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Microsoft Pays University $250K To Use Office 365
BogenDorpher writes "Microsoft has offered to give the University of Nebraska $250,000 dollars to make the switch from IBM Lotus Notes to Office 365, which they say offers newer technology, greater flexibility, and operational savings. Microsoft did this in hopes that the University would not make the transition over to Google Apps."
Pay me $500,000!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
It wasn't good enough sell to the university, so they paid them outright to use Office in the cloud?
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At first I was outraged that Microsoft "discounted" (read: bribed) the uiversity to switch but then I realised that the students are probably grateful because
Lotus Notes is a horrible horrible piece of software. Microsoft might be evil but Lotus Notes is the scourge. I would happily endure a Windows only hell over a life of Lotus Notes.
IBM probably did this to the university to begin with, no system administrator would use Lotus Notes willingly.
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University of Nebraska: "I don't care what the benefits are. You'd have to pay me to use Microsoft's Office 365."
Microsoft: [Takes out a checkbook.] "How much are we talking about?"
The software practically sells itself!
needs to go. What's with all this anti-competitive bullshit coming from Microsoft. They actually used to be a very good technology company until a couple of years back.
Think of it as a marketing tool. If it is good students who have used it for 4 years will go on to promote it in business, at which time they will be laughed at, (or not).
Lotus Notes still exists?
...possibly because it so unbelievably bloated? or because they glued Lotus Symphony into it and made it even more bloated? I can't think of any other specific reasons because there are so many... ...
Did I mention that Lotus Notes is a bloated, fat, resource hog already? :D
No. RTFA. They discounted conversion services by $250k. The school is still paying for the product. This is commonplace in the industry.
"Sure, we want to swap from x to your product y, but it will cost us too much to transition"
"How can we help out so that we get a revenue stream from your subscription/maintenance (that still makes us money in the long run)?"
Who needs accuracy (though the linked story had the same inaccurate headline)?
$250k is cheap like a whore, the vice chancellor probably gets paid more than that in a year. I wouldn't get out of bed for less than $2.5m, unless that bed had Lotus Notes in it.
how things 'change', years after they 'should', into what? unlessgangstered?
250k? That's all? It will probably cost the university 3 times that in support and upgrade costs. They probably should have run this by their math department....
OpenOffice is good, but it's not a full replacement for modern versions of Office. If all you're doing is authoring memos and papers (by yourself) it will suffice, though. What's with the random dig at Nebraska, though? The state has plenty of social conservatives and plenty of liberals (see: Omaha) -- there's no reason to slam a pretty respectable university over your stereotype.
I use OpenOffice almost daily, but for very simple stuff. The truth is, it still lacks many features that Office offers.
So does Lotus Notes, which is the suite referenced here. I think this was really mostly about trying to get the university to transition from Domino to SharePoint.
Breakfast served all day!
I'm not being sarcastic there, I haven't seen anyone using that since the 90's. I kind of put it in my "assumed they phased it out years ago" file right next to Novell Groupwise (found out not long ago they still make that too).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Has anyone in Redmond actually tried using GDocs? The built in functionality is on par with Office from a decade ago, and the portability of its files is on par with Works circa WFW 3.11.
GDocs made a big splash as the first free, cloud-based office suite, but it really is subpar in every conceivable fashion. Its portability with regard to spreadsheets is particular abhorrent. Export to Excel and you lose all linking between graphs/charts and the data which is supposed to be driving them.
GDocs might be fine for grade schoolers who don't need much out of an office suite, but it's a joke for post-secondary education and beyond -- especially for students/professionals in STEM. I'd say a combination of OOo and Dropbox should be a bigger threat than GDocs.
$250,000 is nothing compared to future revenue once they are locked in to Microsoft products
...UNL sucks and is an embarrassment to the Big Ten Conference.
I suppose we'll soon enough see an endless stream of magazine ads including a "testimonial", about how Nebraska U. "saved" hundreds of thousands of dollars by "choosing" Office over IBM's product.
Wouldn't this count as a bribe?
That's what your mom said about your dad, but with no money for dentures, who else was she gonna get in the sack?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Unless my alarm company is also "paying me $300" by installing my monitoring equipment for free and 3 months of free service so I will then pay them a monthly, 2 year contract guaranteed amount of $30.
The University is paying for the service, but getting free services and a discount. Article makes it sound like Microsoft is paying them to use Office 365, which is untrue.
Microsoft seems to have something against Nebraska.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I've never had a problem opening/editing/saving Microsoft formats with OpenOffice (Though, technically I use LibreOffice now). However, Office 2007 and up handles .odt files very well. I never bother to do a conversion anymore, and just let MS Office handle it if I need to use the files on a Windows computer that isn't running OpenOffice. My papers tend to be limited to Academic stuff, reports, essays, and occasionally some mathematics-related stuff. So maybe I've never run into trouble because I don't use some of the fancy features, but that being said, I fit the bill as a typical student user, and don't really see a major hindrance or lack of features with Libre/Open Office.
$250k to compensate the college for trying out a new technology. I get the feeling that the university didn't really want to go to Google Apps anyways but used to as a bargaining chip with Microsoft. Organizations have done this before all the time. I don't know Boeing, Air Bus seem like a better deal. Or You know Ford we like those Chevy's for our fleet trucks. An educated consumer can really give those evil corporations a ride. (They just make all their money off of the stupid consumers)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Considering that they are going to pay 1/2 the yearly licensing fee, umm... yes, we will and it's true.
which they say offers newer technology, greater flexibility, and operational savings.
Microsoft: "It offers newer technology, greater flexibility, and operational savings."
University of Nebraska: "No it doesn't! It costs $249,999.99 more than Lotus Notes."
Microsoft: *slides check across the table* "There you go."
My work here is dung.
kickbacks are supposed to be UNDER the table....damn computer illiterate millennials...
Microsoft did not write a check to the University for $250,000. Microsoft, like so many other companies do, probably offered $250,00 worth of credits to pay for consulting services from themselves or their Microsoft partners. This is a common practice, that both Google and IBM engage in. Even your local taxing authority offers tax rebates to bring in businesses.
Sorry, I want to like Openoffice, but I just watched it eat my daughter's 20 page novella with a know bug in the auto-recovery that's existed since 2.0 and has an easy work around (disable auto-recovery). BTW, once the auto-recovery bug gets going just about anything you open gets wasted. It's a nasty, critical bug. On thing about commercial software, they can't tolerate these bugs because they get sued class action style.
Part of me wants to give them the benefit of the doubt on this, but the mean spirited part wants the devs at oo.org to pull their heads out of their posteriors on stuff like this. I can't help but wonder, if they knew it was a problem why the heck they didn't disable it in the first place. I understand it's hard to fix, but for Pete's sake, disable it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
A product so bad, you couldn't even give it away for free to Lotus Notes victims!
If OpenOffice paid them $250,000, I'm sure they would be glad to use that instead.
Heck, even the biggest Linux advocate would be silly to turn down that much cash.
Business ran just fine without the latest features.
MS Office is over priced bloated piece of software that does everything it can to tie you to it.
It's an easily exploitable security risk, and it force a company to behave how their software works, not the software to behave how there company works.
And of course this office 365 is a constant expense. Her we use office,. nit its office 2003. So while we paid for a license one time, we have used it for 8 years. 8 years at the current charge rate for Office 365 is out of the question.
\
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hey now! no need to go dragging your "facts" into this.
M$ is trying to get away with marketing unscriptable office apps once again (Office 365 doesn't support VBA macros).
What happened the last time they did this? Office 2008 for Mac dropped support for VBA macros. Customers complained mightily, and now it's back in Office 2011 for Mac.
There's only so much one can do with unscriptable office apps. M$'s new "ribbon interface" is hardly a breakthrough. Things only get interesting when users have access to automation and an easy-to-use programming language like VBA.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I know a common tactic used to talk about how much donors give is to point to really expensive software and say "they gave us 5000 licenses to a product that retails for $500! So they gave us $250,000!". I'm wondering if this is what Microsoft did, or if they agreed to actually donate 2500 hundred dollar bills to the school--the article didn't explain it at all.
The difference being, in my mind at least, that giving money sounds like a bribe, while giving software licenses in exchange for a contract just sounds like standard contract negotiation.
University of Nebraska at Lincoln? University of Nebraska at Omaha? Or the whole University of Nebraska system? There're more than one University of Nebraska...
Microsoft is fast on its way to becoming irrelevant - Their office suite was actually their best product ..sadly for them it won't matter for much longer
It also still doesn't seem to open or save Office files correctly, which is really needed if you want to exchange files with other people.
Funny thing is that Microsoft Office has problems saving and opening in different versions of Microsoft Office as well.
Their product is so convoluted that the guys who wrote the last version cant get the current version to save to the old version perfectly.
How is another company going to do it.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I have, on multiple occasions seen licensing fees negotiated down to 1/3-1/2 initial asking price on more than just Microsoft products. It is no crime.
I always thought higher learning institutions should be payed to indoctrinate their users into using a particular vendors commercial product, which frustrated the shit out of me when my state government continually announced signing multi hundred million dollar contracts with Microsoft to install their operating systems and office applications throughout my state's high schools.
I always wondering what was running through the minds of the dipshits making these deals until one day I found out. Turns out my wife's, sister's, husband's sister was the main negotiator in the state government making these deals. I found this out while chatting to her at a restaurant after meeting her for the first time.
She was actually a very nice, intelligent lady, but it didn't take long to work out what the go was.
I could tell by the excitement in her eyes while she was describing the latest hundred million dollar deal (which I had previously ridiculed with my friends) how much pride and status she felt about it.
It all made sense. She would have felt about 100 million dollars more important announcing her Microsoft deal than what she would have announcing a move to use Linux and OpenOffice.
This also explained why my Dad used to miss out on tenders where he'd already implemented the solution by the time the tender was submitted. He wasn't charging enough! He would only charge tens of thousands of dollars while the winners would charge millions of dollars for something they'd deliver 12 months down the track (or usually never at all). There's no status in doing a deal in the tens of thousands!
Moral of the story...charge like a wounded bull if you're dealing with the government.
...Google countered with a bid of $271,828.18
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
The 250k is not a payment, it's a discount. They'll still have to pay, just less.
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OpenOffice is good, but it's not a full replacement for modern versions of Office. If all you're doing is authoring memos and papers (by yourself) it will suffice, though. What's with the random dig at Nebraska, though? The state has plenty of social conservatives and plenty of liberals (see: Omaha) -- there's no reason to slam a pretty respectable university over your stereotype.
Yeah, because people were not writing documents or using computers before Microsoft Office was created.
Jesus, new generations are retarded...
They have money to burn now. Still, if I was them, I'd put the money into a campus party, then use Google Apps anyways, which is free for universities.
I8-D
Because openoffice doesn't do what they need. They currently use Notes for email and somewhat for collaboration although anyone who's actually used Notes knows it actually does many other things worse than it does email. They also have Office installed on employee and student lab computers, they are replacing that as well from the sounds of things.
I worked at the University when they made the move to Notes and was involved in the conversion / activation. It was absolutely horrifying, but honestly it was better than what was in place before, which was a hodge-podge of department specific servers and technologies. Several people actually ran their own mail servers or a student set something up for them, addresses were all over the map, and trouble shooting someone's issues was nightmarish. Yeah it was cool that I could get my email at my actual machine, but not so cool to manage.
Sounds like a good deal for the university. Cut your recurring costs in half, get 250K up front. Pair it with the fact they don't have to manage any hardware on site, and I'm sure it makes good financial sense. Now, not so cool for anyone who's job isn't necessary anymore, because some of that money saved is probably expected to come out of payroll.
I also think the 'cloud' concept works well for a university. Probably better than it does for a lot of businesses. Students are hopping from machine to machine more than your average person, having everything right there for you will be better than transporting it on an USB stick, using a third party cloud service or back in my day a floppy disk... Which don't handle the abuse of an average student well... (Worked at the helpdesk as a student-worker and had to tell uncountable students their file was unrecoverable, and maybe next time don't leave it on your dashboard when it's 100 degrees outside.)
No.
They gave them a 250k discount on the fees the University was going to pay to move the data from one system to the next, and deal with conversions and such.
Microsoft basically said 'Look, if you switch, we'll help you with the conversion for FREE!'. I'm not sure about MS's policies, at this company, we 'waive the setup fee' all the time, which is just a different name for the same thing. The setup fee for us is to deal with the issues of getting them converted from their old system to ours.
We never expect to collect it. Its a flag by the sales people, if a sales person collects the setup fee, watch out, thats the salesman flagging the account as obnoxious fucks that are going to be so difficult to deal with, we're going to have to charge them a setup fee to account for the amount of time we'll be wasting on them above and beyond what we would normally do for a new customer.
To our sales people, its simply a feature. 'You know what, I want you guys as a customer, I'll wave the setup fee ... I'll have to get approval, but for you guys, I don't think it'll be a problem' ... of course, all our sales people are told up front not to collect a setup fee unless you expect a problem or there is something specific thats going to require more work. If its something specific, they are instructed to bill it as something other than the plain Jane setup fee, such as document conversion or something like that ... but most of the time, we just don't charge a setup fee. We'll loose some money up front, but if they stay with us more than a couple years, its well worth the up front loss to reel them in.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
This sort of thing happens in education. Software producers know they need to plan for future users so they give it to the kids who they hope will buy it. Some coworkers of mine at an advertising agency said their professor called Quark (makers of QuarkXpress) asking for educational discounts for 30+ licenses and were told there was no discount. At the time the license cost was something like $1200 per seat. So they called Adobe and asked for educational discounts on InDesign, new at the time, and Adobe just gave them everything they wanted at no cost.
Worked in their favor too. When those kids hit the working world they only knew InDesign and their employers were forced to switch. We did. And never looked back.
"Then Adobe hit the market in 1999 with a program called InDesign (now used by Inc.). In 2003, Adobe launched its Creative Suite, which rolled in products such as Photoshop and Illustrator with InDesign. Quark couldn't come close. Its U.S. market share tumbled from 95 percent to just 25 percent ."
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100401/can-quark-turn-the-corner.html
If you want to sell your product give it to the educators.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
You have probably never used Lotus Notes.
Yes, the primary reason is they have to communicate with people other than OO.org zealots and actually want it to all work.
Sure OO can open a word doc ... sorta, and it can output a word doc ... sorta ... but for people who actually care about getting things done, the cost of Office is trivial in comparison to the headaches that go with using OO.org when you actually don't live in a bubble.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Yep, it does ... of course when you compare/contrast those problems to the ones OO.org has, its a fucking retarded contrast, but technically you are correct ... regardless of how incorrect you are from a practical perspective.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Yes, the primary reason is they have to communicate with people other than OO.org zealots and actually want it to all work.
Sure OO can open a word doc ... sorta, and it can output a word doc ... sorta ...
I love how people who haven't used recent versions of the software they are complaining about are clearly infinitely qualified to assess the quality of the current version.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
OpenOffice is good, but it's not a full replacement for modern versions of Office. If all you're doing is authoring memos and papers (by yourself) it will suffice, though.
What's with the random dig at Nebraska, though? The state has plenty of social conservatives and plenty of liberals (see: Omaha) -- there's no reason to slam a pretty respectable university over your stereotype.
Then again, outside of law offices, most of what MS Office is used for is memos and papers, particularly on a college campus. I don't really see allowing multiple edits on a term paper as a useful thing. Most universities actually frown on such an activity.
As for slamming Nebraska, any of the remaining Big 12 conference members would probably question using "Nebraska" and "respectable university" in the same sentence, but leaving the Big 12 was all about money and evidently so is choosing Microsoft's new offerings. But I'm sure the Corn Huskers got the best solution Microsoft's money could buy.
The 250k is not a payment, it's a discount. They'll still have to pay, just less.
Why when Microsoft does this with a university it is a discount, but when they do it in a foreign country it is called a bribe?
The 250k is not a payment, it's a discount. They'll still have to pay, just less.
Actually, the 250K is a payment. The actual article states that it is to be used to pay for consulting services,etc. Sounds like if Microsoft is making funds available, that it isn't a discount, but a payment.
From the horses mouth - http://nebraska.edu/faculty-and-staff/e-mail-migration.html
This isn't for students - it's for staff. At least UNL (the Lincoln campus) migrated to Windows Live Email for students and alumni a few years ago, replacing the internal hosted system. Lotus Notes is a statewide installation for all University of Nebraska staff.
I use OpenOffice almost daily, but for very simple stuff.
No, you don't. You post Microsoft marketing crap in every thread where you can stuff your comment.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
...need to be convinced to stop using Lotus Notes?
I worked at the University when they made the move to Notes and was involved in the conversion / activation. It was absolutely horrifying, but honestly it was better than what was in place before
So did I. (29 WSEC machine room graveyard shift network monitoring. I learned first hand that there was one person being paid to be on call that you should never call.)
I remember commenting on how bad Lotus Notes was and being told that regardless of its deficits the deal was made, people had been paid, and the whole University was being switched to it. Since leaving I've never had the occasion to use it again.
Could that be why I lost access to my CSE Alumni account?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
You gotta hang the pork chop around the neck of your ugly baby to get the dog to play with it...
That is all.
Yeah, but since they'll pay 2x per year, it's still essentially a "upfront discount." It's not like the University is getting money for using Office 365.
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I'm no Microsoft fan, but c'mon, ANYTHING is better than Lotus notes, in every way including cost
Linux is FREE, as are most of the highly capable applications that come with it! If you can build entire e-comm and trading floors
around it, I'm sure it can run an office... in the right hands...
Why do people pay money for software, and so called 'experts' anymore? Pay for skilled Linux people instead!
Any university that is becoming MS-centered nowadays is taking a step back in my book.
consider yourself lucky.
Is there a reason they couldn't transition to openoffice instead?
I'm sure there is. Maybe you should contact them and ask, and let us know what they say.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Actually, the 250K is a payment. The actual article states that it is to be used to pay for consulting services,etc. Sounds like if Microsoft is making funds available, that it isn't a discount, but a payment.
If you're going to put it that way, then I'll point out that Microsoft is only paying them to help convert them from Lotus to Office, they aren't paying them to actually use Office. They're paying to get them off of Lotus, which I'm pretty sure qualifies as a charitable contribution.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I suppose it's possible that Microsoft's solution might also not be as good as my testicle, but I can't imagine that it could be as bad as Lotus Notes. I mean, Microsoft would actively have to try to make their product suck to reach Notes' level of dysfunction. Lotus Notes actually makes OUTLOOK look like a fucking amazing mail application!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
God damn I have to hear about the big 12 here on slashdot? We left, we moved up, we ditched you fucking losers. Get the fuck over it.
Considering that they are going to pay 1/2 the yearly licensing fee, umm... yes, we will and it's true.
Umm... No. They'd be saving money compared to if they didn't get a subsidy and all other details were set in stone. You don't understand ROI if you forget that not-so-minor second part. And considering you're choosing between Microsoft and an in-place system, the savings have to be even more substantial since the cost to "transition" to IBM is $0.
Hopefully you weren't the PHB behind the deal or we're going to be seeing another story pretty soon.
And old geezers completely out of touch with reality are retarded too.
Yes, people can create text files with other various editors, but thats not the same thing.
You COULD use WordPerfect for DOS if you wanted too. I'm sure others you communicate with would be happen to deal with all the wonderful formatting you added in WP that Word knows nothing about.
Oh, they shouldn't be using Word? To fucking bad, they are, and you're obnoxious ass just lost the deal because you think your gods gift to the IT world and YOU know what companies need.
You want to communicate with other companies, you better support Doc files at least as good as Word, so that means you want Word, not OO.org or anything else.
People were simulating the physics of the atomic bomb with out computers, are you saying that we should continue to do that as well ... because we can and be cause you think some company in the supply chain is evil?
New generations may be retarded, at least they have an excuse for making statements that show themselves to be completely ignorant of the real world. Whats your excuse?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I checked. What you wrote isn't true. I think you should apologize to cgens.
Yeah, but since they'll pay 2x per year, it's still essentially a "upfront discount." It's not like the University is getting money for using Office 365.
It was going to cost money to convert from Notes to whichever platform they chose. Microsoft said they will pay that cost if they choose Office 365. So, yes, they are getting money for using Office 365.
Actually, the 250K is a payment. The actual article states that it is to be used to pay for consulting services,etc. Sounds like if Microsoft is making funds available, that it isn't a discount, but a payment.
If you're going to put it that way, then I'll point out that Microsoft is only paying them to help convert them from Lotus to Office, they aren't paying them to actually use Office. They're paying to get them off of Lotus, which I'm pretty sure qualifies as a charitable contribution.
True, but Nebraska had already decided to drop Notes and would have had to pay to convert their data regardless of whether they went Microsoft or Google. Microsoft is only paying them as a perk for buying Microsoft.
You can't say yea but. You are agreeing with the guy and admitting you were wrong and then trying to add a qualifier as to why you were in fact correct. That makes no logical sense at all. Either you were right or you were wrong and in this case you were wrong. If Microsoft gives them cash, no matter why, it is not a discount but in fact clearly a payment. If it was a discount it would simply reduce what they pay and Microsoft would not be sending them cash. You can claim anything you want but the bottom line is Microsoft said "Look, use our product and we will cut you a check for $250,000, to use for whatever you want or need." Microsoft very clearly paid the University to switch to their software and it clearly wasn't a discount. Will Microsoft make up the money in the long run? Probably, but that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft paid them cash to switch to their product.
You would be wrong, as Microsoft is clearly paying them to switch to their software. If you cut a check for someone to switch to you as a vendor you are clearly paying them to use your products. It doesn't matter how it was spend you gave them cash that they didn't have before. Normally that is called a kick back and is illegal as all get out. Vendors are suppose to compete on the price and quality of their products especially when it involved government groups like a public university.
Personally I think the AG should look in to this as it is absolutely no different from a kick back or bribe which is illegal. I want to know if the software change was sent out as a request for sealed bids and had at least 3 companies bid on it like is usually required for most government contracts. If you ask me Microsoft is playing fast and loose and needs to smacked down hard, because they are doing the same exact monopoly actions that got them convicted by the US and EU. When you are a convicted monopoly the rules you have to play by are completely different from everyone else since you broke the law.
You mean the ODT format that Microsoft supports in Office and that Libre/Open Office support? Or do you mean RTF or DOCX or UOT or what? Both Office and Libre/Open Office support all those formats. You do know that DOC is not the default for Office any more right? You also know that Office itself has a hard time correctly reading old DOC formats right? This is pretty common knowledge in most companies that different versions of Word produce different DOC files that may not be able to be read properly (usually) by newer versions of Word. Microsoft themselves are not even compatible with themselves and you complain about Libre/Open Office? That is rich, really rich. Clearly you are blindly supporting Microsoft or you don't work with lots of different DOC versions like most business do when they trade around files with other companies. No one expects a DOC file they send to another company to open perfectly and be formated perfectly because they may not have the same version of Word. I have even seen companies call and ask what version of Word they have and try and save the file as that version to help it open better, and even that doesn't always work. This has been a known issue for a very long time with Microsoft Office products.
Probably not a big enough payment or donation given that Office doesn't default to DOC files any more. They default to ODT and then DOCX. Which Open/Libre Office supports as well. If compatibility is the complaint then someone needs to spend more time with corporations who trade files with other companies and see that even Microsoft has problems with this, because newer versions of office have problems reading older version files. This is a known issue with Office. Companies often call who they are sending the document to, to find out what version of Word they use and save it to that version to try and help it open better, but usually it doesn't help at all.
As a Groupwise user at work, I beg to differ.
No problem, just import that format into openoffice which DOES know about it.
I've never understood the insanity of sending things in rewritable formats to people you cannot trust - let's just change a few terms in that contract or add a zero to that price shall we? If it's a finished document it shouldn't be able to be trivially changed by a third party. Of course PDF has now gone down that road too but it's a bit less trivial.
MS Word is just a bit of software like many others that do exactly the same job, there's no reason to get fanatical about it.
I checked. What you wrote isn't true.
Oh yes it is: http://slashdot.org/~cgeys
I think you should apologize to cgens.
Die in a fire.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
true dat. i wonder how people are able to tolerate that shit for >5min. i mean, it gets non-responsive just for syncing. yes you can't do anything until sync is complete.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
even the web interface of office (running on chromium) is miles better than openoffice's native linux version. more responsive, more features, better looking, everything.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
yep, the recent version of open office were SO good that ubuntu, the champion of the open source world, switched to something else.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
What, does the U of N specialize in courses on sadomasochism?
I'd say that's normalcy bias. The same reason I think qwerty is more usable than dvorak despite dvorak being clearly technically superior and efficient
The added bonus of $250,000 makes for a sweeter deal while the University saves about 50% in annual email operating costs (from $1 million to $500,000).
They are getting $250k to make the transition _and_ paying 1/2 of what they were paying. It's not rocket surgery to see they come out ahead barring some colossal fuckup. Nothing in your theory is based on fact, you're just presenting FUD.
and then some more. Those students are enslaved for life
I'd say that's normalcy bias.
God I hate that bastardised word. What's wrong with 'normality' ?
i couldnt agree more, at my previous job they used notes for email/intarweb resources/databases, and i nearly whept tears of joy when i saw my machine at my current job had outlook on it
People, what a bunch of bastards
"A return to normalcy" (i.e. a return to the way of life before World War I) was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding’s campaign promise in the election of 1920. Although detractors believed that the word was a neologism as well as a malapropism coined by Harding (as opposed to the more accepted term normality), there was contemporary discussion and evidence found that normalcy had been listed in dictionaries as far back as 1857.[1][2]
I've never understood why people crack over new(ish) words appearing in the lexicon. Language is an evolving mechanism. Where is it declared that once set in stone a language can't change? Why does it matter to you and people like you so much? I mean it's not like anyone 'axed' you a question. Do you accept 'lol'? The Oxford Dictionary does.
What, you mean libre-office, the open office fork that doesnt have the good old oracle ball and chain attached to both its feet?
That doesnt have anything to do with quality, that is just basic common sense, get out of there before Larry decides he wants a license fee, and you have to suddenly switch within a few days, or bend over.
People, what a bunch of bastards
While I agree with you that that's the way it should be, I think the reality distortion field clouds the matter.
People seem to think MS Office is the only office product. Remember Google's lawsuit over the Federal one-contractor bid (MS)?
Same for iPhone, I think. The various government projects using iPhones and iPads? I'd venture to guess they didn't specify "generic tablet" but rather iPad specifically.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Nebraska will do anything for money. Anything.
If you ask me Microsoft is playing fast and loose and needs to smacked down hard, because they are doing the same exact monopoly actions that got them convicted by the US and EU.
No they're not, paying a university to use their products is not the same as bundling a browser and media player with their operating system.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I haven't seen that behavior, the only incompatibility I see is when someone sends me a file that is newer than my version. This is easily resolved by downloading the viewer from Microsoft if I can't get the document any other way.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Recommendation April 20, 2011
To: Vice President Technology -
The Email Recommendation Team has completed several months of research, testing, vetting the options for replacing our email and calendar system. We have collected input from the college community in multiple ways: campus, center, department, committee and virtual presentations, surveys, online input forums, and focused discussions. It is our recommendation that our College select Google Apps, not only to replace our current email and calendaring, but to leverage the wealth of tools and resources the Google suite will bring to College.
Our recommendation is based on the following differentiators:
Functionality:Both platforms provide a robust and evolving set of features; it was impossible to base a recommendation on feature-by-feature comparison. Surveys confirmed our own assessment that ease-of-use was a high value for both students and faculty and staff. Calendaring was the number one feature noted by staff. A solution that is ‘device agnostic’ (will work equally well on laptops, desktops, tablets, etc.) was important to the recommendation team and important to those we surveyed.
The team uniformly found Google to be stronger in all these areas, as well as others. In fact, the common experience during testing was that the Google solution “just worked”, whereas functions in the Microsoft solution appeared to be less consistent and more prone to variation depending on browser and desktop environments.
Cost - While both solutions provide email and calendaring free to students, staff and faculty, the Microsoft solution charges for faculty and staff use of features like chat, office docs, spreadsheets, etc. To obtain the Microsoft solution with a feature set equivalent to Google’s free offering would start somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 to provide the tools to faculty and staff. Total cost aside, our ultimate goal is to provide a collaboration environment that can be easily adopted across the college. The introduction of charges for a segment of the population creates a barrier in multiple ways. It has long been a question as to whether these solutions would remain ‘free’. It appears Microsoft is definitively moving to a pay-for-services model now, while Google still appears committed to the free model.
The team feels it is important to note that either solution will still require a significant investment in time and resources to transition well and establish a good support mechanism moving forward.
Support - It is our opinion that the Google environment will require less resources and investment to support. The ease-of-use noted above is a significant factor in assessing the need for end-user support. The number and range of enthusiastic endorsements we received from the college community who are already Google users reinforces that assessment.
Regarding administration of the system, Microsoft cites their solution’s strength is its ability to leverage an institution’s already existing Microsoft infrastructure. It became apparent during the set up of the testing environments that the Microsoft solution really is designed to leverage that type of environment. However, there is minimal Microsoft infrastructure in our College environment. The test environment for Google was a quick and simple “glitch-free” exercise, accomplished within hours. That was not true for setting up the Microsoft environment, which required multiple correspondences, a set-up webinar, and more than one session to trouble-shoot issues.
The team’s experience with the vendors during the assessment process also gave us an opportunity to assess the approach they would take in supporting us as an institution. Google provided a single point of contact who was extremely responsive. Replies to our formal and informal questions were full, complete and timely. Microsoft provided a point of contact, but also involved several others in resp
It also still doesn't seem to open or save Office files correctly, which is really needed if you want to exchange files with other people.
I have that problem as well but it isn't restricted to OpenOffice. My GF's instructors post all their assignments and lecture notes as MS Word or Powerpoint documents. Between the two versions of MS Office we have (97 and 2007), OpenOffice 3.3 and LibreOffice 3.4, LibreOffice is the one that works the most often.
The GUI also feels kind of sluggish and outdated, but that probably comes from Java.
OpenOffice doesn't use Java for the GUI. It is just used for some database backends and wizards but that is all. Most people can safely disable it and save some memory and start-up time. And LibreOffice is working on removing much of the java code.
Since they updated the icons in later versions, I think it looks fine, but some features are still pretty hard to find.
I understand that to a real computer scientist, VBA sucks. But I've done some interesting things with it. For example, I wrote a sudoku solver in Excel. You can watch the numbers in the spreadsheet cells change as it converges toward the solution. How could I do that in Javascript? I wouldn't know where to begin.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Microsoft is so far behind in cloud/virtualization that they'll have to start paying people to use 365. What's the old saying... "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" The "cloud" has very rapidly evolved and Open Source is a gigantic force there. Look at AWS EC2 and just check how many AMI's are linux based...
... what does that tell you about what's being adopted in "cloud"
My search shows of ALL AMI's on EC2
-- only 820 are Windows
-- 5,762 are Linux (ubuntu, debian, redhat, centos etc)
Since AWS is by far the largest IaaS Public Cloud