Microsoft Admits OpenOffice.org Is a Contender

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Microsoft has unwittingly admitted that OpenOffice.org is a rival, by launching a three-minute video of customers explaining why they switched to Microsoft Office from OpenOffice.org. Glyn Moody writes: 'You don't compare a rival's product with your own if it is not comparable. And you don't make this kind of attack video unless you are really, really worried about the growing success of a competitor. [Microsoft] has now clearly announced that OpenOffice.org is a serious rival to Microsoft Office, and should be seriously considered by anyone using the latter.'"

Comments

I predict more are going to jump ship from Microso

[Corporate Troll]

There is the price, but then there is the horrible Ribbon interface. I have yet to meet someone IRL who *really* likes it. I recently installed Microsoft Office 2010 to recover emails from a corrupted system (Needed to open PST files, copied the mails to an IMAP server. No more Office needed... That what Trial Versions are great for!). Frankly, it comes over even more toyish, more "Please treat me as a dumb user". It's aggravating.

Interestingly, when installing 2010, it asked me whether I wanted to enable OpenDocument formats. I was torougly surprised by that. That's another admittance of Microsoft that OpenOffice is a treath.

Re:I predict more are going to jump ship from Micr

[xtracto]

Funny, I have yet to find anyone (except me...as I just hate it) in my workplace (research institute) who does not like the new ribbon interface.

Frankly, it comes over even more toyish, more "Please treat me as a dumb user". It's aggravating.

Well... that might be for your self aggravating ego; for the majority of users it means an interface that gets out of their way.

quoting from TFA:

After doing a little digging, we found that these quotes are actually from case studies and press articles from the last four years,

What I would really like to hear is equivalent quotes of companies who successfully migrated from MS Office to OO.o. Is there any? (no, not /. pseudonym-"in my office"-anecdotes, but real company names)

Re:Change names just as it's getting popular

[maztuhblastah]

Sun owned the trademark before, it didn't hinder development then.

Oh yes, it absolutely did. Sun proved to be a major hinderance to the development process -- so much so, in fact, that a fork was created and actually became the go-to choice for some Linux distributions.

It was called go-oo, and if you've installed/used "OpenOffice" in Debian, Ubuntu, or a few other distros, you actually used Go-OO without realizing it.