Why Microsoft Is So Scared of OpenOffice

GMGruman writes "A recent Microsoft video on OpenOffice is naively seen by some as validating the open source tool. As InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues shows, the video is really a hatchet job on OpenOffice. But why is Microsoft so intent on damaging the FOSS desktop productivity suite, which has just a tiny market share? Rodrigues figured out the real reason by noting who Microsoft quoted to slam OpenOffice: businesses in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe that aren't already so invested in Office licenses and know-how. In other words, the customers Microsoft doesn't have yet and now fears it never will."

Comments

I'd be scared too

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle might try to kick Microsoft out of a meeting, too.

Re:I'd be scared too

[BrokenHalo]

Scared is the word. From the TFA, apropos Microsoft's video ad (Silverlight or WMV if you please): "However, the quotes are far from balanced and indicate a subtle attempt to dismiss OpenOffice in the guise of a fair discussion."

That is completely wrong.

There is nothing subtle about it. Unless you consider being bludgeoned by someone screaming "Give Me All Your Money Or I'll Go Broke" subtle, that is. Pretty much every statement made in it is at best a half-truth, and more commonly an outright lie. This kind of hysterical trolling is the kind of thing we expect from the losing side in a political campaign, and it's an ugly look.

Re:I'd be scared too

[pyster]

The full truth is openoffice sucks and is hardly usable for real world use.

Re:I'd be scared too

[Eunuchswear]

Just like word'n'excel then.

Re:I'd be scared too

[Theolojin]

The full truth is openoffice sucks and is hardly usable for real world use.

Have you actually used OpenOffice.org in the real world? Five or six years ago, I was in the mortgage industry and I used Calc to create some pretty complicated spreadsheets such as amortization tables (including adjustable rates loans). In fact, I used such spreadsheets as a sales tool because I could show a client how much he or she could save by refinancing or the potential impact of rate changes on an ARM.

"Hardly usable for real world use"? Bah. Hyperbole not based on real world use. Is it right for every situation? No, it's not but it is sufficient for about 95% of real world users.

Re:I'd be scared too

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar to that comment, lately there's been a huge rise in Microsoft astroturfing and trolling across many popular sites. Anyone know which company Microsoft contracted to run the campaign?

Re:I'd be scared too

[tonique]

Many people *do* use Ooo for real word use in the real world.

I actually like Gnumeric better for some spreadsheeting [1] better than Ooo Calc. http://projects.gnome.org/gnumeric/

[1] Note that verbing is cool!

Re:I'd be scared too

[BrokenHalo]

[1] Note that verbing is cool!

Well, why not? If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for us.

Re:I'd be scared too

[utoddl]

[1] Note that Shakespearing is cool.

Re:I'd be scared too

[Culture20]

The full truth is openoffice sucks and is hardly usable for real world use.

Have you actually used OpenOffice.org in the real world? Five or six years ago, I was in the mortgage industry and I used Calc to create some pretty complicated spreadsheets such as amortization tables (including adjustable rates loans). In fact, I used such spreadsheets as a sales tool because I could show a client how much he or she could save by refinancing or the potential impact of rate changes on an ARM.

"Hardly usable for real world use"? Bah. Hyperbole not based on real world use. Is it right for every situation? No, it's not but it is sufficient for about 95% of real world users.

Obviously you didn't turn it into a presentation with ooimpress. ;)

Re:I'd be scared too

[utoddl]

You're gonna get flamed, but there's a lot of truth there. I use OOo, but it makes me cuss a lot. Last night my wife was fighting with it trying to make email addresses not be mailto links without losing other formatting. It's possible, but you feel dirty afterwards. Taming numbered lists is way more work than they're worth. Moving text while keeping formatting intact without using sacrificial paragraphs is next to impossible. Whoever thought deleting a paragraph mark should produce different results from backspacing away the same paragraph mark is a prime candidate for a severe re-education program.

There's a lot of good technology in there, and I remain stubbornly hopeful that the LibreOffice effort will make it more usable. Until then, I'll put up with the serious usability issues.

Re:I'd be scared too

[rwa2]

Meh, I used OO.org for some graphs for my master's thesis and for work. Had lots of instability with graph formatting and consistent crashes with drop-down menus a few years back. Had to struggle to manually install the latest bleeding edge OO.org (3.2 at the time) that finally addressed some of these issues... the versions packaged for my distros were a tad too old. So I understand when people knock at OO.org .

I can see where M$ is threatened by OO.org becoming the de-facto office suite, though. There's a lot of extra features (that are actually useful, like collaborative "track changes") in MS Office and some nice mail merge wizards that I still haven't seen in OO.org. But most people who do office style work have no idea how to use those features, and think I'm some kind of genius when I point out how they can simply autofilter a spreadsheet to generate different reports from one set of data.

For my part, I do little office-style work and still prefer LyX / LaTeX + gnuplot/octave + make for the occasional serious report generation I do. WYSIWYG is fine for quick and dirty, but gets very cumbersome and unmaintainable after a few chapters.

Re:I'd be scared too

[proslack]

"t's not but it is sufficient for about 95% of real world users." Personally, I'd say it is sufficient 95% of the time for real world users. The problem is the other 5% of time. MSO, on the other hand, is sufficient more like 99.9% of the time.

Re:I'd be scared too

[Kvasio]

while i'm using mso2k7 and mso2k10 on my computers (@work), in my prevoius job I was so much pissed with broken formatting of word 2003 (eg. constantly breaking headers of chapters, annoying behaviuor of autoindexing) that for some 20 months I switched completely to oo write (then: 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5). It took me some time to adapt to different philosophy of section formatting, but then I saved a lot of time, compared to my colleagues.
Some even tried using oo.

Re:I'd be scared too

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] Had lots of instability [...] Had to struggle to manually install the latest bleeding edge OO.org (3.2 at the time) that finally addressed some of these issues... the versions packaged for my distros were a tad too old.

It is more likely that your distro version was a patched go-oo one and not an "vanilla" OOo. Thats were the instability came from. Look forward to LO, which is just go-oo all over again.

Re:I'd be scared too

[supercrisp]

OO.o does have collaborative track changes: edit menu, changes, record. It visually marks the change and records the author of that change, just as in Word. It also allows you to insert editorial comments, just as in Word.

Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Open Office (particularly Calc) can compete with Microsoft in terms of performance, stability, and features, then and only then will Microsoft need to worry about Open Office.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[cosm]

Once Open Office (particularly Calc) can compete with Microsoft in terms of performance, stability, and features, then and only then will Microsoft need to worry about Open Office.

Ballmer is that you?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[0123456]

Once Open Office (particularly Calc) can compete with Microsoft in terms of performance, stability, and features, then and only then will Microsoft need to worry about Open Office.

Probably 90% of people use Office for basic word processing and the occasional basic spreadsheet, for which a ten-year-old version is overkill.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

A Honda Civic cannot compete in every way with a Hummer.

And yet, a lot of people find it does well enough for the price.

I'm sure many would like a Bugatti Veyron too. But since the support costs are too high, they usually go with a less expensive car without such high required costs.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been competing like that for a long time. I've actually used it at work, and there is little that one can do that the other can't. As for the Eastern Europeans, Well, they do try MSOffice, but the "free" version, and when they want to go legal, instead of buying a licence that costs as much as two months worth of minimum wage, they look to alternatives and take the obvious choice.

I live in Eastern Europe, I used both at work. My employers have done what I've written above, just like many others.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize you're probably just trolling, but in what way can Open Office not compete with MS Office?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[tuaris]

If they would only fix the "arrow" cursor to a "cross" in Calc I would be happy.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[SudoGhost]

The ONLY thing I've seen Office do better than Open Office is macros. I'm a huge D&D nerd, and HeroForge won't work with Open Office.

But that's a very specific thing, and other than that I haven't come across anything, so I just don't sue HeroForge. That isn't accurate of the general population I'm sure, and others may find faults with Open Office that I haven't, but that's just my personal experience.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Requiem18th]

Why? The arrow is the standard pointing cursor, the cross adds nothing to the usability.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Frosty Piss]

I realize you're probably just trolling, but in what way can Open Office not compete with MS Office?

And GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop, if not better, right? Right?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[cgenman]

Amusingly enough, I had to switch spreadsheets to Calc from Excel because of interface scripting issues in Excel. Using Autohotkeys to script simple tasks is by and large easy, but Excel fails to queue up UI-level commands properly. Hence, "Down Down Down" sometimes is interpreted as "Down Down" or just "Down." Calc, on the other hand always interprets this as 3-downs each and every time.

While Excel's internal scripting seems fine, sometimes you just need to write a throwaway script that pulls from disparate data sources, formats it separately, calculates through a spreadsheet, and filters the results into another random application. For that, Calc was just more solid.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Frosty Piss]

Ballmer is that you?

Oh good grief. You don't use Office-like tools in a professional setting, do you? Otherwise you would not make such absurd comments. The facts are that Excel and Excel macro capabilities are one of the main reasons that businesses use the Office suite. And, OO (like with GIMP and Photoshop) simply does *NOT* measure up. Yet.

It's *NOT* about being a Microsoft "shill", it's a matter of being realistic and understanding that the Open Office product doesn't *YET* measure up in terms of professional standards and needs, what people that use such products in a serious business setting need.

Seriously, idiots like you hold Open Source back.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize you're probably just trolling, but in what way can Open Office not compete with MS Office?

The GP specifically called out OO Calc. I have tried to use OO several times, in both business (engineering) and academic environments. In my experience, Calc is an abomination -- it crashed so frequently on me that I wondered if I was using a finished version of the software. I love the idea of FOSS, but for a power user of Excel, OO is a joke.

The difference between Calc and Excel isn't so much in the number of features, but stability, plain and simple. For someone who does data analysis or graphing large datasets, every crash is extremely frustrating. You might argue that neither Excel nor Calc are "serious" engineering tools -- but both advertise a set of features (such as linefitting and formatted plots), and in Excel the implementation is (roughly) usable and Calc is a horrorshow of bugs.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[0123456]

It's *NOT* about being a Microsoft "shill", it's a matter of being realistic and understanding that the Open Office product doesn't *YET* measure up in terms of professional standards and needs, what people that use such products in a serious business setting need.

For the one percent of people who actually _need_ them.

For the other 99%, Open Office is fine.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[wvmarle]

In most economies some 95% of companies and at least half of all employment is in SMEs. >90% of those companies will also never use any of the advanced features MS office has, and OOo is missing. Even sharing documents (as in: opening at the same time for editing - I once tried but failed in a recent version of OOo Calc; no idea on how MS Office is doing there) is often not done.

In large businesses I wouldn't be surprised if >90% of the users doesn't use those features. They probably don't even know it exists.

Actually I think 99% or more of the Office users wouldn't be able to name a feature that does not exist in the other suite, even if you would let them use both for a year for normal work, office and home.

We have to be realistic indeed (MS seems to be): how many people know what a macro is, and how to use it? What VB script is, or how to use it?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Eivind]

The thing is, there are all sorts.

There -are- businesses which use Excel for the features. That is, they use features that are hard to use, or nonexistant in OpenOffice.

But there are -also- a lot of businesses that use Excel because, honestly, they've never honestly considered the fact that there even exists alternatives. Many of them never use formulas more advanced than basic arithmethic and perhaps SUM(..) - but nevertheless fork over the cash for Excel for their entire staff.

The former can't easily swap, but the latter could. And there's a lot of excel noobs, for every Excel guru, out there.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Knightman]

I abhor the use of macros in Excel because companies that use Excel usually ends up building datamining tools or some complex spreadsheets that calculate whatnot related to their business. They are usually a big mess of macros and VBA that ends up being supported by the internal IT-department and is one big headache. And just to make it more fun they can have some badly implemented Access "database" coupled to the spreadsheets.

Being able to do macros and/or script applications is usually a good thing since it can automate a lot of tedious work, and if properly implemented it wouldn't be a problem, but the majority of "applications" in Excel is just horrific in my experience. Usually someone makes something "nifty" then it spreads to the whole department and suddenly it's something that has to be supported and the feature creep sets in.

That's my experience anyway.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[careysub]

Once Open Office (particularly Calc) can compete with Microsoft in terms of performance, stability, and features, then and only then will Microsoft need to worry about Open Office.

I have found Calc indispensible for it allows me to cut tables from browsers and paste it into a spreadsheet, and have it import perfectly. This has been of huge value to me. This does not work at all in Excel. Furthermore, I have found Excel to be a nightmare in its insistence on being "clever" and knowing better than me what is or should be in my document: insistently turning text that it thinks looks like email and web addresses into live links (something I have never wanted in my life), destroying text it thinks looks like dates into a non-recoverable form, its apparent inability to mix numbers (as text) and numbers (as numbers) in a single spreadsheet without nightmarish manual work-arounds, etc.

I have used Excel since before it was Excel (i.e. when it was still MultiPlan) and have found long ago that it passed the point of adding value and (as with most MS products) began adding misery instead. I happily use Calc and loathe having to fire up Excel now.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Grey Ninja]

The company I work at has Office installed on everyone's computer. I generally use Excel, since that's the default for spreadsheets on my PC (too lazy/apathetic to change it). However, whenever I have to deal with some complex data, I will always use Calc. Why?

I will log a bunch of program output from my software (such as memory allocations), and I want a simple way of sorting them by file and line number, then I can see the ones that I really want. I could write a tool for this of course, but I would rather take an extra minute to do it by hand, as this doesn't come up that much. But importing arbitrary data (not comma separated but separated by words/spaces/newlines/various) is a pain in the ass in Excel. It involves saving it out as a txt file then importing. Calc will simply pop up a box asking what your delimiters are.

I've never had Calc crash on me, and I honestly don't know what the problem is. In fact, I've never seen any reason to use Office over OpenOffice. Granted, I spend more of my day in Notepad++ than Office, but still. People keep citing macros, but that just seems like an abomination to me anyway. Good riddance.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[virtuosonic]

Seriously, idiots like you hold Open Source back.

yep

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

You're presuming all 90% use the same features. In actuality, 90% of businesses use the same 10% of Office features, plus a different 1% from everyone else. Thus, nearly 100% of all Office features are used.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[lexidation]

I live in Eastern Europe, too. I process text for a living. That means I take in fairly massive numbers of documents from businesses every week. I've never seen a file arrive in native OpenOffice format. Not once. Of course, everybody could be using OpenOffice to export as .doc, but I don't think so.

The truth is simpler. As the post above notes, MS Word is still ungodly expensive here – in Microsoft's shortsightedness, during the 1990s and later, it did indeed cost several months' average salary. The result has been a well-entrenched tradition of using the "free" version of Word. Even at the Ministry level, in at least one prominent case. Getting around an absurd system is also a very old tradition, for obvious reasons.

So the problem OpenOffice faces in catching on here is very definitely one of taking on another free-of-cost competitor. And in a region where people want so badly to catch up with the West, Microsoft has the cachet that comes with being perceived as the Western standard.

With a zero cost differential, the choice will seem clear to a lot of people. It's a very difficult perception to beat.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[rjch]

And GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop, if not better, right? Right?

For me? Yes, it is. For a professional graphics editor? No, absolutely not.

The difference between the comparisons is that very few people need all the features of the M$ Office suite. Very, very few people need the really advanced features in Word or Excel. Macros are one exception - and 90% of applications I've seen developed as macros should never have been developed as macros in the first place.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[BrokenHalo]

The difference between Calc and Excel isn't so much in the number of features, but stability, plain and simple.

Oh dear. Heads up, guys - We've woken up Microsoft's PR department, and the shills are having to earn their keep again.

I've been using OpenOffice since, well, since it was StarOffice, and stability has NEVER been its problem. Startup time used to be slow, but now it's pretty much equal to (or maybe a bit quicker than) MSOffice.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

I abhor the use of macros in Excel because companies that use Excel usually ends up building datamining tools or some complex spreadsheets that calculate whatnot related to their business. They are usually a big mess of macros and VBA that ends up being supported by the internal IT-department and is one big headache. And just to make it more fun they can have some badly implemented Access "database" coupled to the spreadsheets.

Being able to do macros and/or script applications is usually a good thing since it can automate a lot of tedious work, and if properly implemented it wouldn't be a problem, but the majority of "applications" in Excel is just horrific in my experience. Usually someone makes something "nifty" then it spreads to the whole department and suddenly it's something that has to be supported and the feature creep sets in.

That's my experience anyway.

If your IT department is supporting user-created macros then your company has a lot bigger problems than what brand of office software you use.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[im_thatoneguy]

But importing arbitrary data (not comma separated but separated by words/spaces/newlines/various) is a pain in the ass in Excel. It involves saving it out as a txt file then importing. Calc will simply pop up a box asking what your delimiters are.

I'm no excel whiz. In fact I built a new computer about 8 months ago and haven't installed my copy of Office yet. But I was able to figure out how to do that in office in a few minutes last time I had it installed.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

OOCalc can't have horizontal error bars on graphs. OOCalc error bars in general just don't cut it, where Excel's are better.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[El_Muerte_TDS]

I'd be shocked if an other product better supported MS' proprietry format than MS' products. Yes, MS Office is better in supporting MS Office macros. But OpenOffice is better in supporting OpenOffice macros.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot: where everybody who disagrees with you is a shill. Because companies pour thousands of dollars on arguing with a half dozen slashdotters.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[asliarun]

For the one percent of people who actually _need_ them.

For the other 99%, Open Office is fine.

The problem is that 1% of the users need feature X, while a different 1% badly need feature Y, while yet another 1% find feature Z indispensable.
Many people who use your logic don't realize that this seemingly insignificant 1% adds up very quickly. Plus, these 1percenters are usually the ones who are vociferous and evangelical.

I actually tried to encourage my wife to use Open Office about a year ago. She needed to do a fair bit of document editing and rewriting work, and I gave her a (fairly powerful business-grade) laptop with only Open Office installed and told her about all the virtues of open software, and how Open Office is as good as MS Office, and after a short learning curve, she will not even miss MS Office.

Mind you, she was using Open Office mainly for straight-forward document work - document editing, proof-reading, rewriting, reformatting, etc. No macros, no formulaes, no fancy stuff.

Never worked. For a brief initial period, she was fine, and even pleasantly surprised by Open Office. Then, she started finding small issues with layouts, small features that were not present, etc. Then, she started facing deadlines and small issues with her clients.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I ended up installing Office 2007 for her, and so far, so good.

As a neutral observer, I find -this- kind of anecdotal evidence compelling, and the reason why so many Open Office proponents are simply missing the point. In a business context where everyone else is using MS Office, Open Office had better support MS Office documents to a perfect degree, and offer the same toolset that MS Office provides.

Otherwise, the only potential market will be markets (mainly government organizations) where everyone uses or is forced to use Open Office.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[LingNoi]

So then it doesn't actually do macros better. It just supports it's own document format and macros better.

I know you might consider this to be what you meant however what you typed makes it look like you believe macros to be better for some particular reason such as being faster, easier or better documented.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you, Steve Barkto?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Knightman]

If your IT department is supporting user-created macros then your company has a lot bigger problems than what brand of office software you use.

If you look at any larger company that uses MS Office their IT department usually has to support these types of solutions one way or another (ie. officially/unofficially).

Re:Open office != MS Office

[LingNoi]

In the context of the article where it is about new businesses without any existing excel spreadsheets?

Switching from an existing solution has nothing to do with it. Any new business could use anything and have the same problems. If they start out with open source solutions then they can scale that up much better then starting with Microsoft then making the switch.

The advertising video the Microsoft released isn't about new business though (which the article refers to). Almost every quote given in that video is from companies switching to open source solutions or specifically open office. So I don't believe the article when they say that Microsoft is targeting New Businesses.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[91degrees]

Well, I've used both. I don't consider Excel to be superior because that would suggest that it's actually any good at all. However, it loooks like the OO guys decided to clone every single annoyane and limitation of Excel (e.g. arbitrary table size limits, rubbish sort dialog). I seem to recall the Calc equivalents of Pivot tables being a bit rubbish too but perhaps they've fixed that.

If anyone thinks they're equivalent, they only want to do trivial things with their spreadsheets. This is actually okay. Most people do. For most people Calc is perfetly adequate.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

Macros are one exception - and 90% of applications I've seen developed as macros should never have been developed as macros in the first place.

Be that as it may, you won't get people to migrate off Office by saying "Your processes built around huge numbers of macros (which, for all its sins, broadly works) was developed in the wrong way in the first place, you must rip the whole lot out and start again".

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

For the one percent of people who actually _need_ them.

For the other 99%, Open Office is fine.

When that one percent happens to exist in every company, and it's a department the company doesn't really want to hammer the productivity of even for a few days (such as sales or finance), OpenOffice is not fine.

What does puzzle me is that so many businesses go to great lengths to make sure they can't get entirely screwed over by one supplier - vehicle manufacturers always have at least two suppliers of every major component, for instance - but have gleefully bought into all sorts of computer systems and merrily tied themselves so tightly to one supplier that they are heavily in the brown smelly stuff if that supplier no longer supplies. It's not just Microsoft, it's been endemic since well before they gained their current stranglehold on the desktop.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anne Thwacks]

I've never seen a file arrive in native OpenOffice format.

That is because, even where we use OO to produce documents, unless we have prior consent from the recipients, we export to MS format before sending. The majority still believe that Computer==MS.

If anyone can accept ODT, they will generally say so when requesting documents. I hope you do!

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

Two things to bear in mind:

1. Who's going to go through every spreadsheet and make sure there's nothing too taxing in there?
2. For most businesses, the cost of an Office license is really not that great. They'll spend more in man-hours learning something else and for what gain? Businesses tend to be run fairly pragmatically - they want something that works, not a religion. All your "you are being held hostage by the file format!11oneone" stuff is something most business owners will take one look at and say to themselves "Let's look at this in context. A: it's never been a huge problem before - sure we've had to upgrade occasionally, but BFD and B: why on Earth would Microsoft make the next version completely incompatible with the old one, not even able to open the old file format? It makes no sense at all."

Re:Open office != MS Office

[abigsmurf]

(Abritrary high percentage pulled out my ass)% of people won't ever have to use the spare tire in their car. That spare tire is still vitally important to have though.

It's all well and good saying "you probably won't ever use that feature" but at some point you may actually need it. Heck your job may be very specialised and one obscure feature that 'no one' uses makes your job much much easier. It's better to have a feature and not need it than to need a feature and not have it.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[gdshaw]

I live in Eastern Europe, too. I process text for a living. That means I take in fairly massive numbers of documents from businesses every week. I've never seen a file arrive in native OpenOffice format. Not once. Of course, everybody could be using OpenOffice to export as .doc, but I don't think so.

I use OpenOffice and I wouldn't dream of sending someone an ODF file unless I was confident they would be able to open it. Since ODF support is half-baked in the current version of MS Office and non-existent in previous versions, that rules it out for most recipients. So yes, if you use OpenOffice then you probably will find yourself needing to export to another format on a regular basis.

(Of course you shouldn't be sending ODF or .doc files unless they need to remain editable: PDF is a more reliable interchange format for finished documents.)

The most credible estimate I've seen for OpenOffice usage in the Czech Republic is 22% from this survey. Together with Poland that was the highest percentage in any of the countries listed. Usage in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria was lower but still respectable.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[blackest_k]

The real question to ask of any software is does it do what you need it to do in a relatively efficient manner.

Pick the tools that meet your requirements and your budget, it really is that simple.

You can probably find many cases where the Gimp does what you need it to and some where Photoshop is the only tool for the job. We make choices like this all the time in every area of our lives.

Is OpenOffice a viable alternative to Microsoft Office - sometimes it depends what you want to do with it.
 

Re:Open office != MS Office

[satuon]

Save it as .csv file (stands for Comma-Separated Values, I think) and Excel will open it automatically. It won't even ask you for the delimiter.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[abigsmurf]

If I get a 5mm screw from "Scott's screws" and decide to one day switch to "Sam's Screws" I don't have to worry about retraining staff for how to use them. A screw is a screw. Likewise if I contract someone to make a fuel tank to a certain specifications, I would hope that they would produce a near identical fuel tank to another company given the same specs.

If you were to put Open Office and MS Office on everyone's PC it would cost a fortune. Staff would need extra training for it, support staff would have increased amounts of issues to sort, you'd have issues with some saving in OO formats, some in Office formats and so on. All just incase MS goes under or dramatically increase their prices so that you can't afford it.

It's frankly cheaper and easier to stick to a single Office suite and on the off chance something happens, then you can switch and pay for the retraining and implementation.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[digitig]

1. Who's going to go through every spreadsheet and make sure there's nothing too taxing in there?

Having worked for a large organisation, the answer is "the maintainer of the spreadsheet". The IT department will announce a change of policy without bothering to check how you are using the software, and if the change doesn't suit you then you have to make a business case for having non-standard software.

2. For most businesses, the cost of an Office license is really not that great. They'll spend more in man-hours learning something else and for what gain?

Which I suspect is why this is taking off now. Most of our customers are still using Office 2003, and I reckon it would cost less to train Office 2003 users in OOo than in Office 2007/2010.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[SuricouRaven]

I wouldn't be surprised if they did, actually. The argument may be with half a dozen, but it's witnessed by thousands more - many of whome are IT professionals, who will eventually make high-value purchasing decisions for a company.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one obvious thing that OOo is lacking, grammar checking as well as spellchecking (actually OOo is lacking spell checking too until you explicitly add it with the extension manager).

Re:Open office != MS Office

[syntaxerrormmm]

I see the same pattern in some multinationals for which I work (as IT support, sigh). Probably a simple web application can resolve much of their problems, but the real problem is that no developer are involved in the process of designing and making of this "commodity reports" (in fact, that I know, there aren't any fulltime developer in the company). So simple programming problems are overlooked by untrained people and that is the primary source of lots of problems. And yes, from a support point of view, users keep saying "That's a Microsoft Office file, why couldn't you support it?". Are we working for the same company? :P

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Calc needs macros that break on every update.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

As a neutral observer, I find -this- kind of anecdotal evidence compelling, and the reason why so many Open Office proponents are simply missing the point. In a business context where everyone else is using MS Office, Open Office had better support MS Office documents to a perfect degree, and offer the same toolset that MS Office provides. ...

Quite. It's not about features, it's about bugs. For most users, if Open Office handles documents differently to MS Office that's seen as a bug. Doesn't matter if this is objectively correct or morally right, it's a fact that Open Office promotors just have to deal with.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: Excel doesn't ask for a delimiter.

Solution: Excel won't even ask for a delimiter.

And that's not even the first time I hear Microsoft fanboys rephrase the problem as the solution.

I've had the same problem. Excel expects that a CSV file is always separated with a comma. If you use the US version. En the European version, Excel expects that a CSV file is always separated with a semicolon.

If you have a file that's not separated with the separator Excel expects, everything ends up in column A. Even if you try to import a euro-style semicolon separated file into a US version of Excel.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[icebraining]

That depends on the price of said feature. Which for a whole company can be very expensive.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[muckracer]

> Open Office had better support MS Office documents to a perfect degree, and offer the same toolset that MS Office provides.

Quite frankly, this is exactly, why OSS is always trailing and having a hard time to catch up: It needs to always do twice as much as the entrenched programs...once their own way of doing things and then, in addition, the Microsoft way of doing things. Most complaints I hear are not so much about how an Open-Source program in itself has limitations, but how it has limitations (perceived or real) in dealing with MS-issued software or larger MS-environment.
"If it doesn't do exactly what MS-Office does I won't use it!"
"If it doesn't perfectly/100% read MS' proprietary file formats, it's not ready for business!".
"If it doesn't look exactly like MS-Office my people won't be able to/won't want to use it!"
"If it doesn't integrate with AD...."
etc.pp..

While Open-Source software is certainly not the right thing for every place (incl. some Office settings), I hear the distinct whining of people and businesses, who have more or less willingly painted themselves into the corner of a specific vendor. That getting out of that corner or even entertaining the thought of it is almost an insurmountable obstacle is only a logical conclusion.
As far as I am concerned I feel, that it's got to be one of the most ridiculous things on earth in 2010, that people are forced to use a specific Office program to edit documents. It shouldn't matter, damnit, what you use, as long as the resulting file makes sense and can be shared. OpenDocument is a great thing, but came a decade too late. Today DOC(x) is 'the standard' and everybody else's gotta cater to it. MS wins by default: DOC(x) = MS-Office, MS-Office = Windows, Windows = site license, site license = AD, Exchange, Sharepoint etc. until we are in schools, where 'todays business standards' are being 'taught' to students. It sucks and the Mafia couldn't have done better in setting up their business (remember WordPerfect, which most people were highly unwilling to leave but got forced to by MS). I still regard the DOC format as one of the top three things that held back innovation in the entire IT infrastructure and business landscape. It's be so great, if the choices were manifold with a certainty, that resulting documents and spreadsheets could be seamlessly used by any other choice (of a user). Technically we have that (OOo, MSO, WP, KO etc.)...in reality we don't!

Re:Open office != MS Office

[obarthelemy]

Same as only when the Atom can compete with the i970x in terms of performance, stability, and features, will Intel sell any Atoms ?

Or only when bicycles compete with Feraris on ...

Or only when boats compete with planes on ...

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the same problem. Excel expects that a CSV file is always separated with a comma.

Well, so would I, generally: Whose fault is it that some countries use semicolons as delimiters in C/omma Separated Ffiles?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[muckracer]

> even where we use OO to produce documents, unless we have prior consent from the recipients, we export to MS format before sending.

Out of interest:

Why not send both versions attached (ODT and DOC)?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[muckracer]

> If anyone can accept ODT, they will generally say so when requesting documents.

Actually this would be great to have as X-email header: ODT accepted. The E-mail program could print that out as status line or pop up a notice when sending an attachment to that recipient...
Not holding my breath for Outlook to implement that, but how about the Open-Source mailers?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Sique]

Whose fault is it to ignore local conventions? Tables separated with colons or semicolons are older than Excel.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[vlim_bathory]

As quality management consultant, I've seen many dreadful Excel document during audits : 1 quick and dirty database like 2 static chart without any formulas 3 embedded macros written by a trainee 2 years ago. Of course it's works as a black box and when something goes really bad nobody can't fix it (have to start from the scratch) 4 lists and calendar 5 form And one time, I've even seen a company use Excel/Words for managing their procedures and policies (kind of electronic document management). Of course everybody could edit these documents. Needless to say that the requirements for the ISO9001 certifications were far for being reached. I used Excel for many years but now when I really wants to make real statistics, I rather use R/python/gnuplot or Minitab/Origin (if open source is not a option). Plotting with Excel is more financial focused and not so well convenient for MSP / 6 Sigma My 0,02€ (sorry for my “english written by a french guy”)

Re:Open office != MS Office

[amber_of_luxor]

You have to install the grammar checkers for OOo as extensions. Which grammar checkers to install depends upon which languages you want to do grammar checking in.

Amber

Re:Open office != MS Office

[demonlapin]

(remember WordPerfect, which most people were highly unwilling to leave but got forced to by MS)

Yeah, "forced". As in, "We'll sell you the entire office suite for the price WP charges for the word processor alone. And WYSIWYG will actually work."

Re:Open office != MS Office

[dropadrop]

Which is a good point. For some reason our company has 10's of photoshop licenses, mainly for people who just resize pictures occasionally. It would be very easy to do with gimp "but it's always been done with photoshop". Probably the main reason Adobe does so little to fight against piratism - if people where accustomed to using gimp at home (due to not being able to buy photoshop) most would find it adequate. Sure there will be some who are actually requiring the features in photoshop, but not very many.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[lennier1]

Depends on the product.
Over the years I've had to troubleshoot more than a few cases where the only browser that had problems with Microsoft's Javascript dialect was IE itself.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Lord Bitman]

Probably because the dead-simple tasks, such as "resize an image" have always been extremely primitive and clumsy-feeling to the point of being downright broken when compared with Photoshop. If GIMP can't even get that right, why should anyone use it?
PaintShopPro is a less-expensive alternative to Photoshop which actually works, though.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[gringer]

If I get a 5mm screw from "Scott's screws" and decide to one day switch to "Sam's Screws" I don't have to worry about retraining staff for how to use them

Yeah, but what if "Scott's screws" had a little kink just near the head that gave the screw a little extra bite, so your staff got used to tightening those screws a little less than most other screws?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[deniable]

So save it as TXT and it asks you for the delimiter. CSV is comma separated values. If MS did it some other way they'd get slapped for being too stupid to recognize a comma.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Alex Belits]

Another Microsoft marketing person found.

Now they don't even bother googling for bugs and complaints posted on the forums, and invent "problems" entirely on their own.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Alex Belits]

Actually yes it is, and your tone is misplaced. Photoshop is only popular because this is what was taught in "digital art" courses.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[couchslug]

Car analogies would work better if you could warez a car...

Re:Open office != MS Office

[deniable]

Oh yeah, I've been there. The mess of VBA is nowhere near as bad as the people who do everything in worksheet functions with no macros. I once found a nested matrix of IFs being used because someone hadn't heard of COUNTIF and SUMIF. Currently I'm trying to sort out an ugly timesheet and the only good thing is that they haven't embraced the power of circular refereences.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[TheRaven64]

Not true. For a large percentage of Microsoft's customers, MS Office 97 did everything that they needed. The only reason that these people upgraded was that people kept sending them files from newer versions of Office that they couldn't open. I worked with one company that ended up upgrading over a hundred thousand users from Office 97 about five years ago for exactly this reason - they didn't need any new features other than the ability to open files that they had been sent.

If OpenOffice becomes more popular then ODF becomes more popular and this makes it much harder to force people to move to Office 2015 to support its new file format. Sure, a few people will need the new features, but a lot of people use Word as a glorified typewriter - they don't need even a fraction of the features that the current version has. OpenOffice can quite easily skim these users away from Microsoft's market share. It doesn't have to be as good as the latest MS Office to do so, just as good as the last version that added a feature that they use.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[pablo_max]

Yes, clearly the reason people don't buy Veyron is down to support costs. Certainly it's not the 2 million dollar price tag.

I think your car analogy is ridiculous.
The only thing a Hummer and civic has is common is that they are both vehicles. Just as photoshop and firefox are both applications. That does not mean they are comparable.
It would be more reasonable to compare like cars.
Say, Hyundai Genesis and a Mercedes S Class. Both are 4 door sedans. Both are aimed at a similar demographic.
The Genesis does all the basic stuff that the Merc does and even lots of the advanced stuff, yet somehow..it's just not the same thing.
This is how I see OO to Office.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[the_leander]

if people where accustomed to using gimp at home (due to not being able to buy photoshop) most would find it adequate. Sure there will be some who are actually requiring the features in photoshop, but not very many.

That's precisely what has Microsoft shitting itself.

They try OpenOffice, see that its more than enough for what they need. Sooner or later people who have to budget for companies IT support needs realise that large chunks of their workforce could use a free alternative that they've got experience with and there goes Microsoft's bread and butter.

OpenOffice, Gimp etc have been good enough for non professional use for a long time now. The only real change is that people are now becoming aware of these free and legal applications.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

No Open Office is not fine for 99% of people.
I started uses Open Office Writer about a year ago. However, I have experienced two big bugs:

1) pictures dissapearing from my documents.
2) my Open Office userprofile becomming corrupt, causing my not to be able to open my documents.

I am still using Open Office Writer, despite these bugs. But I do not believe 99% of people are that forgiving.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Alien1024]

importing arbitrary data (not comma separated but separated by words/spaces/newlines/various) is a pain in the ass in Excel

Hm. No it isn't.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[mangu]

Probably because the dead-simple tasks, such as "resize an image" have always been extremely primitive and clumsy-feeling to the point of being downright broken when compared with Photoshop

Wow, if clicking on the image -> scale menu is "extremely primitive and clumsy-feeling to the point of being downright broken", then I wonder how Photoshop does it? A telepathic interface, maybe? Photoshop knows instinctively what size I want the picture to be and reshapes it without any command from me?

Your argument seems pretty desperate, like you are grasping at straws to find some shortcoming in Gimp. If you need to do it, then it seems like Gimp has improved to the point of being a serious contender to Photoshop by now. Good to know that.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[zippthorne]

If you're just resizing images, why not use the OS's built-in functions that do that? Or ImageMagick?

Using photoshop to resize images is like using a Caterpillar 797 to drive down to your mailbox and pick up your mail.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[TheKidWho]

It's called quality control. Something that exists outside of IT in real engineering fields.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The counter argument is, Imagine a world where the cost of making the second Ferrari is the same as the cost of making the second Hyundai accent. And so the Ferrari is priced just a shade about Hyundai accent, which one would grab the market share? All the investment in Microsoft Office has been paid back and at present it is just a purely profit making money minting machine for Microsoft. All further investment in MS-Office by Microsoft is make it difficult to get off the upgrade treadmill, to lure unwitting customers into the fold.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

Wow, if clicking on the image -> scale menu is "extremely primitive and clumsy-feeling to the point of being downright broken", then I wonder how Photoshop does it? A telepathic interface, maybe? Photoshop knows instinctively what size I want the picture to be and reshapes it without any command from me?

Actually, that's not far from the truth. While you can resize to a specific size, IIRC Photoshop also allows you to specify how the image will be used and sets sensible defaults on the back of that. Not really much point to this in full-blown Photoshop - anyone using a legit copy should know about pixels and resolution - but in something like Photoshop Elements it makes a lot of sense.

Most people don't have a clue about resolution or pixels, they just want to save it so they can upload it to Facebook/flikr/(insert site here) quickly. This isn't, however, the kind of thing the Gimp developers have historically had much time for.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[MrHanky]

For somone considering to invest in an office suite for the first time, you're basically saying that while the initial cost of Microsoft Office is higher than for OpenOffice, the long term cost is even worse.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[hairyfeet]

Why does everyone keep doing this? The other poster was right, MS Office and Open Office are NOT anywhere near the same tool, and are much more like Gimp VS PSP/PS. If all you are doing is making a simple Word doc, or making a simple spreadsheet? Open Office works fine for that, my youngest uses it all the time. Start getting complex? I'm sorry but Open office will bone you hard.

Let me give an example: I just had to go digging through storage to find my copy of Office 2K7 pro (I'm an old MS Office 2K man myself) for my oldest boy who just had to switch away from Open Office. Why did he have to switch? Because he found out the hard way that docs created by Open office with any significant formatting in them SUCK, that's why! Hell he'd make the doc on his XP X64, bring it over to me on my Win 7 X64, and the same version of Open Office would throw little funky changes in the formatting, like changing header/footers or throwing off indents. If he was just writing to a friend this would have been NO problem, but when he is losing point at college for every document fuckup it is a BIG deal! Then you have to figure in a good 90% of the people you'll be doing business with have some form of MS Office, which opening those same above docs in my Office 2K and his 2K7 equaled even MORE weird fuckups, and you can see why he had to drop it.

If these guys in Eastern Europe are using JUST Open Office and sharing docs/spreadsheets with JUST other Open Office users AND they don't mind the occasional weird formatting error? Its all gravy. Hell I've got a couple of businesses using Open Office because all they ever send is PDF and that is just fine for the most part in Open Office, and of course I give all my home users a copy, why not? It's free. But if you are having to interact with MS Office users and/or formatting COUNTS? Not so good IMHO. Sadly I should have known it would happen as I had the same thing bite me in the ass with Open Office 2 and an English class. The first paper I got was a C and when the teacher showed me what it looked like on her Office 2K3 I understood why: Word Salad. Like it or not, .doc is THE format of business. And Open Office just can't do Word docs right. And before anyone even says it yes, you can get borked .docs that only Open Office can open, but that is data retrieval NOT sharing docs where formatting counts. after all, you wouldn't take that doc you just retrieved and send it to a client with a big contract on the line, would you?

And finally for those mod trolls that downmod anything other than "Gee, isn't (insert FOSS product) swell? It sure is Biff!" go right ahead, I got more karma than God and would rather be honest than bow to groupthink. These problems bit both me and my oldest square in the butt, and with him it took an A paper down to a B thanks to indents and footers being screwed.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Inda]

The solution is "text to columns". Yeah, Excel won't ask, you have to "tell".

You can choose any delimiter you please.

Non-issue.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me of how Linux fanboys have been telling the world for years that 99% of users only need a web browser. It hasn't turned out very successful so far.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Excel can import arbitrary CSV files too, just hit Data Import and it will ask delimiters. Moreover it can import more than 65k lines

Re:Open office != MS Office

[tuxgeek]

Actually, OOo already can easily replace M$O for most users. Performance and stability are already there. Features .. OOo has everything most users need. Only a very small percent need scripting capability that only M$O can provide.

I use both. OOo interface has been consistent for years. M$O changes theirs with each update. The most recent M$O is not intuitive at all and quite inconvenient to use, for me when I need to get something done. "Now where the fuck did "print" go?" or "Now where the fuck did 'save page as' go?"

Re:Open office != MS Office

[tjhart85]

The learning curve of 2007 was so steep for many that I know that it was almost equivalent to changing to an entirely new application. Since people are willing to make the commitment to learn a new program with MS, why can't they do it with another app? With that said, I'll be honest, I tried OO a year or so back & it couldn't handle a bunch of my formulas. I'm not talking about work spreadsheets, just the ones I have for my own personal use & it couldn't handle those. If it couldn't handle a bunch of conditional sums and such out of the box, what else can't it handle that would bite me in the ass in weeks/months/years down the line? Then, when you get an email from a potential customer in excel format that won't work & you call him back and say "sorry, the boss was cheap and didn't buy office, so that document doesn't open properly" what do you think is going to happen?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

Actually, I'd say that's true of any office suite. In a large enough company, you always wind up with someone in some department somewhere deciding they can avoid going through all the bureaucracy to get a proper system in by solving their problems with a spreadsheet, some VBA and a few formulas. Possibly some Access thrown in as well.

Six months later it's become critical to the business and the first you hear about it is when the person who threw it together's left the company and your helpdesk starts to get calls about it. I don't think you'd see a drastically different outcome if you were to substitute OO Calc for Excel.

Take away every iota of similar functionality and you'll wind up with an office suite that a lot of people simply will not touch with a bargepole. The people who will be making the noise are the people who have serious traction within the business, generally because they're either directly generating money (sales) or they count money and try to reduce the money going out (finance).

IT is seen as a sort of necessary evil within many companies, and trying to tell sales and finance that they can't put together their own little apps in a spreadsheet - particularly if you're not in an industry where you can point to a big scary regulator who explicitly bans such things - is a hiding to nothing.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[helix2301]

I remember on Slashdot a while back there was a post on most people use only around 10% of the features that Microsoft Office has to offer. Open Office is targeted at those users and that market. People that just need a quick work document or a small spreadsheet Open Office is great for that and again its FREE.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[gorzek]

Thanks for pointing this out. I was wondering how so many people were bitching about this "missing" Excel feature. You can open any arbitrary text file in Excel, and yeah, it won't ask for delimiters--because it has the "Text to Columns" menu that lets you specify delimiters, fixed length fields, etc.

OpenOffice can do the same, for that matter. The two programs are pretty much equivalent in terms of that little feature.

(I say that as someone who prefers OO in general, though.)

Re:Open office != MS Office

[CronoCloud]

I know Claws Mail can do custom headers.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[blackest_k]

It doesn't really matter which software is best, if it does what is required of it without causing problems.

If a particular piece of software doesn't meet your requirements then simple don't use it.

Unfortunately its also a fact of life that most of us are being squeezed for cash in the current economic climate, taxes are rising and we have to make a few cuts here and there. It makes sense to consider the alternatives and see if they can work for you.

People are a bit more aware of open source than in days past. Firefox is pretty well known by ordinary computer users and thats helped raise awareness of alternatives. Google is offering lots of free software and people are aware of that too. Picassa isn't Photoshop or even the Gimp but its pretty easy to use and free and you get free space on the net to share your photo's. Photoshop doesn't do that.

Thats really the big issue for companies like Microsoft people are aware of free alternatives and are trying them and finding they work for them. Is Openoffice as fully featured as Microsoft office well not really, but does it do what most people want it to do, actually yes it does.

Are people bothering with email any more 500 million facebook users are sending updates and messages to each other via facebook. Can you blame them look at the garbage which is filling peoples inbox its mostly marketing and scams.

Microsoft is part of an older generation and it's going to fade away, makes you wonder why they even choose to slag of openoffice when google docs is probably a bigger threat. So yes Photoshop is better and easier to use than the Gimp but it doesn't really matter.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[gorzek]

This is assuming Microsoft doesn't spend any money fixing bugs or offering support, which is untrue.

Sure, the marginal cost for future copies of any software is zero, as long as you don't plan on supporting it in any way.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[sanguisdex]

Your comparison is really,insightful yet one sided.

A hummer is a big robust vehicle that can handle multi terrain settings and war zones very well. However the civic can last just as long in its INTENDED environment.

In my humble experience most people don't live in war zones. They live in places where the Civic would be a much better vehicle for them. In the US we drive longer highway commutes to work, where the civics fuel efficiency come into play as a way better vehicle then the Hummer. Don't not to mention that once one gets to the city the streets would be way to narrow for a Hummer (especially in Europe).

Now would some please please think about the children! Oh I will.

But encouraging hi cost software, that the development has basically been halted on (or high overhead cars that are not all the fuel efficient or practical) we create an environment for future generations that pollute the market with over priced items that have impractical features.

Hummers have a use and so does M$ Office, and it innovations. But most of the time a civic is is all one needs.

All this being said, I am some one who uses VIM, and laTex for any document publishing, and who finds it easier to write my own MySQL schema then to use an gui data base program like access.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy Thumbnails does automatic resizing... and it is also free.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

I've written a pretty awesome Star Fleet Battles software (sound effects, full rules) for Calc.
It won't run on Microsoft Excel without changes. I can't count on all my SFB buds having Excel but I can count on having Calc on my memory stick. (it won't run well from the memory stick so I have to copy it to their hard drive-- too slow).

If the writer of the D&D utility wanted it to work, it would work. The macro languages are very similar- just not identical.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

It's not there yet.

Partially because of political decisions by the authors.

But I only create / modify a dozen images a year (mostly maps for D&D or photo manipulation).

I can't justify $600 to do that.

Gimp could use improvement- but it's the right price for the amount I'm going to use it.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Eunuchswear]

(Abritrary high percentage pulled out my ass)% of people won't ever have to use the spare tire in their car. That spare tire is still vitally important to have though.

But is that spare tire a feature of MO or OO?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[muckracer]

> I know Claws Mail can do custom headers.

Well, it'd only work if it's implemented system-wide. As in: Install package OpenOffice and automatically the header gets added to your e-mail program for outgoing messages. Likewise the mailer needs to pick up on it as already described.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Gimp in the workplace is that most non-hobbyist users find the interface confusing and far from intuitive, but in the commercial setting the only people who might be able to help (i.e. the advanced users) are already on Photoshop and probably find the Gimp interface just as confusing. As a web designer who tried the completely OSS approach, Gimp was the big flaw, it just took too long to figure out even basic tasks, and it felt like the only reason for that was that someone wanted to differentiate the product from Photoshop to such a degree they essentially cut their nose off to spite their face.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[tehcyder]

Excel expects that a CSV file is always separated with a comma.

You do know that "CSV" stands for "Comma Separated Value"? What the fuck did you think Excel would expect a CSV file to use as separators? Unicorn hearts? ETA members?

En the European version, Excel expects that a CSV file is always separated with a semicolon.

I'm using the UK version, and, astonishingly, CSV files use commas as separators.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[delinear]

However, if you gave most people the choice of a free Genesis or an S Class they have to pay for from their own pocket, I can't help thinking a fair percentage would save their money, so you're still not exactly comparing like-for-like.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

Word is a really robust vehicle that can format pictures with ellipses, is integrated with Sharepoint, and perform many other tasks that OOo cannot perform. It costs $500 (unless student, teacher, limited functionality version, etc.)

I was actually thinking of the big yellow hummers here, not the military vehicles. So I was comparing a $55,000 TO $65,000 car which is awesome off-road to a $21,000 TO $31,000 car which is equally good for driving too and from work.

And my post was pro-civic. Most people don't need hummers. Most people don't need Office.
Word processing is basically a commodity at this point. There should be a market to make millions, or even tens of millions of dollars per year. Other than lockin and forced upgrades, I can't see a market for billions of dollars a year being justified. Word is a great product at the $20 I have to pay with a corporate discount. However, my friends who don't work for large corporations can't afford it.

They used to use old versions of word and excel. Lately, they are making the shift to Openoffice since all my gaming documents are in that format.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

If someone would give you a free Veyron or Civic with the stipulation that you couldn't sell it and it had to be your only car for the next seven years, which would you choose?

I agree we can't afford 1.7 million dollars. But even free, the maintenance cost is likely over our annual gross incomes. The insurance cost might be as well.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[tehcyder]

Why? The arrow is the standard pointing cursor, the cross adds nothing to the usability.

It's a lot easier to have the cursor change shape so you know you're actually in the corner of the cell e.g. for clicking/dragging.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[design1066]

Look, I love GIMP. I work as a graphic designer and use it on a regular basis. But sensible defaults are not GIMPs strong Suite. Learning to use the tools are a bit clunky and it has a unique "unix way" application interface. Vendor lock in is the real issue. I literally hide the fact that I use open source tools because I have to fit in to my industry. That industry uses photoshop period. Its not about features, its about perception.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[design1066]

Word perfect had better WYSIWYG functionality that MS office at half the price. MS did the same thing to them they are doing to LO. They are intentionally programming incompatibilities within their software and using the monopoly power to lock other vendors out.

You seem ok with this?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[design1066]

Amen

Re:Open office != MS Office

[QuantumBeep]

You're probably correct about the Gimp being good stuff these days, but I'm concerned about your logic.
  "If you're pointing out the flaws of my product, my product must be almost as good as yours" is a thought-terminating argument.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Lonewolf666]

Sometimes, you have commas in your data. That makes it desirable to have the option of using another delimiter. Numbers in German, for instance, use the comma as decimal separator. Insisting on CSV files using the comma as delimiter would cause problems a soon as you have some number strings in your data.

Fortunately, there is a way around this (version: Office 2000):
Save to .txt, open in Excel. A "text conversion assistant" will pop up, and offer you a choice of how to import. Including different delimiters.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[CAIMLAS]

This is exactly the problem with Office to OpenOffice migrations, at this point.

Arguably, Word deals with complex Word forms and the like better than OpenOffice, too. When you've got hundred+ page document form templates which autogenerate a lot of information, etc. moving to something else is difficult as well.

I've got a friend who ranches. He's technically savvy, but not what I'd call a genius. All his information is kept in excel worksheets, which auto-generate important data via formulas. He uses WinCE/WinMo devices (a number of them) to scan in and enter data when out in the barn or pasture (a common/daily occurrence) with the Pocket Excel (or w/e it's called). He's then able to examine and generate reports - using the same files. Often, he's accessing the files directly over a VPN on a Windows file share.

With Windows, it's not convoluted to do this. To do this in any other way would be difficult, because there's years of development involved. He's tried OO, and it won't due the trick because there's nothing in PDA form that does the trick short of a custom application.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Chris Burke]

Slashdot: where everybody who disagrees with you is a shill. Because companies pour thousands of dollars on arguing with a half dozen slashdotters.

Yes, they do! And see a many-fold return on their investment as many independent analysis show!

(Seriously, shut the fuck up, I have a good thing going here alright?)

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Matt Perry]

Furthermore, I have found Excel to be a nightmare in its insistence on being "clever" and knowing better than me what is or should be in my document: insistently turning text that it thinks looks like email and web addresses into live links (something I have never wanted in my life)

To be fair, OpenOffice does this as well. Two weeks ago I was creating a spreadsheet of contact information. Every time I entered an email address, Calc would turn the email address into a link, change the background color to grey, and then would not let me edit the address in the formula field. Don't believe me? Open Calc and enter "address@example.com" in a field, then hit return. The "lightbulb" helper (OO's Clippy) appears in the bottom right to tell me that "An URL has been detected and a hyperlink attribute has been set".

Re:Open office != MS Office

[adrn01]

Gimp's crop tool only has width, height, or size as crop aspect ratio choices. GThumb, in contrast, offers choices such as square, image, screen (your own current screen), book or DVD, postcard, and a few others. If I'm cropping a WoW screenshot for use as a screen backdrop, that makes the job that much quicker & easier.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[cayenne8]

"Be that as it may, you won't get people to migrate off Office by saying "Your processes built around huge numbers of macros (which, for all its sins, broadly works) was developed in the wrong way in the first place, you must rip the whole lot out and start again".

Sounds like the wrong way to think of it....sounds more like a business opportunity!!

You first get in there, convince the PHB's that they need to move to Open Source, throw around some good new shiny tech terms and get them into it...and then contract with them to rebuild and replace all current stuff with the Open Office version.

Then...contract maintenance for it...etc.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of an outlining tool similiar to MS Word's kills the option for me.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy, paste, text to columns choose either delimited or fixed width, its very powerful, yet should be available on input imo.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[RobertM1968]

Macros are one exception - and 90% of applications I've seen developed as macros should never have been developed as macros in the first place.

Be that as it may, you won't get people to migrate off Office by saying "Your processes built around huge numbers of macros (which, for all its sins, broadly works) was developed in the wrong way in the first place, you must rip the whole lot out and start again".

No, but the next version of Excel may force you to... happened before.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[RobertM1968]

Slashdot: where everybody who disagrees with you is a shill. Because companies pour thousands of dollars on arguing with a half dozen slashdotters.

Ummm... it wouldnt be the first time, would it? So, I guess, if one assumes there's no sarcasm in your post, then the informative mod is well warranted.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

No, but the next version of Excel may force you to... happened before.

I know. For some strange reason, people don't seem to get the hint. Probably because in many businesses there are frequent needs for quick solutions to relatively straightforward problems where it is patently ludicrous to involve an IT department which will almost invariably spend months developing some hugely over-engineered thing when in reality a simple little database which only one or two people will ever use is quite adequate.

Though it's still aggravating to be asked to support such things.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

Word is "THE" format for business in the same way that IE was "THE" format for internet browsers.

As OO gets better, the cost difference becomes increasingly compelling.

Within word, documents from word 2003 to word 2010 don't display correctly, don't print, print painfully slow, don't open/crash word. It's not common and it's not word salad (tho the non-printing issue is what drove me to OO).

I've used OO a LOOONG time to open and fix word documents which Word crashed on or hung when opening. They have added a "fix document" option- but it didn't work. It seems to work on the crash/hang problem tho.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

Periodically load it and crash it and then click "send error report".

They use them. Your crashes will stop happening.

Microsoft uses theirs too. (and have been using it longer).

I only have "crash on open" errors these days.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

If everyone was like your wife, microsoft wouldn't be concerned and this thread wouldn't have occurred.

I was like your wife with version 1.x and 2.x and even 3.0. However, as of 3.04 (maybe .06), I hit a horrible snag in Word and was forced to spend about 8 hours converting a document to OOo to print it (It wouldn't print in Word-- it was a Word 2003 document).

After that, I found myself *missing* features in Word that I'd gotten used to in OO. I still use word for work. But all my personal documents are open office. And we used google docs recently for a major collaborative web project. Microsoft is *expensive as hell* (millions of dollars) for my company. And it's "all or nothing" except for Project. So we get Word included. Can't break it out. I imagine if there was a good free Project replacement, they would start rolling it into the overall site license as well.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

You run into the paradox of choice.

Microsoft ran into it and added the Ribbon which basically hid most of your choice. The feature is there but in some cases it took me months to find it again.

It may have a feature you need, but if you don't know the feature exists or where it is or what their name for it is, you may have a hard time finding it.

But otherwise- of course, you are absolutely correct. If your job runs around putting drop shadows and soft oval masking of images, then Word >>> OO (for now).

Re:Open office != MS Office

[turgid]

I'd be shocked if an other product better supported MS' proprietry format than MS' products. Yes, MS Office is better in supporting MS Office macros. But OpenOffice is better in supporting OpenOffice macros.

OpenOffice.org calc does a better job of creating Excel 97/XP files that Excel. I find that the spreadsheets I make with Excel (and we've got the one with the ribbon interface as well now) are a good 25% larger than when made with OOo calc and saved to Excel format.

You can create the file in Excel, load it into OOo calc and save it in Excel format without making any other changes and it miraculously shrinks in size!

The pointy-haired corporation I work for has finally allowed us developers to have Linux on the desktop. Our Windows XP PeeCees got reinstalled with 64-bit CentOS and the Windows XP images got relegated to virtual machines on a server.

I do everything except OutBreak and PoorPoint on CentOS. All our development is for Linux anyway.

Yes, I detest Microsoft. No, I'm not immature, I just have opinions that have formed over 25 years of bitter experience.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a high school student. 11th grade. Fourteen years old. The one issue that I haven't seen raised in this discussion yet is that of PowerPoint. As a high schooler, and I think this is probably true of many businesses at well, I know it is for my parents', I am required to frequently create slide shows. Impress is the one OO program that I think is vastly inferior to MS. I find Impress to be just... bad. When I create a PowerPoint, between slide templates, text and images fields, graphs, and transitions, it looks drastically better than anything I could create with Impress, and the creation process is far easier. I find that the slide shows I create with Impress look great, ten years ago. While I don't have the best frame of reference for this, I remember playing with PowerPoint in 2000 on my parents' computer; that is what Impress presentations look like.

I also find Impress far more difficult to use than PowerPoint, especially for chart creation. After fighting the chart creation wizard in Impress often, and obtaining substandard results, I now create graphs using an external program and insert them into my presentation (when I am forced to use Impress) The PowerPoint UI is much cleaner and easier to use, and, from what I've seen, more easily customized.

I use Word for most word processing tasks, although I have no problems with Writer, and actually like it better for quite a few things. Word fits my needs better though; I need a fairly basic word processor with good graph support and compatibility. I am taking almost entirely math and science courses, and being able to insert simple graphs into my lab reports quickly and easily is a must. I use Macs, running Tiger and Snow Leopard, my school uses Linux, Windows ME (Yes, really) and Windows XP, some school computers just have MS Office, some just have OO, and some have both, but by saving as .doc I can be certain that any computer will be able to open it, with my formatting mostly intact (although I do have to save a .rtf version and graphs seperately as backup). Once images and graphs are inserted into a document, the manipulation tools and ease of use leaves much to be desired; I recently did the graphics for my mother's resume (she needed word for some reason), and it was a nightmare to manipulate graphics and text while dealing with formatting. I'm not sure if this is something OpenOffice does any better or if my extreme difficulty was just due to using the incorrect program for the job.

I prefer Calc to Excel, except, again, for graphs. I do like being able to cut tables from the web, but I end up using Excel more for integration reasons. Overall Calc is a better program for casual use, in my opinion.

I reccommend OpenOffice to users who do only casual word processing, and don't require much document sharing. I think the computer illiterate are better off using MS Office overall; on the occasions when they do have to share documents they tend not to remember to check the file format, or are confused when their document formatting is messed up, and don't know how to fix it. Since MS Office is the standard, there are less compatibility issues. My little sister uses OpenOffice, and I have to help her with Word/Writer confusion at least once a week. My school primarily but not entirely uses OpenOffice, and there is at least one person in every class that has problems each time a report of some kind is assigned.

The major problem with OpenOffice is MS Office is the standard, and OpenOffice can't quite compete at this point. It is still lacking in features and usability, and to change the established standard it needs to be at least as good as or better than MS Office.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange, why do I know professional graphics editors who prefer Gimp then?

Re:Open office != MS Office

[hairyfeet]

Ya know, I've heard that old "Word docs don't display between versions" but frankly I've never seen it. For my capstone I had no less than 4 guys besides me, and every one was on something different. I was on 2K, one was on 2K3, one was 2K7, and one was on whatever the latest Mac version was at the time and trading this HUUGE 400 page+ monster with diagrams and charts and MLA formatting and headers and footers and everything but the kitchen sink and....nothing. It looked just fine on everyone's machines, we traded the doc back and forth as we got our stuff done, it all "just worked".

Not saying it don't happen, because I've worked computers long enough to know EVERYTHING has happened more than once, but after messing with tons of huge docs I've seen NOTHING like what Open Office does to .docs. You can complain that MSFT don't share the format (it is theirs they don't have to) or about lack of manpower or whatever, but for the foreseeable future Word is THE standard, and if my kid can't even make a simple doc with basic headers and footers without getting indent errors? Well that just don't cut the mustard. And as for OO.o in the future? Not unless they spend a HELL of a lot of money on Calc and Impress and probably Base as well. look at their release notes...a good 90% of the work for 2 plus years has been in Writer, and frankly it is in less need of work than the others. Calc SUCKS for macros, Impress looks like someone colorblind picked the defaults, and while I haven't got to play with Base as much I doubt it can be as easy as Access.

So while I wish them luck and will continue to hand it out to home users, after the whole Libreoffice pissing match I really ain't betting much hope on Open Office. just look at the huge amount of 2 year + bugs outstanding with Ubuntu to see why the community model doesn't work with large monolithic chunks of code. Nobody wants the shitty bug fixing jobs, so they just don't get done.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[demonlapin]

You are seriously misremembering something.

WP5.1 didn't have WYSIWYG. WP6 did, at the expense of being a slow (unusably slow, on the 386s that were then still quite common) piece of crap. And MS Office sold their entire suite for less than WP sold its word processor alone.

You won't hear me argue that the best camp won - the best word processor, hands down, that I have ever used was Ami Pro 3.1, because it had the easiest-to-use and best-looking formula/equation editor out there at the exact moment in time that I was majoring in chemistry. People adopted Microsoft because it was cheaper and it was good enough.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

I abhor the use of macros in Excel because companies that use Excel usually ends up building datamining tools or some complex spreadsheets that calculate whatnot related to their business. They are usually a big mess of macros and VBA that ends up being supported by the internal IT-department and is one big headache. And just to make it more fun they can have some badly implemented Access "database" coupled to the spreadsheets.

Being able to do macros and/or script applications is usually a good thing since it can automate a lot of tedious work, and if properly implemented it wouldn't be a problem, but the majority of "applications" in Excel is just horrific in my experience. Usually someone makes something "nifty" then it spreads to the whole department and suddenly it's something that has to be supported and the feature creep sets in.

That's my experience anyway.

And then there's people like me, who save literally days worth of time in a month by automating simple tasks such as copying & pasting (as images) objects from Excel and placing them in specific locations within PowerPoint. Many of them. Only to find out that we need to make a minor formatting change (e.g. other departments change the formatting of their information, so we need to adjust ours to fit into the new template.)

Time to do one batch without macros:
2 hrs

Time to do one batch with macros:
1 minute

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this:

Cut and paste the data into Excel. All of the columns will show up in a single column.
Highlight the data that you want to parse into separate columns
Choose Data --> Convert to columns
A window appears and you can select fixed format or deliminated data. You can choose any deliminator you want.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[drkim]

...and these are the same countries that have no idea how to properly use 'inches' or 'ounces!'

In fact, some of them have NO IDEA how to speak proper English! They just stare at you blankly...

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Eivind]

You still overestimate a lot of businessess. I'm not talking primarily the multi-billion ones here. Remember that a large part of the population works for businesses with less than 20 employees, where the it-department is often a single guy with no formal qualifications whatsoever.

You're lucky if he can give a comprehensible answer to what a "file-format" is, or what "compatibility" means.

There are a LOT of copies of Excel and Word that never use even a fraction of a percent of the capability. Hell, you need only look at the school of my father. Full office-copies for every employee (even the cleaning-ladies), and nobody except the it-teacher knows how to do anything more complex than make text bold in word, and use basic arithmethic in Excel. Yes I know, schools get a discount, that's not the point.

The point is, you're nuts if you think that even a majority of companies who use ms-office do so as a result of a conscious *choice*.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Maxo-Texas]

Display, fail to print, and print incredibly slow.

Just mix tables and graphics with tight tolerances. The only way I could recover was to convert to OO.

OO showed me (with bounding boxes) that office 2003 had allowed overlapping graphics and tables but Word 2007 (and later) was choking on those.

Also had terminal "margin out of bounds" issues.

Agree on the Libre office and other things could be an issue. Jury is out on that.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jimicus]

Oh, I think there's conscious choice. I just don't think the thought process is "I need an office suite, what is the best available?".

I think the thought process is "I need to open the document Fred sent me, what software did Fred use?". Every once in a while you'll get someone using OpenOffice because their friendly neighbourhood IT guy said it should open it just as well and costs nothing - but sooner or later Fred will send something which doesn't open quite right in OpenOffice. You'd be amazed how much noise people will make about that one document - I'd say that free (as in beer) software probably gets proportionally more complaints along those lines than commercial software would.

IOW, people who've bought Microsoft Office and find it won't open a document think it's "just their computer being weird", people who are using OpenOffice think it's "the crappy free software, get what you pay for, mumble mumble".

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Phoghat]

Seeing as how the first thing I do with a new computer is to use Decrapify my computer Pc Decrapifier removing all links to try Office and any other MS trial or programs I don't want and the installing Open Office, which admittedly probably isn't as powerful as MS Office, but gets the job done for me.

Veyron, Civic, E class Merc, Meh! These are all poor analogies. All I want in a program is if it does the job that I want and costs very little or nothing.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[sagematt]

Car analogies would work better if you could warez a car...

But you wouldn't download a car

Re:Open office != MS Office

[DaVince21]

Point is, only flamebait is given an no actual reasoning.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jobiwankanobi]

I'm a software developer. I've been using Open Office for years so that I wouldn't have to boot up a stupid windows system just to do my office type communications - development specs, read spreadsheets, etc. It's worked great for me, and I've actually found that it doesn't have some well-known unfixed bugs that M$ has as it continues to wow people with new features instead of long-standing bugs.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[gullevek]

That is not even the biggest problem. Much bigger is it when you have data NOT in the standard encoding that Excel expects. eg you get japanese EUC or something like this. With OOo you can choose the text file encoding while importing it. With Excel you can't ...

Re:Open office != MS Office

[gullevek]

OOCalc does the same. I hate this, especially because URL detection is so broken. often you get only http://www./ and the rest is just normal. I still try to turn it off because the MOST annoying part is, that you CAN NOT edit this anymore. It is like a fixed block. So horrible. So really really horrible.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Grey Ninja]

I figured there was some sort of way to do it, but nobody I asked knew how. Thanks for that tip.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[jobiwankanobi]

MS Office has a bug where it does not export CSV's correctly. I've had to use Open Office to overcome this bug.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Grey Ninja]

I simply do not care enough to spend 5 minutes figuring out how to do it. I would rather just use OpenOffice.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[alfielee]

That's a shot across M$s bow, they wouldn't like that

Re:Open office != MS Office

[t_ban]

To be fair, OpenOffice does this as well. Two weeks ago I was creating a spreadsheet of contact information. Every time I entered an email address, Calc would turn the email address into a link, change the background color to grey, and then would not let me edit the address in the formula field. Don't believe me? Open Calc and enter "address@example.com" in a field, then hit return. The "lightbulb" helper (OO's Clippy) appears in the bottom right to tell me that "An URL has been detected and a hyperlink attribute has been set".

Go to

Tools -> Autocorrect Options -> Options -> URL Recognition.

Turn off.

Re:Open office != MS Office

[Matt Perry]

Yes, exactly. It's also in nearly the same place in Excel.

Tools -> Autocorrect Options -> Auto Format As You Type -> Internet and network paths with hyperlinks

IMO, the grandparent doesn't deserve the +5 score since it's not informative nor insightful. Both tools have the same issue and it's equally easy to disable in both. This is more a case of careysub complaining because he or she does not want to learn their tools.

Re:first

[Lanteran]

actually you were third.

Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

This was obvious. Word has such domination in Western markets that an ad campaign against open office would be 100% gaurenteed to damage microsoft's market share in both short and long term. Having read the previous article, I thought it must have to do with Eastern Europe where open source alternatives are more widespread, otherwise I could only think that the genius behind this campaign had something against his employer; attacking its most valuable LOB.

Re:Obvious

[einhverfr]

Whether or not this is obvious, there's an interesting point here. This ad will be circulated far wider than its original target market. This suggests that this will help Open Source here in the US.

Indeed, one of the key uses I have for this sort of thing is SELLING FOSS. My approach is to look at this carefully and determine how one can use it. While this is less useful than the old Get the Facts campaign, it does provide some fodder for FOSS consultants. First, the fact that Microsoft is attacking it is significant. Secondly, the problems discussed are real ones for some customers. Understanding the problems and how to avoid them is key to make a migration work. Saying "don't let this happen to you. Use MY services!" is a very powerful thing.

Moreover it addresses a number of issues, including "who will fix it?" ("I will if you pay me to!")

Re:Obvious

[scdeimos]

On the "who will fix it" I found this quote FTA interesting:

"I need something I can rely on. If an open source based system breaks, who's going to fix it?" -- Jeff Cimmerer, Director of Technology, Pittsford School Districts

The whole idea of Open Source is that it's open for anybody to fix it. If you've got the skills you can fix it yourself. If you're a business with a genuine interest in the FOSS you think is broken, but don't have the skills to fix it yourself, you can at least log a bug report if not hire someone to fix it for you if you consider it urgent.

Yes, you can also log bug reports with Microsoft for their software. But you're still at the mercy of Microsoft to actually get it fixed - trawl support forums about Microsoft's ClickOnce deployment system for .NET Framework 2.0 or later and you'll understand that Microsoft is quite willing to acknowledge the presence of bugs (and anti-features) and, strangely, also willing to publicly acknowledge that they have no intention of fixing them. Ever.

I've logged the same bug on Windows Find/Search since Windows NT 4.0 and yet it still isn't fixed in Windows Vista/7. (You can get search matches from unicode text files using the command line find tool, but Windows Find/Search cannot find those same matches - it only understands ASCII/ANSI test files.)

Re:Obvious

[ThePromenader]

Right on.

Don't forget that MS owes its fortune to its 'educating' the western world to its products while it was an emerging computer market - but, different from today, users then had little choice - the 'first' (later, 'most popular') product out there is most likely to be learned first, a trend that led to the 'interoperability market lock' MS has over western users today. Emerging computer markets today, on the other hand, do have other choices: this is what scares MS, as if they can't use their initial 'educate, majority rules' marketing strategy that has worked so well until now, they will fail - and utterly. Today new users can and ~will~ compare products for their capabilities, and make the most economic choice. Throw into that MS' dear price and OpenOffice's 'free-ness' - and go figure. In short, for emerging markets, and perhaps for the first time in its history, MS can depend only on the performance of its product to justify its price.

Which also brings into question our way of determining the 'value' of software - On one hand we have MS and its 'old market' values ("here's the tool, this is the price"), and on the other we have the Open Source movement giving their products out 'for free'. I see fault in both - the first depends on a consumer's 'tech ignorance' to take as much money as they 'can' from him (the software's price is not determined on how much work it took to create it), and the second... well, I see the value of the system as a whole (development, de-bugging, feature requests & updates), but I don't see how they can make money enough to keep it going, especially as it grows. So here as well, an emerging market user's choice is a confusing extreme: overpriced or free.

So, if MS is trying to sell into a market where it doesn't already have inter-operability dominance, and there exists a similar product for free, I can see reason for their fear - especially before shareholders expecting continuously increasing profits: the western world is saturated with MS products already.

Re:Obvious

[N1AK]

The whole idea of Open Source is that it's open for anybody to fix it.

And that's a strength. However, selling something to people on the grounds that they can pick who fixes it when it breaks may be shooting yourself in the foot.

I like the idea that an MS campaign against FOSS can be used to show FOSS has become a serious competitor. I don't think it will play out that way. If your client watches an ad by MS pointing out flaws (real or otherwise) with FOSS the most likely impact is they will now be worried about the flaws the ad highlights. They aren't going to simply ignore the content and think "wow FOSS is mainstream, let me in on this".

Re:Obvious

[jimicus]

I don't think fixing bugs is quite the kind of thing he's talking about.

I think what he means is "I can have a Microsoft-based solution set up by any two-bit MCSE I can hire for peanuts very easily. Seriously, I can put out an advert and have more replies than I know what to do with from people who will work for relatively little. If the person I hire messes up - maybe they misconfigure something, maybe there's something odd that requires specific steps in order to work properly - I can have people queueing up outside my door to fix it within 24 hours. I just need to open the Yellow Pages and dial the first number I find in the relevant section.

I can't do that with Linux because there are nowhere near as many qualified, experienced admins. Let alone anyone who I can hire for peanuts. And don't tell me that one Linux admin can do the work of four MCSEs, I don't need the work of four MCSEs, I need the work of one."

Re:Obvious

[16K Ram Pack]

I was working on a site that had a Sharepoint problem and there was a bug which was reported to Microsoft and open for like 6-9 months.

This "corporate support" thing is nonsense. Some of the best support I've ever had has been on Wordpress, because you hit the forum and find someone who has had the problem before, delved into the code and worked out a fix. If I got stuck with something from Microsoft, I'd post soemthing on superuser.com or stackoverflow.com before I started talking to Microsoft.

Re:Obvious

[complete loony]

And how many people in that queue are competent? How many are going to create a mess of Access DB's, Excel spreadsheets, macros, etc?

Re:Obvious

[hjf]

Keep in mind that when you talk about "Overpricing" in emerging markets, it's way much more than you can imagine. Down here in Argentina a Dell computer is about 3x the price of a generic machine (already assembled by your local computer tech), yet in developed countries the price is similar. An XBOX 360 or PS3 goes for almost USD 800 for the basic version (while it's not over $200 in the USA). And NO, I don't accept the "taxes" excuse. Taxes aren't really that high.

So the point is: companies have been trying to squeeze money out of emerging markets for years, and now they're basically whining because they never sold anything (except maybe to corrupt governments).

It's not that difficult to do: just sell your product at a price that the market can pay (no, this isn't impossible. McDonald's has been doing this for years. A Big Mac doesn't cost the same in every country). But the problem is: companies don't want to go through all the "hassle" needed to sell a product. Look: Microsoft doesn't have "offices" here in Argentina. They have a whole , like IBM, and I'm not sure why, but there is a 30+ story building with a Sun Microsystems logo near these. So if they can invest that much money in a developing country such as mine, why can't they put a little, just a LITTLE effort in selling their products as well?

Why do I have to pay almost 2 months salary for a game machine that any European or American can get for 1/5 of their weekly salary (and even less)? Why does a Windows license cost MORE here than what it costs in the USA? Are you really, absolutely, positively sure that they can't sell a product here for what the market can really pay for? No? Really? Then why does 3D cinema on a saturday night cost $20 (USD 5) here? I know it costs way more than USD 5 in USA. Oh, I know, because people would buy the overseas version of Windows to pay less? Really? Really? Joe Sixpack will order Windows from Argentina (in Spanish for Christ's sake!) to pay less than the american version? Really? Oh so we make a castrated version of Windows, call it Windows Starter and sell it to all the poor bastards that don't deserve to open more than THREE apps at a time.

Really? Really, FUCK Microsoft, Sony, and every other company that doesn't give a fuck about the third world and then comes whining when they are "losing" a "potential" market share. Potential my ass: you won't sell your crap for what you want to charge.

Thank God we have piracy (because open source just doesn't do it sometimes).

Re:Obvious

[einhverfr]

Well, Microsoft owes its success to helping (along with Compaq and Phoenix) break the vertical integration of the computer business and allow an economy of scale to develop which allowed them to sell way below their competitors. That's a wonderful thing! They then were able to further decentralize the industry.

The thing is that if this is what Microsoft does well, this is also something FOSS does even better.

Re:Obvious

[einhverfr]

Well, "fixing it" is way more broad than bug fixes. It includes product support among other things. Someone who knows how to leverage community resources, when to pay someone who knows more, etc. is worth a great deal.

Ideally the "fix it" firm coordinates/does/pays for bug fixes, but also is generally responsible for it working well (this means general support etc).

Moreover, every single one of the quotes here discusses a legitimate pitfall in the migration process, but every one of them is avoidable.

The 'why' is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is afraid because they haven't adjusted their business practices for 15 years. They need Office to sell Windows and all of the other productivity and development software they make. Without Office everything else looses its selling power.

But I was told OO is bad and Libre is way to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what's my party line now?
Give me the talking points ASAP.

Less piracy from

[future assassin]

younger people means less MS Office users when those people grow up which means smaller market share whether by install base or brand name recognition. If I was in my teens/20's right now and I had an option for running pirated PS or GIMP I'd go with GIMP. Same with office I'd rather go and download OO right off the site then spend days trying of warez versions which could possible have infected my computer.

Re:Less piracy from

[yeshuawatso]

I dnt no abt that. I wld gess the prgrm that can trn this to a legble respns will be the savir for our new tnns of tday.

Re:Less piracy from

[furgle]

If I was in my teens/20's right now...

If i were in my teens right now, Id be doing the same thing as my friends around me, I would really be making a choice based on mostly a social logic.I'd also be making really strong opinions about subject I know very little about, only to consider them again in my 30's.

Personally I don't think teens care about whether something is open source(yes the unpopular, "know it all" ones do) . So the solution : Parents give your teens Open Office and Gimp and if you get in on the ground floor, their friends will follow. If not your teen will probably be pirating the software they want to use anyway.

Re:Less piracy from

[Jane Q. Public]

Gimp used to be cool, 10 years ago. Now Gimp sucks, at least on the Mac. I can get better (if not more processor-efficient) functionality from Inkscape, also for free.

It's amazing to me. Today's mac-version Gimp almost seems designed to make things difficult. 6 different select tools, and not one of them lets you just select a single object.

Re:Less piracy from

[Dhalka226]

And you would still be in the minority.

I know a lot of people in their teens or twenties who are extremely interested in, shall we say, the visual arts. They love making music videos and video editing, logo design, website design, etc. One of them is finishing up a degree in marketing degree, the other is finishing up high school now and is already accepted into a design school, another is younger than them (friends of brothers etc) yet highly interested in web development. Never has the word "GIMP" entered any of their vocabularies. Never.

OpenOffice they are familiar with its existence, which it still didn't stop them from, for example, going out and buying the Mac version of Office when they bought their cool new Macs a year or so ago despite recommendations from me that they could at least wait and get by with OO for a bit while their wallets recovered from the purchase. And I don't mean clicked the "Sure, sell me Office too!" box, I mean literally drove to the store and bought it. (I was visiting one of them at the time.)

Yes, it's anecdotal but it's also real. They don't care about ideologies; they want to use the tools they will use as professionals, and that is determined by business and not their own inclinations. So long as kids (and schools) continue to look to business to see what they should be acquainted with, businesses will have a ready-trained new workforce and little incentive to move away from what they all know.

Re:Less piracy from

[0123456]

It's amazing to me. Today's mac-version Gimp almost seems designed to make things difficult.

I believe you'll find that's true of all versions of Gimp, not just the one for Macs :).

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

No you wouldn't. Anyone that actually tried to use a FOSS image editor would know paint.net is better, gimp is horrible, and Photoshop easily outclasses any of them by magnitudes. Paying for a product means they can pay programmers for stuff they might not normally do. Programmers will make free stuff that programmers use, but they won't make free image editing stuff because 99.9% of programmers don't really use image editing programs a lot.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather go and download OO right off the site then spend days trying of warez versions which could possible have infected my computer.

You obviously haven't been pirating all that much. I could have the latest version of MS Office on my PC in less than 5 minutes, fully operational. Pay for software that's worth its price.

Re:Less piracy from

[Totenglocke]

One of them is finishing up a degree in marketing degree

Just curious - is he by any chance getting his degree in marketing degree at the University of Redundancy University?

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

They are also mac users...

Re:Less piracy from

[BrokenHalo]

Now Gimp sucks, at least on the Mac.

The best way to get Gimp working well on the Mac is to install it via Macports. Most of the ready-made binaries aren't built very well. Also, using ports allows you to skin Gimp (and other GNOME/GTK+ programs) so it looks more consistent with native Mac programs.

Re:Less piracy from

[im_thatoneguy]

I went to an animation/film/design school. I know of one person who used an open source program instead of pirating or buying a student copy of the commercial packages. But he had been using it since Jr. High and is a ideologue--and even then he would admit it sucked for actual work but liked to poke at it and try to improve it in his spare time. And even he wouldn't touch Gimp with a 10 foot pole.

Re:Less piracy from

[thetartanavenger]

I know a lot of people in their teens [snip]. Never has the word "GIMP" entered any of their vocabularies.

From the teenagers I've met I find that extremely hard to believe.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't care about ideologies; they want to use the tools they will use as professionals, and that is determined by business and not their own inclinations.

Which means they will never be artists (or hackers), but just corporate drones... Too bad for those kids...

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all bullshit anyway. Microsoft isn't scared of OpenOffice. OpenOffice is their inflatable passenger so that they get to use the carpool lane. They're inflating it right now, probably because they'll soon need a competitor to point at in some regulatory lobbying.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

Inkscape is a purely vector package. There is no comparison - they are both image-manipulation programs, but for different types of images entirely.

Re:Less piracy from

[abigsmurf]

Some of the basic bugs and design issues in GIMP (for Windows) have me tearing my hair out.

-Disappearing mouse pointer in the save dialogue when I have to click a random area to get it to re-appear (and hope I don't press a button doing so).
-When I've selected the file type in 'Save As' that's the file type I want to save as, I shouldn't have to retype the extension.
-Restoring from the task bar or switching between windows is a buggy mess. Sometimes the GIMP window appears/goes to the front, most of the time it fails to do so.

Re:Less piracy from

[digitig]

You obviously haven't been pirating all that much. I could have the latest version of MS Office on my PC in less than 5 minutes, fully operational. Pay for software that's worth its price.

If it isn't worth the price, why would you bother pirating it instead of using OOo?

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimp and Inkscape are two different things. Gimp works on pixels, Inkscape works on vectors. Just like Photoshop is completely different from Illustrator.

You might as well complain that a Ferrari sucks, and a speed boat works much better.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is amusing since almost everyone I know with Office installed on their Mac uses it exclusively to open Word files sent via email. These are almost never documents that require further editing, rather the senders don't have a clue about suitable file formats.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Gimp is a bitmap editor, while Inkscape is a vector editor, and therefore you are comparing apples to oranges, right ? The day you get better bitmap functionality from Inkscape than Gimp, there will be something really wrong.
Not that Gimp doesn't suck thus...

Re:Less piracy from

[16K Ram Pack]

Something that kinda backs taht up: If you're a company with less than 10 people, you can now get Visual Studio 2010 Professional + Sql Server Web Edition for $100. They're losing their grip to people building stuff in PHP and Rails.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how a bunch of kids throwing money around is relevant here. TFA talks about businesses making a conscious choice.

Re:Less piracy from

[xaxa]

I've known students buy MS Office, since it's about £40, which looks great compared to the usual retail price. But many students I know use OOo, especially science students.

Never has the word "GIMP" entered any of their vocabularies. Never.

My teenage friends (friends of siblings, etc) certainly use the word "gimp", although they aren't thinking of image editing software...

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that when we were in our 20's people outside of the IT department thought computers were toys and artsy types played with "real" media.

Now they play with Macs!

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like Apple's office suite on OSX. Have you tried to use Office 2010? It's like someone puked in the toilet that *is* the Windows 7 GUI.

Re:Less piracy from

[Alex Belits]

That's because you are running X11 version of it on Windows.

Re:Less piracy from

[imakemusic]

Gimp [...] Inkscape

Apples [...] Oranges.

Microsoft Access sucks. I get a better sound quality from VLC, and it's free.

I don't disagree that GIMP on Mac sucks, but Inkscape is a vector graphics editor whereas GIMP is a raster graphics editor.

Re:Less piracy from

[Kitsune Inari]

What is this I don't even

Seriously, please try parsing your message in a human-readable language. That way we'll be able to understand what you mean.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to Office from WordPerfect (dates me a little bit) because that's what college courses I was in required at the time. I have since tried OpenOffice a few times--for word processing and some light spreadsheet use--and have continually gone back to Office. Even after the ribbon, which is a strange design choice, frankly. Two reasons: I have had several technical problems with OOo involving the word processor, such as formatting not displaying correctly and documents not saving in their entirety; I can get MS Office cheaply through my university. I like the idea of OOo, and I'd like to see it succeed, but I don't have a dog in the fight as the saying goes, and I would rather pay $70 for Office than make do with (and try to fix) OOo.

Conversely, my wife, an elementary school teacher and MA student, has also used Office for many years, but doesn't have a legitimate copy. As an experiment, I am going to set her up with OOo and see how she does. Her usage is almost the exact opposite of mine: light word processing, and fairly extensive spreadsheet usage, with some slideshow thrown in. I am curious to see for myself if someone who isn't especially interested in FOSS one way or the other will choose OpenOffice over Office after using it for awhile.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in my teens and twenties and interested in, as you say, the visual arts, I also preferred the GIMP to trying to find a decent pirated copy of Photoshop. That was ten years ago. I wouldn't say GIMP has made up any ground, but I no longer believe they're competing directly. The GIMP has exactly what I need and for that subset of features (mainly drawing) that Photoshop provides, the GIMP is better. Also, I can install it anywhere and on any platform (I have, a lot).

With the GP, that's two people to your three. You should tell your statistically significant number of acquaintances that learning more that one tool sometimes helps them learn all tools. There's value in looking at alternatives and you might tell them you know of one.

Re:Less piracy from

[flappinbooger]

My wife is a graphic designer and web designer. When we were first married she had a 1g imac. After a while that got way too old and she got a PC. I showed her GIMP and asked her to at least try it. She absolutely hated it. She zooms through photoshop, of course, but GIMP made no sense.

I think the following sums up GIMP pretty well. I read this (paraphrased from my memory, of course) once on a forum or FAQ on the GIMP website:

GIMP isn't made, developed or maintained with the purpose of editing images. The developers don't want to learn to edit images. GIMP is about making software that edits images.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Access sucks. I get a better sound quality from VLC, and it's free.

If you are using MS Access for sound, you have issues I can't even imagine.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that - a lot of FOSS projects are driven by one or a handful of guys who have their own set ways of doing things, and a lot of the time the attitude is that if users don't like it, they don't have to use the software. That's fine of course, they're doing this stuff for free, on their own time, etc - but it can lead to issues when the competitor is all about making money, and that requires listening to users and moving the product in the direction they want.

Re:Less piracy from

[design1066]

How long did she use photoshop before she used gimp?
How long did she try gimp before she gave up on it?
How long did it take her to learn how to use photoshop?

Re:Less piracy from

[hitmark]

I am unsure if want plays much into it. The computer industry is still young, the generation that trained themselves to use the early mac is still around in various offices and teaching positions. As such, they pass on to the next what they themselves learned by rote. This results in training of memorized buttons and actions, not concepts that can be applied anywhere. Basically, one is programming robots/monkeys. And the industry don't mind, as they can squeeze more value out of their hardware and software investments this way. That is, the choice between a mac or a pc ends up being a choice between working the desired job or not. Not being from USA, i can tell when someone is studying some art topic. How? it's the student with the mac. Even people that was happily using anything else before they started studying said topic ends up using a mac.

Re:Less piracy from

[JonySuede]

that was the whole point of his message, here is the translation:
I don't know about that. I would guess the program that can translate this to a legible response will be the saviour for our new teens of today.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

From a professional photographer: GIMP is a joke.

Re:Less piracy from

[Kitsune Inari]

Ah, thanks.
I guess Poe's law caught me again.

Re:Less piracy from

[flappinbooger]

How long did she use photoshop before she used gimp? How long did she try gimp before she gave up on it? How long did it take her to learn how to use photoshop?

I see your point. 1) years (like at least 6+) 2) Not long, probably less than an hour 3) A good while, was taught it in school

Re:Less piracy from

[fat_mike]

And you just perfectly described the "ME" generation.

"I want it NOW!"

I don't want to PAY for it!"

"You mean I have to WORK!"

"Just give it to me FREE!"

"Mommy, daddy! I NEED this!"

"I have to STUDY to pass!"

"MY poop smells like roses!"

"I'M A DELUSIONAL ASSHOLE WHO'S USED TO HAVING EVERYTHING GIVEN TO HIM/HER WITHOUT EVER HAVING TO LIFT A FINGER, CLEAN MY ROOM, OR SHOW ANY FREAKING RESPONSIBILITY!"

Just put all the above as your sig, that way people will know you're a fool and just ignore you. You're either under the age of 13 or in your 30's and you still think your entitled to anything you want without working for it. I'm freaking ashamed of you. If you're to stupid to not scan things you download then you deserve every piece of crap you get.

Re:Less piracy from

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to an animation/film/design school. I currently do my job (including realistic 3d animation) entirely with open source tools (except when I have to use Flash for some stupid reason). Perhaps there's a threshold of adaptability, but I learned in school that if you have a true understanding of WHAT you're doing, the tools you use aren't as important as long as they'll do the job.

Re:Less piracy from

[Jane Q. Public]

I do know the difference between bitmaps and vector drawings. Nevertheless, when importing a multi-level .psd from photoshop for example, I ought to be able to easily select the bitmap objects on the various layers. And in fact I can do so... ONLY by selecting everything on that layer (and fortunately, in my case, each bitmap has tended to be on its own layer). But NOT by using any of the "selection tools". Which is, plain and simple, an oversight.

As for vectors, my tool of choice is Xara. It may not be quite as full-featured as some programs, but darned near, and for those many thing it does, it does them much better and faster than anything else out there.

Re:Less piracy from

[Jane Q. Public]

But Gimp does import multi-layer .psd files, and therefore should be smart enough to recognize bitmap objects imported from Photoshop. But it's not. At least not so far as its selection tools are concerned.

Re:Less piracy from

[imakemusic]

Well done, you almost got the point!

Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft using the old "total cost of ownership" line is what they usually use on customers.

It is easy enough to test which one results in more support calls. Have some departments use Microsoft Office and have other departments use OpenOffice and track who asks for more help.

Oracle is in the enterprise space with their database products and Microsoft knows they will push OpenOffice to try to keep Microsoft out.

Having customers that don't need to talk to Microsoft is what Oracle wants.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

The thing is universities need to push more training of using open source alternatives.

The fact still remains: You will find more people who have used MS office than people who use OpenOffice. More people in the pool = less wage required to hire if you are an employer. That is where "total cost of ownership" comes from.

For example, in our university, most LAMP sysadmins are full time staff which you have to pay at least $45 - 55K per annum, while most WISA (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, ASP.NET) sysadmins are students which cost much less (somewhere between $13 - $18 an hour + tuition waiver if you are grad student).

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[orin]

Windows administrators are cheaper because Microsoft pursued a strategy of ensuring that there was a training infrastructure for their products. There is a whole ecosystem of books, online material and courses created by Microsoft to facilitate people learning their product. No such infrastructure exists for open source products. It may not even be possible to create such an infrastructure.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[antifoidulus]

It is easy enough to test which one results in more support calls. Have some departments use Microsoft Office and have other departments use OpenOffice and track who asks for more help.

Thats about as unscientific as you can get. You don't take into consideration the relative use of office suites between the departments, the training and skill levels of the individuals etc. Not necessarily saying your conclusion is wrong, but even if you were to carry out such a test it really wouldn't provide a whole lot of corroborating evidence.....

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[wvmarle]

For example, in our university, most LAMP sysadmins are full time staff which you have to pay at least $45 - 55K per annum, while most WISA (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, ASP.NET) sysadmins are students which cost much less (somewhere between $13 - $18 an hour + tuition waiver if you are grad student).

Somehow I have the feeling that such a full time sysadmin can give you better quality work than part-time students. If only because they know the system, they know it's specifics, and half year later if there is a problem the same person is still around to help fix it, and they likely can fix it quicker because they have the experience with the system at hand, and likely with other systems previously in their career. Troubleshooting is more art than science, so experience is king.

OTOH hiring a new student for each job (yes that will be the case: students have time maybe now but not next month due to an exam, or they finish studies, or are on internships, or have enough money already) will waste a long time figuring out the problem at hand, possibly costing you more in time wasted (especially including the extra time needed to find the solution).

The Linux vs Windows part is totally moot in the above argument, it works both ways.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[ducomputergeek]

It depends. Is the product developed by a company? Juniper offers training on their JunOS, based on BSD. Talend offers training and services for their application, as does Jasper Reports, and Openbravo (well with their ERP at least, POS side, not so much). Red Hat offers training an certification for their platform. Novell offers training for SuSE. We develop documentation and offer training for SuitePOS. In fact that is what we're selling is the documentation, training, customization, and technical support and all because the the product/project we forked from failed to offer these services.

Opensource is a big world. Now there are a lot of OSS projects where support is non-existant.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Hognoxious]

I don't know about classroom style training, but there are shedloads of books on open source software. Just looking around I see ones from O'Reilly, Wrox, Que ...

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Eten1l the Gr34t]

You forgot to mention the fact that schools and university are actually training new windows users payed by public money that will eventually reinforce Microsoft's position on this type of products. Training a windows user/admin isn't cheaper, it's just been already paid by taxes.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[giorgist]

OO = Oracle office !?!

Maybe they can settle their argument with the name of open office by keeping the OO but letting open office have Open, which is dirty in the coorporate world anyway

G

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus it would take months to settle down to a stable level. I recall when we moved to Office 2007 - the calls flooded in by the hundreds, mostly in the form of 'where has option X gone?' due to the interface redesign. You'd see something similar with openoffice: People *know* office, they have used it for years, they used it at school, at university and at home. Give them something new, and even if it's ultimatly easier to use there will still be a period of intense confusion while they learn the new interface.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[grahamm]

So when did this change? At one time it was pretty universal that 'learn computing at university' meant 'learn *NIX'.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[flyingfsck]

So, you never heard of the certificate programs run by Redhat and Novel and never visited http://tldp.org/ or used http://google.com/linux?

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[blarkon]

How many RHCTechnicians are there compared to Microsoft Certified Technical Specialists? There is probably one RHCT for every MCTS - and *that* is the problem. The majority of sysadmins don't learn by surfing google - but by going to some kind of class. Microsoft built a whole big infrastructure of training partners to pump out people who are minimally trained to administer their operating system. This keeps the cost of employing a Windows administrator down. There is production line of them. One leaves and another will be along in a moment. Unless someone comes up with a way of mass-producing Linux admins, it will always be significantly cheaper to hire a Windows admin. While it is significantly cheaper to hire an Windows admin, Linux will always be more expensive to deploy. Lose your Linux admin and your chance of replacing them isn't at all good. It isn't that organizations don't want to deploy Linux, it is that they just can't find anyone minimally qualified to do it!

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[blarkon]

That should have read one RHCT for every 100 MCTS - not a one to one mapping.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a whole ecosystem of books, online material and courses created by Microsoft to facilitate people learning their product. No such infrastructure exists for open source products.

Not all in the same place, but to say it doesn't exist is misguided.

Does this mean LAMP admins don't know what they're doing? Of course not. They learned their stuff. What difference does it make where they learned it? What difference does it really make to hold one of Microsoft's degrees? What's it saying? That you read their stuff, that's all.

Ultimately, it's the hands-on experience that counts in either case. And that's not going to be marred by where the admin found his docs. Hell, on the contrary; I'd value more the admin who had to dig for it. Show she's resourceful and determined.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[vlm]

So when did this change? At one time it was pretty universal that 'learn computing at university' meant 'learn *NIX'.

Educational institutions are *NIX. Easily identified as the kind of place where you have to learn at least some advanced math, a foreign language, and learn to read and write English.

Training institutions are pure 100% MS (FOSS? Whats that?) and have been for at least a decade or two. Easily identified as the kind of place that offers degrees in video game testing and web development, and has radio/TV commercials claiming theres a shortage of IT personnel and you could be making six figures in mere months if you sign up.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to counter the Microsoft created a training infrastructure bit in that I find it much easier to learn about and receive help on open source projects. Sure no one is obligated to help me, but help is usually much quicker and better.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Alex Belits]

University degree trumps all certifications, and plenty of Linux developers and sysadmins graduated from universities.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[dkleinsc]

There is a whole ecosystem of books, online material and courses created by Microsoft to facilitate people learning their product. No such infrastructure exists for open source products. It may not even be possible to create such an infrastructure.

I'd be amazed to find out it's impossible for Open Source folks to create an infrastructure with books, online material, and training.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat and their RCHT/E/A would like to differ.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't invalidate the claim that it costs more to use open source because you have to pay your IT department more to get people qualified to support it.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Well and that infrastructure still works, and there is no reason to change it. Also Ms is surely not afraid of a buggy, unfeatured, open source office, they might be afraid of the OracleOffice that will be here in a few months with corrections and maybe a new visual to increase usability.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

open source online help: it's called google search.
it's very rare I've not been able to find a solution to any problem, OSS or proprietary without using google... in fact, it's rare that a proprietary product's own help files are more useful than a carefully crafted google search.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

that's interesting. i guess i should stop reading o'reilly books or looking for dox or sourcecodes on the internets then.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Jawnn]

For example, in our university, most LAMP sysadmins are full time staff which you have to pay at least $45 - 55K per annum, while most WISA (Windows, IIS, SQL Server, ASP.NET) sysadmins are students which cost much less (somewhere between $13 - $18 an hour + tuition waiver if you are grad student).

Academia != real world, for multiple reasons, but most significant is the fact that the real world (business) can't afford to have their Windows boxes administered by $13/hr part timers. Not that many of them don't try, but the results are... predictable. More to the point, those results are costly. Many of those costs are hard to quantify, I will grant you, but the fact of the matter is that proper administration of business systems costs money. Pay now, or pay later when someone has to clean up the mess, deal with solutions that don't scale, etc. This is true for Windows or Linux.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm didn't OO recently split from Oracle?

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[tehcyder]

Windows administrators are cheaper because Microsoft pursued a strategy of ensuring that there was a training infrastructure for their products. There is a whole ecosystem of books, online material and courses created by Microsoft to facilitate people learning their product.

The evil bastards.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Eunuchswear]

The thing is universities need to push more training of using open source alternatives.

That's it, we're fucked. The dreaming spires are to be replaced by office application training schools.

You don't go to university to be "trained" how to use a particular application. You go to university to learn how to learn.

(And to get shitfaced drunk of course).

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[the_womble]

That may apply to sysadmins whose main skill is knowing how to use the software. I doubt it applies to non-IT jobs. I really doubt that the average office worker could raise their earnings by learning Open Office, so it follows that they would not cost employers any more.

Also, in comparing Windows and Unix admins, are you comparing people of equal skill, doing jobs of equal responsibility? Are your students really as good as your Unix admins? Are they as productive? Can they ensure the same level of security and reliability? Are the Windows and Unix server equally important? Why can you not recruit LAMP admins from among the students?

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, you gotta be kidding me-- WROX APPRESS and many more publisher can take on MS material anytime-- plus there's extensive documentation on FOSS apps 99% of the time down to the system call and inner workings of it, what else do you want.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[Bertie]

Microsoft did that because it's a self-perpetuating money-spinner. Every time they make a new version of an application, they ensure it's just different enough that a significant proportion of users come back to retrain on it. And once people have invested in training for your software, they're more likely to keep using it. This practice doesn't make Microsoft unique or evil, everybody does it, including Open Source vendors.

Windows administrators are cheaper because there are just more of them.

Re:Microsoft talking smack business as usual

[blarkon]

A good library provides the same information as you would learn in a university degree, yet for most people they need the structure of a University course to learn that information. The information for training Open Source admins exists, but the lack of consistent formal training infrastructure is a big reason why Windows admins are far more prevalent,

Re:But I was told OO is bad and Libre is way to go

[yeshuawatso]

No, you were told Oracle was bad and and their commitment to OOo is a coin flip. Libre is just a way to settle the "who will support the open source nature of the program now?" No talking points needed for bad recall abilities.

They should be...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an average user. My office-related activities consist of writing letters, short papers, and making the occasional presentation. OO.O does all of this just fine, and I hence have no need to shell out $100 for an Office suite.

Re:They should be...

[im_thatoneguy]

The reverse argument is that if 95% of Word customers just want quick common tasks done then it comes down which is easier.

If you don't use Word or Open Office enough to really dig into it and discover the features then the program with the more accessible UI will seem more useful.

I find Office 2007+'s hand holding and templates extremely helpful in this regard. I don't have to think about fonts or formatting I can just use the defaults which actually produce really well designed products. And since I don't spend any time in office I don't know where anything is but with the Ribbon I'm using significantly more of the application. That's been worth the $60 I spent.

In contrast when I load OO I'm always hunting and reading help files trying to find the tool or menu I'm looking for. And the templates aren't nearly as well designed or sexy.

I also like the minimized ribbon. Since I don't use much of Office most of the time I can just have it minimized and it literally takes up less screen real-estate than notepad. If I could get it to launch as fast as Notepad I would use it in its stead.

Re:They should be...

[Ice Tiger]

At work I have MS Office but at home I have Open Office installed on our Windows boxes and Macs, a friend has it installed on their Ubuntu system which I switched from XP after it kept on getting infected. It meets all our needs for an Office suite and saves us £££s.

If MS Office was one version, was cross platform like Open Office and was like £40-£50 tops then we'd probably be using that but at the moment it's just too expensive for what it gives us so Open Office wins out.

OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[G3ckoG33k]

The OpenOffice market share is not bad at all: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Market_Share_Analysis

And, Ballmer has the right to be concerned about the 300 million pc market is eaten by both Apple and Linux:

"I think depending on how you look at it, Apple has probably increased its market share over the last year or so by a point or more. And a point of market share on a number that's about 300 million is interesting. It's an interesting amount of market share, while not necessarily being as dramatic as people would think, but we're very focused in on both Apple as a competitor, and Linux as a competitor."

and

I assume we're going to see Android-based, Linux-based laptops, in addition to phones. We'll see Google more as a competitor in the desktop operating system business than we ever have before. The seams between what's a phone operating system and a PC operating system will change, and so we have ramped the investment in the client operating system.

And, OpenOffice runs on Android mobile phones: http://www.alwaysonpc.com/aboutOpenOffice.php. That is something for Microsoft to be sleepless about.

OpenOffice on Android mobile phones. Mmmmmm. Sweet.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[ducomputergeek]

Against Apple, what they have to fear is iWork. Honestly, the past two years I've been using iWork for 90% of my business needs and now I use it on my iPad. But what really hurt MS Office on Mac was the removal of VB Macro support. I had to keep a machine with Office 2004 just incase someone sent me an excel file with macros. The only application that MS Office still has as a killer app is PowerPoint. For presentations PowerPoint for Mac is still king in my book. I can get by with Keynote, but I still prefer PowerPoint. Especially the powerpoint templates.

When I bought my first Mac I got along with Apple Works for about year until I really needed powerpoint.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[shutdown -p now]

And, OpenOffice runs on Android mobile phones: http://www.alwaysonpc.com/aboutOpenOffice.php

This is highly misleading. In fact, you just wasted about 3 minutes of my time claiming that, because at first I was all "oh wow! need to get that right away". But what they do instead is host a virtual machine for you "in the cloud", and provide you with a VNC client to connect to it. Needless to say, this is 1) online only, and you really need WiFi or 3G, 2) eats bandwidth like cookies, and 3) still slow. No wonder it's rated 3 stars on the Market (with comments along the lines of all three points)! And they want $20 for that... no thanks.

If someone did a proper port of OO.org to Android (redoing the UI etc), I'd gladly pay $100 for that. But this is mostly useless.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[0123456]

The only application that MS Office still has as a killer app is PowerPoint.

Indeed, Powerpoint has probably killed more people than any other Microsoft application (Columbia's last crew, for example). I'm not sure that's an argument for using it though.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually prefer PowerPoint to Keynote? Is that a joke? Please explain yourself.

PowerPoint is to Keynote what Numbers is to Excel.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. You didn't actually think OOo, which bogs down modern quad-core PCs, would run on a 600-1000MHz mobile ARM CPU did you?

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh btw, I wasn't supporting the OP's claim, just trying to say that it was immediately recognizable as false.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[TheTurtlesMoves]

You actually care what *tool* someone uses to create a portable document? Oh wait.

That really is the bit that bugs me the most. Why do i need to care *what* word processor or presentation software you are using? I don't care when i read a book, or look at a report. And i create PDF presentations, and then it does not matter what i use, i can run my presentation on any machine.

The problem is lack of open document *formats*. Then anyone can use any tool they like... I don't get stuck with some word 2003 document that won't even open properly on a windows machine because MS is not really all that compatible with MS.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Why do you ask?

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[Anonymous Coward]

For varying definitions of "run." See this thread.

For those who want to appreciate how horribly slow is starting openoffice.org on the n900 device, here's a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMSrtdX5fu8
Don't start viewing unless you have something more than 5 minutes spare.

My favorite part:

I've tried the actions of the video by not starting debian first, but starting OO3 directly via xTerminal ("debbie ooffice").

This boosts the speed approximately by a factor 2.

I've started OO3, than selected "new Textdocument" and typed the same sentence as in the video.
The last letter has shown up after 3min 36sec.

Apparently later they reduced startup to 50 seconds.

After the latest Maemo 51-1 distro upgrade, Openoffice.org seems waaaay faster. It's ready to work in 50 seconds instead than 5minutes+

Video

...but 50 seconds is still 48 seconds longer than is acceptable.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[Stratoukos]

The only application that MS Office still has as a killer app is PowerPoint. For presentations PowerPoint for Mac is still king in my book.

Really? I'm not in a position to judge, since I'm not a heavy PowerPoint/Keynote user, but my experience is the exact opposite. I use Keynote maybe 5 times a year for presentations not longer than 10-15 slides and I've found Keynote to be much better for my needs. Since I don't require any of the advanced features, the aesthetics of the default templates and the fact that keynote behaves like a Mac application are enough for me to use it. Same thing with Word/Pages. Very casual user, so the little things won me over. Since I use spreadsheets much more heavily (no VBA though), Excel is the only application for which I favor MS Office over iWork.

Just out of curiosity, what makes PowerPoint the killer app for you?

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[shutdown -p now]

Of course. You didn't actually think OOo, which bogs down modern quad-core PCs, would run on a 600-1000MHz mobile ARM CPU did you?

I was hoping someone stole a jar of that pixie dust from Apple offices.

Still hoping, in fact.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[tehcyder]

OpenOffice on Android mobile phones. Mmmmmm. Sweet.

Yes, those three inch screens are great for working on complicated spreadsheets.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[oever]

What is missing is lack of support for open formats that do exist.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[Bertie]

If you've ever used Keynote, you'll know why this is a reasonable question. It's so effortlessly superior to Powerpoint that people who use it can produce better presentations. To choose Powerpoint in preference baffles me as much as it does your parent poster.

You can be forgiven for thinking that Powerpoint is adequate, maybe even good, but once you've used Keynote you soon realise it's not. Ditto MS Visio compared with Omnigraffle.

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[TheTurtlesMoves]

The point I was making its that it *should* not *matter* what you make your presentation in. You save and you can run it on *anything*.

Right now if you don't plug your mac in at the conference or at the class. Your out of luck. And more and more conferences are demanding that the talks are uploaded onto a single computer to avoid the laptop changeover time.

And they pick the lowest common denominator. Powerpoint. Not keynote. However they do almost always allow pdf. Animations are for wimps and communists ;).

Re:OpenOffice on Android mobile phones

[TheTurtlesMoves]

This is really what i meant.

forget these office suits

[brainscauseminds]

Ahh, invest some time and learn for example following tools: Tex/Lyx for documents, presentations, papers etc R/ggplot2 for data manipulation, tables and plotting Python for other things you want to compute you get quality stuff and you never want to use any office suit again

Re:forget these office suits

[arivanov]

Been there, done that. You also forgot to add that with all of these you can keep clean revision and change control.

The problem however is that you are not alone. There is usually an organisation around you which cannot be bothered. Even if you are "alone" as a lone software contractor you have customers who want to be bothered even less. On top of that you have an army of buzzword bingo players, sorry recruiters, that will not accept a CV in anything but MSF Word.

So I have to admit - from writing everything in LaTeX 10 years back, never touching a spreadsheet, etc I have degenerated into using an Office suite. OpenOffice in my case.

Re:forget these office suits

[wvmarle]

Not all people have the mindset to do programming. Actually I'd argue most people don't. I have tried TeX and it feels like programming to me. Way too big a learning curve when >95% of what I do is typing out invoices, one-page letters, and the like... even though it may give you great reports and so. If ever I have to write a report again I may consider learning TeX.

For everything else, OO is doing just fine.

Re:forget these office suits

[The Great Pretender]

invest some time

Sorry don't have any, got out of the academic environments a decade and a half ago. Even then I wrote my dissertation in Word and it was perfectly fine, quick and did what I needed it to do. (The subject was analytical chemistry and it contained math equations, although nothing majorly complex, and a lot of chemistry). I currently write all my reports (very large and small) up in Word and then convert them to PDF. Never had any complaints.

Re:forget these office suits

[sFurbo]

Sure, TeX is command line based, and that takes some getting used to. LyX is a graphical front-end for TeX which is much easier to get used to. It has a much flatter learning curve than TeX. I think it is quite nice, though I prefer the greater control of a command line interface.

That being said, for one- or two-page letters, invoices etc., why not use OO / Word? It is good enough.

Re:forget these office suits

[zippthorne]

You shouldn't be using TeX unless you're a programmer. If you just want to bang out some documents, you should be using LaTeX, which is TeX, where programmers have already set up a bunch of useful macros so you can focus on what you actually want to do.

Or, LyX. I have not found a better program for typesetting scientific papers. Even emacs with the latex-preview feature installed pales in comparison. There is simply no more efficient equation editor on the market than the one built-in to LyX. Sciword is a joke compared to it.

LyX is gui, and it spits out LaTeX-like code under the hood (or straight LaTeX if you ask it too), but it shows.. not quite what the finished product will actually look like, but enough so that you know what you're working on and aren't distracted by fiddling with the fonts or carriage returns or whatever.

If you haven't tried LyX, then you really ought not criticize the learning curve for it based on trying to typeset a document using straight up TeX. Also, you should give LyX a try. It's pretty good for letters, too.

Re:forget these office suits

[Alex Belits]

On top of that you have an army of buzzword bingo players, sorry recruiters, that will not accept a CV in anything but MSF Word

Recruiters are useless, and the only reason they demand CV in MS Word is so they can strip your name and contact information from it before sending it to every employer they know.

Re:forget these office suits

[nitio]

Interestingly enough there a _lot_ of modules for LaTeX including Chemical modules for you to add formulae in a simple way - not easy.

Sure, nothing beats WYSIWYG for editing but the quality of the document done in LaTeX where you just focus on content is amazing. Nor re-organizing, cross-references that always work in the end is a given. The weird part is that I had a MAKEFILE to produce by undergraduation final paper.

Re:forget these office suits

[DaVince21]

I'd rather use an Office suit(e) to quickly jot down those somewhat formatted notes I have to be taking quickly. Tex etcetera are nice, but you need to actually write some code down sometimes, and you don't have the time to add all that to your document quickly sometimes.

Classic "skills" FUD

[Compaqt]

The MS video features this gem: "New employees lacked OpenOffice.org applications' use skills that significantly increased employees' adaptation period and adversely affected their operational efficiency." -- Igor Gentosh, Head of Systems Integration Department, Kredobank JSC

Uhhmm ... so is that the reason you went and changed the entire interface in Office 2007 to the ribbon? If anything OO preserves skill investments.

OO is basically Office97+, which was a great version. OO is just fine for the non-templated letters that pass for "Office suite" use in most offices. Not that it doesn't have better templates (and page formats, too).

The only major deficiency is the non user-friendly macro system.

Re:Classic "skills" FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Or that the ribbon interface was created because it is so different that MS is able to claim this. Clue: Notice the words "new employees".

Re:Classic "skills" FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you are used to the old interface, then the ribbon is quite intuitive.

To be fair to Microsoft, they do put a lot of effort into design and usability, and as the ribbon shows, they can and do come up with pretty major changes. OO, on the other hand, seems to rely on a cargo-cult notion of usability where features are copied without understanding why they exist. Forget macros - this is what makes it awful. The commonly used features work fine, but any unusual feature will be hard to find and hard to use.

Re:Classic "skills" FUD

[Wowsers]

More interesting would be the argument that would suggest that when you first start using an office application, if it's OpenOffice it takes a lot of time to get used to, but if it's Microsoft Office, it must therefore take no time at all to use the features it has. Microsoft can't have it both ways in the argument, a new user will take time to learn how to use software WHATEVER it is.

Re:Classic "skills" FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and most users never do anything more sophisticated than opening Word or Writer, typing some stuff, maybe changing the font if they want to be fancy, and clicking 'save' or 'print'.

Re:Classic "skills" FUD

[nha]

The other major deficiency is the huge list of bugs. Try working on anything non-trivial and you'll quickly come up with problems.

Re:Classic "skills" FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

> New employees lacked OpenOffice.org applications' use skills

Plus - for fuck's sake, it's a bloody word processor. How hard is it to get "use skills"? You sit down with the damn thing and in a little while of using it to write a document, you know how to work it. Have we gotten so idiotic as a society that we consider this a hard thing to do? How can those same people tie their shoes, or get dressed?

It isn't like writing a kernel from scratch in ARM assembly language, or designing a turbine engine from scratch. It isn't even as hard as learning to use LaTex. It's *using* a bloody WYSIWYG word processor! Let's not pretend learning to use it is some kind of massively difficult task requiring years of study and deep theoretical knowledge.

It's got menus and buttons. You click on them and very logical things happen. That's it!

Re:Quite frankly, OOo is damaging itself just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

By native code surely you didn't mean Java?

That Microsoft video is only about drug addiction

[Anonymous Coward]

how I explained at http://stop.zona-m.net/digiworld/microsoft-video-proves-microsoft-office-cocaine-and-has-dealers-inside-schools

Several of those quotes really remember people who can't free themselves from cocaine

MS may not have much to worry about here

[Dracos]

Since Oracle seems determined to destroy OpenOffice themselves.

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[rahvin112]

Nothing to worry about. Some very brave people have Forked it and created LibreOffice to replace it. Given the more flexible source contribution rules the development rate already exceeds that of OO.org. It's only a matter of time before Oracle isn't even relevant anymore in relation to office software. It's unfortunate that they didn't accept the LibreOffice request to coordinate development and direction as it will sideline them even more. Oh well.

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[Richard_at_work]

Sideline them ... how, exactly? Seriously, this time last year Oracle didn't have an office suite and now they have a fully featured, fully developed office suite with full copyright assignment. How often does that really happen? How many fully developed office suites are there in the world, especially ones where you can buy the fully copyright to?

Oracle haven't been sidelined at all, they've barely started.

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[flimflammer]

I'd sure like to know why they chose LibreOffice for the name... I get that it's the Spanish word for Free, but honestly? It just seems a bit weird for my taste.

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this brave? It's probably the right thing to do, and will probably become the dominant fork; but it doesn't look like a personal risk for individuals.

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[muckracer]

> Oracle haven't been sidelined at all, they've barely started.

Yeah...like they started charging 80 bucks for the, formerly free, MS-Office ODF plugin...

I really wonder, what they're gonna do about OOo. My feeling says, nothing that Open-Source friends are gonna appreciate. :-/

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[Richard_at_work]

Sun was dying the long slow death of large costs against small revenue streams - why shouldn't Oracle try and cut the losses where they can?

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[Anonymous Coward]

How many fully developed office suites are there in the world[...]

Probably more than you'd think. But the question is, how many of them are relevant. Which Oracle's OO won't be, soon, if they keep ignoring the community devs and the distros carrying it.

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[jimicus]

That may not necessarily be a bad thing, depending on your POV.

IME, one of the big things still holding F/OSS back is its cost. The old adage that you don't get something for nothing is still viewed as being true by a lot of people, and many companies believe (albeit erroneously) that having purchased Microsoft Office, they also get support for if it breaks - whereas with a F/OSS product you may or may not get useful support if it breaks.

Were Oracle to sell OpenOffice for, say, 30% less than Microsoft Office, it'd be cheap enough that it'd be taken seriously without being so cheap that a business will steer well clear for fear of support issues. Even if Oracle gives little back to the F/OSS world, they could do a lot to damage the view that the only viable desktop is Windows with Office.

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the more flexible source contribution rules the development rate already exceeds that of OO.org.

How could that not be the case? After all they merged all of the OOo development in and then translated or removed a few comments. So yes, they "exceed" the development rate of OOo, but by no means substantially and unlikely ever will.

Re:MS may not have much to worry about here

[crimperman]

I presumed the reason was that Libre (freedom) is distinct from Gratis (zero cost), both of which can be written as Free in English.

Better and simpler answer

[VincenzoRomano]

MONEY.

Couldn't watch the video

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only available for Silverlight and WMV. Could someone transcode it to MP4 or WebM so that I can see what the fuss is about?

Re:Couldn't watch the video

[furgle]

Have you tried using windows?

I've found windows the best platform to play WMV files and run Silverlight. There might be better software out there but windows 7 just runs this without any extra setup. Frankly it is the best for this task and you should seriously consider using it if you want to be in the *know* about these topics.

Re:Couldn't watch the video

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried using windows?

I've found windows the best platform to play WMV files and run Silverlight. There might be better software out there but windows 7 just runs this without any extra setup. Frankly it is the best for this task and you should seriously consider using it if you want to be in the *know* about these topics.

If you can set up all the drivers and programs during a Windows installation but haven't cared do so in Linux, you are at fault.

Re:Couldn't watch the video

[Anonymous Coward]

*whoosh*

Re:Couldn't watch the video

[Alex Belits]

And I have found that sledgehammer is the best tool for breaking your own skull.

The problem is, I have no intention of breaking my skull.

What support?

[hobbes64]

A few of the quotes in the article are about poor support of open source products. But Microsoft don't have very good support either. Depending on license you get limited support or have to pay per incident. You usually just end up searching the internet to solve your problem whichever product you use. So what am I paying for again?

Re:What support?

[opposabledumbs]

You're paying so Microsoft can pay a graphic designer to develop a cool-looking video bashing the competition, obviously.

Re:What support?

[Mashiki]

A name, and the right to be reamed out repeatedly for a product that you can get for free, in another name, that does exactly the same thing?

Re:What support?

[Richard_at_work]

Microsoft also has the Technet, Volume Licensing and MSDN forums, which are well staffed with MS reps who give very very good answers reasonably quickly - you don't get access to these forums unless you have paid for one of the aforementioned programs.

Re:What support?

[nine-times]

Yeah, I've always thought about this when I hear that line from Microsoft about "poor support".

I've been working in IT for 15 years, and I've worked in a few different companies of different size and in different industries. I have never been aware of anyone getting support from Microsoft beyond searching their website knowledge base to clarify obscure error messages.

The only times I have called Microsoft for anything (or heard of anyone else doing it) was for 1 purpose: product activation. I've had copies of Windows and Office spuriously decide that they weren't legitimate, and I had to call Microsoft to get them to fix it. So the only use Microsoft's support personnel have been to me is when Microsoft broke my computer on purpose, and I had to get them to undo it.

Blood from a turnip.

[zenwarrior]

The bottom line is whatever Microsoft says or attempts as a fear tactic, it won't make any difference whatsoever to a very large number of those consumers. They simply cannot afford Office at any price Microsoft would offer it--other than free. When you have no money, free (or theft*) is the only alternative. Given that reality, Microsoft is jousting at windmills and trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.
* Might we next be seeing not-so-subtle threats in those emerging markets about using illegal copies of Office? Betcha we will.

Re:Blood from a turnip.

[Anonymous Coward]

We won't see threats in those emerging markets (for a few years).

IMHO MS policy towards emerging markets is:
1. Loud complaints, but no action against private usage of unlicensed Windows/Office copies.
2. No action against small and medium business for a few years (3 - 5 years sometimes longer).
3. After grace period expires, start hiring guns against business (form local BSA, pay politicians to pass more restrictive law, bribe high ranking police official to change priorities from chasing wrong doers to bullying SMB)

Loud complaints gives MS free media coverage.
No action against private users ensures that every teenager knows that MS Word is right tool to write cheet sheet or assigment.
Initial grace period for small business is typical drug-dealer scum. First dose is free, for the rest you pay through the nose.

Re:Blood from a turnip.

[Anonymous Coward]

Might we next be seeing not-so-subtle threats in those emerging markets about using illegal copies of Office? Betcha we will.

Not until they finish "emerging." This campaign isn't designed to sell more copies of Office, it's designed to keep people using Office instead of OpenOffice. Microsoft cares more about market share than licenses sold to most of these people -- because it's a network effects game. If people use Office at home then they bring it to work and vice versa. If poor home users or developing world businesses start using OpenOffice instead, Office is on the path to losing network effects and Microsoft wants to nip it in the bud. Even if that means countenancing piracy in "emerging markets."

Comments

[zeraeiro]

Have you checked the comments on the right side here: http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/US/details/faaf9eb8-77c6-4bed-bc08-c069a7bfbb04 Let's tell MS what we think.

Re:Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

What comments? I'm not going to install Silverlight only to waste some of my time telling MS what I think!

Re:Quite frankly, OOo is damaging itself just fine

[melted]

It's not written in Java. It requires Java for some optional features, but believe it or not, it's slow, buggy and heavyweight even without Java's help.

Re:Quite frankly, OOo is damaging itself just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, cause I just love having to be online just write a damn essay.

Re:They should be... OpenOffice has 10%-20%

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an average user. My office-related activities consist of writing letters, short papers, and making the occasional presentation. OO.O does all of this just fine, and I hence have no need to shell out $100 for an Office suite.

You are not alone. You are in fact a long, long way from being alone.

Depending on the geographic location, OpenOffice has been measured as being installed on between 10% and 20% of machines.

Unless you call this "tiny", the OP has it wrong.

This measured 10% to 20% share correlates quite well with the number of copies of openOffice that have been downloaded.

Re:Quite frankly, OOo is damaging itself just fine

[0123456]

It's not written in Java. It requires Java for some optional features, but believe it or not, it's slow, buggy and heavyweight even without Java's help.

I was actually amazed recently when I discovered that Open Office _wasn't_ written in Java because I'd always assumed that was why it seemed so slow at many things.

Nothing to be scared of..

[Tei]

The emergent markets will probably use the last version of Office, as soon as is launched, since on these markets warez is rampant. These markets are more slaves of Microsoft than our market.

Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[mark-t]

When I started working at my last job, we were initially using Openoffice for almost everything except for any documents that needed to go to clients, because documents that we created with Openoffice would not reliably open with the same formatting by clients who were using Microsoft office, particularly if indentation or outlining was used. Programmers such as myself did not generally need to have Office installed, since virtually all of the documents created by programmers were intended for internal only. Ultimately, however, it was realized that even documents that might initially be thought to be internal-only were often needed to be looked over by clients for review, and so eventually everybody had to install Office and use it for everything, simply so that we could compatibly communicate with the company's clients.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[jonwil]

I see a lot of people making claims that "OpenOffice and Word wont format documents the same way so I cant use OpenOffice" but I have yet to see any actual evidence (e.g. screenshots of both OO and Word showing the difference)

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[KingAlanI]

For some documents, the differences in layout are more important than for other documents

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[lordandmaker]

If I still had an MS office install I could show you a few. Indenting, bulletting and tabulation were the biggest culprits IME. Also, page breaks tended to wander and often duplicate themselves. OOo was a lot better at opening MS Office documents than MS Office was at OOo generated docs in MS formats.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Mashiki]

Probably has more to do with the fact the OO adheres to the document creation standards, and MS Office doesn't. Much like MS refuses to adhere to the HTML/XML standards while every other browser does, or has +95% adherence. All that means at the end of the day is MS is creating a market by not following standards that they said they'd adhere to.

Big shock.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Zoxed]

> ...because documents that we created with Openoffice would not reliably open with the same formatting by clients who were using Microsoft office...

Was delivery as PDF not an option ?

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[randallman]

This is and will be true for any two different programs using non-native (more so for proprietary) formats. Word Perfect -> Word. Word -> Open Office. Even Word '97 to Word 2007. You've hit on one of the reasons that standard formats are needed.

However, if formatting is that important, consider if you should even be sending word processor documents. Maybe you should be sending PDFs for review. Or maybe you're doing something that requires desktop publishing software.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Anonymous Coward]

chances are you would have been better off sending pdf and tiff files to clients. most documents dont have to be edited or changed by someone outside your company.

makes me wonder why companies insist on receiving resume in doc format. what do they want with an editable file? help me pad my credentials?

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[AK Marc]

I installed OO on my wife's computer. She made a resume with it. When I opened it on MS Office to see if it looked the same, it did not. I edited it to make it match what she wanted, then printed it to PDF so that we could be sure what anyone opening it would find. I don't keep screenshots to convince strangers of something that I thought was common knowledge and I run across every time I share anything with someone using the opposite of what I'm using (I use both and it goes both ways), so I won't be the first to show you evidence. So you can continue to claim it never happens.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Anonymous Coward]

So export to pdf. Problem solved.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[KingAlanI]

the fact remains that the difference exists, whoever's responsible.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Anonymous Coward]

If that is true, then convert OO to PDF before sending to customer. Problem solved.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[gdshaw]

Ultimately, however, it was realized that even documents that might initially be thought to be internal-only were often needed to be looked over by clients for review, and so eventually everybody had to install Office and use it for everything, simply so that we could compatibly communicate with the company's clients.

That would be a good reason for switching to MS Office except that:

1. MS Office can't reliably open MS Office documents with the same formatting either, and

2. It would be better to use PDF unless you actually need the document to remain editable.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Alex Belits]

If you claim that you have t send clients documents in an editable format (that is, not PDF), you are either a moron or a liar.
If you claim that "thought to be internal-only" documents can ever be sent to anyone outside in an editable format, you are a liar.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[grahamm]

When I started working at my last job, we were initially using Openoffice for almost everything except for any documents that needed to go to clients, because documents that we created with Openoffice would not reliably open with the same formatting by clients who were using Microsoft office, particularly if indentation or outlining was used.

Unless things have changed somewhat, neither will even the same version of MS Office always show consistent formatting. If the document author is using 'printer X' and the document is opened by someone using 'printer Y', then the whole formatting can change.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Anonymous Coward]

In a former company I wasn't allowed to send Ms Office files because of their infamous undo feature. Thus everything that actually leaves the company was converted to PDF. there is no need to edit something if it is used for reviewing.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[jimicus]

1. MS Office can't reliably open MS Office documents with the same formatting either

Maybe not with 100% reliability, but it can do so with substantially more reliability than OpenOffice.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[mark-t]

Could you explain how a story about a company decision that is absolutely true and that I had absolutely no choice about following makes me either a liar or a moron?

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[mark-t]

Y'know, when the announcement came down the pipe, that was the very first question I asked. The answer, however, was no. They wanted the client to be able to edit the document as a means of communicating any information about the document for which they had questions or wanted clarification. Such edits were highlighted in the document so they could easily be found, and the company wanted them to be part of the same document so that they could easily be located and their context quickly determined.

Of course, we could have accomplished much of the same thing with a full version of Acrobat, with which pdf's could be quite easily edited, but because the full version of acrobat was not as ubiquitous as office, the CEO figured it was not a good idea to expect all of our clients to have it.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[mark-t]

In fact, yes... the company wanted the document to be editable so that clients could easily add highlighted questions or comments about parts that they felt required clarification, keeping the context of such changes clear because they are within the same document. While the sort of markup they were wanting could also easily have been been done with a full version of Acrobat, because Acrobat Pro was not as ubiquitous as MS Office, the CEO felt it would be unwise to expect all of our clients to have it, or to place the expectation on them that they obtain it.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Alex Belits]

You are still either a liar, a moron or both.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[mark-t]

That's not really an answer to the question I asked... it merely is a restating of your initial position without any justification whatsoever. I can't help but notice your response seems to be of this type.

I nevertheless would ask you again how you could come to those conclusions, because, as I said, this really did happen where I worked, and I had absolutely no say in the matter. There were, in fact, reasons why they wanted the clients to have editable versions of the documents we sent them, and when I heard this decision to migrate to Office, I inquired about what those reasons were. Now regardless of whether those reasons were particularly good or not does not diminish the fact that they still had some, and I had little choice but to accept the decision. Now how does my relating that incident make me a liar? How does it make me moron? Because I chose to work for a company I didn't agree with on every single little thing? If so, how does it make me a moron that if I had chosen to quit over it, I would have found myself unemployed with nothing to fall back on? Or are you asserting that I'm a moron because I happened to live in a country where, in general, one can't collect any employment insurance if one voluntarily quits their job?

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[Mashiki]

Really all it means is that people who join the various standards associations, aren't following the rules that they themselves helped create. All documents created with the same standard should have +90% rendering compatibility across all apps. Unless one company which has a large paid market share refuses to follow the standards, in which case you get another case of "looks best with..." or "only renders properly with..." tag.

End of the story is, either follow the standards you helped create or make it 100% proprietary so people know that they're getting into something which has next to no compatibility.

Re:Switching from Openoffice to MS Office...

[mark-t]

The idea that the company had was that the client would probably want to make notes, and those notes are most easily put into the document itself highlighted in a different color so that they are easily visible and the context is clear.

In reality there was nothing we were doing in this respect that could not have been done with a full version of Acrobat (which would have had numerous other advantages as well, not the least of which was preserving formatting and appearance even if the person viewing doesn't have the required fonts installed), but the CEO felt that Acrobat Pro was not as ubiquitous as MS Office, and did not wish to require that our clients all possess it.

Also

[Sycraft-fu]

Many of the open source tools just aren't up to par. Open Office may be for many things. I am not a serious Office user, I just do basic word processing and the like so I'm not in a position to say. It has a good interface though, so that alone puts it ahead of many.

However for a lot of programs, particularly those in the media area, they just do not compete with commercial software. I've found this in video editing. I tried to do it on Linux and just couldn't. None of the open source tools would do the trick. Not only were there some extremely confusing, unintuitive, hard to use, interfaces but the software just didn't have the features I needed. Not even esoteric stuff, but simply shit like the ability to capture and open DV video.

Unfortunately I think some people who recommend OSS alternatives do so out of a loyalty to OSS, without any real knowledge of if the solution will work. They don't use the software, or if they do they use it only in an extremely cursory way. They've never used the commercial packages they are advocating it as an alternative to. As such it doesn't end up working.

You always have to remember that just because a product is the same rough idea, doesn't mean it is a replacement for another product.

Re:Also

[rtb61]

After having used Office suites for over twenty years, this nonsense about the latest upgrades is just that marketing nonsense. People have produced millions of documents on office suits of all varieties including the completing unstable windows 95 and M$ office variants. The version of M$ office I liked best was 98, after that it got frustratingly unhelpfully helpful, menus kept changing and the original macro language was wiped out to sell visual basic, I was long gone before the ribbon nonsense.

The office suites are all much of a muchness now. So what is all this sudden attack bullshit all about, hmm, "ANDROID EVERYWHERE" and what office suite will it run, 'er', let me guess, certainly not M$ Office. Of course Android won't be absolutely everywhere, that's only cause, Linux will be on servers, net appliances and super computers, leaving M$ with the luddites, the drones and, the dinosaurs (no where did that idea come from).

Re:Also

[drinkypoo]

The version of M$ office I liked best was 98, after that it got frustratingly unhelpfully helpful, menus kept changing and the original macro language was wiped out to sell visual basic, I was long gone before the ribbon nonsense.

Office 98 was cool but it didn't use Microsoft APIs correctly. If you put it on the second display and open a menu the menu pops open on the primary display. Classy.

Re:Also

[flappinbooger]

I also tried to edit video on FOSS software once. I completed one simple project. It was like going naked down a slide lined with razor blades. Painful, but I made it and have the scars to prove it.

Cinelerra was the program. Now, the latest Ubuntu comes with a decent FOSS video package and there are a few out there now.

By decent I mean I've actually used one of them to do a quick and dirty very simple video and I didn't want to kill something afterwards.

Also - different topic - I gave a presentation once to the local chamber of commerce explaining the concept of Free and Open Source Software. I went through several examples of expensive commercial software and the open source equivalent.

I made sure to tell them that not all of those examples would work for everyone, but the point is to make them at least AWARE that such a thing is out there, and that there is a definite possibility that they could take advantage of something.

Pretty much everyone there had no idea such a thing as legitimately free software existed. This, in a community where even major government agencies openly pirate MS Office.

And microsoft would never have them in any case

[unity100]

think. do you think that anyone can push american copyrights and their enforcement in russia ? if you think so, think again. they cant.

so, it was to be either that all pirated microsoft, or, they used openoffice and open tools. with the latter, ms at least saves face.

and theres their tendency to coding as well. they seem to have an inclination for coding and programming. maybe because of the long east europe winters. they would much prefer to have what they can mess with, than some product made to be sold to technologically challenged american small to medium businesses.

Eastern Europe!?

[petarro]

Huh, Eastern Europe!? That is where OpenOffice is DEVELOPED!!!

It's not just feature set vs. feature set.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used OO and I honestly found the UI to be clunky and just that little bit less seamless. To some extent, that is because I'm used to MS Office, but I still consider the latter to have better UX than OO, even though OO might have a decent feature set.

Similarly, gimp can be used to do just about anything that PS can, but my experiences with gimp have been some of the worst software experiences I've had.

Not really

[Cyberax]

OpenOffice Writer is about as good as Word.

However, Excel is seriously better than OO.org Spreadsheet. Especially Excel 2010. We've replaced an expensive CrystalReports report builder with Excel and everyone is super-happy. It consumes data from OLAP database, it can easily run various analyses and it's even possible to export spreadsheets using Web.

Re:Not really

[poetmatt]

you call those things special features? export to web?

don't get me wrong, excel does better, than the office version but analysis is not an area where excel does better than anyone else.

the rest of the openoffice suite is substantially better than the MS setup, and most importantly does not have a ribbon interface.

Re:Not really

[Cyberax]

"you call those things special features? export to web?"

It exports _interactive_ spreadsheet. I.e. I can quickly draft a report with adjustable parameters and nice 'dashboard-like' visualization and expose it on a corporate portal in a matter of minutes. And this spreadsheet can connect to OLAP backend, using connecting user's credentials.

This is certainly not a 'trivial' feature.

I'm ambivalent about ribbon, but a lot of users like it. Besides, Word has a number of nice features, like Russian language grammar checking (Russian is a flexible language, so simple spellcheckers suck).

Re:Not really

[poetmatt]

uh, office word has language specific grammar checking and spell checking.

interactive spreadsheets are not new either. Ever heard of google docs? ever heard of open office? One might wonder. In fact, in google docs (with google applications) you can do exactly the same with OLAP and AD authentication while never leaving the corporate intranet. Also you're talking about sharepoint, and not office, which is not the same product at all.

So Trivial? yes. Open your eyes? I hope so.

Re:Not really

[Cyberax]

"uh, office word has language specific grammar checking and spell checking."

It doesn't, it only has primitive spellchecking which doesn't understand Russian wordforms, it tries to cope by listing _all_ possible wordforms in its dictionary (and quite often fails, of course).

There's http://www.languagetool.org/ plugin which is promising, but right now it's an unusable crap.

"Log in to your Google Docs account (see Resources link). At the top left, click "Upload," and follow the prompts to upload the spreadsheet you just created. It will open in a new window or tab, where you can view or modify it. Verify that everything looks and works correctly."

That's a joke, sorry. Google Docs is nowhere close in functionality even to OO.org. And there's also no possibility to connect to backend DB.

Re:Not really

[Slime-dogg]

That isn't really a feature of Excel 2010, and more a feature of SSRS.

I mean, let's be realistic here. If you've replaced a Crystal report with an Excel Spreadsheet, then you're using the wrong tool for the job. If you've replaced the Crystal report with an SSRS backend that reads the file that Excel generates, then that's completely different. At that point, Excel is less a spreadsheet and more a report builder.

One of the many roles of development is to eliminate as much Excel abuse as possible. Excel is not a database, and should not be used as such. There are far too many business types that don't get that, and then complain when their network shared "Excel database" gets slow, unstable, etc. That's partly Microsoft's fault though. They enable that type of behavior, and people just eat it up.

Re:Not really

[Cyberax]

We actually use Excel with our own backend (a custom Java application on a Linux server working with PostgreSQL), via web services. Excel indeed works like a report template builder.

We're certainly not using it to store data. But it simply shines in data visualization.

Re:Not really

[RobertM1968]

OpenOffice Writer is about as good as Word.

However, Excel is seriously better than OO.org Spreadsheet. Especially Excel 2010. We've replaced an expensive CrystalReports report builder with Excel and everyone is super-happy. It consumes data from OLAP database, it can easily run various analyses and it's even possible to export spreadsheets using Web.

Wow, honestly? People still use Excel for that sort of stuff? We've made a decent little business in getting rid of such uses of Excel and moving the data to MySQL databases with report managers and such that output the reports in HTML or PDF format. The speed increase has been tremendous. We've gotten some of the bigger reports running in 5-10 seconds instead of 5-10 MINUTES that Access and Excel or MSSQL and Excel were doing. It wasn't even too complex of a report... roughly 50,000 records to be loaded and used for calculations for a 10 page report (9 sections, one summary page, same 200 users each page, monthly stats for each user for each page, sub totals and capped totals for each user for each stat for each page for the year).

I also still remember the nightmares of working at CompUSA (Technician turned Tech Manager) and having to run 45 minute reports via Excel and MSSQL that should have taken no more than 45 seconds. Sadly, the Seibel people's "report module" consisted of using Excel and MSSQL for anything more than very very basic reporting. It was a nigthmare... though on the flip side, it did give me time to go get a snack, make coffee or whatever else.

Excel may be "really neat" and make people "super-happy" with it's ease in creating ugly reports linked to a database, but it is horrendously inefficient and slow.

Note, I haven't tried the 2010 version, so maybe they've incorporated some speed improvements in it? Of course, they'd have to be VAST speed improvements to make it speed-competitive. Wasted time=wasted productivity=wasted money. As of now, none of our clients are using the Microsoft solution and cant understand why they were ever suckered into using it ever.

What you're talking about is great for small, non-complex data sets... but idiotic (IMHO and experience) for anything more "complex".

Re:Not really

[Cyberax]

Out problem is not with speed, we are using CrystalReports and JasperReports working with Postgres database for most of reports. Some of them are more than 1000 pages.

No, our problem is with flexibility. It's not easy to create an ad-hoc report with something like Crystal. Which is exactly what we need. And it's not inefficient, our biggest dataset used with Excel is about 200000 rows (which Excel can comfortably handle now).

Most reports take less than 10-15 seconds to build on my machine (even less when they are hosted). And if we encounter problems later, we can offload some data processing to our backend.

Re:Not really

[aphelion_rock]

In my experience, OO Write is more compatible than Word. It will open up a .docx document where as word 2003 won't.

I chucked the chair, but I didn't fling a footrest

[Hognoxious]

But why is Microsoft so intent on damaging the FOSS desktop productivity suite, which has just a tiny market share?

# Every time I plant a seed, he say kill it before it grow... /#

Compatibility

[sparrowhead]

Among all that propaganda bias and the discussion above most is a matter of personal preference. Looks, Features and even stability can work for one or the other package.

In my books compatibility is the biggest issue. I don't want to have to care, what programs the person i transmit my documents to is using. In that book OpenOffice scores way higher than MS Office. Not only is MS Office in my experience incompatible to itself (different versions, even language versions of the same iteration cause problems), also OpenOffice is more compatible to MS Office than the other way around.

Use the right tool for the job

[Mathinker]

> used to be cool, 10 years ago. Now Gimp sucks, .... and not one of them lets you just select a single object.

Last time I checked, the only objects, besides pixels (and layers, and channels --- which, BTW are easily selectable, in some sense), there were in the Gimp were text objects. And they were added less than 10 years ago, IIRC. Your complaint is kind of like bitching that your car doesn't bake cookies, and makes you sound clueless.

Use the right tool for the job. The only reason you thought Gimp was cool 10 years ago for what you do, is because Inkscape didn't exist, and you didn't want to pay for programs from Adobe.

Gimp is still plenty "cool" for doing what it's meant to do. It's not meant to be a replacement for a vector drawing program.

Microsoft are scare of it because....

[DrXym]

OOo is a wedge. It's free and in most cases it works. Those are great reasons for people to use the product over the expensive, bloated and Windows encumbered MS Office. MS Office is a great product and better in most regards than OpenOffice but the reality is its packed with functionality which many people will never use - integration to MS backends like Sharepoint and so forth and it costs a lot of money to adminster and keep up to date.

If people start using OpenOffice, not only do MS lose sales on the office suite but they risk sales next time Windows comes around for an upgrade. Businesses will start to question why they need Windows at all when their users can run the same browser, office suite and possibly email app on multiple operating systems. So it's no wonder MS are concerned.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is just one prong in a new offensive since the BSA are also in the headlines for lobbying the EU to ban open formats in procurements. I bet we start seeing fud fly thick and fast about the OpenOffice / LibreOffice branch too.

TCO

[Errol backfiring]

"Total Cost of Ownership". Yes, I always laugh about that. There is no ownership, just cost. With open source software, you have at least one aspect of ownership: the fact that you can repair your own stuff.

Why computer training never actually IS

[RomulusNR]

A recurring theme in the criticisms -- perhaps the most painfully misanthropic -- is that, since staff are trained to use MS Office, they simply can't figure out Open Office, and everyone who's switched back to MSO from OOO has seen support time and staff frustration drop like a rock. (Of course, going from MS Office 2k3's traditional interface to MS Office 2k8's "Ribbon" caused absolutely no confusion at all!)

But why is this? Why are people trained eat the bread and sip the MS Kool Aid so utterly helpless when faced with an alternative that doesn't look the same?

Well, it's because people with minimal computer skills teach other people with no computer skills that, in order to make this word look blue, you click this button in this place. Not "look for a color changer and select blue". No, it has to be under THIS menu, with THAT name, and looks like THIS button.

We don't teach people how to use computers or even software. We teach them very specific, contextless mundane steps.

What saddens me most is that I was able to document this twelve years ago and it's still the same today.

Re:Why computer training never actually IS

[neumayr]

Okay, I'm not reading this text right now, sorry.
But I don't blame the users or the teachers for this fact. As a teacher, I was often met by people being so intimidated that there was no way to get any fundamental concepts into their minds. Same as with teaching math really, only worse - people can avoid solving math problems a lot better than avoid using computers.
And I can understand their confusion. Many of the conventional UI concepts don't make sense, and if I didn't grow up with computers and those concepts I probably wouldn't get it either. What I feel is needed is not a better way to teach those (imho broken) concepts, but better user interfaces.

Re:Why computer training never actually IS

[whoop]

No UI will get through to these sort of people. Trust me. Anyone's that worked in phone tech support knows you can get someone to do something like, "left-click the second button from the left on the toolbar near the top of the application," and not, "click the open-file icon on the toolbar." First, they won't call it a toolbar, but something stupid like picture gallery. Then you can go on and on defining click, icon, an open-file picture, etc.

Many people do very much work strictly like click here, type my initials (it's not a username, it's my initials!), type my cat's name, type 1, hit enter, A, enter, 14, enter 7 enter (at a text-based terminal app, for instance). After going insane in a corporate tech support environment like this, I left IT and set for the medical field. It's the same damn thing.

Medical machines make beeping noises to alert you to some warning or error. People go up and do the same routine of mute, reset, reset, mute, reset, stop, start, reset, mute. Only then, if it's still beeping, will they perhaps read the error message, if they don't just come to me saying, "This machine won't work." I read it, and see a blood pressure related error, and tell them they need to put the damn BP cuff on the patient. These people will never understand anything. Trust me.

Re:Why computer training never actually IS

[neumayr]

I see it the other way. When a huge amount of people don't get how to operate those systems, it's the systems fault, not theirs.

Re:Why computer training never actually IS

[complete loony]

Ok, I've used the ribbon. I've transitioned from office 97 to 2000 to 2003. Yeah it was different. The one thing I've heard the most complaints about would be "where did save / save as / print go to...". But everything you know office can do is at least possible to find on your own.

There's a hell of a lot of things I *know* OOO can do. But I can't find them from the menu's.

Here's a use case to explain what I mean. You have some address data in a Calc spreadsheet. Print some mailing labels on a sheet of stickers.

The approach I used that ended up working was;

• delete and recreate heading (apparently the style info was confusing the issue).
• copy the content.
• Open OOO Base
• Right click and paste the data as a new table.
• Create a new "Labels" page in Writer.
• Pick the database, table, and add the fields.
• Print it.
• Only then are you prompted to generate the form data.

Why isn't this just another mail-merge style feature? Why is there no easy way to use a spreadsheet as a data source? The paste table menu item doesn't even show up in Base unless you already know exactly what to put on the clipboard.

Without google I was lost. There is very little discover-ability in the OOO interface. Hopefully this will improve in LibreOffice.

Re:Why computer training never actually IS

[steelfood]

Part of it is the education system, and part of it is just how people learn. Children learn through mimicry. They learn out how to abstract certain situations in school, and then they figure out how to apply the abstraction process to other things, and abstractions itself.

But most people barely make it to the first abstraction step, much less be able to abstract their abstractions.

Who will fix it? NOT Microsoft

[SmallFurryCreature]

This idea that MS will come around to fix your broken Word install is so ludicrous, so totally beside the daily reality you have to wonder how it ever got started.

When you buy from MS, you are NOT buying from IBM. Yes, when you buy from IBM you buy a large amount of support (how large? just see how many of your accounts drop dead when the bill arrives). When you buy from MS... oh wait. You DON'T. You buy from Dell and your support comes from India and is "re-boot and re-install". MS barely acknowledges security threats that affect ALL its customers. The idea that they will an issue that only affects you on demand is insane. They won't. Never have, never will.

Open Source, you got the code and developing software is NOT all that expensive. Not for companies that develop aircraft or build oil rigs. And you can coast on their efforts. And that SCARES MS. They live not just on the myth that they will fix your problems, but that software is hard and only a billion dollar company can do it.

I have had a couple of discussions with open source developers about issues in beta code. NEVER EVER had a talk with a MS employee about the countless issues with MS software.

Where is this mythical MS support? Is it the great manual that comes with Windows or Office? Is it the direct line to MS development or at least bug testing? Nah... it is through Dell or countless forums. Sure, most Linux support is through forums as well, but at least forums run by the Linux distro and I don't pay through the nose for my Linux software.

And you know the strange thing. OpenOffice has become accepted, the days when you HAD to run MS office are gone at least in my field. Now the un-official company policy is that all documents must be readible by everyone and this includes people running Linux and OSX without jumping through hoops.

This means using older formats and not all the bells and whistles and lockin of MS products... and that scares MS. A non-upgrading Word user is almost as bad as a FOSS user. MS gains the majority of its income from the endless upgrade cycle. It NEEDS this money to fund its numerous loss making programs. If that revenue stream dries up, it will loose the status of must have stock and have to actually economize on its spendings. That would very quickly end MS as it is. No more Vista's or ME. These failures would then wrack the company like they would a real company.

MS fears Opensource. Not because it is better or even equal in its own eyes, but because it is good enough and an awful lot cheaper. And once enough switch, then its lockin breaks down for everyone else. No more "Needs Office 2050" if companies run into "resend that file, can't read it" to often.

Re:Who will fix it? NOT Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I see that that Open Source grammar checker is working really well for you.

Re:They should be... OpenOffice has 10%-20%

[digitig]

I'm an average user. My office-related activities consist of writing letters, short papers, and making the occasional presentation. OO.O does all of this just fine, and I hence have no need to shell out $100 for an Office suite.

You are not alone. You are in fact a long, long way from being alone.

Depending on the geographic location, OpenOffice has been measured as being installed on between 10% and 20% of machines.

Unless you call this "tiny", the OP has it wrong.

This measured 10% to 20% share correlates quite well with the number of copies of openOffice that have been downloaded.

But how many of those OOo installs are alongside MS Office installs, rather than instead of?

After having watched the video...

[neumayr]

...I really don't see how people might might see it

as validating the open source tool

or even

indicate a subtle attempt to dismiss OpenOffice

(emphasize mine). This video is the same what Microsoft has always done with anything that might, at some point, become a threat to its business - spread FUD as soon as possible, don't wait for them to become a real threat first.
In no way does that mean Microsoft views OpenOffice as real competition, at least not yet. Maybe it does indicate that they expect Oracle's takeover and it's database technology to make a OO Base a better Access, but still, it's just a preemptive strike.

EE is emerging market?

[jernejk]

Eastern Europe? Really? We've been using Office since Windows 3.1, which also had EE version.

If they aren't for programming, why VBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they aren't for programming, why VBA? After all, that's just another python. And isn't the shibboleth for the pro-MSO crowd the "Open Office can't use the complex VBA in MSOffice"? So complex that people who aren't programmers won't want to do it, yes?

And given that many people spend much more time twiddling where the page breaks come and where the figures and tables sit in the text on MS Office than they spend actually doing the work and writing the plain text, MS Office is DEFINITELY the wrong tool for the job.

I thought all these pro-CSS people were for "the best tool for the job, open or closed"?

They don't seem to be in evidence today.

Maybe their "best tool" is "closed source when you're promoting an open source product" and so cannot be used here.

list things broken in open office

[random string of num]

problems i have had Math ML interpretation is screwed (though at least the math editor is typed but why couldn't they used a more acceptable syntax) no cross referencing or labels! shitty formatting errors when opening docx but this is because of their shitty "open" proprietary format (the world would be a much better place if M$bullshit had a smaller market share so we didn't have to put up with doc format problems again, its just a document format you fucktartds!). I seem to remember docx is an iso standard or something but only through heavy lobbying by M$, they half publish the standard so Oo cant interpret it. Even go0gle docs has a hard time with that pice of sh**. I just wip out the LaTeX instead, ahh that's better anyone can reed a .tex file or a pdf. also WTF is silver-light is it one of those vampire movies?

Re:list things broken in open office

[doogledog]

Having read your post, I'd say that any issues you come across in a word-processing package are most likely of your own doing.

Microsoft EDGI

[Anonymous Coward]

Processes in Place

* Linux desktop virtual team

* CompHot escalations weekly review

- EDGI request escalations

* Linux compete squad - billv

* International desktop OS tracker link link link

Re:Quite frankly, OOo is damaging itself just fine

[DrXym]

I was actually amazed recently when I discovered that Open Office _wasn't_ written in Java because I'd always assumed that was why it seemed so slow at many things.

Much of the issue appears to be OpenOffice is dragging so many different runtimes into existence when it starts - Java, Python (for UNO), StarBasic, even bits of Mozilla for LDAP and addressbook functionality. So when OOo is running it may be running native C++ for much of the time with occasional leaps out into different runtimes. This bloats memory and performance is all over the place .

It's a mess and could do with streamlining. How it could be streamline I don't know. I think each runtime needs to be evaluated for its criticality. For example, if Java were considered "critical", why bother with Python when Jython could do the same job. Maybe LDAP can also be done through Java to lose Mozilla. Perhaps StarBasic can be killed completely or at least be optional / deprecated. And if Java were not critical, what happens for things like OOo Base which depends on it?

In summary it's a bit of a mess. I think in the interests of Open/LibreOffice's independence that if Java were critical that other options should seriously be considered as to how it is integrated. For example, perhaps a subset of Harmony or Dalvik would be a better fit. The latter would have its own issues of course (e.g. adding extra jars like JDBC drivers at runtime), but I expect runtime overheads would be a lot lower.

The funny thing is

[WindBourne]

that MS proved that is not true. EVERYTHING beat Windows, on all measures for multiple decades. EXCEPT for price. Heck, you could run regular Office on OS/2 (i.e. MS' infamous monopoly did not play in here), and OS/2 was superior in EVERY sense against win 3.1. But Win 3.1/dos won. Why? Price.

It is only a matter of time, assuming that Oracle does not screw up.

Why Microsoft doesn't have to be scared of Ooo

[kangsterizer]

Let's keep it simple:
Because open office plain sucks for real office work.

It's fine when you need to do your home works, a quite doc or demo, etc. Basically while it's not great, it's for for everyone who wasn't going to pay for MS Office anyway. It works and it's free.

Now if you're doing real office work, and I happen to do that sometimes, OpenOffice just sucks.

It's not (always) the missing functionality, although it sometimes is.
It's not always the horrible GUI, although it often is.
It's not the speed, although it may annoy (MS Office is extremely fast in comparison)
It's the bugs. The million bugs. If you start filling reports (that won't get fixed most likely) you've no time to actually work. Oh god the bugs.
You don't see them until you start using the features of the program above the "super notepad clone with tables" stage.

Just to list a few recurrent ones that make my life hell:
- autocomplete failures, even when disabled. some autocompletions cannot be disabled and sometimes just complete it wrongly, like a wrong date format, even if you change it or force it not to complete.. it does it anyway.
- properties updates - you need to quit OOo and start it again
- autosave - its useless, you'd rather check auto backup complete file, sometimes OOo is going to break while saving the XML inner file and 100% of the data is lost
- UI options: wtf ?
- split view: "open a new window"
I could go on forever.

I do not like OpenOffice one bit, yet it's the only office suite you can use on Linux, aka the less "bad".

Feel free to to down rank and talk about how OpenOffice is great and you're an office worker while you're actually never using OpenOffice and probably have no job. That's how things get fixed!

No VBA, no lock-in

[Diddlbiker]

Microsoft has been working very hard over the last few versions to make the use of VBA less and less attractive. The strategy behind this must be (I cannot imagine anything else) to promote the use of .NET but I don't think that is happening. What is happening, is that it's forcing more and more users to work with macro-less solutions. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that macros are great way to lock their customers in. Instead of getting a small group of developers moving to .NET they are now confronted with a large group of customers moving to OpenOffice. Once you break the VBA barrier there's nothing that will stop you after all.

12 year old with an MCSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows administrators are cheaper because Microsoft pursued a strategy of ensuring that there was a training infrastructure for their products. There is a whole ecosystem of books, online material and courses created by Microsoft to facilitate people learning their product. No such infrastructure exists for open source products. It may not even be possible to create such an infrastructure.

You mean like those twelve year olds you get their MSCE? How much would they get in salary given they should "know" the product because they have their papers?

Bullshit, at least where EE is concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from EE, I know how things stand here. Licenses and know-how? The market for office software is saturated, no point in winning over new clients and techies, because they don't exist. Apart from start-ups and students of course. If anything companies may consider switching to OO as OLD MS Office versions become obsolete. In other words, when faced with the annoying docx problem they install OO to convert it to doc. Sometimes that's enough to switch...

Oracle vs Access

[mangu]

Oracle will kick Microsoft out of the meeting when they integrate OpenOffice with their database system.

Personally, I'm no big fan of Oracle but there's no way any of Microsoft's DBMSs could hope to compete with it.

Pipe Dream

[pyster]

Scared? Of a piece of software only nitwitts and douche bags are embracing? OpenOffice sucks. I think they are taking opportunity of the current openoffice chaos to bring to light the chaos and in-usability of openoffice in the real world.

OOo is MS's perfect poison pill for OSS

[Dr. Spork]

Open Office is just good enough that some stingy businesses are tempted to install it, only to have their employees waste many hours and advance their greying/balding trying to make it work. A friend just told me about a presentation machine that had only OOo, and a very important presentation meeting turned into an unproductive catastrophe as everyone tried guessing at what the slides were actually supposed to say if they had been displayed correctly. People who have OOo forced on them at work have a million stories like this. MS Office is downright cheap if you compare it to the price of a single wasted meeting involving a dozen people.

But here is why OOo really is Microsoft's wet dream come true. It's because OOo is essentially unfixable. It is a ridiculous tangle of spaghetti code dating back to the 90's when it was all a giant proprietary platform-independent semi-OS. Every new version tries to atone for some of this original sin, but only so much progress can be made. Chasing after the many bugs reported in the comments above must be like a nightmare search though a forest of tangled brambles. The point is that OOo's code base will never produce a truly good application. And yet, the OSS community is going to keep fucking that chicken. We're committed and we're sticking to it. We're not going to throw a decent number of developers on much more promising alternatives like koffice, because we've got OOo that can "do more" now. But OOo has no future. It will will always be "almost good enough." And that seems to me like the perfect poison pill: It's good enough to seem worth trying, but when it goes horribly wrong, all of OSS ends up with egg on its face. It seems good enough to be worth an investment of development resources, but putting a bit of polish on that turd is probably harder than just adding features to a much cleaner code base, something that could one day actually be great (unlike OOo, which never can). So OOo is the perfect tool for destroying enthusiasm for OSS, and it's the perfect tool for sucking the oxygen out of OSS projects that might actually become as good as MS Office. Microsoft could not have dreamed of a better ally!

Re:Quite frankly, OOo is damaging itself just fine

[pyster]

This is pretty much the truth.

Why is everyone dancing around the issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason people use MSOffice is because it is the only thing in the market that can ensure interoperability with MSOffice. It is a complete failure of regulators which did not mandate interoperability and now a vendor lock-in exists. We now have the paradox of sovereign entities (a county, a country!) that do not know what the contents of their documents are (it does not have access to the file format it stores official documents in). Spectacular!

Crack smokers

[pyster]

Its been a while since I have said this... but the user comments make me want to smoke crack. Openoffice is unusable crap, and with the recent issues with the forking, and Oracle's recent lets screw open source movements, the FUD of using or adopting it is founded in in obvious. So many of the comments around this were basic ignorant of the facts hippy douchebag bullshit. None of you seem to actually understand how office suites are used in the workplace.

I've been using openoffice at home for a little over a year for word processing and spreadsheets, and I have to say that MS-WORKS was more enjoyable to use.

Perfect FUD antidote: sunlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidence of compatibility and INcompatibility: http://www.officeshots.org. Only for ODF formatted documents, though.

It's Free...

[InsertCleverUsername]

...and the Office suite has been M$'s biggest cash cow. Next question.

naively?

[crimperman]

TFS says

A recent Microsoft video on OpenOffice is naively seen by some as validating the open source tool. As InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues shows, the video is really a hatchet job on OpenOffice.

and from TFA:

But considering the 90 percent-plus share Microsoft Office has in the office productivity market, why would Microsoft validate OpenOffice.org?

I think both have missed the point. Those claiming that MS has validated OOo as a viable alternative are not suggesting that this was the intention. It would be virtually impossible for anyone to see that video and presume MS were somehow endorsing OOo. By attacking it they are MS not also implying it is a threat to MS Office. They are saying it a competing product which potential customers might choose or existing customers migrate to. If MS weren't worried by OOo they wouldn't have produced this marketing video decrying it: they would have ignored it.

Whatever your opinion of the suitability of OOo, this video suggests that MS think it's worth making to prevent people going over to OpenOffice.org.

SMEs are the backbone of the economies...

[Anonymous Coward]

European, American, Asian... SMEs are the backbone of any economy.

And what office suite is *the* real MS Office killer for SMEs ? Google Docs.

SMEs don't have complicated needs : they don't need crazy macros nor 99% of the features MS Office or Open Office have.

What SMEs care about is: not having to worry about backups, not having to worry about "keeping files in synch", etc.

Because SMEs don't have money to spend on admins nor time, and certainly not need, to train people on how to use all these needless features.

I'm the owner of an SME now (and before that I worked for a startup in California) and here Google Docs rules the day (and so did they at my previous startup).

It is just so convenient. And we're an SME, not Boeing nor Airbus : we don't care about "trade secrets" issues that could surface due to the fact that our documents are hosted by Google.

On the contrary : to us this is basically free outsourcing of all our "office documents infrastructure".

No more file format issues, no more backup issues, no more synch issues, no more "where's this file" issues, no more "Mac / Windows" issues.

SMES are the backbone of the economy and the real MS Office killer in this area is Google Docs.

On one side you have Google Docs, on the other Open Office. Enjoy your illegaly sustained monopoly while you can MS ;)

In all likelihood ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... Microsoft's reassessment of OpenOffice as a competitor stems more from a concern over the intentions of Oracle, rather than from the intrinsic merits of the software.

.. and why it does..

[cheros]

I'm with you on some of the usability (whoever came up with auto-complete ought to be fed cactii via the rectal cavity, if I hadn't planned to reserve that for whichever jerk cam up with the idea that Internet links MUST be formatted differently).

However, I spend almost 2 decades rescuing docs produced by people who have never figured out the use of styles, a problem augmented by an IT department that was making sure it kept a job by means of cooking up bizarre doc macros that were mandatory. And crap.

Documents in this company were a LOT of cut & paste, and there is no better way to make a screaming mess of a Word document than picking bits from other docs with weird macros, formats, manual changes in format - Murphy's law applies here because the more you approach the end, the bigger the complexity and just before production, such document would fail with razor sharp timing.

The quickest way to clean up that mess was (and still is) to open the doc in OpenOffice, which seems to have a much better crud tolerance than MS Word. OO opens up a doc where Word would just crash and lie twitching in your task list, begging to be put out its self inflicted misery. And OOo didn't execute and macros, so that was more risk of failure removed. Clean it up, save as Word format and hey - it all works again.

Personally, I think you need both. Word because you get stuff sent by feature geeks, so OO won't open it properly. OO because it's there is you need to get some work done, and its interface has remained consistent instead of being sacrificed on the altar of "needing new stuff to sell needless upgrades". Boring, maybe, but if boring gets the work done it has my vote.

BTW, the Mac version does not have the ribbon. That makes it worth switching all by its own..

Re:.. and why it does..

[kangsterizer]

The thing is, OOo is so crappy by it's UI and by it's bugs that it makes office ribbon a non issue :p

When I actually want to do something I'd rather start MS Office since it actually works.

I'm not using zillion features etc, I just want the useful stuff to actually work consistently.

That's something OOo doesn't really deliver. OOo is probably a much better tool for recovery bad word documents, than for writing them :P

Closed source at work, Opera

[SmallFurryCreature]

Sorry to disappoint, but wrote this using Opera. Shows what closed source does eh? Or maybe English is neither my first or second language, how many do you speak AC? Oh... wait. All... damn.

First they ignore you

[bugs2squash]

then they ridicule you, then they the fight you...
Then you win

MSOffice 2003, 2007, OpenOffice 3.2

[srobert]

The MSOffice 2003 user interface is very similar to the OpenOffice 3.2. At my work we recently switched from MS Office 2003 to 2007. There are a few improvements in functionality, but the change in the interface (the ribbon) is difficult to adjust to. I think that's exactly what Microsoft was shooting for in changing the interface, i.e. making it difficult for the casual user to switch to alternatives. Most of the changes aren't really improvements, but rather an attempt to lock themselves in as the sole vendor.

Didn't anybody notice?

[grandpa-geek]

Microsoft's monopoly in the operating system rests on MS Office. It is only the incompatibility of MS office formats that keeps people buying Windows. If OpenOffice is competitive, there is no reason to buy Windows.

can i just say

[Anonymous Coward]

whoosh, i think

Yawn

[artistscope]

Yawn... OpenOffice is so inferior that a fly wouldn't use it. Don't believe me? Create a document and then convert it to PDF. Ha-ha-ha-ha!

half the cash-flow

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft makes 50% of it's total income from MS-Office.

(Other half comes from Windows, that the only reason they hate
Linux and Mac)

The Year of the Linux desktop will be easy to notice, because that's
when Microsoft begins to crumble.

Re:It's because..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because it can't be true. Insert rant about treating stereotypes here.

IBM must be smiling

[ElliotWilcox]

One only needs to read all of the articles today from slashdot, paints the Microsoft picture pretty clearly. Microsoft feels threatened. Linux is taking over the enterprise, Microsoft is giving away 500,000 licenses in china and russia under the auspices of freedom and at the same time bashng OpenOffice for giving itself away. The war is on, Microsoft has a viable competitor, it's name is open source. Congrats IBM, you started all of this with the Linux open project... I've installed and run the free version of MS WSS 3.0, works well inside an Ubuntu Virtual machine! http://wss.gregrank.us/