in two cells. On another tab, have a cell equal the sum of the other two cells on the other tab. Export to .xls. Open in Office (OOO can read this just fine), and shake fist in anger. It's been 2 years since I've even tried this, so hopefully it's fixed, but last I checked the Excel would come up with the equation in the second cell, but the value was #ERR or something until I highlighed the cell, put the cursor in the equation and pressed "enter". A good QA team would have caught this, but alas, that's a weakness of most open source products.
Well, I was all set to read a real world retort of an OO.o review. Well, right up till sentence 2. You lost me there. Can't be a very good retort if the author isn't even a mature enough adult to interpret the meaning of a piece of text regardless of how many "naughty" words were used.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I agree there are those slashdotters who believe so much in Free software they want the for profits to fail. Not everyone, though.
There are many for profits I hope succeed. I want the bad ones (and there are MANY types of bad companies) to fail. I also want companies to play fairly and not use sticks like "intellectual property" to shut other (usually smaller) businesses and individuals down.
I believe that for applications that many, many people use (OS, Office, web technologies, etc) Free software is the way to go because it is OPEN and it allows everyone to interact. There are many pieces of software that are more limited (like for a small specific industry) that wouldn't get built if it wasn't for For Profit companies because it takes a lot of interest to get an Open Source product off the ground and a big pool of potential users and developers. There has to be motivation somewhere. I think Linux works because of a huge amount of interest and people that need it. I think if you are one of 5 businesses in the world that make a certain type of widget, however, then you are not going to get Open Source to help you on your very specific software need and that's a good fit for a for profit company.
1. Sorry, did it again, nothing. And yes, I was selecting all the cells.
2. Umm the general public does want to resize all cells at once, otherwise they wouldn't be able to see what's in them.
3. BTW Google Docs does it just fine. Not just Excel. So, I don't know what to tell you.
This is exactly the attitude that is holding FOSS back.
That's too general a statement. A more correct statement would be "This is exactly the attitude that is holding FOSS back in user-driven markets".
In technology-driven markets, FOSS is doing just fine because in those markets, users are expected to at least look at the documentation before deciding something doesn't work.
*sigh* back to work...
Are you nine? Or an idiot?
Btw, as a midget I find your use of the word shortcomings very unpleasant. Please use "of-below-average-size-comings" in future. "Fuck", on the other hand, is fine.
IIRC, the core of OOO is written in C++, not Java.
*sigh* back to work...
Firefox doesn't already know that CSV should be tied to OO? Shouldn't that have occurred at install time by OO?
This could be a complicated issue. For example, if I cared much about the GUI knowing what to do when I clicked (I usually go via the app to my data), I might get upset if OpenOffice.org re-associated csv from, hypothetically, gvim. CSV is a funky format in that it is quite likely feasible to manipulate with multiple apps installed concurrently. OpenOffice.org installer may be able to ask which ones to do/not do (it might for all I know), but that could also be perceived as asking a user a question that's 'too hard'.
So I got a netbook ...Takes a long fucking time to open OO. I mean a LONG time.
In defense of the software, I've heard that most netbook platforms are pretty slow to open anything (Excel included) to people used to using higher end equipment. Hard to compare when you don't mention if you tried Office 2k7 and didn't see the issue. I think there are faster spreadsheet apps than MS Office or OpenOffice, but in brief I think they are generally only 90% there in terms of capability.
I select all the fields and go to resize them all with a single click but--nothing happens.
This may be a fault of openoffice or merely a difference. I don't use spreadsheets to know the action you are describing (select multiple rows and one click without drag does something?), whether it is an 'obvious' intuitive way to do it or a learned behavior from MS Office. The former would be a fair criticism, the latter an unfair comparison if OpenOffice implements it in an equally accessible, but different way, but I have no idea one way or another.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
if i was 'engaged' at any point by steve ballmer, i would run for it. the guy scares the living daylights out of me.
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fag
It has struck me how much more affordable Microsoft Office has become over the last few years for home use. A lot of this is no doubt because Openoffice.org is good enough for most people. Soon, Microsoft may be forced to give it away for home use, or sell it for a true pittance, and depend on business sales to make any money from Office. Microsoft's biggest threat on the Office front is that Openoffice.org (or another free office suite) becomes good enough that users don't want to pay extra for something they do not do much more than simple documents and simple spreadsheets with. I wonder why Dell et al are not offering users such an option. Microsoft is also experimenting with ad supported Office to try and counter the free office suites.
It's HER incapability, not OOo. She doesn't know how to do things, she knows how to do things with MSOffice.
That's all.
All spreadsheets feel the need to fubar csv data.
If you have 0002, most assume you mean '2', assuming you must have accidentally put three zeroes in.
If I put in a slot/port number for a wiring chart (i.e. slot 5, port 2 as 5/2), it assumes it must have been a date and tags on the current year (incidentally, even if they *were* correct in guessing it to be a year, how the hell can they assume the date is the current year? Who knows when the CSV was created, this is arbitrarily adding more precision to a value than it originally contained).
Often times, for CSV data, it's best to throw up your hands and use a text editor because spreadsheet apps all try to be 'too smart' about the task.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I think you misspelled BSD there.
Linux Fanbois would be reliable, open, but require everyone to share everything with them.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Figuring I'd save my accounting department a few hundred dollers pur desktop I uninstalled Microsoft Office from their PC's one night after the workers left. One of my friends whose really smart and has worked at Best Bye for 6 months now said this Open Office program was just as good and was free! So I thought my bosses would really be proud at all of the money I saved them.
Well, the next morning when the accountants came into work and couldn't open any of their Excel files I would of thought that the office was on fire! They were all red-faced and pounding there desks with there fists. Of course my big boss came out of his office too see what all of the yellking was about.
I didn't want to admit to being the one who unintalled Microsoft Office, but I had too own up too it. Since we didn't have any real install CDs for Microsoft Office our accounting department say on there hands and my boss screamed at me at the top of his lungs. I almost broke down and cried in front of him.
Trust me, that's the last time I will ever try to install any of that free software that is supposed too be just as good as what Microsoft makes. Open Office was a joke but my big boss was not laughing. And neither was I.
Just ignore him, he is just a mormon flamebait.
You are weird.
I just double clicked a *.csv file in my file manager (Ubuntu/Nautilus) and it opened up with OO instantly. Never configured that. Ok, it did not do that with Firefox, but seriously, who downloads csv's from the web regularly (not many people do, which is why it is ok to have that thing set up manually).
OO fired up in like 5 secs for me (without pre-loading), which I consider acceptable. It probably won't break any records, but it works and for a software with it's capabilities that's pretty acceptable. If you try to run it on a very low end device, it'll take some time, but what not?
Resizing all the fields worked for me too. Selected everything, double clicked on the sizer thingy in the top row, everything resized to optimal fit. Dragging that thing made everything uniform with.
No idea what your problem is, but it sure as hell isn't the software.
On every machine where I've used both, MS Office loads almost instantly (on this 500MHz Athlon, Word just loaded in 2 seconds and I haven't used it recently), whereas OO.o takes its time (I don't have it on this PC because it is too slow).
As for resizing, OO.o tends to open files in read-only mode and then fail miserably at making it clear how to make edits. You have to click a "make editable" button with a non-obvious icon hidden among all the other grayed-out icons. God forbid they make it bigger, or hide all the other buttons so it's the only choice.
Your doing something wrong I use this all the time.
I just tried it
In the save dialog Choose Open With - It doesn't show OPenOffice as the app just the Browse button.
Don't click Browse just click OK.
FIle opens up in OpenOffice Calc.
I assume FF uses the Windows file associations as a fall back , hell it evens shows the OO.o icon for the file in the download box.
Using
Windows XP
Firefox 3.5.6
OpenOffice.org 3.1.1
Get with program!!!
MS does not consider a threat, so they focus on the leaders and those that will go places. Hence, the reason for Linux AND OO, not Linux and abiword.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The biggest problem facing OO is that it's not MS Office. The latter is one of the few applications people actually bother to learn. That is, they have usually invested some or a lot of time learning the places and uses of various functions. Most organizations simply prefer to just splash out on the license fees than having to retrain their employees. The same sort of problem is facing the Gimp. It's fine for new users, but seasoned designers don't like to learn the workflow of a new application.
The solution for OO to gain significant market share would seem to be:
A) Be exactly like MS Office, at least from a usability standpoint
B) Offer some substantial functionality over MS Office that would not be easily duplicated by MS
The first one would call for a flexible, theme-able GUI - like Firefox - that would allow the application to at least look like the one being used. Win on Win, Mac on Mac, etc. Placement of functions would have to be consistent with MS Office for a given version and platform. This requires some serious coordination and preferably a centralized effort.
The second one isn't as easy, since it much depends on the type of user that's targeted. Perhaps a web-based version? This might impact the TCO and drag management along.
Anyone planning to deploy OO should consider what the gains are going to be for the user/customer, simply being open/free isn't enough.
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
...will be about keeping prices up.
One suspects that there is gaining heat in the market about using oo.o as leverage to get a better deal from m$.
Oo.o is pretty good tech. It looks like a word processor, and a spreadsheet, and a powerpoint... just might fool someone in upper management during some presentation put together by the lads in IT. Coupled with a business case, might just be enough to put 'downwards pressure' on the ol' monopolists pricing model...
I hadn't used it since 2.0 days, but recently switched to ubuntu for my home lappy. Has dealt with everything I have thrown at it so far, which is good - long doc's and large financial spreadsheets (nothing with macro's tho), and a LOT of powerpoint.
...because MS Office can't continue adding new features forever. They'll try, but eventually their software will plateau and stabilize into an Office suite that has all of the features anybody would ever want. And then it will take OO a few years to duplicate all of those features and then it'll be a real threat. OO will always be a few years behind, until MS Office stops changing.
or rather, do we really need to perform complex operations on text based documents containing thousands of lines (or cells) of data ?
we are living in the tech era, we have databases on intranet and online, we have software which is able to manage them. yet, there are still 'power users' who are managing data through csvs by running 'complex macros' on them ?
well excuse me, but this sounds a very shitty way of dealing with big data. especially if the data is sensitive, i wouldnt want my sensitive data to be handled by someone's own work pc running some office program with some 'complex' macros. if they manage sensitive, or huge data, they should create a proper database/client setup and run it. not text based files saved on someone's pc.
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I develope a plugin that runs in Outlook.
On a daily basis I run Office 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010.
I don't really care which one you pick, or what kind of machine or what installation options you picked, OO.org takes longer to do pretty much everything.
If you don't realize this, you shouldn't be making comments comparing or contrasting OO.org and MS Office as you've obviously not got the experience to do so.
OO.org doesn't do basic things that the OS controls due out of the box without any changes. Why is it everyone thinks they need to write their own fucking toolkit? USE THE OS CONTROLS! I realize Linux doesn't have any OS provided GUI controls and multiple toolkits. Thats great, good for Linux. But for the rest of the world that wants software that does what they expect rather than to circle jerk each other about how 'free' it is, then it sucks ass.
If your product doesn't memic the basic controls of the OS because you felt you had to go redesign everything yourself, you've not only made a POS software package, you've broken rule number 1 in GUI design, which is to do what the user EXPECTS without requiring 'education' about how to use the product.
For something like an Office product, if your everyday user needs to read a help file or gets confused about the way something works, you fucked up your GUI.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You would be wrong.
If after playing with it for only 5 minutes, he found things that didn't work as he expected, then the GUI is most definitely broken. Any GUI designer worth his/her salt knows that the GUI is supposed to do EXACTLY WHAT YOU EXPECT, without needing Google or help files.
People know how to use these utilities in their traditional form in their office, making a GUI that lets them use the software out of the box without help or searching isn't hard.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
As for myself, I don't think Linux needs world domination on the desktop, it does need interoperability though.
You do understand that as long as MSFT has a desktop dominance, it would do anything to make sure that there would be no interoperability with any other competing OS?
Because interoperability (through truly open standards) is what gives people choice.
[...] I don't mean the OOXML farce that was pulled through the ISO.
And MSFT many times exemplified that in their opinion a "de facto" standard (they have complete control over like OOXML) is just as good as a "de jure" standard.
That's why as long as MSFT has >50% of market, there would be neither interoperability nor open standards.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
"Figuring I'd save my accounting department a few hundred dollers pur desktop I uninstalled Microsoft Office from their PC's one night after the workers left"
What Microsoft department did you get your refund from ?
"One of my friends whose really smart and has worked at Best Bye for 6 months now said this Open Office program was just as good and was free! So I thought my bosses would really be proud at all of the money I saved them"
Why did you uninstall 'Microsoft Office'? How did you save them money by uninstalling 'Microsoft Office' ?
"Well, the next morning when the accountants came into work and couldn't open any of their Excel files I would of thought that the office was on fire!"
What business do you have in interfering with the accounts department ?
Office 2007 excel opens it in around 5.
Fresh restart etc...
Call office bloated all you want, but it -is- faster.
Who was it who said "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer" ?
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I will admit that OO is slower, but I have seen MS Office take a long time to do anything on a laptop as well. They still need to be compared on a equal footing.
"For something like an Office product, if your everyday user needs to read a help file or gets confused about the way something works, you fucked up your GUI."
I have been forced to use a help file to figure out how to do stuff on OO, but i have also done that using MS office products.
they both have hundreds if not thousands of options and not all of them are intuitive and many need to be hidden behind layers of menu options.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Id release microsoft works under an LGPL license.
Liar. You weren't set up to do anything except find something negative you could use to discredit a review you disagreed with based on it's outcome.
Turning to a Linux advocate for thoughts on Microsoft is like asking Hitler how he felt about the Jews.
You installed OO on a machine that wouldn't even run Office, then complained about start up times.
OO opens slow in it's own right when compared to other programs and all other office suites.
Turning to a Linux advocate for thoughts on Microsoft is like asking Hitler how he felt about the Jews.
I'm using open office on my core machine now... and so far it basically sucks donkey balls. I'm going to give it another 2-3 weeks... but so far it is complete crap.
Did you check to see if it was opened 'Read-Only'? Sounds like it.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Why was this modded interesting? You install a full blown office suite on a netbook. and you are whining because it runs slow ?? It's a netbook with 512K of L2Cache. The hardware allows you to surf the net - that's it. You want the performance of a real computer, you have to buy the actual hardware. For 250, you could have gotten a used/refurbed laptop with a Pentium M with 1 - 2 Mbof L2 cache that would have ran an office suite faster
To address your specific points:
"Prime example: I open a CSV file on the web. Firefox doesn't already know that CSV should be tied to OO? Shouldn't that have occurred at install time by OO? No, ok, I'll set it up--done. "
OO didn't take over the CSV file associations from Works. It makes this weird assumption that you know what you are doing and have set those file associations for a reason.
"Takes a long fucking time to open OO. I mean a LONG time. It opens, sweet."
See my above statement about hardware requirements. An Atom flat out does not stand up to a Pentium Mobile. Two different designs for two different needs.
"I select all the fields and go to resize them all with a single click but--nothing happens. WTF? I try again. Nothing. I look on the menu bar quickly--nothing. WTF?"
I would have had to see this. Like Excel, perhaps you needed to save it in it's native file format first, then make it pretty.
MS Office is terrible with csv files that OOo handles correctly. The best work around I've found is create tab-delimited files and tell excel how to import them. Excel has always been poor with csv content. MS won't fix this because they want everything saved into their proprietary formats, which works most of the time. Although when I get complaints about excel and csv, I tell them I use OOo and never have issues. More often than not, they go and download OOo and use that instead.
Dude your running a netbook NOT a laptop or a desktop it has a slow chip it in. Don't blame OO.
Trying it in Excel right now, with long lines of mixed data.
Pasted csv data into cell A1... Data strip->Text to columns... specify delimited with comma... preview looks good... one column should be date format in the cell - adjusted... "Finish" - Done.
Instead of using the wizard, let's try opening it with the good old double-click... hey, what do you know? Even formatted the date automatically.
If you're having problems getting your CSV to work in Excel it's either because you don't know how to use Excel or you've got a malformed CSV.
Post your sample CSV data that Excel can't figure out and prove me wrong.
Comedians basically review society. The art is to do so from an interesting perspective.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
You didn't find a menu item and you moved on probably without even consulting documentation or Googling
Telling the user to Google for a solution is an open admission of failure.
The answer should always be easily accessible from within the program itself.
"Often times, for CSV data, it's best to throw up your hands and use a text editor because spreadsheet apps all try to be 'too smart' about the task."
The "text to columns" wizard lets you fine tune everything, including making sure pesky columns stay "text". I'm not much of a wizard user, but that one works great.
"I didn't read your entire post, but, MS Office can't properly handle CSV either. If you have an internationalized Windows and in the language settings of WINDOWS (not of office or anything!!), you have somewhere ";" instead of "," as "separator", then MS Excel can't read a CSV that uses "," anymore! It's called COMMA separated list, and yet excel can't read it and uses your localized settings, so that people with a computer of a different language can't even exchange such files with each other!"
I'm looking at the wizard right now, and I see under "delimiters" options for tab, semicolon, comma - and an option for "other", along with a box to put your delimiter in. I'll be very surprised if that doesn't work for you.
Regardless, I'd say the problem is behind the keyboard in this case.
The monitor?
... regarding something that is a pretty commonsense business move. I like to get my MS bash on too, but seriously. Every company (if they want to stay in business) keeps tabs on both real and potential competitors. Every company also looks for opportunities to cooperate with other companies/organizations - even if these outfits are also competitors. So there's nothing particularly nefarious about MS 1) keeping tabs on what's going on with various FOSS projects, 2) looking for ways to cooperate with them, or 3) doing both at the same time. Sun, Linus, etc, no doubt are aware that what they say to MS reps could be used to improve MS products later. This isn't illegal or even unethical - it's healthy business competition, and it's good for everyone involved.
Now if the MS rep(s) misrepresented their allegiance to MS in these conversations, or improperly obtained and used Sun's/Linus's/whoever's proprietary data to improve their products, that would be something else. But there's no evidence that that's what's happening here.
Unfortunately, like many other open-source projects (e.g., The GIMP), OO is an example of how developers refuse to connect with the end-users. Suffices to mention the cumbersome process of inserting a page number in a SWriter document: Insert footer + Right justify + Insert field + Select "Page number".
I use OO all the time and it has been my main office suite since it was first released. Especially at Version 3, I have very little difficulty collaborating with others on documents in MS Office formats.
Back during the Microsoft monopoly trial, it was pointed out that the file incompatibility of MS Office file formats with those of other office suites is the basis of Microsoft's Windows monopoly. That is why many corporate users feel they must use MS Office and thereby adopt Windows as their basic operating system.
Executive Row at Microsoft must realize this. Take away the need for MS Office and you eliminate the need for Windows. That's why they regard OO as a major threat.
Excel asks if you would like to use OpenOffice?
If so, we can kiss it good bye, which will be a great loss to the community. While they cant buy it out to kill it like they have done to others in the past ( like truespace, for a quick example.. ), I'm sure they will find a way to neuter it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You might as well followed it up with a paragraph about how Microsoft uses those little plastic strips in $20 bills to track you when you go through airport scanners....
You mean they don't?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
for CSV file, try naming the first field of the first line "ID" and open it with MS-Office
I use OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 on CentOS 5. It does take a bit of time to launch the first time you run it in a session, like 10-15 seconds. But running it again it only takes 3-4 seconds to start. Sometimes less. The startup time doesn't bother me. My dad can view weird PP slides everyone emails him in O.O. 3.1.1 on a similar CentOS 5 system I set up for him.
O.O. is way more word processor and spreadsheet than I will ever need. All my personal word processing / spreadsheet documents are stored in od* files. I add that version (3.1.1) to several RHEL 5 Linux labs at N.C.S.U. university and a LOT of students run it every day. Maybe it runs like crap on Windows which is why so many people are dissing it on this site? Or maybe people remember older versions? Or people "HAVE" to have it load instantly? I admit I don't use Office or Windows so I am biased in that respect. Still, I think Microsoft should be worried about the younger future customers. And the price was awesome. If Oracle wants to make money off of it I guess they should charge for support of some kind like Sun tried to do.
-- If there's one thing i can't stand, it's intolerance!
I'd be a bigger fan of OO.o, except that MS formats are contractually mandatory with my customer, and any formatting beyond the most simple stuff absolutely always gets mangled by conversion between OO and MS office. So, in practice, I'm never really going to be able to use OO.o for anything I have to share with anyone else until this gets fixed.
Of course, the situation is only a little better between differing releases of MS Office products, so it's not really a very fair criticism... but regardless, my contract has words to the effect that document formats will be MS Office 2003. So there you have it.
simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge."
So, What is wrong in that? Any company would do that to its rival if it can..
CSV is associated with Microsoft Excel by default. And it opens my CSV files quickly...
MS has free and open access to all FOSS code and is free to scan the Internet with Bing to its hearts content searching for discussions of FOSS and all its projects. It's not like FOSS is doing anything that needs to be hidden. Where MS wields power is through political influence in government and trade groups, power FOSS generally lacks or lacks the skill to exploit as effectively as MS because in those arenas, it is always about the money.
So having MS involved in FOSS stuff is typically no big deal. Well, except for Miguel "Judas" de Icaza.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Netbooks will run MS Office just fine. I use Office 2007 on mine. Many systems from 2003 (when Office 2003 was released) were often as slow as today's netbooks.
Office 2007 has the ability to temporarily hide the Ribbon by double clicking on one of the tabs (similar to Eclipse or NetBeans).
... at least in my business (I'm a defense contractor), there is zero appetite for anything but traditional "page-centric" documents. No demand for Wikis. No demand for mobile device readable documents. No demand for feeds. Your business may be different, but in these parts, we're nowhere near there yet.
This is sort of nonsensical. First of all, a PDF isn't an application, it's a file format. It's great for holding "page centric" slideshows, and I use it as the destination for Powerpoint presentations fairly often. Second, "bringing up the web page live" is hardly a substitute for a presentation. You're only going to have a live web page for stuff that's either 1) customer facing material - how to get to your location, product lines, etc; or 2) internal company stuff - HR policies, trouble ticket systems, etc, etc. When you need to brief your boss on the new servers you need to buy, you're going to show your decision process by bringing up various companies' live web pages and talking off the cuff? Good luck with that.
The point of all this is not to say that "new school" documentation isn't any good - it obviously has a lot of applications. But I really doubt that Word documents and the like are going the way of the dodo any time soon.
Of course it's a fair comparison - people don't frequently use all the programs of an office suite at once. I typically use a word processor the most, followed by a spreadsheet, and then presentations.
But when I do use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint at the same time, they all load and respond quickly. (Even using Office 2010 in VMware Fusion.)
Did use Lotus Symphony for work for about a year but sadly had to ditch it due to its bugs and compatibility issues - collaboration with OpenOffice and Lotus Symphony
, documents went terrible messed up. There are great ideas behind Lotus Symphony but it seems to be based on old outdated OpenOffice code, this might make you very dissapointed, or, maybe it depends on what you put in your documents.
Great! So you volunteer to write custom applications to replace uses of Office macros, right?
+1 Though I would still *advocate* for OpenOffice (since Softmaker's ODF support is flaky), but the reality is that most of the world's business information is locked in DOC/XLS/PPT. And the excellent compatibility of Softmaker to MS formats (especially XLS) , makes it a transition path towards Linux.
Since when does it take much for Microsoft to stiffle competition?
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
"... a way for Microsoft to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge..." Um, how much more do they need to know than to simply look at the source code, which is available to anyone in the world for free? On the other hand, they probably don't care what's in the source code. They want to figure out devious ways to blackmail any and all institutions into using Microsoft products. Oh, then, that kind of "inside knowledge."
I'd be delighted if they tried to continue their fight for the desktop.
Businesses will delightedly pay $0.00 for OpenOffice and buy cheaper Linux boxes because they don't come with the Windows tax. Gates & Balmer are going to find that they're stuck on the desktop and that businesses aren't the loving, loyal customers that they thought they were. Businesses are cheap as hell when the time for upgrades comes around. That should distract the Hell out of Microsoft.
Meanwhile, Microsoft will be totally missing the consumer who is going to buy cheap Linux boxes and Apple Mac Minis, MacBook laptops, iPods of all stripes, iPhones, the upcoming iTablet, and leave Microsoft to choke down its own vomit.
Microsoft will ALWAYS be playing catch up to Apple' designs and they'll be doing it with their existing base of box makers, people who are too broke to take a chance on a new design and haven't got the design acumen to try it.
What do you do with a consumer who prefers Microsoft's industrial designs? Poison his dog and steal his white cane?
Nah, it's not even worth the bother. Just point and laugh.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
There's more than one angle to it, here's a few I can personally relate to:
1. Some of this for-profit software seems outrageously overpriced for its functionality, a position of greed that can only be protected by eliminating all affordable alternatives. This results in hostile takeovers of free-software projects, or abusive litigation to destroy the projects, which rarely have any funding to support a court battle.
2. High quality free software stimulates innovation, in both the free and for-profit realms, and the pursuit of knowledge is generally considered a good thing.
3. Free software has been the backbone of the internet for a very long time, and has enabled widespread adoption of technology and education in areas that could not afford commercial software.
4. We don't want to be fighting the for-profit sector, which has its rightful place in the industry. They are the ones picking fights IN LIEU OF releasing superior products, and we have to defend what we think is right.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"Takes a long fucking time to open OO. I mean a LONG time."
It does. It uses more RAM to manage any specific MS Office document (on the same machine, and a lot of time it's more by a factor of 10). This is what I call a 'by design tradeoff'. Excel can open Spreadsheet.xls a little quicker and only use 10-20 megs of RAM as opposed to Open Office using over 100 megs of RAM to do the exact same job. To me this is ok, because even though MS Office has stayed relatively static in price, RAM has dropped significantly and has more utility to my box that just 'opening spreadsheets.
no one is talking about using all of Microsoft offices applications at the same time.
I am saying you cannot compare MS Office installed on a $2000 dollar PC with the loading time of OO on a $300 laptop.
OO is slower, but that does not mean that MS Office would not also take a long time to load on a low end laptop.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
if, a company uses some macro on some humongous office document continuously, they should have bought/gotten done a software to do that on a real database already. if they havent, well .
Read radical news here
^^ Microsoft shill.
Jesus Christ, how much are you getting paid?
It should be character-separated-values ; as usual, the Unix way of doing it is simplest - one field separator, one escape character, one line ending. Excel/MS-CSV messes around with quotes (instead of just escaping the special characters that occur in data), because the rules are more complex, implementations vary. Localised field separators... that doesn't surprise me.
And yet no one was making that comparison. Nice strawman argument.
MS Office doesn't take a long time to load on a low end laptop, though.
Or they can just use their Office macros that work just fine, since unity100 doesn't want to write custom applications for them.
Wow, they can do that. Checking out my $20 bills...
Depends on the version of Excel. We still use Office XP (2002) here for many people and it often shreds leading zeros without warning. I use OpenOffice instead unless I have some need for trendlines in charts (OO has crappy trendline options IMHO).
One of the most irritating features of the misguided that M$ use as shills is the that they are STUPID. How many can be constantly convinced that this LATEST version has a novel super UI, is really SECURE and ..., when that was the spiel for all earlier versions that are now derided. XP, Vista, Win7 ... Office, Office 2007.
... all on hand and free.
The "decade of bad UI experience into your expectations" was also brought to you by M$, last year, when it was shilled to be the best.
On the desktop M$ biggest competitors is M$ yesterday, everywhere else, and on the desktop outside the US, FOSS is rapidly eating M$'s lunch. With Virtualization, and more memory and CPU power, you can use Office under Wine, or virtualized but with shared filesystems you can also have a stable and capable base environment with Apache, MySQL, PHP
You really don't know how to resize columns in a spreadsheet app?
Try one of these options:
select all, double-click on the line between the columns
select all, right-click on any column and choose "optimal column width".
select all, click "Format... Column... Optimal WIdth".
Now was that so difficult? Geez. I bet you were confused when Office moved the print button off the screen in 2007.
I like Openoffice and I disagree. If it takes a long time, it took a long time.
If his experience is that opening Excel takes 3 seconds and Calc takes 71 seconds, then that is an issue that OOo needs to work on (so if I had that experience... which I havn't... I'd report it as a bug or go to the Open Office forums and say, "here's a document that takes a long time to open, what can I do?"
There are things you can do to speed up Openoffice like turning off java and using the preload option. Personally, I prefer to avoid the preload option myself but I *think* I still have java turned off.
Load times are not an issue for me with OOo or Word 2007. Infopath is another issue entirely. Man that thing is a dog.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Grandpa's off his meds again apparently.
"Now Bill, go sit down and we'll bring you some nice iced tea. You like iced tea, don't you? Just follow the nurse and we'll be right there."
I've seen a few people complain about speedI had been using NeoOffice for a long time (mainly because at the time I installed it, there was not a version of OOo that used Aqua widgets).
Now OOo has full OSX support, and I've found it significantly faster than NeoOffice (I don't have hard figures, but Neo Office took approximates as long as Photoshop to start up, which is pretty ridiculous).
Okay...
So I loaded a simple file into calc and word 2007 excel.
15 seconds calc
8 seconds excel
I resized the cells by clicking and dragging my mouse across 4 columns and then drug the right most edge over and all cells resized equally.
I resized the cells by clicking and dragging my mouse across 4 columns, selected column width from the format menu and set them all to 1".
Next, I entered a long text box and then double clicked on the columns right border. It autosized as expected.
I agree, this is B A S I C functionality and it works for me EXACTLY the same as it does in excel. Are you sure you were using OO 3.1? I'm using OO from Portable Apps. It's awesome. It runs without installation off a thumb drive (but I copy it to the hard drive to speed it up).
Next, I opened a 11 sheet document with many formulas. Each sheet had 365 rows of date related data.
Load time Openoffice, 2 seconds.
Load time Excel, 2 seconds.
All formalas the same in both documents. Even the sheet cross references.
It is likely that your performance issue is the time to get the application off the hard drive. Excel is partially preloaded and openoffice is not (there is an option to do so but then it consumes memory... as Excel probably does). Also, ever since at least office 95, microsoft has used unapproved API's to speed up their performance (re: "Certified Word 95" vs "Corel Office"- microsoft really screwed them over). Also, microsoft has a history of putting parts of their applications *in* the operating system. Which saves load time. And I suppose that's their right.
Reasonable price for excel and word - about $99 for private use-- $300ish for business use (few pay rack rate).
Reasonable price for calc and writer - about $0 for private or business use.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Microsoft's strategy for interacting with Open Source seems to be settling into the pattern of treating it like any other software. Instead of being pro-"Open Source" or anti-"Open Source" their reaction depends on the specific project.
Software that interoperates with, extends, runs on, or otherwise boosts Microsoft products: Good.
Software that replaces or competes with Microsoft products: Bad.
So, it would make perfect sense to Microsoft for them to try to lure open source projects built on top of OpenOffice.org, like plugins or whatever, to switch to building on Microsoft Office instead.
Human/Ranger/Zangband
I agree... my so's office has gone to gmail for mail, thunderbird for mail client, and openoffice for all documents.
My office used a google docs spreadsheet to coordinate data from 10 users recently. It did what excell under sharepoint *should* do.
We were all entering our data, you could see colored boxes whipping around over the sheets and the graphs constantly updating.
We were in multiple locations.
There are some real threats out there to Office.
However, at this point, I trust microsoft very little and it probably wouldn't matter if office were $33 instead of $99 (teacher/student version which they will sell to anyone at Fry's).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
1. I just tried it in 00 2.4 and it works.
2. Good job they can then.
3. That you're just making stuff up?
So, you suggest that we should change the definition of CSV just to make Microsoft look less stupid about their implementation. Maybe we should change HTML to mean "Here's That Microsoft Lossage" because they have a different idea of how to implement it than the rest of the world.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
It is not true that all WYSIWYG word processors produce poorly typeset output, this is just another INNOVATION M$ brought to the business. Although I think TeX based typesetting is the best, there are other usable systems, see O'Reilly's Colophons
FrameMaker, which can also handle (very) large documents, but has slowly got worse under Adobe's stewardship. Wordperfect also produces acceptable, if not good output.
As an architect, I find this very strange, the best algorithms are not complicated and public domain, screen sizes and resolutions have improved hugely and the memory and compute power available to the layout engine is now hugely greater. Perhaps basic layout became a poor relation to too many Advanced features, anyhow I cringe looking at material printed through Word. It is plain UGLY.
emails we get out of the blue stating "we're an all Linux shop but we want an Exchange server with Outlook licenses for compatibility reasons.
Compatibility with what? Sounds like BS to me.
To me, seeing MS Office and OOo “fight” each other, is (/would be) like seeing two drooling retards beat each other with a stick or something.
Both are so bad, it’s beyond belief. Even the more than a decade old SmartSuite was better.
Maybe I’m spoiled, since I did so much hard work, and thought so long about how to invent better user interfaces. But to me, they are somewhere at -100 vs -102. I just can’t see the difference so deep down there.
Hell, they still use modal dialogs! And require mouse usage in a text processor!
It’s beyond ridiculous...
(Yes, I will give you a money back guarantee to improve it beyond what you could imagine, if you pay me to improve it. But I did too much work to just tell you for free.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
99% of people want 1 advanced feature in their word processor. Thing is, they all want a different advanced feature which the other 98% will consider unnecessary.
This explains why GNOME is the way it is: it's designed for all the other 98 percents.
So, for her PC, I fork out the $$ and buy Office.
Maybe this is just a stupid question, but why doesn't she fork out the $$ for her PC?
What am I missing? Some universal truth about human nature? Or just a social norm in your society? Or something third?
OO sucks but it's free. Don't pretend it's better, cause it's not.
Strange.. on this machine I am typing on (Linux Lenny Xfce).. OpenOffice,org Calc version 3.1 opens in about 2 and a half seconds.. Gnumeric opens in slighly less than a second.. For pure speed, Gnumeric wins.. but Calc looks nicer.. I don't use MS Office other than work, so can't give you times for it on my machine. For what I need to do at home, OpenOffice does just fine, and speed is not an issue.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I have to say, I don't mind "intellectual property" perse, at least I believe in Copyright, Trademark, and Patent law. What I don't believe in is the persistence of Copyright beyond a generation or two, let alone life + 70 years or whatever absurdity it is. I also don't believe that any copyright should be able to be owned by a non-living entity and extend beyond a natural length of time. I think that trademarks are appropriate, but they are often abused, and misinterpreted. I think that Patents should be limited, and don't believe that anything in terms of software has been unique enough in the past 20 years to apply, and even if we apply patents to software, it should probably be limited to 5 years from the time of filing, since that is a lifetime in software terms.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
No offense, but your view is very naive ..
FOSS slashdotters DON'T wish to see "For Profit" companies fail. Most of us make our living in the "For Profit" software industry. Man's gotta eat
That said, M$ should not be considered as just another "For Profit" software company. Micro$haft is a marketing company first and foremost. Profit margins are priority #1 regardless of how inferior, buggy, and insecure their products may be. Micro$haft is run by devious minded and morally bankrupt individuals. Their existence and what they represent is despised by many in the computing world, much like a black plague or a cancer to the entire software industry.
FOSS users want freedom to have their computing experience their way. Microsoft represents a restrictive and locked-in, gotcha-by-the-balls experience. An operating system that is reliable, safe and secure is not a difficult concept. OpenBSD is one that come to mind. I prefer Linux as it has the reliability, security, stability, and all the software I desire. M$ SHOULD be scared by the advancements in Linux technology of today. As a windoz user, you should be pleased as well, as Linux gives M$ REAL competition and forces them to actually produce a quality product. Lest they lose their market edge completely.
For me, I was tainted with Win95. I found it to be the most unstable abortion of programming code of all time. I have disdained their entire product line/label ever since '95, and will never again be a fan.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
You can have my WordStar WP when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!
GUI another word for bloated overfeatured apps.
Why should installing a particular spreadsheet program cause my preferences to change so that that program opens .csvs (unless it asks politely, and I say yes)? Also, why would I assume that Firefox automatically knows what program I want to open a web-hosted .csv file with? Do I really want a web browser to automatically run programs based on a file I click on if I haven't explicitly allowed it?
In fact, OpenOffice.org, in its present form, is pretty poor tech (there are many reasons for this, which I shan't quote here for the sake of brevity.)
BorgOffice is superior in practically every technical aspect. However, as Microsoft knows all too well, if the price is right, the sheep will flock to it, even if it is complete and utter shite.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
emails we get out of the blue stating "we're an all Linux shop but we want an Exchange server with Outlook licenses for compatibility reasons.
Compatibility with what? Sounds like BS to me.
Compatibility in communicating with other customers, I guess. I'm not in sales so I don't get to hear the full story. Believe me or don't, but I see these emails monthly.
They'll try, but eventually their software will plateau and stabilize into an Office suite that has all of the features anybody would ever want.
This is a very flawed way of thinking, because it fails to take into account the fact that expectations change. User requirements will change, as will operating environments, user expectations, communications protocols, hardware standards, standard formats, user interface standards, etc. etc.
In essence, you're wrong because as far as software goes, anything that plateaus and stands still will stagnate—and Microsoft are smart enough not to let that happen.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I really wish I could disagree with you, but you're probably right on some level. To me, WinAmp peaked with v2.78. Office peaked with v2003. Photoshop and Illustrator peaked around ~CS1 or earlier. As soon as the open-source apps catch up to those feature-sets, I'm happy and can finally stop buying (pirating) the commercial versions. But you're probably right about new (younger) users and their new expectations about what hardware/software can/should do. As far as I'm personally concerned, though, as soon as OO can copy 99% of the features in Office 2003 (close, but not quite there yet) I'll never look back. And, I've got my breath held for Inkscape, etc.
yea. or they should just close the company due to incompetency, for, if they are still processing bulk data that is saved in plain text databases through microsoft software and macros, they are incompetent. woe to the partners and clients and customers who have their data in those files. their data's integrity depends on one single person using some macro on a microsoft software on a single desktop/laptop running it. glory to the digital age ...
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Or that file could be stored on a file server or SharePoint and the data itself could come from any ODBC data source.
because its free and does all of what they need.
When all these students start buying laptops later in life will they buy Office... no way. Some of these students will then be in charge of IT departments eventually....
get it?
Competitive analysis jobs have been around at Microsoft for a long time. It isn't new for there to be one to look at Linux, either. I knew someone 10 years ago that was doing that job.
This is actually very normal for large and successful businesses. At least...it is normal for the business that want to keep being large and successful.
It amazes me (and amuses me) sometimes to see how shocked the Slashdot crowd can be over things that have been perfectly normal in business since before your grandparents were born.
On the other hand if you always expected the thing to be there then the other one which doesn't have the button in the glove box would be seen as odd.
None of this stuff is difficult to use so I don't know why people are whining.
I don't understand the desire of many slashdotters to see For Profit software companies fail.
I think the issue is not that most slashdotters wish for For Profit software companies to fail. The issue is that MS is a monopoly and has a history of using every trick in the book to make sure noone threatens that monopoly. This goes way back to DOS 3 when internal memos revealed that they were manipulating DOS to make sure Lotus 123 didn't work well on it. "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run".
Our development group was affected when they came out with Visual C++. We were heavily invested in Borland C++. Every OS release seemed to break Borland (i.e. it worked fine until we upgraded Windows). Remember when it came out that MS had created secret APIs for Windows which only their own developers knew about?
It's as if GM were to own all the roads in the US and design them so that only GM cars could run on them. MS owns the road and makes it extremely difficult for any competing product to work well on it.
I own a small business, a bookstore, and I recently switched to OpenOffice.org from MS Office for Mac. For the stuff I do, accounting in a spreadsheet and writing letters, creating forms, printing address labels and things in a word processor, I can't discern any functional difference. There may be more options or pretty things in MS Office, but are they worth a couple of hundred dollars from people like me who don't need them? I also prefer OO.o to iWork for a lot of the same reasons. My business is really really small though (I just hired my first employee) so maybe I'll see the advantages of proprietary software when (or if) it gets any bigger.
"simply a way for Microsoft to fight against it from ...inside..."
duh, microintelpro?
...
I do not see it as wanting For Profit to fail so much as the destructive forces of a particular For Profit company needs to be curbed. OO is an inferior product [dons helmet and flame proof suit] and as such is not a real threat to M$ in the business arena. M$ want to stop people from illegal copying and that will force those that use illegal copies of M$ office at home to switch to OO for home use where it is perfectly suitable. Your son does not need all the M$ macros and corporate compatibility for his homework but M$ do not want to lose the users that are currently using illegal copies, they want them to pay. The truth is that there is no point in them paying when there is a free product that does all that they need to do. So M$ will try to destroy OO with smear campaigns and that is what is wrong. They have always used underhand techniques to compete with Linux, not because Linux is better or worse, but because that is how they operate. If they want to stop people like me from bitching, then all they have to do is start competing by making their product the one of choice rather than the only choice. I am not anti-M$, I use it at work all the time and I am using it atm at home. I do not want to see them disappear but I do not think that they are the best and I would rather that competition was fair and correct.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Firefox doesn't already know that CSV should be tied to OO? Shouldn't that have occurred at install time by OO?
No. I hate it when programs tie all kinds of filetypes to themselves and fuck up the prior setting. Openoffice isn't the only program in the universe that can import CSV. CSV isn't an Openoffice specific filetype. What if I prefer to open CSV files with a text editor? It should leave the settings as they are or at least ask about it.
yea. and the data will get modified in someone's own pc and sent back isnt it. a pc that is probably running a media player, at least one instant messenger, various browser windows and god knows what other software at that moment. its not even a client to send modification request to the database - it will be the place where data is modified and then sent back.
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This is how some applications work. Do you have something against the use of network file systems?
So what? Have you switched to complaining about work being performed on desktop PCs?
ODBC supports SQL including INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE.
User driven markets are still part of the whole, so it's certainly not incorrect to suggest the attitude is holding FOSS back.
The fact is, overall FOSS adoption could be increasing far more rapidly if there was actually a better focus towards the end user rather than a culture of treating the end user as the enemy.
Doing fine in one market segment doesn't really help the movement in it's overall goal to displace closed source proprietary software as the standard method of software delivery.
So what? Have you switched to complaining about work being performed on desktop PCs?
unreliable. a normal user pc that is prone to crash and mixups, handles my sensitive data. yea, im against this, and this was exactly why i was condemning the use of office documents to handle sensitive data.
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