connectivity is good enough and cheap enough such that you don't need to store the music in the phone - you will simply stream it on demand from your "server in the sky" (ie your home server, through the net, like Orb). Note, this applies even more to video content, which will always swamp whatever storage you have in your portable player/phone..
why is it I suspect there may be a little more to the story? Massachusetts is a 1-party state with virtually *no* oversight (see Big Dig). Cronyism runs rampant and unchecked. I am not defending Diebold in any way, but frankly I find it hard to believe Diebold would waste time and money suing for a measly $9M contract unless they knew a little more about the "selection process". It would not surprise me in the least if it turned out somebody had connections. In fact, it *would* surprise me if the selection was indeed on the up-and-up.
You're kidding, right? IMO, it was the massive scale up of the internet that made the net worthwhile. I remember the early days of the internet very well. Do you? No ability to download music/movies/TV shows, no ability to download software, no ability to order dirt-cheap computer gear from places like newegg, no online banking or bill-paying, no Wikipedia or Google. Heck, there wasn't even a web yet; just a bunch of IRC channels and newsnet and nerd-infested chat rooms. It was a primitive, dark place. Once the masses started to jump in the richness of the net came about. Google is a great case in point. They make their obscene revenue based on advertising, which itself is fueled by the sheer number of potential viewers. Take away the scale up and you lose Google.
Wilkes decided to go all-Apple because the new Intel-based models and the Boot Camp dual-boot software - would let the school reduce the number of machines campus-wide. "This is an aggressive technology refresh," Byers said.
OK, now I get it. It's cheaper to standardize on Macs because they dual boot - therefore the same machine can be used to run Mac OS (and hence Mac-only apps) or Windows (ditto). So they aren't standardizing on Mac OS (as the headline implies), they are standardizing on Mac hardware because it can run Windows too. This has nothing to do with the OS wars, it is purely a financial decision.
The only reason to use Windows is if you need software only available on Windows or another proprietary platform.
Actually, I would think that another valid reason to use Windows (and a reason why Windows might be cheaper) is if your staff is all Windows trained. Getting new staff or re-training your existing staff is very expensive and those costs could swamp the cost benefits of a Linux build-out.
... that this is a don't care for MS. FAT is ubiquitous - thumbdrives use it, digital cameras use it, mp3 players use it. In fact it's hard to find a piece of solid state media that doesn't come pre-formatted with FAT. Because of that, I guess I was always under the impression FAT was in the public domain; it really surprised me to see there was a patent at all. Does anyone out there know if MS collects royalties or license fees from this patent?
I can play WoW with it, listen to my mp3s with it, surf the web with it, watch YouTube with it...the only two things I'm not doing with Linux yet are watching DVDs
Sounds like Ubuntu is all ready for use by state government employees then, except for that pesky DVD problem.
It is sad that so little civil interchange happens on/., but it is these rare instances that keep me coming back. And not coincidentally, those are also the ones from which I usually learn the most. Thanks.
Well argued. Let me counter by suggesting that if you have 100 employees, and the advantages (features, performance) of MS Office allow each employee to save a total of 5 minutes a day (heck, that's only 10 graphs per employee per day - if you have 10 employees cranking out 100 graphs/day you also achieve the same savings), you have just saved 1% of your labor (5 minutes is about 1% of an 8 hour work day). Now, the typical office worker, allowing for benefits and overhead, costs about $75K, so saving one person means saving $75K. It would seem to me that $7500 is a small price to pay to get $75K in return. Heck, even if each employee saved only 1 minute per day due to the superiority of MS Office versus OO, that still constitutes a net savings of $7500 after purchasing 100 MS Office licenses.
As regards the question on Office 2007 on old hardware, I am not aware of any performance differences in the new suite. I did some crude benchmarks (very limited) and found no difference in performance on my machine between Office 2000 and Office 2007. As I understand it, the "big savings" with Office 2007 are supposed to be in productivity due to a more coherent and easier to navigate UI. If this indeed is the case, the upgrade (per my above numbers) would in fact be compelling. I guess we shall have to see what the early users of Office 2007 report.
I was talking about Redmond's pricing policies, and how they are increasingly viewed in the rest of the industry.
Sounds a little bit like a broad generalization to me. I hope you aren't drawing this conclusion based on what you read here on/. Group-think and group-speak run rampant in this place.
... but the cord holding the fluffy dice dangling from the rear-view mirror is worn almost through
Touche. I suppose one over-reaching analogy deserves another. Maybe I really, really like fluffy dice - did you ever think of that? Maybe the fluffy dice play an important role in the driving of the car by blocking the sun during certain times of the day. People like you are very quick to dismiss fluffy dice just because you don't happen to think they're important. Well they are very important to some people. OK, I admit it, I'm a fluffy dice fanboy. Ya got me!
But hey, why let anything people actually say get in the way of your pre-conceived notions?
Wouldn't you think that if I had preconceived notions I would never have tried OO? I really wanted it to work for me since I was able to install OO on my thumbdrive (check out the U3 initiative at http://u3.sandisk.com/download/Download_no.asp), hence having it available anywhere I go without having to install it on the machine. Unfortunately this particular aspect of OO will not work for me, but I will continue to try other portions - who knows, maybe I will be surprised. One thing you can be certain of - if I use it and am impressed by it, I will freely and willingly say so. I am not blinded by ideology or envy (of the Redmondians). I just want good products that help me be productive.
Not quite. In fact it was virtually my first experience with OO Calc. I had some data I needed to graph. The machine I was on did not have Excel so I pulled down OO and used that. When I saw how slow it was I actually figured the machine I was on was too underpowered (1GHz C7 with 1GB DDR400). Only later when I replicated the problem on a dual core machine and did a careful comparison with Excel did I realize it was OO Calc that was the problem. This led me to try a few more things and, lo and behold, each thing I tried revealed a new problem.
generalization with no evidence
Well, I posted exactly how to reproduce the problems. Others on this thread did in fact see the same thing. That, my friend, is evidence. It sure beats the typical "M$ is teh sux" language that passes for evidence around these parts.
Open Source software is doing great.
I agree whole heartedly. Just the fact that I took the time to download and install OO and try it out is a testimony to OSS. And I am an avid user of Firefox, have used GIMP on occasion if Photoshop is not available, and also use Linux (not for the desktop), Apache and MySql. OSS is wonderful. I just had to take exception to the OP's claim that his company wasted $75/person on Office XP licenses when they "could have used OO for free". It is that kind of dogmatic, blind behavior that gives OSS a bad name. If it bothers you that I am willing to spend my time finding and advertising problems with OSS, try thinking of me as QA for OSS, helping the community to fix it so it really is a viable alternative in more and more situations.
Oops, you made a small slip there. As I have explained, I gravitate to the best product that lets me do my job. I don't put a heavy emphasis on price, though obviously price matters. I don't view paying for a product that helps me get things done as "a tax", given that I have a choice, which in this case, thanks to OO and others, I do.
Another overly broad generalisation, I think
I have been careful to qualify all of my statements to refer to OO Calc, not generically to OO. I do not have any meaningful experience with the other applications in the OO suite. I am merely saying that Calc (and specifically the graphics subsystem) is poorly done, and is not appropriate for spreadsheet users who graph. Now as to this being an overly broad generalization. If you were looking at buying a product, say a car. You sit in the driver's seat and hit the heat button and cold air blows. You hit the AC button and room temperature air blows. You turn the fan speed knob and the fan speed does not change. Obviously the HVAC system in this car is messed up. You know nothing else about this car. What do you suspect you might find, based on what you know, in say the engine compartment, or the transmission? It certainly doesn't give you confidence, does it? I have not spoken in absolutes except as regards the Calc graphing functions (and you yourself acknowledge I am correct in this criticism). But I am raising a warning flag about the balance of the functionality, about which I know very little, based on my experience with this one aspect of OO. It was done, I assume, by the same team and under the same development conditions, so my assumptions would not be unfounded.
but I think that in these days of shrinking budgets, that proposition might become an increasingly hard sell to the CEOs and CIOs of this world
CEOs and CIOs are business people who make decisions based on facts, not touchy-feely "software freedom" religious arguments. If I am a CIO and I need an office suite for 1000 employees, I need to approach the selection choice rationally. Let's try a simple (albeit contrived) example. Let's say the typical office worker costs my company $75K/year including overhead. Now suppose the "free" office suite made my employees slightly less productive (like if some of them do a lot of graphing, for example, and are forced to wait 30 seconds per graph). If each employee only wastes 5 minutes a day waiting unnecessarily, or working around some feature deficit, then I am wasting 1 of every 100 employees (5 minutes is about 1% of an 8 hour day). That means that if I spend less than $75K dollars to eliminate that 5 minutes of wasted time, I am ahead. Now according to the OP MS Office XP seats are $75. If I bought 100 seats (one for each employee) I would have spent $7500, but I would have gained $75K in productivity - a factor of 10 return on investment! That is the way CEOs and CIOs look at the problem. It is not a "Microsoft tax", it's a productivity enhancer. This is in essence the "cost of ownership" argument that you keep hearing about. It's real and it matters.
You don't get it.
I have to disagree here. In fact, I think I am much more in tune than most here on/. I see software as a tool, not as a "movement" or a "community" or as a "religion". And ODF is not some world-changing thing. Microsoft will support ODF, and yes, others will offer ODF-compliant office suites, and yes, Microsoft will lose some market share in the office market, but only insomuch as the other applications work well and allow people to do their jobs. All you have to do is open your eyes. XLS is pretty universal these days -- OO can read and write XLS files, as can many other applications, including the emergent online spreadsheets. This is not fundamentally different from ODF in that regard. And yet despite this fact (and OO has been around for years) Excel is the t
But really the only reason you've given me not to migrate my business to OO is that, if everyone else joins me, it might make your graphs run slower.
Actually I have reported 3 distinct problems with OO Calc (based on about an hour's usage). Yes, the graphing performance is abysmally slow... if you use Excel to graph then OO Calc would be intolerable to use. Second, the formula syntax is different than Excel. If you are the type of person (like me) that writes Excel formulas as fast as you touch type then OO Calc is not for you, because you will be forever fixing "typos" in your formulas. The third bug I found had to do with read only files - OO Calc "acts" like it's letting you create a graph (again, the graphing subsystem), but in the end it simply ignores you and does nothing - no graph, no error. Now, I will grant you that the 2 graphing bugs only affect users who graph. However, the formula syntax differences are more far-reaching and will really frustrate a seasoned Excel user (like me). And I can't help but wonder how many more nasty problems there are lurking given how quickly I found these 3. I suspect that the entire code base may be beyond repair given this kind of serious bug discovery rate on a supposedly "mature" application. And hence my comment about OO being "a toy". So in summary, I simply could not recommend OO Calc for any serious spreadsheet work. Perhaps it is OK for poor college students, or for high school students (though the student edition of Office is only $149), but for business people who depend on their office tools, I think the $75 per seat license fee (according to the OP) is money well spent.
But I think MS Office is doomed to join VisiCalc, Word*Star, the Dodo and the Passenger Pigeon. It'll be interesting to see who's right.
Indeed it will. What, pray tell, do you envision usurping Office? Surely not OO, which is just a poor imitation. Perhaps Google Office will bump Microsoft off, though I will be amazed if companies are willing to store their sensitive data on Google's servers, and have it flying all over the web for anyone to see. I think in the end Office will survive, but its price will drop in response to competition. As OO has shown, even trying to match MS Office in functionality is a huge task, and one not easily accomplished with a Microsoft-level of resources, so I don't see anyone creating a "better Office". They might, however, create a simpler, cheaper one that meets most users' needs (see Google Office example).
I just tried the same thing (Open Office 2.0.3 on Windows XP) - same machine as before (dual core, 2GB). Same results as before - 15 seconds before I got my graph and another 12 seconds before the UI was again responsive.
While demonstrating the truly pathetic graphing performance of OO Calc I accidentally stumbled across another serious bug in OO Calc (the type of bug Microsoft would be excoriated for). I dropped a read-only CSV file into Calc. It dutifully imported the data. Then I highlighted the data and clicked graph, dragged out the graph rectangle, selected the appropriate options to configure the graph and... nothing. I of course waited for at least 30 seconds because I know how pathetically slow OO Calc is with graphing. Still nothing... no graph... no error message.... I tried it again, same result. Puzzled, I noticed the "read only" descriptor in the window title. I closed the file, turned off the read-only attribute and reperformed the experiment. Voila, it worked badly just like yesterday, but at least I got a graph. So apparently for some bizarre reason if you open a read only file the graphing functionality does not work, though it "appears" to work. Pretty poor quality I would say.
Whenever I test OSS stuff I am usually reminded of a story a friend told me. He was visiting a mid-East country. He went into the men's room and they had one of those hand drying blower machines. He pressed the button to dry his hands and cool air came out. He examined the unit and realized there was no facility for heating the air. Apparently they had copied the "western" design, but didn't realize it blew hot air. Most OSS is like that. Superficially it looks like the *real* product it is copying, but just below the surface it falls apart. Now, before you blast off and call me the usual derogatory, unimaginative and trite names, I want to add that not all OSS is like this. Firefox is an excellent, best in class browser, and I used it exclusively until IE7 came out. Now if a machine has IE7 I use that, but if it doesn't I install Firefox and use that. I also have had good experiences with various Linux distributions, though not as a desktop replacement. I find KDE and Gnome sorely lacking relative to OSX and Windows). GIMP is good for what it does and I sometimes use it if Photoshop is not available. I am sure there are many other fine and competitive OSS applications, but I am afraid I cannot put Open Office in that camp - it is just far too buggy, sluggish and "foreign" to be useful to most users as an alternative to MS Office.
PS You might wonder how Excel handled the read only file. When I opened it, Excel warned me I was opening a read only file and asked if I wanted to continue without saving changes. I opted to open it anyhow and of course the graphing functions worked properly. Oh, and the window title also informed me the file was read-only in case it slipped my mind. This is the type of behavior I expect and demand from *real* products. I don't expect 30 seconds of frozen UI while a simple graph is created. I don't expect to be led down a series of dialogs configuring a graph only to be presented with nothing... no error, no graph, no hint as to what could have happened (or not happened in this case). Just imagine, I have used OO Calc for all of about an hour and I have stumbled across 3 serious problems. What are the odds those are the only serious problems in that application?
I didn't realize you were the arbiter of all that is useful to business users. I bow to your omnipotence. I'm sure all those people who use the Excel graphing function (that would be a very large number of people, many of whom are "business users") will be surprised to learn they are stupid. Here's a thought you might ponder in all of your wisdom. If graphing data is so useless why was it included in OO in the first place? Granted they did a crappy job on it, but isn't it better to omit useless features rather than to include a poor implementation, giving "fanboys" like me fodder with which to beat them up?
... where OO is slightly slower...
A factor of 50 is not slightly slower. 30 seconds to wait for a graphic, during which time the application is frozen is a little more than "slightly slower" - it would be better described as "borderline useless". I thought I was back in the 1980's waiting that long for a simple line graph. On a dual core machine with 2GB of RAM no less. This suggests strongly to me that the underlying code is extremely poorly done, and makes me wonder about the rest of the application. You have to really go out of your way to make a simple operation like that take so long. Either that or you have to be really incompetent.
BTW, I said nothing about GIMP other than implying that it is (undeniably) inferior to the closed source application it is attempting to emulate: Photoshop. Do you really disagree with that assessment? And I should also hasten to add that since Photoshop is not a Microsoft product, the "Microsoft fanboy" label you ascribed to me, sadly for you, does not apply. If you must assign me some derogatory label, please refer to me as a "Quality Product fanboy" as that more correctly describes me. You see I am not blinded by religious fervor and irrational hatreds. I evaluate products on their merits and choose the one that does the best job. And I don't put with up, nor do I recommend, crappy products if there is a better alternative, even if I have to spend some money to get it.
Now shut up
Ahhh, the standard response from open source zealots when someone speaks the truth. Sorry, but I will not shut up. I will continue to point out that which is obvious -- that most OSS is a poor imitation of *real* products. And given time I will also continue to provide detailed, verifiable reasons why OSS is inferior, such as I have in this thread. Happily, the gulf is so large, it rarely takes more than a few minutes to find a gaping hole in any given OSS application's functionality.
One more thing. While I am happily productive using those xls files someone emailed me, you can enjoy staring at a frozen screen waiting for OO to render a simple line graph.
I'm glad you found it so easy. And did you observe the same inexplicable 30 second freeze up while it created the graph? One other person on this thread tried this same thing and reported the same intolerable delay I saw. As for how easy it was to create the graph that's not a surprise since it is a complete copy of Excel - highlight the range, click graph, choose line, finish. Except Excel gives you your graph instantaneously, whereas with OO you have to cool your heels for what seems like an eternity.
Yours is an interesting supposition, but I think you are the one with flawed logic. First of all, I have not talked about menus and user interface differences at all - and that is principally the difference between Word and the then dominant Word Perfect. My two complaints regarding OO Calc are that the syntax of the formulas is different, and the graphing performance is pathetic. There are obviously many user interface differences as well, but those are less of an impediment to OO's adoption, so I haven't bothered to discuss them. And if UI changes prevented adoption, MS Office 2007 would be in alot of trouble. No, Microsoft knows that users are most interested in the features and the performance. They will deal with the UI differences because that is a short-term irritation. But having to wait 30 seconds for a graph is a continual irritant, as is having to change the way you enter formulas (as long as you also deal with Excel spreadsheets at the same time).
For simply typing documents there was not much difference between Word Perfect and Word. But imagine if you had to type in some other language with Word versus Word Perfect. Or imagine if it took 5 extra minutes to print preview with Word versus Word Perfect. Do you think Word would have supplanted Word Perfect given those severe shortcomings? I highly doubt it. Further, if Word didn't support, or offered a lousy implementation of, some common word processing functions (like underlining, automatic TOC creation, etc), then Word would not have usurped Word Perfect. Carrying this line of reasoning a bit further, it's interesting that when Excel came out, Lotus 123 was the dominant spreadsheet. And so Excel supported Lotus formula syntax, and at the same time it also added superior graphing tools. This allowed Excel to take over. It was a better 123. But, importantly, it was easy for users to adopt it because it had the features they required (plus some), and it allowed them to type their formulas the way they were accustomed to.
So, the fact that Word supplanted Word Perfect, and Excel usurped 123 are both, in my view, supportive of my logic.
Interesting list. Here are the freedoms I enjoy using Excel on Windows.
- The freedom to be able to work on >90% of the world's desktops and get things done the way I want to work.
- The freedom to download thousands (probably millions) of pre-existing spreadsheets and plugins without having to write the code myself.
- The freedom to send my data files (XLS) to virtually anyone in the world without having to send them an application/explanation as well.
- The freedom to manipulate the data in any way I please. Excel easily exports in many formats including CSV and imports from a huge variety of formats as well.
My list of freedoms are the freedoms that matter to ordinary users who have a job to do, and for whom Excel is simply a tool to accomplish that. Your list of freedoms are more targeted at technical people. This whole thread has been about forcing business (ie ordinary) users to switch to OO versus MS Office. My list trumps your list in that context.
I was not aware of that fact, though I don't see why it makes a difference to my argument. If OO wants to replace MS Office, it needs to work the same way (especially as regards formula syntax in Excel) or it will have no chance of adoption on US business desktops. But as I pointed out, OO operates differently than Excel (on my machine), and I hasten to add that I have done no customizations. I am running the default US regionalizations and the default installations of Office 2000 and OO 2.0. In other words, I am the 99% use model for US business users. It seems like you are suggesting that US users should switch over to using commas instead of decimal points in their numbers so they can save $75 every year and use OO Calc - yeah, that'll happen.
We were talking about business users, who are intimately familiar with Excel (and, graphing using Excel). The OP wanted them to use OO because it's free. I rebutted that with a few pointed examples of how OO Calc is simply unsuited for business users. Regarding your suggestion, there is no business user who is going to crunch numbers in Excel, then write them out to a CSV file and then run some other tool like gnuplot or ploticus when they could simply highlight the data and click Graph-Line-Finish.
Your comment actually highlights an interesting clash of cultures. In the Linux/Unix world, a large collection of "point" tools are used (hence the desire for command line interactivity). They rely on standard interchange formats. Scripts are thrown together to chain these point tools to accomplish some task. In the Windows world, the "swiss army knife" approach, like Office, is used; you stay in Office and it does everything you need (as long as you are the kind of user they designed it for, which is basically business users). We witness every day (especially on these boards) the gulf that exists between these two cultures. Small wonder neither side can convince the other to switch; they are as different as night and day.
PS Yes, it is possible to automate Excel. It has a macro language which is commonly used (even by many business users), and it supports VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), which allows even more sophisticated automation.
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connectivity is good enough and cheap enough such that you don't need to store the music in the phone - you will simply stream it on demand from your "server in the sky" (ie your home server, through the net, like Orb). Note, this applies even more to video content, which will always swamp whatever storage you have in your portable player/phone..
why is it I suspect there may be a little more to the story? Massachusetts is a 1-party state with virtually *no* oversight (see Big Dig). Cronyism runs rampant and unchecked. I am not defending Diebold in any way, but frankly I find it hard to believe Diebold would waste time and money suing for a measly $9M contract unless they knew a little more about the "selection process". It would not surprise me in the least if it turned out somebody had connections. In fact, it *would* surprise me if the selection was indeed on the up-and-up.
Sorry to ruin your point with facts, but Microsoft donates to both parties. And as it happens, since 2002, MS has actually given quite a bit more to the Democrats than it has to the Republicans: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.asp?ID=D00 0000115&Name=Microsoft+Corp
A slight modification:
1. Tell Steve Ballmer the asteroid is a threat to Microsoft
2. Disable all space-based anti-ballistic-chair defenses
3. Wait
4. Danger avoided
Interesting. I am not new here, but I didn't happen to see those other discussions - thanks for the pointers.
... that this is a don't care for MS. FAT is ubiquitous - thumbdrives use it, digital cameras use it, mp3 players use it. In fact it's hard to find a piece of solid state media that doesn't come pre-formatted with FAT. Because of that, I guess I was always under the impression FAT was in the public domain; it really surprised me to see there was a patent at all. Does anyone out there know if MS collects royalties or license fees from this patent?
It is sad that so little civil interchange happens on /., but it is these rare instances that keep me coming back. And not coincidentally, those are also the ones from which I usually learn the most. Thanks.
Well argued. Let me counter by suggesting that if you have 100 employees, and the advantages (features, performance) of MS Office allow each employee to save a total of 5 minutes a day (heck, that's only 10 graphs per employee per day - if you have 10 employees cranking out 100 graphs/day you also achieve the same savings), you have just saved 1% of your labor (5 minutes is about 1% of an 8 hour work day). Now, the typical office worker, allowing for benefits and overhead, costs about $75K, so saving one person means saving $75K. It would seem to me that $7500 is a small price to pay to get $75K in return. Heck, even if each employee saved only 1 minute per day due to the superiority of MS Office versus OO, that still constitutes a net savings of $7500 after purchasing 100 MS Office licenses.
As regards the question on Office 2007 on old hardware, I am not aware of any performance differences in the new suite. I did some crude benchmarks (very limited) and found no difference in performance on my machine between Office 2000 and Office 2007. As I understand it, the "big savings" with Office 2007 are supposed to be in productivity due to a more coherent and easier to navigate UI. If this indeed is the case, the upgrade (per my above numbers) would in fact be compelling. I guess we shall have to see what the early users of Office 2007 report.
Oops, you made a small slip there. As I have explained, I gravitate to the best product that lets me do my job. I don't put a heavy emphasis on price, though obviously price matters. I don't view paying for a product that helps me get things done as "a tax", given that I have a choice, which in this case, thanks to OO and others, I do.
I have been careful to qualify all of my statements to refer to OO Calc, not generically to OO. I do not have any meaningful experience with the other applications in the OO suite. I am merely saying that Calc (and specifically the graphics subsystem) is poorly done, and is not appropriate for spreadsheet users who graph. Now as to this being an overly broad generalization. If you were looking at buying a product, say a car. You sit in the driver's seat and hit the heat button and cold air blows. You hit the AC button and room temperature air blows. You turn the fan speed knob and the fan speed does not change. Obviously the HVAC system in this car is messed up. You know nothing else about this car. What do you suspect you might find, based on what you know, in say the engine compartment, or the transmission? It certainly doesn't give you confidence, does it? I have not spoken in absolutes except as regards the Calc graphing functions (and you yourself acknowledge I am correct in this criticism). But I am raising a warning flag about the balance of the functionality, about which I know very little, based on my experience with this one aspect of OO. It was done, I assume, by the same team and under the same development conditions, so my assumptions would not be unfounded.
CEOs and CIOs are business people who make decisions based on facts, not touchy-feely "software freedom" religious arguments. If I am a CIO and I need an office suite for 1000 employees, I need to approach the selection choice rationally. Let's try a simple (albeit contrived) example. Let's say the typical office worker costs my company $75K/year including overhead. Now suppose the "free" office suite made my employees slightly less productive (like if some of them do a lot of graphing, for example, and are forced to wait 30 seconds per graph). If each employee only wastes 5 minutes a day waiting unnecessarily, or working around some feature deficit, then I am wasting 1 of every 100 employees (5 minutes is about 1% of an 8 hour day). That means that if I spend less than $75K dollars to eliminate that 5 minutes of wasted time, I am ahead. Now according to the OP MS Office XP seats are $75. If I bought 100 seats (one for each employee) I would have spent $7500, but I would have gained $75K in productivity - a factor of 10 return on investment! That is the way CEOs and CIOs look at the problem. It is not a "Microsoft tax", it's a productivity enhancer. This is in essence the "cost of ownership" argument that you keep hearing about. It's real and it matters.
I have to disagree here. In fact, I think I am much more in tune than most here on /. I see software as a tool, not as a "movement" or a "community" or as a "religion". And ODF is not some world-changing thing. Microsoft will support ODF, and yes, others will offer ODF-compliant office suites, and yes, Microsoft will lose some market share in the office market, but only insomuch as the other applications work well and allow people to do their jobs. All you have to do is open your eyes. XLS is pretty universal these days -- OO can read and write XLS files, as can many other applications, including the emergent online spreadsheets. This is not fundamentally different from ODF in that regard. And yet despite this fact (and OO has been around for years) Excel is the t
Indeed it will. What, pray tell, do you envision usurping Office? Surely not OO, which is just a poor imitation. Perhaps Google Office will bump Microsoft off, though I will be amazed if companies are willing to store their sensitive data on Google's servers, and have it flying all over the web for anyone to see. I think in the end Office will survive, but its price will drop in response to competition. As OO has shown, even trying to match MS Office in functionality is a huge task, and one not easily accomplished with a Microsoft-level of resources, so I don't see anyone creating a "better Office". They might, however, create a simpler, cheaper one that meets most users' needs (see Google Office example).
I just tried the same thing (Open Office 2.0.3 on Windows XP) - same machine as before (dual core, 2GB). Same results as before - 15 seconds before I got my graph and another 12 seconds before the UI was again responsive.
While demonstrating the truly pathetic graphing performance of OO Calc I accidentally stumbled across another serious bug in OO Calc (the type of bug Microsoft would be excoriated for). I dropped a read-only CSV file into Calc. It dutifully imported the data. Then I highlighted the data and clicked graph, dragged out the graph rectangle, selected the appropriate options to configure the graph and ... nothing. I of course waited for at least 30 seconds because I know how pathetically slow OO Calc is with graphing. Still nothing ... no graph ... no error message .... I tried it again, same result. Puzzled, I noticed the "read only" descriptor in the window title. I closed the file, turned off the read-only attribute and reperformed the experiment. Voila, it worked badly just like yesterday, but at least I got a graph. So apparently for some bizarre reason if you open a read only file the graphing functionality does not work, though it "appears" to work. Pretty poor quality I would say.
... no error, no graph, no hint as to what could have happened (or not happened in this case). Just imagine, I have used OO Calc for all of about an hour and I have stumbled across 3 serious problems. What are the odds those are the only serious problems in that application?
Whenever I test OSS stuff I am usually reminded of a story a friend told me. He was visiting a mid-East country. He went into the men's room and they had one of those hand drying blower machines. He pressed the button to dry his hands and cool air came out. He examined the unit and realized there was no facility for heating the air. Apparently they had copied the "western" design, but didn't realize it blew hot air. Most OSS is like that. Superficially it looks like the *real* product it is copying, but just below the surface it falls apart. Now, before you blast off and call me the usual derogatory, unimaginative and trite names, I want to add that not all OSS is like this. Firefox is an excellent, best in class browser, and I used it exclusively until IE7 came out. Now if a machine has IE7 I use that, but if it doesn't I install Firefox and use that. I also have had good experiences with various Linux distributions, though not as a desktop replacement. I find KDE and Gnome sorely lacking relative to OSX and Windows). GIMP is good for what it does and I sometimes use it if Photoshop is not available. I am sure there are many other fine and competitive OSS applications, but I am afraid I cannot put Open Office in that camp - it is just far too buggy, sluggish and "foreign" to be useful to most users as an alternative to MS Office.
PS You might wonder how Excel handled the read only file. When I opened it, Excel warned me I was opening a read only file and asked if I wanted to continue without saving changes. I opted to open it anyhow and of course the graphing functions worked properly. Oh, and the window title also informed me the file was read-only in case it slipped my mind. This is the type of behavior I expect and demand from *real* products. I don't expect 30 seconds of frozen UI while a simple graph is created. I don't expect to be led down a series of dialogs configuring a graph only to be presented with nothing
A factor of 50 is not slightly slower. 30 seconds to wait for a graphic, during which time the application is frozen is a little more than "slightly slower" - it would be better described as "borderline useless". I thought I was back in the 1980's waiting that long for a simple line graph. On a dual core machine with 2GB of RAM no less. This suggests strongly to me that the underlying code is extremely poorly done, and makes me wonder about the rest of the application. You have to really go out of your way to make a simple operation like that take so long. Either that or you have to be really incompetent.
BTW, I said nothing about GIMP other than implying that it is (undeniably) inferior to the closed source application it is attempting to emulate: Photoshop. Do you really disagree with that assessment? And I should also hasten to add that since Photoshop is not a Microsoft product, the "Microsoft fanboy" label you ascribed to me, sadly for you, does not apply. If you must assign me some derogatory label, please refer to me as a "Quality Product fanboy" as that more correctly describes me. You see I am not blinded by religious fervor and irrational hatreds. I evaluate products on their merits and choose the one that does the best job. And I don't put with up, nor do I recommend, crappy products if there is a better alternative, even if I have to spend some money to get it.
Ahhh, the standard response from open source zealots when someone speaks the truth. Sorry, but I will not shut up. I will continue to point out that which is obvious -- that most OSS is a poor imitation of *real* products. And given time I will also continue to provide detailed, verifiable reasons why OSS is inferior, such as I have in this thread. Happily, the gulf is so large, it rarely takes more than a few minutes to find a gaping hole in any given OSS application's functionality.
One more thing. While I am happily productive using those xls files someone emailed me, you can enjoy staring at a frozen screen waiting for OO to render a simple line graph.
I'm glad you found it so easy. And did you observe the same inexplicable 30 second freeze up while it created the graph? One other person on this thread tried this same thing and reported the same intolerable delay I saw. As for how easy it was to create the graph that's not a surprise since it is a complete copy of Excel - highlight the range, click graph, choose line, finish. Except Excel gives you your graph instantaneously, whereas with OO you have to cool your heels for what seems like an eternity.
Yours is an interesting supposition, but I think you are the one with flawed logic. First of all, I have not talked about menus and user interface differences at all - and that is principally the difference between Word and the then dominant Word Perfect. My two complaints regarding OO Calc are that the syntax of the formulas is different, and the graphing performance is pathetic. There are obviously many user interface differences as well, but those are less of an impediment to OO's adoption, so I haven't bothered to discuss them. And if UI changes prevented adoption, MS Office 2007 would be in alot of trouble. No, Microsoft knows that users are most interested in the features and the performance. They will deal with the UI differences because that is a short-term irritation. But having to wait 30 seconds for a graph is a continual irritant, as is having to change the way you enter formulas (as long as you also deal with Excel spreadsheets at the same time).
For simply typing documents there was not much difference between Word Perfect and Word. But imagine if you had to type in some other language with Word versus Word Perfect. Or imagine if it took 5 extra minutes to print preview with Word versus Word Perfect. Do you think Word would have supplanted Word Perfect given those severe shortcomings? I highly doubt it. Further, if Word didn't support, or offered a lousy implementation of, some common word processing functions (like underlining, automatic TOC creation, etc), then Word would not have usurped Word Perfect. Carrying this line of reasoning a bit further, it's interesting that when Excel came out, Lotus 123 was the dominant spreadsheet. And so Excel supported Lotus formula syntax, and at the same time it also added superior graphing tools. This allowed Excel to take over. It was a better 123. But, importantly, it was easy for users to adopt it because it had the features they required (plus some), and it allowed them to type their formulas the way they were accustomed to.
So, the fact that Word supplanted Word Perfect, and Excel usurped 123 are both, in my view, supportive of my logic.
Interesting list. Here are the freedoms I enjoy using Excel on Windows.
- The freedom to be able to work on >90% of the world's desktops and get things done the way I want to work.
- The freedom to download thousands (probably millions) of pre-existing spreadsheets and plugins without having to write the code myself.
- The freedom to send my data files (XLS) to virtually anyone in the world without having to send them an application/explanation as well.
- The freedom to manipulate the data in any way I please. Excel easily exports in many formats including CSV and imports from a huge variety of formats as well.
My list of freedoms are the freedoms that matter to ordinary users who have a job to do, and for whom Excel is simply a tool to accomplish that. Your list of freedoms are more targeted at technical people. This whole thread has been about forcing business (ie ordinary) users to switch to OO versus MS Office. My list trumps your list in that context.
I was not aware of that fact, though I don't see why it makes a difference to my argument. If OO wants to replace MS Office, it needs to work the same way (especially as regards formula syntax in Excel) or it will have no chance of adoption on US business desktops. But as I pointed out, OO operates differently than Excel (on my machine), and I hasten to add that I have done no customizations. I am running the default US regionalizations and the default installations of Office 2000 and OO 2.0. In other words, I am the 99% use model for US business users. It seems like you are suggesting that US users should switch over to using commas instead of decimal points in their numbers so they can save $75 every year and use OO Calc - yeah, that'll happen.
We were talking about business users, who are intimately familiar with Excel (and, graphing using Excel). The OP wanted them to use OO because it's free. I rebutted that with a few pointed examples of how OO Calc is simply unsuited for business users. Regarding your suggestion, there is no business user who is going to crunch numbers in Excel, then write them out to a CSV file and then run some other tool like gnuplot or ploticus when they could simply highlight the data and click Graph-Line-Finish.
Your comment actually highlights an interesting clash of cultures. In the Linux/Unix world, a large collection of "point" tools are used (hence the desire for command line interactivity). They rely on standard interchange formats. Scripts are thrown together to chain these point tools to accomplish some task. In the Windows world, the "swiss army knife" approach, like Office, is used; you stay in Office and it does everything you need (as long as you are the kind of user they designed it for, which is basically business users). We witness every day (especially on these boards) the gulf that exists between these two cultures. Small wonder neither side can convince the other to switch; they are as different as night and day.
PS Yes, it is possible to automate Excel. It has a macro language which is commonly used (even by many business users), and it supports VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), which allows even more sophisticated automation.