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Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

blogs.computerworlduk.com

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Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#61

Post by flogic »

drinian wrote: post #24
jacquesm wrote: post #13

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…

How many people use the features in Excel that are missing from OO? Surely it's a small percentage of the total number of Office licenses out there.

Managers love Excel. Some of them are really good with it. It's probably the wrong tool for their job, but it is a tool they know how to use. For managers it's the lingua franca of data manipulation. They view it the same way most of us view pipes and the Unix command line tools.

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#62

Post by mattparcher »

Maro wrote: post #28

OpenOffice is a horrible piece of software. When I switched to Mac, I tried MS Office 2008, and it was buggy as hell, so I've been using OpenOffice, which sucked too, but slightly less (on Macs). Now MS Office 2011 is coming out, bugs fixed, looks great, UI/UX is great, so I started converting all docs back to MS format and will ditch OpenOffice in a couple of weeks.

I agree that Office for Mac 2011 is a large improvement, but it still doesn’t feel quite right to me. Have you seen Apple’s iWork suite?

http://www.apple.com/iwork/

It provides the most commonly used functionality from Word, Excel, and Powerpoint in a simpler interface that I find much easier and pleasant to use (certainly much more Mac-like), at half the price of Microsoft’s Home/Student edition (a 30 day trial is available).

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#63

Post by jasonlotito »

rbanffy wrote: post #58
jasonlotito wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the 80/20 numbers are pulled out of my rear, but I feel it's an accurate description. That 20% is different for each person, too. For example, the last feature missing from OOo that I needed (and it's been reported, too) is styling for tables. Working with Internal API Docs, we use tables for parameter listings, and trying to make the tables readable and easier to use is difficult when you have to style eac…

Is that the Table/Autoformat thing?

No. When I first saw it, I thought "Yes, I found styling for tables!" but no, it's not. Basically, you are still setting each table an individual style. And if you are dealing with a lot of tables, this can be a lot of updates.

Here is the open bug report: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=11121

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#64

Post by bediger »

flogic wrote: post #61
drinian wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people use the features in Excel that are missing from OO? Surely it's a small percentage of the total number of Office licenses out there.

Managers love Excel. Some of them are really good with it. It's probably the wrong tool for their job, but it is a tool they know how to use. For managers it's the lingua franca of data manipulation. They view it the same way most of us view pipes and the Unix command line tools.

If you'd stopped at "Managers love Excel", I'd agree with you. Unlike the lucky duck up above, I've never seen a manager write a spreadsheet that included a single macro, active cell or calculation.

I've only seen managers use Excel to format columnar data, and then only because "Word" does such heinous things with text in the cells.

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#65

Post by wazoox »

jlgosse wrote: post #18

As someone who tried to switch, I can tell you that this is not the case. I remember doing a resume in OO.org, and then when I sent it to my friend with Word to print it off, it TOTALLY wrecked everything. Not cool.

The exact same thing happened to me with MS Word, however. In fact Word was such a pain that back in 2000 I switched to StarOffice 5, then OpenOffice.

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#66

Post by dhimes »

phr wrote: post #60
dhimes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too bad. Schools are the one place that definitely should switch. The basic skills of writing, revising, presentation, and spreadsheet usage can all be taught just fine with OO. I switched to it (nearly) full time about a year ago and haven't had any problem. The idea that teachers make students pay for MS Office, simply because they can't be bothered to change, angers me. I don't know too many teachers who ca…

Typical grade school teachers spend their days on their feet, rushing from one crisis to another, trying to help mainstreamed kids with serious disabilities, kids with chaotic home-lives and resulting learning and behavior problems, political mandates to teach to a standardized test regardless of what they think the kids really need, and so on. They don't feel they have time to figure out simple user interface proble…

I understand, but what they need to "relearn" isn't that hard. The skills are quite easily transferred, especially the skills that they would use an office suite for in grade school. And especially the skills that the grade school students would use an office suite for.

Like any population, some of the teachers are actually quite tech-savvy, and some will whine about anything. This is an area, however, where if I was superintendent I would make the switch and take a day or two of their "planning time" for training. It would be a good place for a "peer teaching" lesson plan.

When we first got computers, we had to teach the teachers what it meant to "save," how to insert and eject the disk, and so on. Transferring to OO would be much easier than that initial training.

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#67

Post by Maro »

mattparcher wrote: post #62
Maro wrote: post #28

OpenOffice is a horrible piece of software. When I switched to Mac, I tried MS Office 2008, and it was buggy as hell, so I've been using OpenOffice, which sucked too, but slightly less (on Macs). Now MS Office 2011 is coming out, bugs fixed, looks great, UI/UX is great, so I started converting all docs back to MS format and will ditch OpenOffice in a couple of weeks.

I agree that Office for Mac 2011 is a large improvement, but it still doesn’t feel quite right to me. Have you seen Apple’s iWork suite? http://www.apple.com/iwork/ It provides the most commonly used functionality from Word, Excel, and Powerpoint in a simpler interface that I find much easier and pleasant to use (certainly much more Mac-like), at half the price of Microsoft’s Home/Student edition (a 30 day trial is a…

I like Keynote a lot and use it all the time for presentations, I think it's better than Powerpoint. Also, compatibility isn't that much of an issue here because I just present from my Macbook all the time.

But I prefer Word & Excel over the Apple/OpenOffice counterparts. Here compatibility also matters, as I routinely send Word & Excel files to lawyes, investors, etc. You don't want your files looking like crap with those guys =)

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#68

Post by [deleted] »

kierank wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #13

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…

I know of a very well known company that runs complex visualisation software on Linux workstations because it performs better but dual boots Windows only for Microsoft Office (and nothing else)

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#69

Post by AndyKelley »

btilly wrote: post #52
eli wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For home users, maybe true. Though I'd imagine many home users of Excel would be better served by Google Docs. But it's a massive number of business users. Everyone at my company relies on at least one spreadsheet that has macros or complex pivot tables. It's a bit scary how much critical data is moving through Excel in the typical business. My understanding is that Wall Street relies pretty much runs on Excel.

It's a bit scary how much critical data is moving through Excel in the typical business. It is a lot scary that an average of 1 formula in 10 in Excel spreadsheets is wrong.

Care to explain?

Re: Microsoft unwittingly admits OpenOffice.org is a threat

#70

Post by AndyKelley »

jlgosse wrote: post #18

As someone who tried to switch, I can tell you that this is not the case. I remember doing a resume in OO.org, and then when I sent it to my friend with Word to print it off, it TOTALLY wrecked everything. Not cool.

I suggest exporting to PDF when you want to show someone your document. They need not know you were using Open Office.
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