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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."
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.
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?
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.
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
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.
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