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* Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft IntelliMouse®, or compatible pointing device

I have a Logitech mouse and its not written anywhere on it that it is compatible with Microsoft Mouse or Microsoft IntelliMouse so I obviously can't use MS Office.

* Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 256 colors

There again I fail. I have a higher resolution (1280x1024) but in 16M colors. Switching back to 256 colors? no way!

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the term "minimum requirements" (to which the requirements actually imply compliance) mean other, more capable systems will usually do the trick just the same...

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You're not funny.

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Idiot, of course the mouse is compatible.

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Funny you should say "<tt>of course the mouse is compatible.</tt>"

Why should the mouse be compatible?

And why on earth should office software be not compatible?

Aren't they the same? Aren't they both tools to make you more productive with your computer?

Aren't there mice with more or less buttons, with and without wheels, from a myriad of manufacturers?

Aren't there even 'perversions' like touch pads and trackballs and these little stick-'mice' you find on some laptops?

And yet there are but a few mice protocols. Mice don't differ in important ways on an application level. Why should documents differ in important ways on an office software level?

There can be just one reason: mice vendors trying to not compete on quality --- instead restricting consumers to their brand only --- or was that what a certain office software company tries?

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personally I don't care what the others say - you *are* funny<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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Yes, very funny!

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Microsoft displays fear, uncertainty, and doubt toward any of its competitors.

This is basically Microsoft's way of admitting that OO.o is a threat.

This is a good thing.

I can't see how anybody but a gullible simpleton would believe Microsoft's FUD after all these years.

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There are still many people who have only heard the MSFT side of the story.

Tonight, standing in an office supply store near closing time, I'm pretty certain I 'sold' a copy of RH WS. I told "the Linux story" to a guy who was contemplating buying a copy of XP to run a copy of Adobe Acrobat. I acknowledged that Linux used to be hard to install<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... but not any longer<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... and emphasized its strengths. The guy listened to me, another customer, for about 20 minutes and was asking questions right along.

OO is a threat. In fact, all of Linux is a threat and the more capable FOSS applications become, the bigger the hammer over MSFT's head.

Ballmer was right<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...

"developers, developers, developers!"

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Man, that guy is going to be so pissed off when he finds out you've conned him into buying such duff software.

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I am sorry, but I see people believeing Microsoft all the time. Those people work in the management part of the company, and they listen to the marketing drones of Microsoft rather than their own organisation.

So, no, this is not a good thing.

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Of course you're right, there are many, many gullible simpletons out there, and there are many people who are so out of touch that they just listen to the guy who shouts the loudest (Microsoft).

But many people are now starting to realize that there is more to life than just Microsoft, and Microsoft is helping publicize this.

Many people are getting fed up with Microsoft, and this feeling is increasing. Microsoft continually frustrates those who buy its software. People are 'considering' or 'looking into' using alternatives. Also, many people don't trust Microsoft, and this attitude is increasing.

For those with a clue, Microsoft's FUD fights reveal Microsoft's fears. Look at SCO, people can believe in SCO, but it's not going to stop the company from going down.

Open Source is looking better and better, and Microsoft is constantly trying to produce new weapons to combat it.

I expect many people believed the Iraqi Information Minister too.

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Regardless of the technical merit of the OSS movement there is one barrier that seems to get in its way most of the time: OSS advocates tend to come over as idealistic intellectual snobs who mostly seem to forget the primary concern of the consumer: technology is not the end, it is a means to the end. The end invariably revolves around making and selling tangible products and services. Fat Bastard Financial Services Corp won't give a flying fig for the ideology nor the license fees. FBFSC wants to know how soon they can solve their information technology problem, how much it will cost to install and customise, and how much it will cost to run and maintain. That is the market that MSFT target with this supposed FUD and those are the people who will listen to statements of cost and risk of ownership.

If you want to belittle these people as "gullible simpletons" then I guess you're doomed to failure. The first step you need to make in business is to understand your customer. If you can't even do that you may as well go back to, or stay in, University and write papers for the rest of your life.

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I understand your point about deriding customers, obviously this is not good business practice. However, this is a news site where anybody can express their feelings, and a few home truths can't go amiss.

I don't feel any bitterness to ignorant computer users, after all, we all start from the beginning.

The problem is with people who choose to neglect the information before their eyes, like somebody seeing a person getting mugged but looking the other way because they don't like the thought of that happening in their neighborhood.

OSS is only now really having its potential revealed. What started out as user-unfriendly software, designed by tech-savvy people for tech-savvy people, is now being developed for the average user.

Big companies are backing Linux/Open Source, marketing is happening. Services and solutions are being made available. Compared to a few years ago, Linux/OSS is flying, people know about it.

Of course you have to understand the consumer. This isn't a point of 'OSS' vs 'Microsoft'. This is a war against misinformation.

People should all be aware by now that Microsoft has attempted to force them to upgrade continually. People should all be aware by now that Microsoft says one thing, but things never quite work out the way Microsoft said they would.

The news is full of Microsoft and its anti-competitive practices. If you run a business and you believe Microsoft's FUD without looking into the software for yourself, you are a gullible simpleton - or just completely ignorant and shouldn't be surprised if your business collapses due to your incompetence and false sense of security.

If you know what I mean.

People need to stop burying their heads in the sand and hoping that this will all work out.

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I can't see how anybody but a gullible simpleton would believe Microsoft's FUD after all these years.

Well, unfortunately, that consitutes the vast majority of people in the world..."gullible simpleton[s]" that is<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:(

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I've been waiting for ages for somebody to post that.

Yes. It does appear that the vast majority of people are gullible simpletons.

Now, if anybody out there makes up the 'most people' category, I would strongly suggest that you get a clue. Without being rude, you really should, unless you want to get ripped off for the rest of your miserable life. Would you trust Bill if he said that virii didn't exist? Of course not, so don't trust any of the other crap he spews out.

It would be the sensible thing to do.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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"I can't see how anybody but a gullible simpleton would believe Microsoft's FUD after all these years."

An appropriate decsription of all microsoft customers, to be sure.

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They make special note on the cost of migrating a Microsoft Access database to OpenOffice, but fail to mention the costs associated with upgrading a Microsoft Access database even with their own software. Free Software and Open Source databases are typically available at no cost, so the money would be spent on the actual 'liberation' of the data. Microsoft will require you to purchase licensing for SQL Server, and businesses will still have to pay for the migration of the data.

the thing is the OpenOffice suites does not have a database at all. I believe StarOffice has something called Abacus and there is some free or open-source databases out there (PostgreSQL and mySQL until they changed their license) but these are not part of OpenOffice.
This seems a major weakness in OpenOffice to me: the abscence of a simple relational database, easy to install and with some (but not all) of the features of the big ones. I know that many people hate Access 'kuz its too primitive' but look at the small business environment: do they run Oracle or DB2? Nope - most of the time they use Access and this is something which our community sorely lacks for the time being.

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I've tried the Windows version of both Microsoft Office and OpenOffice and connected both to a MySQL database backend running on a Windows server, using the MyODBC driver from MySQL AB and the MySQL Control Center. It works great for me. Using MySQL brings the benefit of a fast database for serving web pages. Customers can fill out web forms, the data is submitted to the MySQL backend, and MSQUERY or the OpenOffice Query tool gets the data into the different Office suits. All the packages come with graphical installers, are easy to set up. If you know what you are about to do, you can do it all in about 30 minuttes.

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Working in network support, the last thing I want is for end users to create databases all over the place. Unfortunately, they do and a great mess they cause!

The fact that OOo has not got an integral database, forcing you to use mySql/Oracle/anything-you-like is actually a productivity enhancement!!!

The users can get on with creating spreadsheets, documents etc and we can set up databases that are efficient, fast and **BACKED UP** because we make sure they are on a server not on a floppy disc "so that I can pass it to X".

 

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"Adabas D" is the database that ships with StarOffice's suite.

By the way... Microsoft forgot to mention that StarOffice is free for educational and research use.

Get StarOffice here:

http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/solut<nobr>i<wbr></nobr> ons/staroffice.html#StarOffice

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Oo.o can create databases in the legacy dBase formate. It is not a fully relational dBase, with plenty of features, but it'll allow you to get the job done.

Granted that a more explicit way of creating those Databases should be made, but just try it:

Go to Tools|Data Source and create a dBase data source in a directory.

You'll then be able to create tables, queries, etc.

This is the best kept secret of Oo.o

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OpenOffice dovetails very nicely with Mozilla. It will let you use a Mozilla address book (abook.mab) as a database source. Great for creating mail merge documents!

Also, we use OpenOffice daily to access data in our Windows PoS (Point of Sale) software (Atrex) which keeps data in the DBF format.

OpenOffice offers one of the best user interfaces to databases that I've found.

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I have it in under "View/Data Source" not "Tools/Data Source" but yeah it is definitely there. SQL seems to drive it, and it supports different file formats (at least for importing) I've been able to load up my Yahoo and Mozilla adress books with this. I'm not a big DB user so that's been about it, but for what most people are likely to use DB for I bet it's there.

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I use this to interface with MySQL, and it works perfectly.

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Thing is, Common Microsoft Office dosn't include Access. You have to buy Microsoft Office Professional to get it and thats about 5k sek (~ 541.69 EUR).

So i'd rather go with OO and a nice db.. =)

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That was an expansive Office package. 5k (SEK). If you buy 50 licenses its half that sum. (But it isn't as cheap as openoffice).
(Just to add some facts)

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the thing is the OpenOffice suites does not have a database at all.

Well, MS Office hasn't either. Access is not a database. But why not think of mySQL as OpenOfficeAccess?

Or if you want a real database, there's PostgreSQL.

You seem to be complaining that mySQL and PostgreSQL are not included in the same download as OpenOffice. Why is that a disadvantage? Surely it's an advantage that people who don't want them, don't need to waste the extra time and diskspace on downloading stuff they don't need.

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Whilst OpenOffice.org does not include a database per se, you can always install PHPMyAdmin -- and modern package management systems will take care of the dependencies on httpd, php and mysql for you. I've used PHPMyAdmin and it works; it's a little clunky, but at least it lets you enter and display records. And once you've got it up and running, you have a complete LAMP environment which you can use for throwing together a custom web-driven front end in a matter of hours. If you think that's hard, you probably can put up with the clunkiness of PHPMyAdmin. But you'll end up learning anyway because PHPMyAdmin shows you the actual SQL queries. The complication is present at the task level, not the interface level: relational databases are hard and there is no way to make them any easier without sacrificing some functionality. That may not be what you wanted to hear, but it's the truth.


Both the PHP and MySQL sites have good user feedback sections (not a proper Wiki, though) so the stuff you need to know is out there.



And now for a story about databases. A person I used to know was setting up a new business venture: he spent a lot of money on a brand-name server with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server, and created a bunch of web pages in ASP. I was tasked with cloning a copy of his database onto our systems for our purposes. Now, my company's software procurement policy is basically "No Source, No Sale" so we were using MySQL on Linux, with Perl or PHP as necessary.


It took me a morning to throw some scripts together to do the initial cloning; and I did have to download something half-proprietary just to get it to work, but there didn't seem to be anything Open. Now, the idea was supposed to be that we'd run our databases sort-of independently, with occasional syncing up; so anything we changed, we would send him.


I wanted him just to e-mail the INSERT or UPDATE statements generated by his script to an address I was setting up, where a procmail recipe would pass them through to MySQL. When I made this simple request, all I got was a lecture on extensibility, abstraction layers and not getting my hands dirty touching data like that. Turns out he was using some highly complex system for pretending that the MS-SQL database was an array in his programme so he didn't actually generate any SQL statements himself.


So I had to take care of syncing us with him. Which basically meant wherever an INSERT bombed because there was an existing record with the same primary key, doing an UPDATE instead. Anything we changed, he still got an SQL query. Only Microsoft SQL server uses an ever-so-slightly different syntax than MySQL. MySQL uses mandatory "double" speech marks around non-numeric values -- but will tolerate 'single' ones -- and mostly-optional `backticks` around field names. Microsoft use 'single' speech marks around values and "double" speech marks around field names.


In the end I used 'single' quoted values and unquoted field names (they didn't match any reserved words) when I sent him the modifications we were making, which seemed a reasonable compromise.


Well, I must have spent, what, about 24 hours writing the Perl and PHP to do all this. Then I got an error -- couldn't connect to the server. The lovingly-produced, extensible, fully-abstracted "relational" {used in the loosest sense, as there was only one table in it so there was nothing for anything to relate to, but it could have been relational} database he'd designed, wasn't working.


When I tried to ring him to ask about it, I found his business had gone T.U. I couldn't stop grinning for a week after that.

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I totally agree that OpenSource lacks some equivalent of Ms Access.

Access allows to share database as simple files.
And in this file, you have the data, the reporting (ugly I must say), and the interface forms.

No bigger database allows that.

I do agree that Access is limited, buggy, slow, and uses some strange subset of SQL.

But it gives to small companies, that often do not have internal computer professional, a great tool for many small problems.

Of course, for longer term solutions, centralised database are required. But they usualy require more knowledge, GUI needs to be developped specifically (compared to Access automatically generated one), often tools of various origin need to be integrated<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.... They are simply too hard to use for the occasionnal power user who is not a specialist and are overkill for most small uses.

But many of my clients (mostly small consulting companies) create Access databases per project and have found no better solution (either OpenSource (may be EasyPHP sometimes) or proprietary).

So I guess that we definitively need some light utility database (why not base on sqlite?) bundling some interface, some programming logic in a single file that would allow to build small "single use" databases for non computer specialist and share it as a regular file.

(sorry about the poor the english, its not my native language)

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and by the way, using Acces is actually an improvement other using some fucking big Ms Word tables for database job with some convoluted Macros passed hand to hand, years after years, bloated with "on error resume next" and instructions that do not work anymore because WordBasic was not Visual Basic for Applications and is not supported anymore.

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'but look at the small business environment: do they run Oracle or DB2? Nope - most of the time they use Access'

Perhaps that's because they can't afford them. That problem goes away with OSS SQL databases.

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But still with access you get data entry forms, reports,<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... all in one go. I REALLY like OO/OpenSource,... but when it comes to small projects where you need do a few data entry forms and reports there is nothing that can beat Access. Really. E.g. try to give the user one data entry form where he can use some comboboxes to filter some data and enter some other things.

With mysql or whatever the user would need to setup a db server, a web server (or maybe do a java gui) + php or something. That just does not work for a looney. In comparison I can give him a simple MDB which he double clicks and off he goes (given that he has access installed or installs the access runtime).

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You can even create simple forms with ooWriter-- just click the Show Form Functions button on the side button bar, set the Form Properties Data Source to one of the data sources (including DBF tables) defined as described in previous posts, and start adding text fields, dropdown lists, etc.

I did find this somewhat more limited than MSAccess, but for simple forms like most small businesses would use (i.e. anything not needing a programmer to do) this would be just fine. In fact, it might be somewhat less confusing that MSAccess, since it puts it all in the context of an ordinary word processing document, making it more safe and familiar.

I didn't know about this feature at all, but after reading your post an hour ago or so, I decided to see if it existed, and sure enough, it did, and I was able to get up to speed and create a simple two-table database relating people and their hobbies, all without writing any code.

Mind you, this doesn't do proper relational stuff like using hobbyid as the foreign key in the people table. I was unable to find a way to do that and still display the hobbyname in the dropdown listbox on the form. But if I used hobbyname, it all related automatically and effortlessly. This is how most non-database-trained people would design their databases anyway, so I guess it's a moot point.

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Thanks for the tip I did not know about the feature.

I guess this does not fill the need Access does, but it is still usefull to know.

Even if they never heard of Codd I find my clients doing some pretty sophisticated stuffs with the help of Access wizards.

Often they begin some project, define usefull data, do a first raw database, then buy me a few days of work (one or two usually) to add what they could not....

Access is good for that, particulary since its graphic request builder is not too bad for someone that would not be able to write SQL.

I don't know if this is only me, but among my clients, 4 companies are regulary doing that (and I did not induce them to do so, I even tried to find some free software equivalent since I did not like (and still doesn't much) Access).

Small companies, particulary those dealing with imaterial services often have this need for a data swiss knife, which, more or less, Access fills.
I have not found anything that would compare favorably to Access for this use.

I'm even really thinking to combine some C++, Python interpreter, wxWindows and SQLite to make something that I could substitute to Access sometime.
But this is still pretty theorical (if I find a full week of free time, I guess it won't anymore).

Just my 2 cents

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Umm, actually MySQL and other databases work fine in both Office and OO.o.

I'm still working on the kinks in the online book on OS on Win, but give it a try and send feedback

<A HREF="http://lccdigital.com/osonwindows/top.htm" TITLE="lccdigital.com">http://lccdigital.com/osonwindows/top.htm</a lccdigital.com>

see chapt 16 and 17 for MySQL use straight (ODBC) into OO.O, or XSell spreadsheets, text' docs & cetera.

JayNicks

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While I am trying to learn the OOorg programs, I must disagree with several of your points, not for any particular love of Microsoft or its products, but rather for a frustration with some of OOorgs "features", and the learning curve I am being subjected (and I am not a newbie).

It seems that many of your arguments were written as though OOorg already had the marketing leverage that MS Office has conquered over many years, and (yes) some hard work (at least early on, they overcame great obstacles to get on top of the heap).
I have yet to discover (after several web search and Help searches) how to show two pages side-by-side and discover a "format painter", other then adding a new named format based on the existing text and then using that to paint to the area desired - an extra step for which I don't understand the reasoning or necessity.

Just two little examples which, at least in my case, undermine the concept of

"All things being equal, if a company's staff need formal training for OpenOffice, then they probably need it for every new version of Microsoft Office."

From one version of Office to the next, for the most part (but admittedly not always) Microsoft knows better than to change things which already work, so you can still do what you did, until you start learning extras and adding More New Things (which you probably didn't need anyway - but that's a different rant).

And most importantly (to me):

"In migrating Microsoft Office documents to OpenOffice, some advanced formatting may be lost - and this is a problem, but it is unreasonable to demand this because of the fact that Microsoft does not make it's data formats public."

unfortunately, since no one is physically coerced to purchase MS Office (or at least doesn't seem to have been proven yet) I don't see why Microsoft, a private company, must release its standards, just because it would be convenient to its competitors. And if the company uses a valid, functioning product, I don't see how they can be blamed if in using a competitive product, the competitor doesn't "get it quite right" just because I am unwilling to help the competition out of the "good of my heart" (we're talking business, not humanitarianism here...)

The capability (or not) of OOorg to deal with the data is one of its Davidian problems in overtaking Goliath, but it is silly for us to say that Goliath is injust unless he warns before taking a swing, just because David thinks it's cool to let out a yell before every stone's throw.

You can bet that if and when OOorg becomes a threat to Microsoft, it will either support the public standards already available, or suffer the losses (if it feels it can afford it).

Or maybe it will just try to buy its way out here too...

I do like OOorg, and can manage with the limitations it has with MS Office documents, but I don't see any reason to hide that the problems exist, just to play it up better against the competition without actually improving anything.

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"In migrating Microsoft Office documents to OpenOffice, some advanced formatting may be lost - and this is a problem, but it is unreasonable to demand this because of the fact that Microsoft does not make it's data formats public."

I think you missed why he made this as an example.

What's better? Having your information and data tied up into proprietary formats where future access might not be possible or complete, or in open standards where your information and data are stored in a way that even if new features or software would be imcompatible with the existing format, you could still engineer a filter that would make access to the info and data possible? It's an obvious choice.

His point is MS makes the situation where your data is locked up in a proprietary then have the gaul to make this a sales comparison!

I agree with you this is business. But business that poisons the food you eat then offers you an antidote you always have to take else you will get hurt but then tries to convince you it's a good thing IMHO is just plain wrong.

It would hurt them immensely if they had to open their office formats. Then again, it's how they maintain their monoply and extort companies into using them by holding the info and data in closed and proprietary formats.

As for your first point... either the features exists and you need to do the leg work to find out how to do it, or it needs to be added if it's something that might be useful to others and doesn't conflict with the software architecture. This is one area that OSS has over proprietary and that is if you need a feature, all you have to do is cruise over to the forums or email your requests to the OO.o devteam.

Granted, you can do this with MS also, but they usually ask the question, "Will this feature make us money so we can justify the expenditure of resources to develope it?" If the answer is yes, then it is added to the developement queue. If no, then it may not necessarily be abandoned, but looses all priority and maybe added at an undetermined point in the future.

But you say, "Well, the same priorities in different ways maybe assigned to feature upgrades in OO.o as well." True. But here is the big difference. I, as a 3rd party, can hire another 3rd party to develope my feature. And if I so choose, I can sell that feature so long as it conforms to the GPL'ed nature of OO.o.

However, I do agree, OO.o is not as good as OfficeXP or Office2003. But OO.o does what I need and it's free and I feel safe with the licensing.

And if this doesn't bring home the difference between OO.o and Office...

I have nine computers in my living room. Eight of them have OO.o installed. I have one computer with OfficeXP, a laptop that came with a business bundle. That copy I think cost around $350 dollars or so. It's in a bundle and ther is no inventory of how much each cost. Irregardless, if I bought Office at a store it's $400+. My point is that one install cost $350+ and the eight installs of OO.o cost nothing (in theory, I did sent $15 to them (unemployed student)). If I had to pay MS's price for OO.o, 8 x $350 or 8 x $400 is $2800-3200 stinking dollars! Free, or $2800-3200? Hmmmm...

I know you didn't mention anything about what my last point was about, but to me it's so striking any conversation about OO.o vs MS should include it.

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I guess you helped me focalize one of my points better:

either the features exists and you need to do the leg work to find out how to do it, or it needs to be added if it's something that might be useful to others and doesn't conflict with the software architecture. This is one area that OSS has over proprietary and that is if you need a feature, all you have to do is cruise over to the forums or email your requests to the OO.o devteam.

but my point is that for many things that a common or average business user need do, MS Office is at the point of development that the feature is more often than not already there.
Without asking anyone.
And relatively easy to find usually, as well.
OOorg is trying to play catch up, and to the average business user that means extra time: what company will allow you time to go over to the OOdev site, or take up the IT Dept time of requesting something that MS Office already had, and the users already know how to use. That is one of the extra "catch-up" costs that the $0 up-front doesn't cover (part of the MS propaganda that actually hits home).
I know I don't have time to develop something for my Word Processer, particularly if it is only as support to be able to do more productive work (like writing a new bid for my real work).
Don't get me wrong, several things about OOorg I like even better than MS Office, but then I still find myself cursing at OOorg when I erase a paragraph, and find that the following paragraph gets reformatted. Oh well, better hope it gets corrected in the next release...

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So are you saying that MS Office never screws up your formatting? Personally, I think OOorg has better formatting than MS Office...

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"since no one is physically coerced to purchase MS Office (or at least doesn't seem to have been proven yet) I don't see why Microsoft, a private company, must release its standards, just because it would be convenient to its competitors."

Under normal circumstances this should not be a requirement. However, capatalist democracies have long recognised that monopolies must be treated differently for the health of the market; that they must be made to ensure that others have at least the opportunity to compete with them, even if they then fail for reasons of incompetence; that, in short, there must be a level playing ground.

For a wordprocessor to compete in todays market it is absolutely essential that it be able to inter-operate with the defacto standard (.doc). If that standard is kept a secret by a monopolist, then there can be no competition. The only reason there is so much buzz about OO.org is because it has the best compatability with the<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.doc format at the present time -- there are other better, free WPs in most other respects.

The recent European ruling against MS was a failure in this respect. The most important change that is needed to allow competition with MS is the opening up of all MS's secret formats, protocols, and APIs. Taking money from them only punishes them for their past actions, but sets no precendents for there future actions.

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> The only reason there is so much buzz about OO.org is because it has the best

> compatability with the<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.doc format at the present time

I have found that OO's<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.doc compatibility is not as good as other WP options (TextMaker seems to be much better, though it's not "free").

> -- there are other better, free WPs in most other respects.

Like what? I truily interested in knowing.

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I'm a senior in a small private High-school. The entire campus has switched from MS Windows to Redhat Linux 7.3 in the past 3 years. Before actually putting to use the Linux diskless terminal client/ master server that now exists they completely converted MS Office to Openoffice.org, solved all the problems while they had both MS Office and OOo on windows, and then switched the server to linux, not losing ANY data in the process. And for students coming in each year it's extremely useful: teachers don't expect MS Word documents, they just expect a file that OOo can open. For students coming in with no MS Office on their computer, it's a great money-saver, and, let's be honest, you always find time to fiddle around with a new program before really using it. In your case the issue is due to some specific function, and I guess you solved it after doing the research.
There is a way to live without MS, and that doesn't always mean just banning it altogether either.
Check out http://network.gouldacademy.org/ for more info on my school.

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You describe the perfect way for OOo to make headroom: education. Students either don't have a lot of ingrain habits yet, or have more time available (and their time is at a lower end-cost to the "company" - that is the school) to be able to learn the newer aspects of OOo.

Once upon a time Microsoft (and AutoCAD - another monopoly) made their way into a market dominated by Wordstar and the behemoth WordPerfect (who? I hear the high school senior ask...) by offering low priced student versions the others did not.

If you manage to set the standard as OOo (interchange amongst high schoolers I am guesing is on an informational level - not format-critical, and not the same as the critical needs of a world Multinational Company Standard that has existed for 10 years...).

Congratulations, I think you are better off staring out as you are with OOo, and envy your luck. Unfortunately, a 50+ yr.old secretary that works with MSOffice since 1995 WILL undergo much greater costs and productivity loss (short-mid term) sidegrading from any MS Office to OOo/StarOffice then from Office 97 or 2000 to Office XP.

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Hi,

As a person using MS Word dince its version 3.0 for DOS and current user of OpenOffice, I can agree with you that OOorg feels a bit rough here and there ut I have to disagree with you on publishing storage formats.

Matter of fact, I think, the question here is not really the data format, but access to my data.

Even if MS does not publicise its document format it should provide a feature of exporting MY DATA (which includes every bit of formatting) to a publicly available stnadard format.

Sandor Laza

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I agree 100%. Although Open Office is an excellent and robust application it is by no means fully mature. I would also not class myself as a proponent of proprietary software and file/database formats but I know a good product when I use one. Quite simply MS makes a good product. Yes contrary to in the increasing number of Open Source dogmatic's out there it's true they actually can do something right. I am the IT Director of a company in 22 countries. 90% of which are on a stripped down ICE WM desktop with Open Office. Why not 100%? Quite simply we as a company do get documents from everyone and their bother that have all kind of formating problems. And although it is a huge pain in the ass we continue to spend money on MS to deal with those concerns. And while it may be a pain to admit this I have less problems in general with the 10% MS Office users while the Open Office users chant for my blood on a daily basis. Why? Quite simply because MS makes a superior product in this case. While it would be nice for them to reveal and release the formating code for all to use, it is not very likely. And after all if you are Mrs. Field's you don't post your recipes for everyone to see do you? It is absurd to blame Microsoft for Open Office's shortcomings. Time and product evolution will solve many of the current problems but until then you are left with the old adage "you get what you pay for". Speaking from experience I can tell you that while Open Office might be okay for really basic business tasks it is not nearly mature enough to really compete with MS. It is nice to think that formating issues or crashes are inconsequential compared to the long term benefit of being free from prioprietary oppression. In the real world not many CEO's are willing to fund an experiment that will definitely cause interuption and disruption of business just because of their IT department says at some vague date in the future we will all be better off by dumping all proprietary software. Doesn't sound like a wise bet to me. Oh and as a sidenote the 90% of the company that does have Open Office installed is POS and has very, very basic requirements. All administration and management still uses MS. On a final note, I would like to point out that all of this FUD talk and increasingly negative static over MS/SCO and Open Source is only making the open source movement look like clowns. It is software people! Not the second coming. Let the lawyers duke it out. Am I the only one who remembers the UNIX b.s from the 80's? And when the day comes when Linux is on 51% of the desktops across the world and the "zealots" among you have adopted a yet unborn BSD variant, please try to remember that there are a lot more things in this world to worry about besides what OS you use.

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Anyone like to comment on the <A HREF="http://members.microsoft.com/partner/salesmarketing/opensource/discguides/considerLinux.pdf" TITLE="microsoft.com">Linux desktop competitive guide</a microsoft.com> that I referred to on
<A HREF="http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/03/18/2048250" TITLE="newsforge.com">Newsvac</a newsforge.com>?

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The hardware requirement comparison in the "competitive guide" refer only to Red Hat. Red Hat is a resource hog, without a doubt. If they were really honest (of course not, this is Microsoft) they would have listed a few other distributions such as Slackware and Debian which would have blown Windows XP out of the water on these requirements.

Slackware and Gentoo are arguably the fastest and less resource intensive distros. While businesses using Linux are typically running Red Hat, it is only for their lack of knowledge for Linux that they are not running a more productive distribution.

In "viewpoint #1", Microsoft is obviously trying to pass Linux off as unstable and unproductive by stating "end user downtime and loss of productivity" while also hinting that Linux will cost more money than Windows from these facts. I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I have yet to see Linux generate a fatal crash or keep me from being productive from whatever reason Microsoft may be implying.

Also, they state "additional deployment, management, and support" as being more costly. Any Linux administrator with half a brain knows that any conceivable problem can be fixed with a few minutes of searching through a newsgroup or user forum (Google is our friend). As far as deployment or management, I am having a hard time thinking of how this is any more of a problem for Linux than Windows.

This whole document is a big fabrication, and Microsoft is trying their hardest to fool the gullible people out there with cheap lies and exaggerations.

One more thing... "Some customers simply don't want to replace their legacy hardware. For these customers, consider Windows Terminal Services as a potential solution"<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... okay, this is ridiculous, I've got a 386 running the latest version of Slackware -- WinXP simply won't boot on this system. Where does Microsoft get off implying that their solutions for legacy hardware are any better than a much less expensive Linux solution?

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Hah! They point to Terminal Server for getting the most out of legacy hardware, but what about remote X sessions on "thin client" type machines? Far superior IMHO.

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A couple of ironic points to make here:

1) The document is in pdf format -- not Billy format
2) Apparently Billy office does not export pdf natively,
a third party app is required.
3) The document it turns out was written using
quark express on a mac.
4) They couldn't use Billy office format for their
pitch, because (contrary to their pitch), acquiring
Billy office is rather expensive for Joe user, and
thus Joe user couldn't read this document in Billy office.
5) If they had nevertheless pushed it out in Billy office
format, folks would have had to download open office,
to read their Billy office formatted paper that explains
why folks shouldn't use open office to read Billy office
documents.

#

don't forget the script. I have many positive experience with importing large excel file with many macro without any problems in openoffice. They simply work.

#

Of course Microsoft is going to come up with a long list of reasons why MS Office is better than Open-Office, because it's their product. Also, MS Office has been around A LOT longer than Open-Office, and it is possible that it is better than it. Take into account that when MS Office first launched though, it was no where near as good as Open-Office is right now. Maybe that will mean something in the future for Sun Microsystems.

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OpenOffice is based on StarOffice, which was around many years ago.

red

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In regards to your sig...I also enjoy:

"Software is like sex. If you really have to pay for it because you can't figure out how to do it yourself, there's always someone willing to take your money."

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I have always had problems converting documents on Microsoft Windows machines. Maybe that is because the Microsoft Windows application developers believe everything should be secret.

I know that StarOffice and OpenOffice.org are basically the same product when it comes to documents, but I believe it is important to note that OpenOffice.org documents can move easily between OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, and in the future, other applications using the format.

#

"Microsoft used to have an advertisement asking where you wanted to go today"

And my translation used to be:

"Let us take you for a ride."

A Nony Mouse

#

I work with PDF files a lot. They're easy to distribute and render well almost everywhere. It lets me distribute documents using fonts I like without forcing others who want to see it rendered as intended to install my fonts on their systems.

Microsoft also realise the benefits of PDF and decided to release their Competative Guide as a PDF document.

However, I create my PDF files using OpenOffice.org. Saving the current open document as a PDF file is a matter of clicking the PDF icon on the toolbar or choosing "Export as PDF..." from the "File" menu.

Microsoft Office does not have integrated support for exporting to PDF. In fact, for this document in which Microsoft defend their Office suite, they had to use third party software.

While Microsoft Office has a text processor (Word) and a desktop publishing program (Publisher), they used Quark, Inc.'s QuarkXPress to design their two page propaganda.

One would expect Microsoft to use Microsoft's own operating system (Windows), but it appears they think Apple Macintoshes are better suited for creating this kind of document.

If you run their OpenOffice.pdf through strings(1), near the end are these interesting hints:

<nobr> <wbr></nobr><TT>/Producer (Acrobat Distiller 4.05 for Macintosh)
/Creator (QuarkXPress\(tm\) 4.11)</TT>

I have created marketing material similar to this document with OpenOffice.org. If Microsoft think Microsoft Office is so great, why do they not use it for their propaganda?

#

Wow, so Microsoft uses a third party application... amazing. Do you know of any companies that rely solely on their own products for all their corporate purposes? Why create an in-house PDF mod for Word when there is already market dominance by Adobe and Quark - it doesn't make economic sense. Just use the one in existence.

As for why they used PDF: think about it. They are appealing to Linux users. They can't exactly open Word files - seems like a smart move to me. Thank god none of you are in any marketing positions...

#

Do you know of any companies that rely solely on their own products for all their corporate purposes?

Do you not think it is strange that while Microsoft Word can be used to write books and Microsoft Publisher is a nice frame based tool to create leaflets like this Competative Guide, they choose to use QuarkXpress?

Why create an in-house PDF mod for Word when there is already market dominance by Adobe and Quark - it doesn't make economic sense.

It would add a great feature to Microsoft Office and take away one of OpenOffice.org's important advantages. As it would increase the value of the product, it would make economic sense.

As for why they used PDF: think about it. They are appealing to Linux users. They can't exactly open Word files - seems like a smart move to me.,

I use Linux and have no problems opening documents created using Microsoft Word. Only a few times has this caused problems. Even Microsoft's own documentation written in Word opens in OpenOffice.org Writer with all lay-out and formatting intact. Note by the way that I think they made the right choice by publishing this as a PDF. I also use PDF a lot.

#

Why create an in-house PDF mod for Word when there is already market dominance by Adobe and Quark - it doesn't make economic sense. Just use the one in existence.

Yeah, just like way back when when everyone had Netscape 1..4.

#

As for why they used PDF: think about it. They are appealing to Linux users.

No problems. Since the software is free, Microsoft should publish it in SXW and KWD formats as well. (-:

As to why they used Quark Express, putting this together in Quark is as easy as falling out of bed, doing the same in MS-Word and getting the layout to work across all versions of MS-Word and all printers on all OSes would have been kind of similar to falling out of bed: it would have been a nightmare. OpenOffice Draw wouldn't do too bad a job, and MS-Publisher would look OK until you changed printers or versions or had to download it over a modem link, but watching someone knock that up in PowerPoint would be marketable entertainment.

Quark is probably also the main reason the PDF is so portable. Somehow MS-Office-produced PDFs seem to be the ones which most often break PDF readers.

#

This is fantastic stuff. So basically this is what your saying is your thoughts on order of preference of tools:

QuarkXPress
OpenOffice.org Draw
Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Word
Microsoft PowerPoint

Interesting. The non-MS products (even the free OOo) are rated higher than all of the MS Office programs that cost $$, have been out for many many years, one that is designed precisely for desktop publishing, one that has many desktop publishing features (which should be more than adaquate to crank out this particular piece), etc..

I agree 100% with you. As far as Quark being the main reason PDF is so portable -- umm.. i don't quite understand that, Quark AFAIK still does not have PDF functionaility and requires Adobe distiller/acrobat to create PDFs..

#

The fact remains that Microsoft tries to promote their tools to do exactly what they did, yet do not use their tools themselves. What makes them good enough for me, but not them?

#

These comments display an astounding amount of ignorance.

Wow, so Microsoft uses a third party application... amazing. Do you know of any companies that rely solely on their own products for all their corporate purposes? Why create an in-house PDF mod for Word when there is already market dominance by Adobe and Quark - it doesn't make economic sense. Just use the one in existence.

You suck at economics then... Microsoft do not put a native PDF exporter in Word because they do not own the standard. It does not help them keep SMB's locked into MS office when they allow people to easily export their documents to another popular standard.

As for why they used PDF: think about it. They are appealing to Linux users. They can't exactly open Word files - seems like a smart move to me. Thank god none of you are in any marketing positions...

They are not just appealing to Linux users, It could be safely assumed their goal is getting this FUD to people who are yet to use OO... Duh. Once someone has swapped he/she will tend to make a judgement on the software themselves. And likely then make the move to OO.

Oh yes, you are clearly a marketing genius!!

#

Actually both the SWF and PDF formats are semi-open and both Adobe and Macromedia offer a royalty free license and Spec/SDK for them.

There is really no reason at all that MS office doesn't export to PDF since Office XP. To be honest all commercial office suites, except MS Office, either has native PDF export or sell a 19.99 plugin to export PDF. Word Perfect Office has had it since version 10, Lotus Smart Suite has had it for a while, Easy Office 123 has had that feature since 2000, and even 601 Office Suite has a 20 plugin (Since 2001) to export as PDF. The only reason why I can see MS not adding that feature is so that people export as<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.doc thus requiring MS Office (Or a MS Office compatibility filter) to open the file.

The document actually made me laugh my butt off. Secure with MS Office!!! This is so funny. How many MS Office Meta-Data snafus have been the press lately? Cmon... The White House plagurizes most of a document from a grad students theseis as a reason to go to war with Iraq and get caught with the MS Meta Data, A Calf DA gets caught letting the MPAA draft his recomendation for P2P networks and gets caught through the Meta Data, and SCO originally was planning on suing Bank of America and we all know this becuase of the MS Meta Data. Talk about security through MS Office formats!!

#

So this asshole claims Microsoft Office requires more hardware and more disk space, and therefore OO.org "holds its own." Well I'll tell you, when I load OO.org on my P4 it takes a fucking long time to load. When I load MSOffice it comes up very snappily. I can't imagine using OO.org on an older machine. It must be like using Mozilla on an older machine, where you wait 2 minutes for the cursor to even show in the URL box! I have 200GB of disk space, I don't care how much space an office suite takes up.

#

The keyword was it takes 8MB for each additional window/app you have open. Open several OO apps and then open several MS Office apps and tell me which uses more memory and takes longer to load.

#

That's because Windows XP loads parts of MS Office (if installed) at bootup, whether you need it or not.

#

No it doesn't<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. what nonsense you talk.

#

Yeah, it does. Every version of MS Office from at least 97 up installs an app called Office Startup Assistant that runs on startup to preload bits and pieces of Office when you first boot your PC. This allows Office apps to appear to start faster. Disable this pre-loading tool and MS Office apps take noticably longer to start.

#

LOL...

If you can't tweak your machine to start OO.o or Mozilla fast, than you definitely don't know what you're doing. Especially a P4 (not that a P4 is anything special). Maybe you should check out what the bottle neck is than make some useless arguments.

BTW: are you someone who thinks Gator is a useful app and it's ok to let Realplayer take over your machine? You should check out what's starting up with Windows and see what's choking your machine instead of your leaning on your incompetence.

#

"When I load MSOffice it comes up very snappily. I can't imagine using OO.org on an older machine."<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.... "I have 200GB of disk space, I don't care how much space an office suite takes up."



That is not the point of the argument. The company states that their product has lower system requirements than OO.org. However, the author has shown otherwise.



Microsoft is not marketing their product in good faith. Documents, such as the MS-Office vs OO.org, have only one intent. To malign the competition by any means possible.



Things dont usually get this far. Microsoft typically kills off the competition by other means. 'Open Source' with its virus (sarcasm emphasized) has nullified their primary strategy of assimilation.

#

Ha. I just noticed this as well. Made on a Mac.

#

Has anyone realized that this document is not produced in somebodys garage.
Microsoft (being not such a small company) has done one of two things for the publishing of this document:
Given the contents to an advertising/design sub contractor or produced the design in their advertising/design departament. In any of this situations they woldn't have chosen a word procesing piece of software for the professional publication of a document they would used what we good Ol graphical geeks use: A DESIGN PROGRAM such as Quark Express and let me tell you what is also very popular in design departaments no matter whose company's: MAC OS
So this argument is pointless Microsoft doesn't produce proffessional design software so why would they use a word processing application for design pruposes.
If you have a shoe factory you don't have to use a shoe to put a nail on the wall you can always get a hammer from the hammer factory.

#

... Microsoft Publisher.

Maybe you're right when you say that "Microsoft doesn't produce proffessional [sic] design software". However, <A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/office/publisher/default.asp" TITLE="microsoft.com">they claim to do so</a microsoft.com>.

Apparently, neither Windows nor Publisher are the tools of choice for a professional publishing job.

#

Of course not!
But they don't seem to claim it to be professional ("The latest version of the popular small business publishing and marketing materials program") which would make a lot of sense because IT'S ABSOLUTELY NOT

Hopefully there'll be a future for design on the linux world...

#

It would be nice to see mention of MS's free (as in beer, not as in speech) MSDE here, instead of assuming that a user is going to buy a full $1200 MS-SQL Server license. I believe MSDE is licensed (crippled) for up to 5 users, and is simply a cut down version of SQL.

Thank you for your time,
BBH

#

But you're missing a point - MSDE, the Developer's Edition of MS SQL Server, is crippled for a reason. Unless your business office will never grow past 5 users, you're more or less stuck - you have no choice but to purchase a full-blown copy of SQL Server. The sole intent of MSDE was to provide a developer the means to test their handiwork in a multi-user environment. It was never meant to run your business on; that's what a full copy of MS SQL Server is for. Otherwise, why bother selling it - after all, if it's price-point is free, then why do I need the larger "product"?

Let me put it into perspective: there is a reason why both Access and Visual FoxPro - the two most popular Microsoft-based file-shared databases systems - can't grow past 2Gb of data per table. Each year Microsoft comes out with new FoxPro features, and each year it gains a more "modern" feel to it. But in the last 3 releases, between version 5.0 and 8.0 (just released), the file size limitiation for tables hasn't changed a bit: 2Gb per free-standing table. Access is even worse: by design, all data, forms, reports, etc. must fit within a 2Gb container object that makes up the ".mdb" file. To the best of my knowledge, the "all your data must fit into 2Gb" limitation still exists today. Why do both of these have limitations that could be removed? It's simple - they would rather you upgrade to MS SQL Server, for a much larger price tag.

#

You're smoking crack

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/msde/default.asp

Thank you for your time,
Frank Russo

#

Umm... and fall into the same trap as Access has proven to be?

#

The previous poster is talking about the MS Data Engine, not SQL Server Developer Edition.

#

MS Web Matrix can create and edit Access MDB files also. Its another MS freebie (As in Free Beer) if you have Windows 2000 or higher.

To be honest I would recomend everyone move thier Access Databases to the Web using MS Web Matrix as it can work with multiple backends like My SQL, MS SQL, Firbird, MSDE, ECT.

Nothing is more frustrating than MS Access incompatibility between versions. Once someone converts that MS Access DB to the next higher version it won't open in lower versions period, and they don't even have to fiddle with anything. Your options at that point is to either upgrade MS Access, Use OO.org to connect to the DB through ODBC, use the higher version of Access to export the DB to the Web, Put the MDB out on a web server manually, or download MS Web Matrix and pull the data out into a web DB. Then again Access shouldn't really be used for any heavy databases anyhow.

#

Take OpenOffice and shove it. I have used it, I dislike it I think it is the worse piece of junk on the market but what can I expect from something free. I will keep Office 2003 you keep Open Office.

#

How awfully constructive<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... thank-you for being a part of our community.

not

#

as you are expressing your freedom of choice. You may not have realised that open source movement is fundamentally about choice, including the ways your computer works, and the ways you may want to change the way it works.

#

Bravo....You're apt testimony that the Internet has been so easy to access that even idiots can get online.

#

spoken like a true MS minon, Billy boy certainly has his fist firmly up yours

#

Microsoft office 2003 is a huge buggy turd, not only is it slow and bloated , but it just plain sucks...inovation indeed. its expensive for no reason and crashes enough to be annoying, no thank you, give me open office anyday. And as for email? well I use mozilla, its super fast, has a ton of features and a great mail client.

Viva free software

#

Even as a Linux/OO convert I oughta point out that migrating an Access MDB to an SQL Server db is pretty much a simple one-click-style process that only a total muppet would need to pay someone to do for them. Last time I did this for an employer (about 3-4 yrs ago, SQL Srv 2000) it was, anyway, though of cos the Billy Bunch may have mad it harder now to get some support revenue in *grin*

Mind you if your database is that improtant WTF are you doing running it under MS Access anyway...

#

One problem with OpenOffice is that it is much slower than MS Office. On my system (P4 1.6ghz, 512mb ram, Slackware 8.1), it takes the OpenOffice word processor 21 seconds to start, while Word 2000 running under Crossover Office takes only 11 seconds. Even counting the overhead of the wine emulation layer and the fact that Crossover does not preload MS Office like Windows does Word still loads much faster. I typically use Koffice if possible myself, though the word import on Koffice 1.2.1 isn't as good as OpenOffice.

#

on my 1GHz p4/512 MB running windblowz XP pro, the OO apps start for about 4-5 secs. this is still about twice slower than excel or word, but totally acceptable. can't really say how does OO compare to M$ office on linux though.

#

Then there must be something wrong with either your machine or your version of OOo. I just loaded mine for the first time since I turned on my machine this morning and OOo loaded in 11 secs. Subsequent openings are taking 5 secs. My machine is an older 1GHz with 512MB ram running on Fedora Core 1.

#

21 seconds? my PC has half the memory and it's an Athlon at 1.6Ghz only takes 8 seconds. So I don't think it's slow, in fact is pretty fast.

#

But having multiple virtual desktops almost removes the effect of the slow start-up time. Keep a copy of OpenOffice running in one desktop, and use it when you need it. You only need to start OpenOffice from scratch each time you reboot, which for a Linux of FreeBSD system should be very infrequent.

#

I am still using a copy of WordPerfect 8 from about 1999. This product is wonderful! On my Athlon XP box running SuSE 9.0 on a KDE desktop the program pops on the screen without any hesitation at all. I still use the program for paper letters and printed materials that don't need the fancy stuff.
You may notice that the OO.o runs faster a second time than th first time it is fired up in a day. This is normal due to the Java back-end being started up. Once this happens the program becomes much more responsive to the user. You may also consider using a lighter weight window manager such as WindowMaker or FVWM2. Both KDE and Gnome suck CPU cycles like crazy.

#

I'd have to agree - OO is much, much slower loading even small documents than Office is.

I tolerate it mostly because I want to give OO a chance and I find its feature set more than acceptable for my needs.

The other big problem with OO is that documents saved in Word don't look exactly the same in OO. Basically I can't be certain what something will look like when edited in OO will look like when opened in Word. For those sending out resumes and are depending on a professional look, this means that they are properly formatted. If I can't trust the pagination, font proportions, etc. of OO I can't use it to send resumes to potential employers.

For internal document editing I consider OO just fine and use it pretty frequently, but the slowness still jars me. In fact, if I just want to take a quick peek at a document I'll just open up Word then open a document which is still way faster than waiting for the document to load in OO.

If OO can go a long way to addressing the speed of loading issue--its operation after it's open seems acceptable to me--then it will stand a better chance of really threatening Office.

#

>The other big problem with OO is that documents saved in Word don't look exactly the same in OO. Basically I can't be certain what something will look like when edited in OO will look like when opened in Word.


  And I have repeatedly had the same problem going between different versions of Word.

  I used to be in an office that had Word 2, Office 95 and Office 97 on different machines. I could not assume that a file created with one of the machines would work on either of the others; I kept getting file errors or Word wouldn't open it at all. I was taking account of version numbers; a file created in Word 2 for Windows would have problems opening in Word/Office95, a file created in Word/Office97 and saves in Word/Office95 format wouldn't load at all, and so on.

  Most of the problems on loading were loss of formatting, sometimes to the extent of opening the Word doc as a text file and showing all the formatting code.

  I quickly got to the point of saving a doc in RTF if it had to go to one of the other machines; worked sorta-perfectly. This lasted until the boss sprang for new machines and all had Office97 on them...

#

And you would want to send an editable, meta-tag caching, bloated resume document to someone because....?

WAY back in the old days, there was this big problem with documents being of differing formatting on every different machine accessing it because of editor versions, screen sizes and installed fonts. Then this wonderful technology was invented called PDF.

For those times when you wish the formatting to be the sameon all boxen, and require only a free reader to view it, why not choose a PDF file?

Oh yes, there is the problem with brain damaged people actually 'requiring' documents sent to them be in 'MS-Word' format. I feel very sad for these people. And do you, then, really want to work for one of them? That must be even MORE fun.

#

> And you would want to send an editable, meta-tag
> caching, bloated resume document to someone
> because....?

Because some recipient want and expect it. I did once send a PDF file to a job consultant, which he could not read and asked me for the Word document.

#

That's why the top priority version 2.0 of open office is 1) startup speed, 2) ms office compatability, and 3) in memory footprint.

Given the improvements I have seen since I started using the software at Star Office 5.0(before Sun bought it out) I would say that it is improving at a faster rate than the MS office series.

#

Why do people judge an application's performance by its start up time ?

Can somebody explain that to me ? I'm pretty sure that the performance of a word processor, for example, matters the most while you are creating a document, not while you are waiting for it to initialise.

Do you judge the performance of a Ferrari by how quickly the engine starts, or by how fast it covers the quarter mile ?

#

Ah! There's the rub.

You see, the average Micro$oft user realizes the benefits with regards to faster startup times. When the program (Word/Excel/whatever) crashes and forces a reboot... they can get back to work quicker! Say... oh I don't know, this happens numerous times a day. Productiviy increased!

It's an obvious advantage over that silly and stable OOo product.

#

Try compressing the OOo binaries with UPX. Makes it load in half the time<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

#

MS says that OpenOffice is not compatible with MS Word, but..

(1) have you ever tried reading documents from one workstation to another using to same version?
I've had to reformat text so it would look and print the same as the first..

(2) have you ever tried to read stuff from older versions of MS Office? Same as above..

Remember MS keeps changing formats every once in a while, and they don't care what your 'investment' is..

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(1)We had such a problem with this in my office (all using the same version of MS Office 2000) that it was finally decreed that *ONLY* the Tech Writer would actually print documents to be released to the customer, and only from his machine!

#

My Dad has office 97 at home - Office XP at work. He emails me documents and I resave them as 97 compatable. Updating Open Office is free.

#

Please correct: "it's" is a contraction of "it is", while "its" is the possessive form of "it".

Example of use:

It's annoying to read a NewsForge story and find its use of "it's" and "its" at odds with grammatical use.

Additional comments on substance to follow.

#

Well said.

#

Contractions receive apostrophes; possessive pronouns don't:

<TT>I am     => I'm          mine
you are  => you're       yours
[s]he is => [s]he's      his/hers
it is    => it's         its</TT>

#

I understand you, however, OSS/linux<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... is international, so just try to accept that fact.

Regards

#

Oddly it's usually the native English speaking people who make this mistake.

#

Not so terribly odd. We get inundated with all of the exceptions which make up the linguistic characteristics of english before we're old enough to really understand the nuances. We learn so many exceptions to the 'rules' of the language before we're 5, that we tend to get them mixed up.

The most famous rule of the english language is, "'i' before 'e', except after 'c', or when it sound 'aye' as in 'neighbor' or 'weigh'. Or the following exceptions, 'weird', 'height', 'foreign', 'leisure', 'neither', 'seize', 'forfeit', 'either'."

How's that for a 'simple' rule for a language. A simple spelling rule with 2 general exceptions and 8 specific exceptions. (God forbid someone coin a new word that breaks the 'simple' rule!)

This rule is famous and confusing enough that it was the focus of a Charlie Brown move (the spelling bee). The only reason I can remember it is because an old B.C. comic years ago that turned the 8 exception words into a sentance (Weird height and foreign leisure, neither seize nor forfeit either.)

We learn most of our own language rules by pure rote memorization because very few people can actually be bothered (or figure out how) to teach them any other way. For more phonetically consistent languages this isn't as much of a problem, because an 'i before e' rule would be just that, 'i before e'.

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Using a LTSP setup you can run Linux+OpenOffice in less expensive hardware (something like 200MHz processor PCs with 32Mb RAM, and without HD).

I don't know if it's possible to configure Windows+Office in the same way, but the license costs would exceed the hardware costs.

That's why it makes much more sense going full open source.

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You can use Pentium-100 with 16 MB of RAM.

No need for such overkill as P-200 and 32MB of RAM

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OpenOffice have less features than Office, it's certain. But OpenOffice have all the common features most people wants.

One feature that is badly needed is a PIM like Outlook/Exchange with a possibility for macros (or extensions). Absolutly no equilavent in open source... A PIM (with a server like Exchange) named Chandler is curently developed and looks good !

These bad things are no good reasons for me to use Office though.

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OpenOffice have less features than Office, it's certain. But OpenOffice have all the common features most people wants.

I'm not sure that's true (the less features part). OOo has a lot of features that MSO does not. For instance:

* A vector graphics drawing program (OOoDraw). This is an incredibly useful program.
* PDF export.
* Flash Export.
* Cross-platform. I use Solaris. My kid brother uses Linux. My other brother uses Mac OS X. My parents use Windows XP. But we *all* use OOo.
* Superior SDK (can be extended in C++, Java, Python and OpenBasic).
* Styles. Yes, MSO has styles too, but OOo's are far superior. The Stylist is a fantastic feature.
* Navigator. Indispensible for managing large documents.
* The ability to work with many different databases and email clients.
* A file format that is not only open, but is techncially superior (smaller and more reliable).
* Much superior Mathematics editor.

Ultimatelly, which is better depends a lot on your particular situation. If you absolutely need an embedded email client, then MS Office will be better for you. There are other features that MS Office has that OOo does not. If you need one of them, then MSO is better for you.

But similarly, OOo has several features that MSO does not. Some of them can be very important. I am a Mathematics instructor at the University of Maryland. For me, OOoDraw, OOoMath and PDF export are absolutely indispensible. The fact that it runs on my Solaris box is indispensible, since I would never be able to get my work done under windows. I would be willing to pay more money for OOo than for MSO purely on the basis of technical merit.

Cheers,
Daniel.

OpenOffice.org volunteer.

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It's too bad there aren't any <A HREF="http://www.booksunderreview.com/Computers/Software/Office_Suites/OpenOffice.org/" TITLE="booksunderreview.com">books and documentation</a booksunderreview.com> on how to switch, otherwise it might be easy.

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There is a 130-page MS Office -> Star Office migration guide by Sun Microsystem:

http://se.sun.com/edu/staroffice/so_migration_gui<nobr>d<wbr></nobr> e.pdf

This document is not well known though.

And many other new OpenOffice.org documents are being created and published lately. Check it out:

http://documentation.openoffice.org/

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(Btw, sorry for the messed format above...)

There is a 130-page MS Office -> Star Office migration guide by Sun Microsystem:

http://se.sun.com/edu/staroffice/so_migration_gui<nobr>d<wbr></nobr> e.pdf

This document is not well known though.

And many other new OpenOffice.org documents are being created and published lately. Check it out:

http://documentation.openoffice.org/

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Sure sure, "RTFM", whatever...

Why should I have to read a book, a training guide, or migration guide?

I was excited to download OO a few weeks ago. I was determined to use it for a while even though, like most businesses, we are fully licensed for MS Office. It has an amazing amount of features and I'm sure it does *everything* I could possibly want it to do. The problem is finding out how to make it *do* those things!

Simple, common terms like "Word Wrap" are converted to geeky terms like "Insert Line Break", or similar. Why don't they just say "Auto 0x10/0x13 Insertion"? OK so I found it after searching a little, but most users want something they can actually *use*. They use 10% of the features 90% of the time and it should be as intuitive as possible.

Users should not have to read a manual for standard office productivity tools. You should be able to figure it out as you go along, with help provided as you go along in an intuitive interface.

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> Why should I have to read a book, a training guide, or migration guide?

Dude, read the grandparent post that it attempts to answer before you start to flame:

Grandparent post said:
>>It's too bad there aren't any books and >>documentation on how to switch, otherwise it
>>might be easy.

And the parent post is exactly trying to answer that. Now, what's wrong with THAT if people are actually looking for manuals?

You got to learn something new in a new environment? Isn't it? There is also another option of paying for Technical support from Sun (even for OpenOffice.org).

Of course, you don't HAVE to switch, but you (or your colleagues/superiors) are responsible or the cost of making things work in your environment: you/they will do the Math for ROI (license cost saved/cost of migration).

If history is any guide, enough functionality at lower cost will show its strength in the long term; not that OpenOffice.org will stop development - it will be further improved in the future version and revisions.

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We use Office XP and Office 2003 running on Windows 2000 and the following is the HDD requirements:

Office XP Full Install - 515MB HDD
Office 2003 Full Install - 900MB HDD (roughly)

Now is this not BLOATWARE lol...

As for a previous note about OpenOffice taking 21 seconds to start up... What? Mine takes about 14 and i'm quite happy to wait an extra few seconds for less bugs etc... Worth it don't you think (aswell as saving on precious HDD space)...

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Yes, OpenOffice.org is very slow. Which version are you using btw? The latest release is faster than earlier releases. And from what I've read, StarOffice is even faster. Given that they share code, OpenOffice should get faster as its optimized.



As others have pointed out, part of the reason is that Windows pre-loads parts of Office to get a faster start. That means its using resources even when not running. Also, there are optimizations that you can set that will speed up OpenOffice.org, especially if using an older version. One optimization is getting rid of the splash screen. A second is going to Tools > Options > Memory, and taking into consideration how much multi-tasking you do, how loaded your workstation or server is, how often you are going to run OOo, and how much memory the system has, raise the memory setting: "Use for OpenOffice.org" to something higher than 32 MB (for 1.1). If you have an older version, iirc, it may be pre-set at 24 or 16 MB. I've made this change on older versions, and it has had a dramatic effect on startup, when combined with eliminating the splash screen (which was larger on the older versions) and "Remove from memory after" (set lower) and "Memory per object" (less if used seldom, more if used often), etc.



The memory optimization tricks shave some startup time from the start. I don't remember the numbers, but you can track this in Linux with "time" for measuring how long the startup takes.



That being said, yes, once again, OpenOffice is very slow. That I'm sure, is thanks to the Java crap base, thanks to Sun meddling with Star's word processor (of course, without their meddling...). Unfortunately, people think Java is great, instead of the absolute garbage it really is, so I'm afraid OpenOffice will not be very fast any time soon.



There are other important things to consider, however. First, you will also get the Microsoft fans who are in denial, make these faulty type comparisons. I don't use OpenOffice.org every day. I use it once a week, sometimes once every two weeks, sometimes less. So start up is noticeable to me when I start it. But during the times when I use it regularly, I simply leave it running. If I were using Windows, that would mean that I have to start my office suite during the daily crashes, and during the morning bootup. But I'm not using Windows, I'm running OpenOffice.org on Linux. So checking my uptime...up 9 days, 11:29, 0 users, load average: 0.37, 0.26, 0.20, I last booted 9 1/2 days ago. Since I swapped out a CD drive about that time, it sounds right. But my average uptime is about 3 months when not adjusting hardware. So in a single user/single system environment, I leave my system running, and when using my office suite, I leave it running. In a multi-user environment, where the fraudulent Microsoft comparison articles are aimed, OpenOffice.org would be installed on a server that runs 24/7, and users log in from their desktops. Yes, even on a small, several user lan, this is the right way of doing it. You get the benefit of backing up a single server, and everyone can log in to run off the server using the oldest systems that would have been thrown out years ago if running on Windows.



Is OpenOffice.org slow? Yes. And more so if you boot every morning, and reboot after crashes. And reboot after re-installs after virus infections, from what I've been hearing from people I know who are running windows.



Are there other options? I keep seeing Kword being brought up as an alternative. Not for me. I have the kword that came with kde 3.1.4, and it still locks up on me, still loses data instead of saving it, etc. It's a nice little experiment, but it isn't stable, and stable an office suite must be.



Would OpenOffice.org run faster if it preloaded? Probably. Would I want it to preload? Not a chance. If I don't run it, I don't want it using my system resources at all.



Another thing I haven't seen brought up is clustering. As exotic as clustering sounds, it is fairly simple to get running now. I know someone who set up openMosix on a file/application server, on some desktops, and added a spare $200 AMD computer (1.3 Ghz Duron) to the cluster. Now, when the desktops are in use, the openMosix cluster spreads the load. As more processes are run on the file server, some processes migrate to the desktops and spare computer, and the file server (nothing fancy) is able to handle an increased workload (including booting and running OpenOffice.org) faster and easier. I don't know what the costs and abilities are in setting up clustering on windows, but openMosix is being used in the real world, in a real small business that I'm aware of, to speed up all applications running on a lan, including OpenOffice.org



And iirc, isn't Largo using openMosix on their production file/applicaton servers?



One more observation:



top - 22:20:01 up 9 days, 11:49, 0 users, load average: 0.15, 0.08, 0.09


Tasks: 95 total, 2 running, 93 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie


Cpu(s): 13.7% user, 2.6% system, 0.0% nice, 83.7% idle


Mem: 515332k total, 506088k used, 9244k free, 4236k buffers


Swap: 1028120k total, 538316k used, 489804k free, 80376k cached



Last time I tried running the number of processes I'm running now, Windows couldn't handle it (same exact hardware, same system). I regularly run so many applications at the same time (thanks to the multiple desktops), that Windows would regularly crash on me. I started OpenOffice.org to check the path for the memory settings. Had I opened MS Office to do the same thing with the same number of apps running, it would have gone down in flames. I'd always have to remember to shut down some other apps, prior to starting MS Office, or Dreamweaver or Windows Media Player, or some other resource hog. Each time I would forget, it would crash (try running 93 processes with many of them major applications, start a movie, then try starting another movie at the same time, and see how far you get. While you don't normally run two movies on a desktop, I've made the mistake of starting a second movie on both Windows and Linux. Windows crashes, Linux doesn't, though the movie player may or may not crash, which means a simple trip to the shell to kill the hung process).



Some time ago, I made a comparison (I was dual booting for a while). I compared what I was running on Windows, and I started equivalents under Linux. After I reached the point of a crash on Windows, I was still able to continue starting and running many additional applications without a problem on Linux. I have to overload my system so much, and with so many apps, that the system slows to such a crawl, without crashing. And on the occasions that a not-so-stable application crashes (Kword, Konqueror when doing a gui file search with a large number of files/directories, Konqueror when shredding large (over 500 MB) files using the gui instead of the command line, Konqueror when I click a link then attempt to "select all" and "save" my post comments prior to the browser going to the new link, possibly a few others I can't remember right now), it is simple to 1. open a shell 2. find the process that hung, 3. kill it, 4 go back to doing what I was doing. The same problem in Windows causes a complete crash, with a reboot necessary. Not having used Windows for a while, I find it astounding how when talking to others, they describe a reboot due to a crash as if it is simply clicking an icon. As if it is nothing out of the ordinary. It brings me back to my use of Windows, and how I had the same mindset, crashes were something to be expected. And to be prepared for, including always making 3 versions of a file in word, such as filename01.rtf, filename02.rtf, filename03.rtf, and then going back and working on version 2 and 3, saving to both, and then starting version 4 after enough additional information had been inputted. And the fist slamming that normally occured when I forgot to do this, and a crash caused loss of data (always backup, and recover, doesn't always work, regardless of how Microsoft bills it).



And as for the pdf capabilities of OpenOffice, they don't work for me. After having tried and failed at creating pdf files from OpenOffice.org (Windows users can't open or print them when I send the files to them, I've tried it myself and get an error message), so my procedure it to create the file in sxw, then print the file to ps, then use the command line utility ps2pdf (as has been covered in a <A HREF="http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/03/18/1452209&mode=nested&tid=131&tid=75&tid=82" TITLE="newsforge.com">Newsforge article</a newsforge.com> that has mysteriously been stolen and has reappeared on Linux.com?) to convert the file to pdf, and that works every time. It's an extra step I wish I could avoid, but it works for me.

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I am a Linux fan and have used OO and MSO, Windows and Linux.

I don't know when most of you people stopped using Windows, but you'll probably be surprised to find out that it is amazingly stable now. Obviously, it can depend on the quality of your drivers, but in general the OS (since W2K) is stable and will run for weeks or months.

Yes yes, Linux will run for months or years. We're talking desktops and not servers. A lot of users shut their machines down at the end of the day anyway. Those that don't probably reboot every few days due to security patches, but that's anther topic of conversation entirely.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

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I don't know when most of you people stopped using Windows,

We can see what is happening around us, and within businesses who are using a mix of both (and more).

but you'll probably be surprised to find out that it is amazingly stable now.

More stable than Windows 95? Yes. More stable than Windows 98? Yes. More stable than Windows NT? Yes. Amazingly stable? Measured against previous Windows versions, yes. Amazingly stable compared to GNU/Linux or Unix? Hah!

Obviously, it can depend on the quality of your drivers,

and more obviously, the quality of the code base.

but in general the OS (since W2K) is stable and will run for weeks or months.

From what I've seen on heavily loaded servers, even weeks is a stretch sometimes. In the case of a business that has small community offices that require one server that "dials in" to the main office several times a day and serves less than 20 clients in the small offices, Windows NT requires regular rebooting, there is a migration to Windows XP currently in progress, and the Windows XP servers are still requiring reboots, though less often, and in the tests of Red Hat being installed in a few of the offices as a test, they have been installed, and have run without a single problem for almost a year. Not a single reboot. And no additional money wasted on licensing for each of the Red Hat servers. The last I heard, the Windows XP upgrade has been frozen in the small offices, and all future upgrades are going to be Red Hat. As for the main office, the Windows XP migration continues, simply because it has already been started. The Red Hat servers that were installed as test beds for evaluating the OS have been running flawlessly without any problems, meanwhile the Windows NT AND XP servers have the staff running around like mad.

Yes yes, Linux will run for months or years.

Exactly

We're talking desktops and not servers.

So what? Desktops shouldn't be stable? Also, you are conveniently pushing aside one of the strengths of GNU/Linux in your observation. Why are you making the desktops an issue? The Microsoft study/paper is for a business justification for Microsoft Office. If the businesses have half a brain, they will be installing GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org to the server, and booting and running the desktops off the network, not from individual desktops. This allows ancient hardware to work without a problem, allows for easier, cheaper, and more secure administration, allows for cheaper and easier backups, and has many other benefits (including the possibility of running a cluster).

A lot of users shut their machines down at the end of the day anyway.

This is not true of virtually all of the major brokerages in NYC, nearly all of the banks (including their headquarters), nearly all of the government offices, nearly all of the investment companies, nearly all of every other major company in NYC. I have walked through most of the Fortune 1000 businesses that have headquarters or offices in NYC, and during the evenings and late nights, more than 95% of the desktops I've seen are left running. The only ones generally shut down are the ones disconnected for some reason.



Should they be shut down? Yes. The energy savings would be tremendous. Are they shut down? Unfortunately not. Someone should out these companies during the next energy shortage that causes rolling blackouts.



I'm also familiar with small businesses that haven't shut down their Unix or Novell servers (and the desktops that boot from a floppy to log in to the servers) for years. Yet they do shut down their Windows desktops daily, simply because it generally means one fewer reboot during the day. The last time I visited a friend's business, as I was watching what the secretary was doing, she rebooted her computer while I stared in disbelief. When I asked her what is she doing? She responded by saying that she was rebooting, that she has to do that after lunch if she's lucky, other wise by mid-morning. She working on a desktop that is fairly new, having been replaced in the prior 3 months, and running Windows XP. I can't believe how normal this is considered to be, nor how accepted. She didn't even blink when I was asking her about it. Yet in many other conversations with small business owners and employees, this is considered normal, and always seems to work its way into the conversation (not that they had to do it, but as part of describing another task, the reboot is casually thrown in). This is indicative of a disfunctional "ecosystem". It is not normal, nor acceptable to reboot, unless your are replacing hardware, moving computer, or upgrading the kernel (OS for you Windows users). Any other reboot indicates a problem, and a flaw. It's that simple, yet Windows users justify this because you are simply rebooting less often than when using NT or 95 or 98. Just to be clear, YOU SHOULDN'T BE REBOOTING AT ALL. IF YOU ARE, THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE SOFTWARE YOU ARE USING. A BIG PROBLEM.

Those that don't probably reboot every few days due to security patches, but that's anther topic of conversation entirely.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)

Isn't security mentioned as a strength in Microsoft's paper? Why are you avoiding the discussion? The last time I had to reboot a Linux server for a patch was to install an nVidia patch. Why reboot? Ask nVidia. When was that? 3 years ago. Was it necessary to install the nVidia patch? No. It was optional. It wasn't critical for the server to stay up, so I installed the patch and rebooted. Turns out there wasn't a major advantage to the patch, so I shouldn't have bothered. Any other Linux patches have all been installed without a reboot. The only other situation I can think of off hand is to run another kernel, but that would be considered an upgrade, wouldn't it? As compared to your Windows example, where rebooting every few days for security patches isn't considered a big deal because you are rebooting anyway, right?



In the Linux world, a desktop is considered a critical system, both in security, and in stability. In the Windows world, it appears that according to its users and the postings here, a desktop is not critical. It can't be, the quality of the code does not allow it.

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On the collaboration issue, it seems to me that MS Office doesn't collaborate with itself very well. Trying to get something from PowerPoint into Word can be....frustrating.

Even though Project is not officially part of Office, getting a display from Project into ANYTHING else is primitive at best.

#

A virus on openoffice.org. Word has a default macro that will run when you open a document, Openoffice.org does not. It is therefore not possible to install a virus simply by openning a document. I agree with the microsoft wording that the customer should take viruses into account.

KenF
OpenOffice.org developer

#

Thanks for your work on OpenOffice.org



Now that I got that off my chest, can you drop whatever it is you are developing, and just cut the monster down to something manageable?



I wouldn't sign my (real)name to OpenOffice.org until it is much better optimized for speed. I'd be embarassed to associate myself with a project so bloated that I can get up, go get a cup of coffee, come back, and it still hasn't started.



Thanks again.

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That's your experience. The latest OO.o opens for me, on the same computer running WinXP or PCLOS preview5, under 10secs everytime.

And I cannot at all, see the bloat you are talking about. If you're feature phobic, stick to notepad. OO.o needs work, to be sure (especially since it's a work in progress, but for something that can be aquired for the cost of a download or a blankdisk, I wouldn't be bitching too much.

Also, if I worked on OO.o, I would be proud of my work. And rightly so. It's a kickass piece of software.

#

I don't understand all these complaints that OO is slow. I have always had it open in under 10 seconds, both in Windows 2000, and in Linux.

???

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" Microsoft used to have an advertisement asking where you wanted to go today; this is more true of OpenOffice since it allows you more control of your data through vendors and even inhouse staff who can help with it. Microsoft is dictating a future; this is why they do not allow Open Standards.

This is also why Microsoft spends so much time in courts around the world."

You know what, this article is a waste of time. It is so childish and so FUD filled all on its own there is no reason to even bother. Tell you what, be a zealot and write an article like one and you will have no one to take you seriously. Except of course the other zealots such as Roblimo, SVN and the other regular Microsoft bashers who no one takes seriously. Being and IT director this article didnt even encourage me to look at OpenOffice. It read like the regular "Open Source rules!" and "Free Software for all !!!" crap. This article is not encouraging at all and if this is the current state of the Open Source movement its seems you guys are taking the Mac route, turning this thing into a religous crusade than anything else.

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If you need 'articles' to make your bussiness decisions instead of simply trying it out (I belive you are familiar with MS OFfice - just would need to download (for free) and try on your own OO) - your company must be doing very bad.. you are indeed a great IT director...

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Thank you, and how *is* the weather in Redmond, these days?

#

If somebody told you their name, then told you that they like Open Source software, you'd probably say that they were a Linux zealot too.

I'm not surprised that you didn't point out any particular areas in the article which gave you this opinion, you don't usually address the points in question when responding to a post that attacks Microsoft.

If somebody points out where your argument is flawed, you can't even make a comeback.

Without being rude, it does appear that you're a zealot yourself, and a Microsoft apologist. Most of what you post here is non-factual and can't be backed up.

#

RJDohnert: try the software and make up your own mind

If you search the web for opinions you'll find them, lots of them. Won't help you rate software though!!

#

The Microsoft web site where the articles in question appear (there are more fud articles than just the Office suite article) was brought to my attention about a week ago. I think it was a Newsforge article that mentioned it earlier. I checked the other articles as well, and they also contain fud. But the Office article is Microsoft's response to their losing their shirt (and their 80% monopoly profit margin) due to their failure to compete with OpenOffice.org (hold your keyboards, Microsofties, we'll compare my claim over the next couple of quarters). I considered doing exactly what the author above did, taking apart their Office article line by line, paragraph by paragraph, simply because it was so easy. But I decided against it for two reasons. The first is that if this is the best they can do, why alert them? They are reading (and posting ala OS/2 wars style like they did on Compuserve and other boards during the OS/2 wars) Newforge and Slashdot regularly. They aren't just reading the sites, they are mirroring them internally so they can "study" us, to find the weaknesses and points of attack. So why point out the blatent errors in their articles, so they can make changes, enabling them to better withstand criticism?



The articles are a complete disaster, especially when they really stick their foot in their mouth about security. But it isn't just the security part. The article is bad all over. So why help them strengthen the article? Either they are totally unable to answer OpenOffice.org's threat, or the person(s) who put the article together are totally incompetent. Either way, it is a win for the GPL community.



The articles on that Microsoft page are not there to convince the converted. They are there so that CIOs and admins can have some documentation to cover their asses in their decision to sign that multi-year contract with Microsoft. That's what a large part of the community forgets. Most of the studies put out by Microsoft/Enderle/Didio/IDC/Gartner/Yankee are put out so that the suits can justify their decisions, and cover their asses. They already have their minds made up about what they are going to do. But along with choices, come chances. Why risk you job over a decision that can materially affect the company? Get the studies, stack the paperwork, and blame the studies and analysts when the next worm wipes out several million dollars of productivity and document reconstruction costs, and when the BSA comes a knockin'. The experts said to jump, we jumped!



A company that has already made the decision to go with OpenOffice.org on Linux is a company that Microsoft is no longer interested in. Ask Largo. Microsoft (or was it Sun prior to their rebranding Linux as Java?) went sniffing around, and they didn't bother making an offer when they saw the setup. Didn't even bother to make an offer.



Microsoft's intent with the articles are for the suits who need to cover their asses over their decisions, and for the suits who don't have a clue. I'm still running into small business people who don't know what Linux is (they heard the name Linux, but that's about it) and their reaction when I tell them that Linux doesn't have a virus problem like Windows is disbelief. Then the next reaction is "gimme" when I offer them a Knoppix CD. So Microsoft's hope is to continue picking off suits who don't have a clue, and therefore have no knowledge to refute the claims made in the paper. And their hope, and tactic, is to bury them in studies, and to gloss over the competitive facts, and to change the subject to their strengths, while avoiding like the plague the weaknesses in their comparisons. So if someone brings up, "well, I heard this, I read this", the sales force comes back with, "well, we have this study that shows this, and this other study that shows what I was talking about earlier, and this other study..." and the point the suit was making is already three points removed in about ten seconds. And there are studies to prove it. And the second salesman moves on to another area, to further move away from the weaknesses.



Microsoft knows that admins and CIOs need studies to back up their decisions, and Microsoft is happily providing the studies for them? Are they flawed? You bet. Will the CEOs and CFOs know they are flawed, and that the CIOs and admins shouldn't have used them to begin with, or was using them to cover their asses? Fat chance. Especially when buried in so many other studies that the CEOs and CFOs will never lift a finger to read. They are providing excuses for the CIOs, for the admins, for the Microsoft salesforce, and the salesforces of their VARs. That's it. It really is that simple.



IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and others in the market would be wise to sit up and take notice. And start sponsoring their own biased articles and studies. The problem IBM, Red Hat, and others are going to run into, is that the geeks will tear them apart if they start putting out garbage like Microsoft is doing. But that's good, because it will force them to strengthen the argument. And this can only be a winning position, because on the merits, the GPL conquers all (sorry BSD, you had what? 10+ years to breakout, and you failed, no flame war intended).



Bill and Steve identified Linux as their number one threat years ago. The actual threat is the GPL license, not Linux, because it is the GPL that has prevented them from 1. buying out Linux, and 2. incorporating the code, like they were able to do with BSD. But they have identified one of the tools that the GPL is using to tear them a new asshole, Linux. The question for IBM, Red Hat, and other wannabees becomes, are you willing to step into the fire, and fight fire with fire? Are you willing to open the pocket books, and get the studies out there, the real world cases that other CIOs can point to, to justify moving a Fortune 1000 company to GNU/Linux, desktop and all?



Big Blue made a lot of noise about spending a billion dollars on Linux a few years ago. Lately, there has been a big void in the case studies that should be put out to justify the moves. I have yet to see studies that document how much it costs to keep track of licenses. How much per hour/per employee virus downtime costs. How much virus re-imaging costs. How much windows reboots cost. How much a BSA audit threat costs in bringing everything into compliance suddenly, within the time period allowed by the BSA audit letter, and within the time period stated in the Microsoft and other proprietary licenses. Has IBM made any conversions from Windows to Linux, including desktops? What are the cost savings? Hardware? Viruses? Everything else outlined here?



The only reports I've seen are one report from a company in Italy that replaced all Windows and went 100% GNU/Linux, and quantified the virus savings and reboot costs, and hardware savings costs, and saved tremendously. And this was for less than a thousand seats, possibly a couple hundred iirc, and the savings were in the hundreds of thousands, starting from the very first year. Don't remember where I saw the story, maybe here on Newforge, maybe someone who remembers what I'm talking about can provide a link. I'm sure I archived it, but I won't be able to find it for quite a while. Sun also put out another study having to do with server downtime, to sell their grossly overpriced servers. They justified their ridiculous pricing by getting lucky on an installation, where Sun stayed up a little longer, and the downtime costs were over $100,000 an hour (minute?), and therefore, taking into consideration downtime, their ridiculously priced servers came out cheaper. The point is, where are IBM's studies on what I've outlined? IBM still afraid of stepping on Bill's toes? Where are Red Hat's studies then? Oh, I forgot, RHAS has the same audit sledgehammer, so that's out. Someone else? Anyone? Anyone willing to spend the money? Release the data? Risk offending Microsoft for telling the truth? Anyone?



IBM, if you haven't figured it out yet, Microsoft is dead in a couple of years. They'll still make some money, but what happens to a company that suddenly turns into a "shrink" company, instead of a growth company? Oh yeah, <A HREF="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=4508404" TITLE="reuters.com">this</a reuters.com>. And then <A HREF="http://www.house.gov/commerce_democrats/Enron/enron.shtml" TITLE="house.gov">this</a house.gov> And then <A HREF="http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2003-32.htm" TITLE="sec.gov">this</a sec.gov>



Don't forget that brokers <A HREF="http://www.securitiesfraudfyi.com/ubs_warburg.html" TITLE="securitiesfraudfyi.com">still had buy ratings on companies</a securitiesfraudfyi.com> the same week they <A HREF="http://www.fraud911.com/showpage.php?pageid=14" TITLE="fraud911.com">filed for bankruptcy</a fraud911.com>. The same will be true for Microsoft. First will come the stock collapse. Then the investigations. Then the charges. Then the settlements without admitting guilt. And the retail investors, like moths to a flame, will yell bloody murder, will demand restitution, and will be left holding the bag. As they should.

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There is one thing where MS Office beats OOo: looks. It looks better. I'm not talking about XP, as the only thing XP about my PC is my CPU.

But, OpenOffice is improving here. And I use it nonetheless.

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Many people state that OOo has BETTER<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.doc compatibility than M$ Office!
a) it can restore broken<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.doc files that Word cannot read any more
b) it has BETTER layout compatibility to<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.doc than the different M$ Office versions against each other!
(even though its compatibility is problematic, it may still be better than e.g. when opening a Word95 document in 2000 or so)

Please add this stuff, not mentioning it would be quite unwise.

Also, the fact that I immediately stumble upon a missing important item makes me think it'd be a good idea to start a community process in improving it to be the perfect response to the FUD document.

Thanks!

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Bugs. Why does the Microsoft harp on things that are minor issues or are just plain wrong when the number one problem with OpenOffice is simply that it's still quite buggy? I tried to use the Impress presentation component of OpenOffice a couple of months ago, and it crashed on me about half a dozen times, and other times refused to apply styles or resize equations properly. It was an exercise in frustration.

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The reason MS didn't use the buggy defence because then they would be open to the rebuttal (they did use the security ploy, which really suprised me).

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Open Office use XML as their native file data format. A real plus for developers that want to extend the application or write filters filters. The use fo XML also make easier the task for migrating documents to other platforms (PDAs) and applications.

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Not to mention that while M$ will also use XML in the future, it actually PATENTED their future XML styles, thus placing severe doubts on whether other applications will be able to use their new format in the future or not.

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Microsoft also using XML?



Really? Do you really believe that? Or are you a Microsoft employee posting ala OS/2 wars-Compuserve style?



For those unaware, unless you purchase the full Microsoft Office Professional, you don't get the fully functioning XML.



As for the patents, that's half way around the world, and when it comes down to that question, prior art will invalidate that patent. Let's keep in mind that you can get a patent for <A HREF="http://www.itworld.com/Man/2687/NWW_1-29-01_opinion/" TITLE="itworld.com">peanut butter and jelly on crustless bread</a itworld.com>. Whether the patent turns out to be enforceable or not is another question.

severe doubts on whether other applications will be able to use their new format in the future or not.

As severe as the doubts about using Linux? Judging from the flood of announcements on Linux adoption, there are no doubts here. And the same is true for XML.

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..and thanks for allowing distribution under this license. Thanks!

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Why don't we just post a story about how Microsoft Office is not compatible with OpenOffice?

Independant tests have revealed that OpenOffice is capable of opening 90% of Microsoft Office Documents yet Microsoft Office has not yet been able to open one Open Office Document.

The clear winner is Open Office.

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"Why don't we just post a story about how Microsoft Office is not compatible with OpenOffice?"

Then again, there's the fact that m$Office isn't compatible with m$Office, but that's another story altogether.

OOo still wins, hands down.

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On the 'Open Documents' format, the typical MS answer these days is:

Upgrade to Office 2003: Office 2003 allows to export Word documents as XML documents in the WordML format.

Several OpenSource people get confused by this when confronted with such an answer. It's very important to realize the following:

• It isn't useful XML: This might sound strange at first as a reaction. But the WordML format is a Object Serialisation. This means that it's possible to do full text searches in it or store it in a database - but that it's virtually impossible to create an application to visualise the file in the same way MS Word does. Microsoft also stated repeatedly that this format is not for interoperability.
  
• They patented this format and have a very specific user license: they allow you to use this format, but disallow any usage that adds anything or changes anything to this XML specification. This means that if you want to write a competing word processor program which would be capable of reading/writing the WordML format, you still were NOT allowed to add any XML tags to the document format. In practice, this would mean you can not add any feature to the word processor that MS Word doesn't do.

As always, it is Microsoft and it stays Microsoft.

I was especially suprised with their 'with MS Office you need only one vendor' statement in their brochure - given the current commotion in the European commission regarding their monopolostic behaviour.

What's next for us wrt Microsoft and OpenOffice?

They will probably add OpenOffice import and export capabilities in Word after a certain percentage of OpenOffice usage is accomplished (maybe even first for certain more critical regions than others).

A good thing you assume Wrong again - I'm not a MS basher, just an analyst of their tactics for over 15 years.

If MS implements OpenOffice import/export they will probably do the importing of OpenOffice documents correctly, but the export function WILL have critical problems (a deviation of certain standards, a so-called programming bug, you name it)

OpenOffice will have no other option to release a new version that resolves the problems introduced by MS then - hopefully quickly.

An important -but often forgotten part of the FUD is the $4.8 billion R&D budget. It's a number that is not questioned as MS is known to have a lot of money. However - MS Office is a product with virtually no innovation at all over the last 10 years. The Microsoft team responsible for MS Office for Mac counts only 100 people (the real budget for the developement of Mac MS Office must be only around $15 million yearly). An incredible profit margin only sustainable because of MSs monolopistic behaviour.

Microsoft invests enourmous amount of money in the markets in which it doesn't make any money to keep its wintel monopoly in place. And THAT's what makes up the big $4.8 billion in R&D.

The last 10-Q SEC filing of Microsoft says the following (not that MS has a track history of accurate SEC filings - but anyway):

In the last 3 months of 2003 - a revenue of $2856 M was generated with $2130 M profit (Office is called 'Information Worker' in the SEC filings)- this means a maximal total spending of $726M - much of this will of course be marketing! Actual R&D on Office will probably be in the order of $50M or less...

MS presence in the embedded market or in the Home and Entertainment market could not be possible without its Office profit center. The vision that MS abuses its monopoly to gain an unfair advantage in these markets by the European Commission becomes very clear here.

Explenation about how 'Research and Development' is counted creatively are provided in the SEC filing itself costs incurred internally in creating a computer software product should be charged to expense when incurred as research and development until technological feasibility has been established for the product. Or: any non-research costs for unsuccessfull products are accounted for as 'R&D'.... In practice, it's this R&D amount which is used to push companies out of any IT industry Microsoft finds appropriate.

More ideas and analysis can be found at <A HREF="http://www.microsoftlinux.com/" TITLE="microsoftlinux.com">MicrosoftLinux</a microsoftlinux.com>

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I have to disagree on your statement on WordML.

Most of the WordML format is easy to process and generate.

I have been able to write many reports and even a whole book in WordML from regular Perl code without any significant problem (including use of tables, images, and various level of customized titles).

On the patent side it may be ugly, but on the interroperability side this new format is definitively a plus compared to their previous OLE binary format.

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One thing which was overlooked here is that by using OpenOffice rather than MS Office you can prevent vendor lock-in. Because OpenOffice uses an open document format it should always be possible for you to take your data elsewhere. Because Microsoft uses a proprietary document standard this conversion would be much harder, more costly, or maybe even impossible.

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"With an R&D budget of over $4.8 billion, Office is a core Microsoft business."

And look at what Microsoft were able to come up with as a result of that R&D budget :

  - Clippy & other unhelpful irritants ("assistants")

  - The Horrible drawing canvas in MS Word

  - Menus that hide half the options

  - Possibly the worst positioning system known to mankind (tab system within Word)

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Comparing software packages on listed "requirements" is ridiculous -- you need benchmarks of speed and memory usage. I use OOo, but I'm dreaming for the day when OO Writer will start in less than a second (as MS Word does on a machine with my hardware). Right now, OOo starts in 10-15 seconds and uses upwards of 100 megs of RAM. (1.7Ghz P4, 256MB) In other words, Microsoft lists requirements for a *good* user experience. OOo lists them for the program to maybe start, and be utterly unusable.

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Umm...OpenOffice.org 1.1 starts for me in about five to seven seconds, not 10-15. Also remember that Windows pre-loads parts of MS Office at boot time, just like with Internet Exploder.

However, if you turn on the functionality to keep OpenOffice.org 1.1 in memory (like Windows does w/ MS Office), then OpenOffice.org Writer, Calc, etc. all come up just as fast on my hardware (PIII-933, 256MB DRAM) as MS Word does, which is less than one second.

Note that, even when I didn't turn on the "stay in memory" functionality of OO.o, any subsequent times I load OpenOffice.org 1.1, it comes up in about one to two seconds. This is true on both my Windows XP box and my GNU/Linux boxes.

Thus, I'm not sure why you're getting such slow times. I assume you're using Windows, since you're talking about MS Office. Could it be that a disk defrag is in order?

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MS Office under Wine does not preload anything. My tests were made with Office 2000 under Crossover Office as well as OpenOffice.

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I just tried the Tools>Options>Memory and set the memory used by my OpenOffice 1.0 from 9 to 32 MB. Result? Ooo starts in 4 seconds flat now, even with 8 tabbed windows in Mozilla, MS Outlook, Windows Explorer, two MS Word documents open and with NAV running in the background. I have chosen not to enable OOo quick launch.

My PC is a P4 1.4 ghz with just 128mb SD RAM. Obviously,there is a lot more to OOo start-up times than meets the eye.

Ramdak

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Just did that and although I don't care how long it takes for an app to start, it's nice to see the improvement.

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Isn't this all a bit of a moot point, unless you're performing an alteration or operation that takes less time than the start time itself?
Personally, I dont care if it takes anywhere between 1 and 20 seconds, if I'm going to be typing in a word processor for 2 hours.

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If it didn't extensively use the Microsoft Foundation Classes, it probably wouldn't be half as fast as it appears to be.

Sure, it's faster on an MS platform. But how fast is it on a GNU/Linux platform?

Oh. Sorry. Darned GNU/Linux doesn't have MFC.

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I tried OOo and some small businesses (in the Houston, TX area) I've done consulting for have switched to OOo, mainly because of licensing costs (and fear of some disgruntled employee reporting use of unlicensed copies!). Its simply _safer_ to switch to the open-source alternative.
I still use MS Office and have two legit copies - Office 2000 and Office XP. The both run fine on my SuSE linux box with the amazing and wonderful Crossover Office product from CodeWeavers (www.codeweavers.com). Crossover sure costs alot less than a 2000 or XP license and runs my usual development environment just fine. (I write ERP's and other enterprise software using Progress Softwares excellent Provision IDE - it works just great under Crossover, including the Windows database server!)

 

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MS Office compatable with older versions? I think not. At my work, there are so many different versions of office and win (NT/97-2003) that when you switch back and forth, everything goes haywire. Mainly email (outlook), one employee has 2000 on his desktop, 2003 on a laptop, sent an email on 2003 office and 2000 quit working. It took me about 20 minutes to get his email back in 2000.

Access DB created on office xp cannot be accessed with say 97. We tried that, it doesn't work. Solution? Spend more money on an office upgrade, just to access one database.

I work for a defense contractor, our customer is the Government (US), if they upgrade all their computers to ms 2003 everything, guess what, the company has to follow along. I think the Linux community needs to convince the Govt here in the US that OSS is really the way to go, if you can get the Govt to do this, businesses will follow suit.

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