Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on May 29, 2005 02:37 AM
As I said in my original post, I was amused that the author, Kevin Quiggle, made the assumption that "what comes with MS Office" is the "correct" definition of an Office Suite. I'll bet that even Mr. Quiggle would be amused by his own assumption, if it was pointed out to him.
But you, apparently, want to argue strongly that Microsoft got it exactly right, and MS Office has the exact right set of tools for Office Suite users.
Interesting.
You argue that the drawing capabilities in MS Word are good enough. But the last time I tried to use MS Word for creating diagrams, it was a painful experience. Prior to that, I tended to use Visio to make diagrams, but my employer at that time considered Visio to be too expensive for anyone except the art department. So I chose to download and learn OpenOffice Draw.
There is just no comparison between the rudimentary drawing capabilities of MS Word, and the full set of features in OpenOffice Draw. Why should someone struggle to use the wrong tool for the job, just because that is all that Microsoft provides?
By the way, if Microsoft added a drawing tool to MS Office, in order to compete with OpenOffice, would you then argue that a drawing tool should be a standard part of any Office Suite?
You also give two arguments against the inclusion of a database tool in an Office Suite.
Your first argument is that a spreadsheet will work for keeping simple lists. And again I would argue that it is using the wrong tool for the job.
Let's take a simple example. Say I want to keep a list of my expenses for a business trip. So I define five columns, named Date, Place, Type of Expense, Amount, and Total, where Total is a running total of Amount.
Now I start to use it. I enter my expenses for the first day. Then I fill in the formula for the running total in the fifth column, and I format the Amount and Total fields to show two decimal places. So far so good.
Now I come to the second day. I fill in another row at the bottom of the list. Did it pick up the formatting, and the formula for the total? Maybe, or maybe not, depending on how I set things up. Then I find a receipt I missed for the first day, so I insert a row in the middle. Did the formula get updated correctly, or is the row after the inserted row still referring the the row before the inserted row? Now lets say I want to sort the list by Type of Expense. What will happen to my running total formula? Or say I want to filter the list to show only meal expenses? What happens then?
A simple database tool gets around all of those problems, because it is the right tool for the job. It was designed to do all those things, simply and easily.
Now you may point out, and I am aware, that some spreadsheets have additional database features built in, however, I have never met anyone who uses them. Spreadsheets are simple to use, but the added database tools tend to be complicated, because they have to fight against the very nature of a spreadsheet.
Again, it is a matter of using the right tool for the job.
You also argued that, for any real database work, you need a full-featured relational database, and a professional designer. But why are you assuming that everyone needs something as complex as MS Access? For most of the things people would want to do with an Office Suite, a simple flat-file database, like the one that came with MS Works, will do the job. It's similar to the difference between a word processor, that comes with most Office Suites, and a Desktop Publisher, that professionals need for doing page layouts.
In short, I think that drawing and database tools are things that a lot of people will use, and are therefore reasonable features to include in an Office Suite. Obviously the developers of OpenOffice think so too.
But, as I said before, I am not here to give the "correct" definition of an Office Suite. I think it would be just as silly to define an Office Suite as "what comes with OpenOffice" as it is to define it as "what comes with MS Office."
I am just pointing out the unwitting assumptions that people tend to make, when all they have known is Windows and MS Office.
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Re:Good Article, with one Amused Quibble
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 29, 2005 02:37 AMBut you, apparently, want to argue strongly that Microsoft got it exactly right, and MS Office has the exact right set of tools for Office Suite users.
Interesting.
You argue that the drawing capabilities in MS Word are good enough. But the last time I tried to use MS Word for creating diagrams, it was a painful experience. Prior to that, I tended to use Visio to make diagrams, but my employer at that time considered Visio to be too expensive for anyone except the art department. So I chose to download and learn OpenOffice Draw.
There is just no comparison between the rudimentary drawing capabilities of MS Word, and the full set of features in OpenOffice Draw. Why should someone struggle to use the wrong tool for the job, just because that is all that Microsoft provides?
By the way, if Microsoft added a drawing tool to MS Office, in order to compete with OpenOffice, would you then argue that a drawing tool should be a standard part of any Office Suite?
You also give two arguments against the inclusion of a database tool in an Office Suite.
Your first argument is that a spreadsheet will work for keeping simple lists. And again I would argue that it is using the wrong tool for the job.
Let's take a simple example. Say I want to keep a list of my expenses for a business trip. So I define five columns, named Date, Place, Type of Expense, Amount, and Total, where Total is a running total of Amount.
Now I start to use it. I enter my expenses for the first day. Then I fill in the formula for the running total in the fifth column, and I format the Amount and Total fields to show two decimal places. So far so good.
Now I come to the second day. I fill in another row at the bottom of the list. Did it pick up the formatting, and the formula for the total? Maybe, or maybe not, depending on how I set things up. Then I find a receipt I missed for the first day, so I insert a row in the middle. Did the formula get updated correctly, or is the row after the inserted row still referring the the row before the inserted row? Now lets say I want to sort the list by Type of Expense. What will happen to my running total formula? Or say I want to filter the list to show only meal expenses? What happens then?
A simple database tool gets around all of those problems, because it is the right tool for the job. It was designed to do all those things, simply and easily.
Now you may point out, and I am aware, that some spreadsheets have additional database features built in, however, I have never met anyone who uses them. Spreadsheets are simple to use, but the added database tools tend to be complicated, because they have to fight against the very nature of a spreadsheet.
Again, it is a matter of using the right tool for the job.
You also argued that, for any real database work, you need a full-featured relational database, and a professional designer. But why are you assuming that everyone needs something as complex as MS Access? For most of the things people would want to do with an Office Suite, a simple flat-file database, like the one that came with MS Works, will do the job. It's similar to the difference between a word processor, that comes with most Office Suites, and a Desktop Publisher, that professionals need for doing page layouts.
In short, I think that drawing and database tools are things that a lot of people will use, and are therefore reasonable features to include in an Office Suite. Obviously the developers of OpenOffice think so too.
But, as I said before, I am not here to give the "correct" definition of an Office Suite. I think it would be just as silly to define an Office Suite as "what comes with OpenOffice" as it is to define it as "what comes with MS Office."
I am just pointing out the unwitting assumptions that people tend to make, when all they have known is Windows and MS Office.
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