11–20 of 73 posts
I almost completely disagree with rodh257. A large percentage of corporate workers don't create complex content and rarely interact with complex files created by their colleagues. It is completely reasonable for a CIO to engage his staff on a research study to determine how feasible it would be to migrate a significant swath from MS Office to OpenOffice.org (or LibreOffice). I have personal experience with this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One by one: > Staff members will despise it, This isn't a point on its own. > poorly formatted documents from others won't display properly What is a "poorly formatted document"? > training costs go up Training costs only go up if you compare it against people already trained with Microsoft Office. > it's a mess. How? None of your points really said how, apart from the one below talking about .doc
I use OO on Mint Linux here at work where everyone else uses Word '07 + Win 7. So here is my experience: > What is a "poorly formatted document"? Had an issue with this today in a word document with tables, OO has serious trouble displaying full page tables properly. There are lots of other subtle things, but I can't reliably produce documents in OO and send them to, say, a client as a word document without checking…
Please be kind and file an issue and provide the test-case. thank you.
In part that's still due to the document formats not being really open (so there will always be implementation issues, some of the docs literally say 'do this like word 3 did it' or something to that effect).
Another part is that it is simply a huge undertaking.
The biggest advantage MS has over OO is Excel vs the Open Office spreadsheet, it's not even close.
In spite of all that I don't use Microsoft stuff any more. The amount of features that I use in these packages is small enough that I can get by with a lesser program and not being locked in is an advantage as well, what sealed the deal is that microsoft does not sell a version for linux ;)
Personally I think that the microsoft office suite has more to fear from things like Google Docs than from Open Office in the longer term.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One by one: > Staff members will despise it, This isn't a point on its own. > poorly formatted documents from others won't display properly What is a "poorly formatted document"? > training costs go up Training costs only go up if you compare it against people already trained with Microsoft Office. > it's a mess. How? None of your points really said how, apart from the one below talking about .doc
Those actually are valid points, but he could have clarified it a bit. If people despise it and either A) start publicly berating the IT organization or escalating to the C-suite or B) stop being productive because they can't stand the software, it's a problem. Formatting is a problem, especially when collaborating on complex Word or PowerPoint documents. Excel & Calc are the most interoperable. Also interestingly, O…
Story of the Ribbon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use OO on Mint Linux here at work where everyone else uses Word '07 + Win 7. So here is my experience: > What is a "poorly formatted document"? Had an issue with this today in a word document with tables, OO has serious trouble displaying full page tables properly. There are lots of other subtle things, but I can't reliably produce documents in OO and send them to, say, a client as a word document without checking…
> Had an issue with this today in a word document with tables Please be kind and file an issue and provide the test-case. thank you.
EDIT: there seems no need to download Create (at this point he is on 0), it was a fair point!
Open Office is after many years of hard work still not up to snuff when compared with Microsofts suit. In part that's still due to the document formats not being really open (so there will always be implementation issues, some of the docs literally say 'do this like word 3 did it' or something to that effect). Another part is that it is simply a huge undertaking. The biggest advantage MS has over OO is Excel vs the O…
If they're saying that in a promotional event, then it really shows the threat MS see from OO. They own the corporate market, but they have trouble capturing the home market, especially with Google Docs
I went to a Microsoft Roadshow recently where they were demoing Office Web Apps - he specifically said it was being targetted towards home users, because "people don't buy Microsoft Office for home use. They use Open Office or they pirate Microsoft Office." If they're saying that in a promotional event, then it really shows the threat MS see from OO. They own the corporate market, but they have trouble capturing the…
The OpenOffice site has a list of major deployments [1], and considering how long it's been available as an MS Office alternative, the list isn't that impressive. Several years ago the local school district switched to OpenOffice. I happened to notice it during a teacher conference, so I asked the teacher how she liked it. I was pretty surprised by how much she hated it ( I mean, she really hated it. ). Of course, th…
I don't know too many teachers who can actually use the finer functionality of MS office. A reluctance to switch must have another origin.
The one place where I've had trouble with OO occurs when I sometimes teach using prepared presentations. I can modify them in OO, but if they have a bunch of A/V goodies baked in I'll use ppt player to present so that everything works easily. I usually run a show like that out of Windows, too.