Slashdot Mirror
MS Office 2013 Pushing Home Users Toward Subscriptions
An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports that Microsoft has announced pricing plans for Office 2013 that include a subscription-based model for home users. There will be a $100/year Home version that can be shared by up to 5 users and a $150/year Small Business version. 'Subscription software of one form or another has proven popular in the enterprise (whether it be cloud services, like Office 365, or subscriptions to desktop software, such as Microsoft's Software Assurance scheme). But so far it's a rarity in the consumer space. Anti-virus software has tried to bully and cajole users into getting aboard the subscription train, but the large number of users with out-of-date anti-viral protection suggests users are resisting. ... As another incentive to subscribe, and one that might leave a bad taste in the mouth, the company says that subscribers will be given unspecified "updates" to add new features and capabilities over the life of their subscription. Perpetual licensees will only get bug fixes and security updates.'"
I am not paying a leasing fee for software, thanks.
Well then, I'll just leave this here:
Download Libre Office. $0, $0 a month. I think you can swing it.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Dad: Merry Christmas kids!!!!
Kids: What did you get us?
Dad: We now have a 1 year family subscription for a web-based word processor!
Kids: YAAAAAAAY!!!!!!
Better known as 318230.
OK, so why wouldn't any home user choose a free LibreOffice download over a $100/year msoffice subscription tax?
Kurt
Don't like it? Buy a disk. Want an upgrade? Buy another disk. Or don't use MS Office. Your choice.
no one in their right mind will pay $100 a year to use MS Word and Outlook at home
This is a no brainer. Subscription would probably work better if there wasn't so much competition in the space. A customer gos into a retail establishment and sees anti-virus on sale constantly for 1 year at $30 or less after rebate and then ends up getting charged $40-60 when they go to subscribe thereafter. Why would anybody who remembered the cost of anti-virus subscribe? The reason they discount it at retail is because they have to compete with other anti-virus companies. What they know is that a large percentage of people won't remember what they paid and/or are too lazy/lack the time to run to the store and purchase another copy. The other reason people subscribe is they aren't technically savvy enough.
You knew this was going to happen. Think you bought your software? Microsoft disagrees, and by the way, Microsoft doesn't think you should own your computer either. Anybody so weak kneed as to be afraid to act in their own interest and move to the free and open option gets no sympathy from me.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Libreoffice can open the *.docx format just fine; I just wish there was a way to work on Access databases in Libreoffice as you can in Access. That is my only gripe.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
Is this a reference to bug and security fixes? I moved away from Microsoft when I realized I wasn't buying new features, I was buying installation convenience to make a product I had already licensed more secure & less broken.
Microsoft delivers junk. Why would people pay for the possibility of some unknown future benefit? Anyone remember Vista Ultimate Extras?
Seriously folks, move on....
First an interface that no body likes ...say hello to blocky windows 8 than a screw you charge for Office. Bill come back! The captain is steering into the reefs!
Awww...screw it just go open source, spend half an hour learning the in's and out's and be free!
Word 2003 still works just fine...
Most home users barely use many of the features of these tools to begin with, they won't see the value of paying $100 a year for this. That's a lot of money to many people.
One more reason to stay with Libre Office...
Microsoft has been trying to go the subscription route for its software ever since Bill Gates was the CEO and remarked about how jealous he was at the AOL subscriber model.
Google Drive.
Seriously if you've not checked out googles iteration of google docs (and their attempt to compete in 'the cloud') you should. 5 gigs free space on the cloud, plus built in web based office suite, all free.
Though from what I understand it costs more than the old google docs subscription models did. If you decide 5 gigs of space isn't enough for you. But it would seem they have added value to it with the rather convenient google drive program
I don't THINK so!
Subscription software may be popular in the enterprise, but I can't see it flying in the home.
There's a huge difference between a word processor and an anti-virus software. Many home users often run an outdated anti-virus and, while this may not give them an effective protection, they don't really see the negative side. Yes, an anti-virus may nag that it's outdated, but there's no additional negative implication. Even if the anti-virus gets completely disabled, users will be able to use computers just fine. This non-criticality allows making purchasing decisions whenever users feel like.
The word processing or e-mail access is a critical function of the general purpose computer. Imagine if your computer requires a $100 payment the night a presentation is due or the e-mail client doesn't allow downloading some critical attachments unless you pay.
The first year the users may buy the subscription, but they will switch to some alternative in the first renew cycle.
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
Why would any home users purchase a $100/year license when they can purchase a full edition that installs locally for around $120. The local version can be used virtually for ever (or as long as the format remains relevant) and they don't have to worry about network down time, slow connection speed or MS pulling the plug on the service.
It is kind of funny how the marketing departments of big software companies think we actually look forward to 'updates' which annoy us and waste our time. Now I actually breath a sigh of relief when my BlueRay player gets past the moment where it may insist I have to spend 5 minutes 'updating' before I can watch my movie. I can't imagine wanting to pay $100 in return for being hassled with updates I don't care about. Apparently, they haven't figured out that people very well might pay $100 to never be bothered with them.
I think we've heard that we'll be "given unspecified "updates" to add new features and capabilities" before.
Reminds me of Microsoft Plus! and Windows Ultimate Extras, stuff that either adds little value to the product or is included in the next retail version of it.
Sign me up! This deal sounds just as good as the one the kid from the Geeksquad gave me on my new fatherboard.
Respect to the big MS
I doesn't seem very good value to me.
I just bought a home license for office from Costco for ~$120 with instant $20 rebate. It allows up to three licensed installations and it doesn't expire. Like many people, I don't upgrade instantly each time a new version of Office rolls around, so you can easily amortize that cost over say.. 3-4 years. So for my 3 licenses (only two of which I'm even using), I paid about $33/yr, or $16.50 per active license/yr and don't have to worry that the software will expire.
If I bought this subscription, I would be paying $100 every year, getting more licenses - even though I can't use more, so I'd be paying about $50 per active license per year - and I better keep paying it if I want to keep editing my files.
Value seems poor, even if I used more licenses, and even if I hadn't got the $20 rebate. Seems at first glance like a 2.5x markup in my case, in fact.
I would have to need the stuff not in the free apps pretty badly to pay a subscription. As in, "do I really need to do this?"
I'm tired of companies calling things convenient that aren't convenient, and using it as an excuse to screw us. Or "Simplifying" things and making things both more expensive, and harder to customize. I think for the first time the IT industry isn't getting better in any way shape or form it's getting worse!
We definately have options to say the least, I haven't had word installed on any of my PC's for almost 10 years. Do I use word, yes but very rarely and thats due to it being the only word processor available at school or on family members computer.
Personal preference is Abiword for word processing it very lightweight but the spelling/grammer checker is lacking in comparison to openoffice but it more than makes up for that in raw simplicity and ease of use, so I use it to write in before transfering over to one of the other programs to do a final check on spelling/grammer.
Openoffice I prefer this over Libreoffice mainly because I have been using it since I ditched MS Office and I'm used to it.
Libreoffice tried it a little while ago but not the biggest fan of it, but I also had a lot of problems with it just plain working.
MS Office, I don't use it but I will admit in terms of functionality and spelling/grammer checker it is hands down the winner. But it costs money and after they changed the interface years ago I don't know where anything anymore.
Fuck that.
I will use my current version of Office until it is absolutely and completely obsolete, and I will switch to something else before I buy into this "pay indefinitely for something" BS. Try increasing sales the old-fashioned way, by actually offering new and innovative products, instead of using this rent-a-program crap to leech off your customers.
I think the price is about 2x what they are currently charging... maybe 3x. They have 2003, 2007, 2010, and 2013. If I bought each one, then I'd be putting out about $100 every 3 years. I guess you get more users.
Office 2000 still works. It'll even open docx files with this.
I'm happy to use the more recent versions of Office, but it has to be on someone else's dime. (Like, my place of employment.) I bought 2000, it works, and they're gonna havta pry it from my cold dead hands (at least until I switch to something open source).
Why would a home user waste valuable income on a new version of Office? Are ribbons all that important for that letter to Aunt Edna?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I know this is Slashdot, but could the editors have done a better job cherry-picking the article for the negative, riot-causing bits?
Standard (perpetual) licenses still exist, as a one-time purchase, so nothing is going away. The article doesn't say what the cost will be, but $130 for a home purchase (single user) isn't a bad deal. So you can get that, OR you can pay $100/year and get five machines covered.
The new pricing for businesses (especially small businesses) is great. Considering that if you pay the yearly fee you also get Exchange hosting and cloud sharing space.
Let's not also forget that Windows 8 RT (the tablet version) will come with Microsoft Office for free.
And if you don't like it, don't use it. But since when did we start complaining about choice?
Expect to be followed up with a "Free to Type" and "Pay to Save" model shortly.
Sadly I think this will actually work out for microsoft. This is the same sort of thing happened with MMOs. The thing is, you do something like this and drive away 2/3rds of your customers... so what if the remaining 1/3 is paying 10x the price for the same product. And what's going to happen here is people will get windows for "free" with their computer. They'll put all their files and such on it and then after 6 months or so... bam... can't access any of their important documents and the only way to get them back is pay microsoft $100.
If you are doing PPTX at home for work, shouldn't work provide you with a copy of MS Office? Maybe I'm being silly, but I don't do powerpoint at home to impress my friends and family.
Predictably, there are already lots of mentions of Libre Office.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit that Google Docs (free) meets my meager needs. You can even download copies of your documents, in several different formats, to store locally.
Highly recommended unless you have advanced needs.
Why would anyone pay in advance for unspecified updates from a company that has offered similar promises before but delivered poorly in the past? Windows Vista Ultimate Extras, anyone?
I moved away from MS after I decided the only incremental value of each new version was that it more conveniently packaged bug and security fixes for products I had already licensed.
Does anyone think this company will change its behavior in the near future?
BTW, any ideas why my relevant postings keep disappearing?
Dear Microsoft,
Thank you for the generous time and money donation to "The Documentation Foundation"; home of LibreOffice. The extra incentive of more users having more time to devote to providing feedback to make LibreOffice better and more focused is certainly appreciated. However, in the future, perhaps consider a straight up money donation as this will be better for your business. After all, more competition is better for the consumer and if it weren't for the consumer, neither of us would be here.
For the future developers coming into the fold, there are plenty of User Interface improvements that are perfect for getting your feet wet with the project. We welcome you aboard!
Best Wishes,
LibreOffice Development Team
the company says that subscribers will be given unspecified "updates" to add new features and capabilities over the life of their subscription.
Remind me how many extras were added to Vista Ultimate?
Poor poor Linux users. They don't get any of the subscription fee love. They get the full Libre Office package, with new versions updated every year, but they are forced to download the package for free (if they want it), complete with security patches, upgrades and all. They don't get the opportunity to pay on a monthly or weekly basis. They are forced to use the software at no change in perpetuity. Darn! Oh, and no one will kick their door down for giving copies to their friends, relatives, co-workers, the kid down the street, or (re)-posting it on the internet. Darn, Darn, Darn!
MS Office dominates any type of office-related application. At the end of the day, it's what the kids learn in school, and it's what lives at 90%+ of businesses in the field. Compared to their current atrocious costing on a "pay-to-own" piece of software that changes every 3 years, these prices are not terrible.
$100/year for 5 people utilizing a suite of Office that they will always have the latest software access to is not terrible for a family. A small business plan is what they've been lacking for years, and has kept companies like mine from being able to earn any kind of reasonable points on reselling something like software/hardware to my clients that they will buy no matter what.
I'm forced into being an M$ punter by profession, but that doesn't mean we don't come up with alternative solutions where viable (i.e. Linux for server OS, Apache for Web, etc). However, at the end of the day it's what the customer wants, and when 90% of the idiots they interact with are stuck in this solution, this only provides a helping hand to those of us that have struggled for so many years in their ridiculous "Parter Program".
They have made some great strides in the last couple years on providing services I can sell my clients, earn points on (albeit not many), and reduce the liability that I need to incur for small-medium size enterprises I support.
Cry as you will about subscription-based pricing, but it works. It will continue to do so.
Here's a newsflash.
Actually, most home users spend more time putting words and pictures into Facebook than they do into any office suite.
My point being that for probably 75% of the public LibreOffice or GoogleDocs are absolutely just fine.
And if LO breaks your dumb Word doc, maybe it's because you've filled it with unnecessary junk that actually detracts from what you're doing.
Three Squirrels
"MS Office 2013 Pushing Home Users Toward Libre Office".
There, I fixed that for you.
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/
Reloaded the last version of Office I bought, which was Office 2000. It is still doing everything I need to do. Imagine that.
Microsoft provides the Orifice and a decent laptop for a $100/yr. Then I might be interested as long as I still have administrative privileges and can install whatever else I so desire on said device.
Until then, there's no need, ever, for me to buy another copy of Bob and the Office. If I need it at work, my employer will provide it. If I need it outside of work, there's Libre Office. If I need it where I don't have a computer, just about every public library has it installed by some magical marketing sham. And last time I checked there's the Google Docs alternative as well, not that I advocate turning anything business related over to the Google TOS vapor cloud.
Kids who learn the Orifice are flexible enough to adapt to alternative software. Professionals who can't can pay for it when they're clients are addicted.
The monthly recurring service fee has become a Holy Grail for the Fortune 1000 companies. I only hope the public wakes themselves from the dependency it requires.
Based on the prices listed in the article, you're almost better off getting a Technet subscription.
This is a coincidence. Just tonight, my wife asked me if she could use OpenOffice on a Microsoft Access database. Some colleague of hers in the Math department had for some unknown reason put a bunch of data in Access.
It took about 30 seconds.
No need for Microsoft Office. None. Zero.
I think we're going to see a rental model being pushed on consumers for everything going forward, from housing and cars to consumer electronics and software. If they could figure out a way to rent us food, air and water, I'm convinced that in this "private capital" world they'd be doing it.
They only thing they want you to own is debt.
You are welcome on my lawn.
99 dollars for 5 users...for one year. It includes all of office, including one note / access / publisher / etc. ... Nope, not at all.
So...break it down, it's $20 per person...no?
Is that a bad deal?
Here's a good business idea for the ambitious among you.
Build a website to link dormant licenses (users that have paid $99) with those that want to buy a $20 one.
Charge a $5 fee and watch the dollars pour in.
Looks like it's time to make the permanent switch. Opens Office docs fine and frankly is just a better program. M$ Word still won't let me see the damn formatting code to figure out why my indentations keep getting out of order.
I do have to say that the 2010 version of office has an unheralded devastatingly good feature called Custom Ribbons. It's even better than the old menus because you pick any feature you want and line it up in your own little toolbar in the order you use stuff. So for example you dump Bold, Center, Left, Font, Size, Cut Copy Paste, Print Preview, Save-As, and Print all in a neat little row. Bang, make a document, click your buttons mostly left to right, out comes your work. Before you dismiss this, the secret is that even the menus only used X functions. The Custom Toolbar has a hard to find set of buttons that eventually let you pick *any of the thousand features* in the entire program!
So I am starting to think THAT is a new game-changer feature that some edition of Libre Office needs to notice and put through.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Remember Visual Studio 4, back when Egghead Software was still a powerhouse? Microsoft went to a subscription model for Visual Studio. For an annual subscription fee, you were guaranteed to always have the latest version of Visual Studio. It actually seemed like a good deal at the time...but it lasted only about a year. Now...the "home" version (Visual Studio Express) is free. Let's hope MS Office follows the same path!
I would be willing to bet that Libre Office, or something similar in the open source market, would more than meet the needs of 90% of all home users. And probably a very large percentage of business users as well. I remember a time, not that long ago, when Internet Explorer had an enormous share of the browser market and many pundits were calling the browser war over. Eventually people found out that not only could other browsers work just fine, in some cases they were better than IE. The same thing could happen with Office software. MS could be putting a nail in their own coffin if they come out with this subscription model. Many people will start looking at alternatives - and find that there are free alternatives that are pretty darn good.
myself or my company to the Micro$oft treadmill to bucks shortly after hell freezes over. The quote "Subscription software of one form or another has proven popular in the enterprise" is obvious drivel from a Micro$oft PR flack. Our enterprise ENJOYS deploying every second release (or more infrequently if possible) of those products when we have to use them. We suffer not at all from being behind the so-called leading edge.
SA is for fools with too much money.
I've had Open Office longer than I can remember. It runs great on XP and will probably still run great long after IE 8 is unsupported by anybody. It boggles my mind to think that anybody still pays for a MS Office product at home; but there are still people who use AOL so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised.
Consider for a moment who is affected most by (almost any) pricing change to Office. I'd wager that enterprises/corporations aren't affected as much, or perhaps it is the case that the dynamics of how they'd react to pricing changes to Office are different from the dynamics of the consumer market and how it would adapt to such changes
Consumers - home users, students and the like - will not stop wanting Microsoft Office. Technology savvy users will use other options - and there aren't a dearth of alternatives to Microsoft Office really. Nevertheless, the general populace will simply not embrace an alternative as the canonical choice - they will continue wanting Office. And Microsoft will provide it to them for free.
Consumers will receive their free version by purchasing a new version of Windows RT that comes pre-installed with Office. This will catalyze the sales of Windows RT devices, and I suspect it will notably help the sales of Surface RT. And the rest of them will receive it for free by accessing it through SkyDrive - which together with Outlook.com has an excellent implementation of web base Office apps. With the recent announcement of Excel Forms, Microsoft has completed the process of being at feature parity with Google Docs, and has bested Google Docs in terms of user experience.
This overall approach, of driving away users from traditional Office towards SkyDrive+Office Web Apps, or towards Windows RT, will work in favor of Microsoft's desire to sell more tablets, drive developers towards the Windows RT platform and convince them to build apps for it, and to compete with Google effectively (at least on the Docs front). I doubt that the subscription model will put a dent in it's coffers - because I suspect that the revenue they have historically accrued by selling boxed versions to families and students was likely a blip compared to enterprise revenues - and thus expendable towards the furtherance of other goals.
I've made couple of big assumption in this analysis, of course. One is that Windows RT will provide Office for free. So far, the only thing we know is that Windows RT will debut with the RC version of Office RT. I don't believe that there has been any announcement made about free upgrade to the final version of Office RT when it becomes available. I'm assuming that would be the plan, because the current plan of record insinuates it strongly as such, and it is probably not in the best interests of any company to use a cheap tactic like this to force customers to pay for an upgrade. Another assumption - which I believe to be reasonable - is that driving away consumers from buying the Desktop version of Office (or receiving it through a subscription) will not be a loss maker. Given these two assumptions, I believe that the remainder of my analysis works ok.
-- obligatory (but true) caveat: my comments my own, and don't reflect my employer or colleagues' positions.
That's brilliant value for my house. To quote Ars "For $99.99/year, there's Office 365 Home Premium, giving Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access, plus an extra 20 GB of SkyDrive storage (in addition to the 7 GB that you get for free), plus 60 minutes of Skype calls per month. This is licensed on a per-household basis, and one account can be shared by up to 5 users across any mixture of five PCs and Macs." 5 licenses of OEM Office Pro (a subset of the above) @ $290 each that die with the PC or $100pa for 5 users with upgrades to hardware and Office. It's a no brainer!
Java
with all its security failings and deceptive toolbars in the middle of security patches it really is the last thing i want on a machine, unless OO gets rid of the Java its not even an option today.
You need to be a student to get the Student Edition. Continuing to use it when you've left school is piracy by the terms of the license.
I guess it's true that it's the windows users who don't want to pay for stuff after all...
Your all forgetting one thing when windows 8 is released and MS locks win 8 computers systems down tight windows 8 system users won't be able to download FOSS it won't have MS digital signature the reason MS are bringing our the UEFI is because they have lost Government and education business all over the world, Shit the reports I've been reading about one province in Spain moving to Linux,
By the end of this year there will be over 1 million students and 400,000 teachers using Ubuntu Linux, In Italy three provinces have passed laws stating all government and education departments have to use open source software, France moved to Linux 5 years ago, England are pushing laws through parliament for the use of FOSS, Ireland is the same, Russia will be all Linux in their Government, schools, collages and universities by the end of 2013, Turkey University have developed their own Linux distribution, India, China, Japan have their own distribution and it goes on and on.
The only place windows 8 will be running is America
You obviously don't use a word processor often enough. All of those functions have keyboard shortcuts; Reaching up to the menu bar to make a bold, centre-aligned title and then saving it is *far* faster on the keyboard (Ctrl+ Shift + Arrows to highlight, Ctrl + B, Ctrl + E, Ctrl + Shift + S). Or, stop being a luddite and set up Styles.
IMO the menu bar is for seldom used functions. I don't often have to insert a table, or change the background colour, so those go on the menu bar. For everything else there's Mastercard^Wkeyboard shortcuts
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
But most people just want something to knock together a letter, or a short essay, or to track out their insurance / tax claims. I don't see much reason at all for using office in those situations. In many businesses it makes little sense either, being packed with features that aren't used and the functionality it does provide can be had elsewhere for nothing.
Libreoffice has been mentioned lots of times and it's a perfectly functional suite of apps. It's free, cross platform and comes with some useful stuff like print to pdf it works great for every day needs. I think the biggest sore point for the suite is usability and it really needs to work on this. It superficially looks okay but its filled with lots of annoyances which add up to give a crappy experience. e.g. I was copy and pasting text into a spreadsheet with coloured regions and everytime I did it wiped out the background colours and cell borders. That sort of thing happens throughout.
I also think with tablets becoming ever more popular that a concerted effort needs to be made to support that format. That probably means junking much of the UI or writing a simplified suite around the same document format and supporting it as Libreoffice Portable. But however it's achieved that also needs to be addressed because it's the next battleground.
Just the other day we setup a client with a delegate mailbox so she had two inboxes in her Outlook profile. Problem is, the pop-up notification only works with her primary inbox, not the other one. There are a bunch of hacks out there using VBScript and Win32 pop-ups, but they're nothing like the Outlook one (can't click on message, for example).
Instead, Microsoft puts their money behind such memorable hits like, "Where'd My Message Headers Go?". In Outlook 2003, you could right-click on the message and go to Properties. In Outlook 2007, it was right-click, Options, now it's under the abysmal Home Button thingy > Options, and you have to have the message opened to do. I'm sure some fanboi is going to jump on here and tell me of some other way to open it, but the point is, I don't want to learn new ways to do the same thing; we spend enough time in IT learning new technologies that UI distractions like Microsoft fobs off on us are unwelcome and counterproductive.
body massage!
For the same reason that Windows XP still has considerable inertia over the desktop OS market, a subscription model fails for casual, non-enthusiast users.
Gamers appear to be more than willing to put up with DRM or at least to pay the drug dealer for their regular dose. I doubt your grand folks that only want to see photos of their grandkids on Facebook would want to subscribe just so they can input rows of numbers.
Which makes me wonder if home users were ever a large market for MS Office. Do home users really do any office tasks besides letter writing? Only business-minded people would be interested in spreadsheets and dbases. Presentations might have a place in schoolwork.
Maybe that's why Microsoft is pushing for a subscription model because they know the number of office suite users is only going to shrink even further.
They would make a killing if they added character classes, experience points and unlocks to the MS Office online suite.
Word was finished with 4.0 everything else is turd polishing.... So what's the next big feature for Word? Integration with Facebook... LOL
Oh Snap, that's That is Windows 8.0
Because there's no way in hell I'm paying to rent MS Office.
Truthfully, Office 2.0 (I think that was its name - came with Word 6.0) did everything I needed back in the Dos/Win 3.11 days. Actually, there are few features back then that are missing today I would like to have back again (Grammar grading/checking, view format markers -- these disappeared around Office 95, are they back yet?).
But then again, I use Scribus for presentation work, not a Word Processor (right tool for the job sort of thing).
A few years back I had to write a system that would use OLE to build spreadsheets and documents (sort of like reports that could then be managed and controlled by others). I wrote this system using MS Office and Delphi, worked fantastic, could not believe how easy it was to do it. Anyway, one day I'm playing around on a system that had OpenOffice installed (no MS Office at all) and I fire up the program and run the reports expecting to see a bunch of errors, Nope, ran perfectly, I was floored! I've been an Open Office fan ever since (and, of course, the few times I had coworkers get corrupted Word Documents and I recovered them simply by opening them in OpenOffice has not hurt as well).
Adobe is pulling this crap too - but the difference is they can get away with it. At $1,000+ for latest CS6 upgrade, their pricing structure is higher and they have no real competition. They do add considerable value in content and functionality with each major release. Can't say that about Micro$oft Office. I hate "leasing" software but its basically what we've been doing anyway - buying a license for permission to use their software. Only difference is when and how much you pay - lump sum or monthly payment.
That's the big problem right there. For anybody getting paid to work on OpenOffice, please fix these two things:
1) Make macros easier with Intellisense (code completion). I mean, if Gambas can do it without any backing, what's holding you back? The legacy StarBasic is just awful. Even developers do *not* feel like learning and memorizing a whole object hierarchy, complete with function parameters, just to be able to automate a few documents. FYI, the reason OpenOffice is not able to offer code completion on objects is that every thing is (inconveniently) dynamic.
2) In almost every other program, when you have a file open, and then you open a new blank document, and then go to save it, it shows you the directory of the document you previously had open. The reason is that if you're working in a directory, you are likely to ... be working in that directory. But OpenOffice shows you "My Documents" or "Documents" so you have to drill down to ./business/invoices/2012/09 all over again, every single time. This should be a quick fix, just save "current directory" someplace.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Wait, what am I missing? OpenOffice and old versions of MS Office already had a toolbar with "Bold, Center, Left, Font, Size, Cut Copy Paste, Print Preview, Save-As, and Print all in a neat little row."
Is this a case of Stockholm syndrome? First they take away your toolbar, and then you're grateful when you give you the ability to recreate it by customizing the ribbon?
BTW, you always also had the ability to customize toolbars in both OO and MS Office. MS took it pretty far in Office 95 and 2K to where you there was all sorts of cool things you could do with custom buttons and menus.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Sorry, I picked too easy of an example of the customizability.
Let's try an Excel version. You start with a blank ribbon and your favorite commands are Format-Column-Hide, Select-Visable-Only, Format-Cells-Accounting, Record Macro, Stop Macro, Run Macro, (then the old ones) font size, underline, fill background blue, (unselect your cells and select all), Format-Column-Unhide.
I guarantee all of THAT stuff isn't on one juicy little toolbar, in that order, with no other clutter.
In case you missed it, I said it was hard to find, but you can select *any of the 1000+ features in the entire program* at your heart's content and stick them on your custom ribbon.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
OK. let me be stupid here, but Corel is still making WordPerfect. Could this type of thing bring them back to being a real player in both home and business use?
I've already acknowledged that MS Office has/used to have nice customization for the toolbar, so this isn't necessarily about M$O vs OO.
Secondly, strictly in the spirit of going to the heart of the matter, I've spent some time digging into your test scenario, and here's what I have:
Screenshot
Basically, a blank toolbar with most of what you referenced. In turn:
Format-Column-Hide: present
Select-Visable-Only: might have to install this OO extension
Format-Cells-Accounting: Don't quite know what accounting format is. I used Currency format.
Record Macro: I added this to the toolbar, but it's not showing for some reason. Didn't dig further at this time.
Stop Macro: present
Run Macro: I forgot to add this to the screenshot, but you can add it.
(then the old ones): what does this mean?
font size: present
underline: present
fill background blue: the background color selector remembers your previous color, in this case blue. Otherwise you'd do a macro.
(unselect your cells and select all): You don't have to unselect to select all, I put both commands in.
Format-Column-Unhide: present
By the way, did you mean: perform all the actions above, and bind that to a toolbar button? Because you can do that, too.
Anything I'm missing? Just trying to understand what's possible and not in the latest MS Office vs. OpenOffice.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Thanks for the effort.
I do feel this thread is partly about Office vs OO as a whole, because if Office 2013 is pushing subscriptions, it is important to know if LibreOffice (aka ex - OO) has some/most of certain functionality.
Once again I provided an example. Those functions I mentioned were examples of a user's most often items, collated to be used any and all as desired on a custom ribbon/toolbar. So since you seem to be pretty good, please advise where in LibreOffice has that system. My point was that the MS version had a (rather well hidden) drop down to darn near every feature ever, including hundreds of strange ones I'd never heard of. Does Libre have the same or did I just hit a "common use case" twice in a row? Please show me where the "toolbar builder" is. I'm as Pro-LibreOffice as anyone, and you're the first one to actually reply to my occasional mentions of customization with info.
Thanks,
--Tao
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
No problem.
Just check out View : Toolbars : Customize.
You get this customization dialog:
http://imgur.com/ZFCNT
You can choose to keep the customization only in the current document (custom toolbar loads when you open the document), or you can set it to be available for all spreadsheets.
While we're on the subject, let me mention that OO is much better than MSOfc in regards to formatting (both have character and paragraph styles, but only OO has page styles). On the other hand, OO has atrocious macro writing system.
It's OK for recording and replaying a macro, but with Excel, if you record a macro, you can figure out most of the resulting VB code. The resulting OO code is totally undecipherable. Please fix this, OO devs (if you can run VB code from Excel, just use that as the default language).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog