Scottish Police Revert to Microsoft Office 699
LordGuha writes "The Central Scotland Policy is removing StarOffice and replacing it with Microsoft Office citing lower maintenance and running costs and greater integration with other departments. According to the article StarOffice was implemented in 2000 when the department was low in cash but lately have estimated that the Microsoft software would cost no more and lead to greater efficiencies."
Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it's crazy giving cops tools like Microsoft Office or StarOffice in the first place. 99.99% of people who use word processors don't get past the part where you hit keys and watch text appear on the screen. Oh yeah, and open and save documents. That's all they ever do.
I'd bet real money that the textarea element in a browser like Firefox provides all the text-editing functionality that these people need, especially if you add spell correct via JavaScript. Hit submit and there's your save function, to a central server that can be accessed from any department. Click a link and there's your file open functionality. Amazing!
You can even do forms! LOL
Why aren't they using a system like this? Because some idiot somewhere equates more-expensive with easier-to-use. It's the oldest story in IT, and it's always a tragedy.
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Why didn't you know? [tinyurl.com]
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:5, Funny)
You even have your choice of a wide variety of WYSIWYG web editors [geniisoft.com] if you need formatting capability.
Two comments deep and you have already gone from a simple text editor to a big piece of bloated software...
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:5, Funny)
No (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I wish I used emacs so I could turn this into a emacs v. vi flamewar!
Seriously, I use and love vi. I wouldn't use it to sell newbies on *nix, Linux, or Free Software as an alternative to Windows.
vi is a great editor once you climb its serious learning curve. Oddities like the ed mode versus the visual mode actually turn out to be strengths, but let's face it, they are oddities created from mashing a cursor-addressible e
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
StarOffice too complex, more so that MS word. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've tried it and hate it. It's why I use macs: linux office apps suck. My office mate is a dieshard roll-your-own linux user and has been using star office as long as it has been around. He still truggles with it's byzantine menus. My other office mate is also a pure linux user and he gave up on it. He only uses TeX. He found remebering laTex is actually a lot easier and more consistent and powerful than remembering the star-office menu confusion.
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
No it doesn't answer the question. In all business cases, supporting two competing, parallel systems is going to cost you more, regardless of what they are. Add to the mix that MS Office is the defacto standard for office docs and you can see that it's easy to make the decision to do away with StarOffice, no matter how well it stands up on its own.
As for the comments about being able to do a police desk job using a textarea in a browser?
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:4, Insightful)
"It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station."
It, like you said, costs "more" to implement parallel solutions in certain instances simply because while supporting both, it's never easiest to take into consideration making things play nice together.
It's always "I want to use feature X", but product Y doesn't support feature X. So they return to products that support feature X, rather than doing a little homework and providing a solution that works best for all the systems. Deploying a mixed network is always more difficult, but it isn't impossible, and with a little effort, could be more efficient and better in the long run for everyone by removing Microsoft's stranglehold on the vertical monopoly. (like their stifling hold on "Office" standards.)
I would rather have none of the features I don't need and the ability to use my files and documents how I see fit, rather than allowing Microsoft to dictate what I can and cannot do with my own data. Text files may be something Johnny Windows users don't like because it doesn't have "pretty fonts" and such, but you can bet long after Microsoft is dead, those text files will still be accessible. And since this whole thing is about complying with some sort of "Freedom of Information Act of 2002", I'd have thought it better to look long-term rather than going back to Microsoft without the lube. Honestly, can anyone name a "feature" of Microsoft Office that is so grand, living without it will bring the world to a halt? Well, let's just say one that couldn't be duplicated with a little bit of effort using open standards and free software. (Convenience is a curse sometimes...)
It sounds as though Microsoft's "solution" is simply "well, the other folks are doing it..." And no matter who you are, that's never the ideal solution....
And yes, as an engineer, I detest Office. So take what I say with that bias in mind.
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:2, Funny)
Of course, any adept Tech Support person will tell you that one of the first things any n00b user will do is find the "Large Text" and "Cool Comic Sans Mode" buttons.
*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
We all automatically assume that the police organization doesn't know what it's doing, doesn't know how to perform cost-benefit analysis, and all are just a bunch of non-tech-savvy pawns. They made the switch to OpenOffice *5* years ago. You don't think that's enough time to give something a shot and evaluate it? You don't think that's enough time to see how much something is going to cost or impact your organization? You don't think that they had people working on it and trying to honestly switch to OSS? Unless you work there, I think your post is way out of line (as well as a lot of others in this thread).
I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but why can't you see past your own point of view? OSS isn't better just because it's free or because it's not Microsoft. Sheesh. Give these people some credit for at least trying something new.
Re:*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm simply pointing out that the reason they reached this conclusion wasn't because they were using StarOffice, but because everybody else was using Microsoft Office.
The costs were in getting StarOffice to work with Microsoft Office. The article makes it sound like it's the fault of StarOffice. It isn't. It's Microsoft who throws up the barriers to prevent OSS from working with their software, not the other way around.
If everybody else were using StarOffice, no way would they be switching to Microsoft Office.
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Why didn't you know? [tinyurl.com]
Re:*Sigh* (Score:3, Funny)
I can see it now...the street corners of America littered with Linux IT professionals holding signs that say "Will support Linux for food".
Re:*Sigh* (Score:3, Insightful)
I was pointing out a fallacy in LibertineR's argument, where he hasn't understood the meaning of the post he was replying to.
In an argument, a winning tactic is to actually understand your opponent's position. It wins because you either argue against it more effectively, or you realise that you agree! For agreement to happen, you have to approach the argument as a battle of ideas, not a battle of wills. May the best id
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:2, Insightful)
So, if I understand you correctly: yesterday, when they were using Star Office (officially), they were the paragons of forward thinking. Today, they are knuckle draggers who dont even need computers, probably, as most of them are
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:4, Interesting)
I really don't understand why a police officer -- or anyone else for that matter -- would require more than the grandparent poster suggests. Rather than just making assertions ("You're arrogant and you have zero clue") why not educate us. Why do they need more? What, specifically, would they need? What idea is there that cannot be expressed in text?
How does a blind person see a font?
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:5, Informative)
There's really not enough information in the fine article to draw a lot of the conclusions being put forth.
In our shop there are, largely speaking, two sides to IT: the mainframe (now super mini) side that contained all the criminal information, and the micro side, used mainly for administrative support. The mobile data terminals and the computers used by most of the sworn population connected to the mainframe. They used pre-designed screens for storing and retrieving information. The support staff used various Office products to provide various services, up to and including reports summarizing criminal data.
But keep in mind that we were a gov't agency. We had to have file interop with the rest of the City, and County, and State, and Feds. We had more severe budget restrictions than most private sector had to deal with. Try not having a pool of money for training for the future year, it isn't fun. When I needed training for a new product, I had to wait for my department head to be out of town and the bureau manager asked me how a project was going. I told him I needed training, he got funds taken out of equipment maintenance to send me to Atlanta for a week. This is not a slush fund, this was money to be used for maintaining the mainframe, fortunately there was some unused funds.
As a rule, if money isn't allocated, it isn't spent. And that is a hard and fast rule.
For the criminal side, they had standards that were dictated by the FBI and the National Criminal Information System. Everything has to be coded in specific ways. Trust me, you DO NOT want to see the information schema! It is not correctly normalized and nothing can be done about it because THEY DON'T CONTROL IT. They had to work around those problems as best they could.
The basic problem is that you don't have a dozen Java programmers and a dozen C++ programmers sitting around just waiting to solve every little problem. We had three network administrators supporting 15+ sites. We had five developers (on the administrative side) for a total micro staff of maybe 15 or so when I left supporting over 2000 officers and another 1800 or so civilian, not including physical networking support (cabling, PC installation and hardware support).
Saying "all you need is a web applet to do X, Y, Z" is disingenuous. It will never be that simple. Until you've lived in police IT for more than 5 years, you won't have a clue what their overall requirements are and you're making assumptions that don't translate. Their data must ultimately fit legally-mandated forms. That's taken care of by tight data restrictions on the criminal side. On the administrative side, by using Office, you have a mobile work force of people who can move back and forth between various other City departments, assuming they can pass the background investigation.
You're talking an insanely complex system and set of requirements that have grown out of old technology over decades and decades of modification.
Yes, it's a MS shop. Started with 3Com 3+Share file servers, went to Lan Manager, now NT Server. Desktops went from Dos to Windows to Win2K and now probably XP. Apps went from Word, Multiplan, DataFlex to Office and SQL Server. There are non-MS technologies both in the server room and on the desktop, but the only place you'll see *nix is on specific apps, such as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System which started out on an RS/6000, I have no idea what it's on, it was not in my realm.
I like *nix, huge pluses over MS servers. But OO/SO just isn't there. The IT requirements for interoperability with so many other departments both in the City and at other layers of gov't are too vast to take a critical area and make it less than 100% compatible with the rest of the infrastructure is bad. I make no claim to have a clue how Scotl
Re:Here's how my police use it (Score:4, Insightful)
Police use Word to fill in reports, forms, etc. that could definitely not be formatted using Wordpad. They also have to save that form data, which could not be done with a web form or Acrobat Reader.
This would be trivial to do with a web based application.
They also use Word to interact with Excel and Access databases. When you're sending out a notification letter to 180 victims in a given county, you better believe it's a helluva lot easier to use Word's mail merge than typing each name individually in Wordpad.
This would not only be trivial to do with a web application, it would be better suited as a web application.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, the police not only use Word, but a whole bunch of other software as well. And you should be glad they do.
Trust me, I'm a carpenter, and you definatly need wood, hammer and nails to fix this problem.
Re:Here's how my police use it (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll do you one better. Not only am I a cop, but I work in the IT field as well. There's nothing that couldn't be handled using a web forms application, and better than what you can do with any office suite.
On the topic of software used by police departments, I think some of it has purpose. Training tracking is good, and e-mail is a good tool for inter- and intradepartment memos. If you can't find a better way to do mass mailings other than Word's mail merge, then you need to go back to school. As for Excel and Access databases, please. MySql is a database. SqlServer is a databse. Postgres is a database. Access is a really fancy spreadsheet, and is absolute crap. Please don't give it any credentials by calling it a database.
Ultimately, from the look of things, you have zero real experience in IT, and need to go spend some time in large scale corporate IT. Once you've done that, take your lessons learned, and apply them to the small scale you're currently working with.
Shit the cops are reading slashdot!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Here's how my police use it (Score:3, Insightful)
What's a better way to do mass mailings other than Word's mail merge? Seriously, what is your happy easy solution that's better and everybody loves it?
And in what way is Access NOT a database? Do you even know what the word "database" means? Hell, Access wouldn't even have to be relational to be a database. (It is relational; but that's not required to be a DB.)
Sure you're a cop and you work in the IT field, but you're also a open source zealot and it shows.
Re:Here's how my police use it (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, if I needed to have people print stuff at their desks from a web environment,I would find a pdf library for php and use that to create formatted documents. Coding such a solution would be a cakewalk for any half-respectable webmonkey.
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the major reasons cited for going back to MS was that MS was supplying the whole force with an application to "comply with Freedom of Information requests". This sounds to me like a database. Obviously, (well, to me) starting with Word files, MS is going to have the best shot at doing this at all, not to mention they will subsiduse it to make the whole deal sweet.
However, if you thought WHY the police
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:2)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems were document portability AND integration with other users. This is there MS cleans up and where OSS falls down completely. How many integrated OSS packages are there that play nicely? (See Info Week this week for some beginnings). Ten years since debut, even something as simple as LAMP is still a PITA to set up and configure. Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??
I just saw a demo of MS SBA and let me say I'm glad I'm not Quicken. It does all the usual Quicken stuff, but leverages the Office suite to do it all better. Integrating multiple tools: That is where their advantage lies.
Maybe, just maybe, 90% of the market isn't completely wrong. Maybe the most successful company in history makes products that are slightly better than what amateurs put together in their spare time. Maybe packages that come from one organization (or are bought from their creators and Borg-ed) beat those cobbled together from the efforts thousands of volunteers, occassionally undrwritten by consulting firms out to make system so hard to configure you need to pay for consultants to do everything. Just a suggestion from someone who talks to real users guys.
I have to admit I loved seeing this article, knowing the howls of shock and indignation that would soon come from the slashbots.
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html [apachefriends.org]
Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??
http://www.scalix.com/ [scalix.com]
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think we're amateurs? I think you should check some of the OS MLs out there. Apache Xerces had full time engineers from Sun and IBM working on the project as their job. Other project are the same.
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, let's start by pointing out how bad your generalization is. First of all, there's a huge difference between building things for crafts and manufacturing things that are commodities. The difference in quality between the two things has littl
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
First, I assume you were not drawing a comparison between Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP and Exchange.
Second, what is the PITA? If you don't want to know how the software works, don't install it manually. Just type: "yum install apache mysql php-mysql" and you'll have a generic semi-secure LAMP system. After you do that, making it secure and customizing it is just as much a PITA a
That's because your students are educated (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft historically has gone for the easy way out by hiding the complicated functions below a pretty "Click 'OK' to automatically install and configure your firewall" MessageBox, which is fine if you're writing a document, but not so good if you need to tweak out your server for maximum functionality and security.
You can see this mentality in
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:2)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the cost, the Register's coverage said, "Stirling also wanted to avoid splashing out £100,000 on a third party application to meet the deadline for compliance with the Freedom of
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Informative)
No, StarOffice is not open source software. You're thinking of OpenOffice. Sun still sells StarOffice as a proprietary office suite.
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Informative)
That's not 100% correct. From TFA:
The agency said in 2000 that it would see initial savings of at least £245,000 (US$439,000) from switching to StarOffice and Linux, and that the open-source deployment would allow it to bring productivity software to more of its officers.
The article also states:
In the past, when the agency deployed a new police application on StarOffice and Linux, the application had to be customized to work with the open-source software, Stirling s
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:4, Informative)
More likely the problem was they couldn't "access" their star office based paperwork from *any* police station because the other 95% of police stations PCs would have office and windows which can't open staroffice files.
Re:Only 5% of users were using StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, yes, your has been modded funny, but I'd like to make a few points.
The police department in question needs to exchange data with other departments. These departments are largely using Microsoft Office.
"They only need a text editor with spell check" claims are, to be kind, absurd and ignorant. At the very least they most likely have a host of templates for document creation. I've had some experience with what happens when documents get mangled by changes to the underlying tem
old StarOffice vs new (Score:4, Informative)
Still? (Score:5, Informative)
You know, I used to be the standard-bearer for that argument, but as of OO 1.9x, interoperability with MS is getting pretty damned good. Particularly the word processor.
Anyone having trouble with it still is usually using Linux and hasn't gotten their true-type fonts working correctly.
Re:Still? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I doubt anyone will jump from StarOffice (read: commercial and with some level of support) past OpenOffice to run their police department on a beta OpenOffice version. Granted, it's getting there but it's not released yet. OpenOffice 1.x got a foot in the door, but it takes more to outdo MS Office, which is in fact quite polished.
Kjell
You haven't experienced Sharepoint then... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm late to the thread here, but it seems that most people with the 'OpenOffice is nearly there' argument haven't really seen MS Office being used in medium to large organizations.
The MS Office integration with the network system (AD/Exchange) and now Sharepoint make the technical menu imitations of OpenOffice nearly irrelevant.
From a website, I can click a button, open a spreadsheet *in the browser* (not a full browser takeover, just embedded in part of the web page), make changes/updates, then save the document, and it'll save back on the network drive (or wherever it came from) seamlessly. If live realtime document collaboration of any Office doc was able to be embedded in IE already, I wouldn't be surprised.
MS has moved beyond the reach of OpenOffice for the next few years because they've taken multi-domain integration to the next stage, way ahead of the fragmentation that exists (almost by definition) in the open source world.
I'm writing this as someone who has pretty much used LAMP for about 9 years, and uses Linux on my desktop daily for the past 3.
Now, if someone was to take the novell openexchange system and define new protocols such that Firefox/Mozilla could do realtime openoffice document embedding and communication with the openexchange server, throwing in an embedded gaim client using a jabber protocol for good measure, and made this cross platform, that would be a serious contender. I'm afraid that won't happen for a few years, until a bunch of OSS developers get a glimpse of what's going on in the corporate world. Unfortunately, that may *never* happen, as many of them wouldn't get hired in the first place.
In short, Microsoft is staying ahead of the competition now by offering extremely tight integration among their core products, and it's only going to continue to go down that path. Not saying it's a bad thing - it's really the only way they *can* go, and I think it'll serve them well easily for another 3-5 years. That's about as far as I'll make predictions.
Re:Still? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a scientist, so I can assure you I deal with equations, figures, pictures, etc. all the time. The newest version of OO - 1.9 - deals with equations from MS Equation and images too. Not sure what you're using for your drawings. I'd recommend common image formats and the conversion will be fine - if you use less supported proprietary standards and expect them to work outside Word, well, that's not very realistic when the plugin was probably made for Word and Word alone.
The layout looked fine too for me. I agree that, with the myriad of vendor plugins that exist for Word, that guaranteeing interoperability won't get you far. But as a user you can make sure your documents open fine in either by avoiding more rare plugin formats.
Did they get a cheaper deal from Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Corrections (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, they are migrating nearly *everything* back to MS. TheRegister have a better description here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/11/ms_lochs_
complete with anglo-saxon mispronunciation joke
It's a shame, but maybe they are right. It's not easy to pay enough for good linux/unix admins on public sector wages.
Re:Corrections (Score:2, Informative)
I am a Linux/Unix admin professionaly and I recently went from OpenOffice back to MS-Office.
The cost of "free" software is too damn high when you cant share documents properly. My CV kept causing everyone elses Word to crash, thats a cost I couldn't afford to pay as a jobseeker.
Re:Corrections (Score:3, Insightful)
Professional Linux/UNIX admins would send their resume in PDF, ASCII, or HTML format. Furthermore, no company minimally concerned about security would open resumes sent to them in DOC format because of security concerns. And if a company insists on something they can open in Word, you can always send them RT
Re:Corrections (Score:4, Insightful)
Word Resumes ONLY! (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't believe me? I have documented my job search [zhrodague.net]. The best is when they send a blank email with a
Just part of the Scottish Police Force (Score:3, Informative)
I hate these excuses (Score:4, Insightful)
The zealots come off as zealots and are thus dismissed as having nothing useful to say.
The MS sales staff have "consultant" in their job title and are thus deigned (by the senior execs) to be experts on all things computerish.
Of course to those of us who grok operating environments and who don't grok executives and consultants see said executives as fools and their reasons as invalid.
Oh well.
Re:I hate these excuses (Score:2)
If your executives don't get that, they deserve to be called PHBs.
Nah, it was a smart move on all parts (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I'd have taken this deal if I were the IT director, and I'm borderline Linux zealot. You take Ceasars salt, you do Ceasars bidding -- and if crucifiction doesn't appela to you, you look after his interests. MS offered them a deal that's a no-brainer. Just do the math.
They have about 1000 officers plus support staff. Don't know how many licenses this is but MS offered them a package deal at £60,000, which divided by the staff works out to £60/body/year. So it's as close to free beer as makes no difference, especially if this saves a staff position a year dealing with the fact nearly everyone else uses MS. Let's say that financially, it's the same as getting the software for free.
Add to this that the deal includes software they need to comply with legal requirements, software they estimate they'd have paid £100,000 to build custom, and now they're far ahead. It's the same old story, fortunately less common today than a few years ago: the app I need isn't available on Linux. In a couple of years when the deal runs out, the free alternatives will have closed the gap more, either forcing the market price of MS software down, or making it even more feasible to switch over if that really makes sense.
From MS's standpoint, this is very smart move. This deal is exactly what I'd have offered. MS wasn't making any dough from these guys anyways, an since its marginal cost for duplicating the software is nil, the limitation on dropping their price is that they don't want to encourage people to switch just to get the deal. That level is probably close to zero at this point in time: for most organizations, the TCO savings of F/OSS isn't attractive enough to switch once the you factor in sunk costs, conversion/training costs, and short term opportunity costs.
So, MS walks away with 60K in their pocket per year, which is not much but it is better than zero. They also get the priceless publicity of a high profile organization going F/OSS and giving up.
It's a natural and, unfortunately, effective competitive strategy in a business where the marginal cost of a product is zero. I expect that as Linux and OpenOffice get better and better we'll be hearing a lot more stories like this.
For those of you wondering why... (Score:3, Insightful)
TIME = MONEY * 3
In this sort of situation, the extra time it takes to convert documents to different formats, and keep those formats updated, totally outweighs the point of moving systems in the first place.
This should be a lesson to organisations, if you want to go open source; do it right - and change all systems at once.
Hmmmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Money buys (Score:2)
And then we have the whole chicken|egg problem: staroffice is expensive to maintain because you have all those perky support calls from people that try to make it work with MSOffice... so what does the Socttish government do? they add more MS Office to integrate better, instead of adding more Staroffice or Open Office (or any other open-standards b
Re:Money buys (Score:2)
You don't need an MS salesrep to convince the people that have to write their operational budget that day-to-day living with an application for which you can't hire reasonably priced local support, or for which interaction with another large user base engaged in (literally) mission critical activities is no bargain. Inertia plays a role, here. I
Microsoft must have a hell of a sales team... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't understand (Score:2, Insightful)
openoffice uses open standards for file saving and microsoft doesn't - this isn't rocket science people. just run them side by side until you totally switch to open office.
Re:I don't understand (Score:2)
If I'm having frustrations w
how dare you... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's like swearing in the church (as we in Holland use to call it). Actually, in my company I've made the same calculation. I use some program's which only work with MS Office and it would cost me more to have them rewritten then to buy the 10 licenses for ms-office. Also, the employees would have to learn openoffice/staroffice which is easily done, but the time it will take to give support for questions like "how do I change my stylesheet", "how does this work..." etc will cost me even
Did anyone read TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Did anyone read TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you get a killer deal - for a few years. Let's see 3 years from now what the yearly cost is after that. Maybe 200$/seat. Or more. But hey, at that point people calculate that moving (back) to OSS is (slightly) more expensive than paying MS again for another contract.
Free/cheap samples or initial contracts are nice way to milk a customer to max later on. MS can think long-term - they are willing to dump some short-term profits for long term wins. They'll milk the difference back over the next 10-15 years - probably several times over.
Re:Did anyone read TFA (Score:3, Funny)
On any warez site!
Re:Did anyone read TFA (Score:3, Interesting)
Gee - I thought I was wrong and I wasn't ;-)
Grandparent says $108 per user per year. We're paying about a third of that but have almost 70x the user base.
Police moving to MS (Score:2, Funny)
"Suddenly, all information on the suspect disappeared from their computer systems..."
StarOffice - OpenOffice anyone? (Score:2)
cops definetely don't know math nor IT.
God Editorial Mistake! (Score:2)
Star Office Problems. (Score:5, Insightful)
First it normally defaultly saves in Star Office Format not MS Word format, yes this is an easy change but people when they are done just hit the save Icon and they are done, they don't want to go threw tens of choices and find the document that everyone else uses.
Second Individuals has invested time in MS Office. From those High School Computer Class to College Classes, CS101. The education system for computers are so dumb that they teach people how to use Microsoft Word but not a Word Processor. So almost everyone who enters the Work field know Office.
Third Speed. Open Office has had a speed problem from day 1. Yea Office isn't a speed daemon but it is fast where the users feel it is important, boot up and typing and saving.
Forth Interface. Open Office is setup with a good interface for Linux but not for Windows or Mac. This is actually very important to know the OS you are porting to and follow the OS's Interface guidelines. If you don't the application looks 3rd party and just doesn't feel right.
Fifth Work Flow. Open Offices goal is to create all the functionality and compatibility of Office but it forgot to get the work flow. Watch a non technical person use Office and you will see that their ways of solving problems may surprise you. They avoid using Style Sheets and just go for the Font Drop Down, except for hitting tab they will use the space and they never ever use hot keys for anything. The menus are off limit to them (The same with the windows start button) If they don't see it it must be an advanced feature that they shouldn't use.
Open Office is good for techs but not for normal people
One More Problem... (Score:3, Funny)
A Sixth Problem: Spell-checking and grammar checking don't seem to work properly.
Re:Star Office Problems. (Score:3, Interesting)
The 400+ grade school students who attend the school at which I work would disagree with you.
Until very recently they were all using the MS Office suite. We wholesale converted them to OpenOffice and none of them skipped a beat.
To them software is software, and OpenOffice was just as good as MS Office for their needs.
Re:Star Office Problems. (Score:3, Informative)
There are still some major problems for MS Office.
First, it normally defaultly saves in The most current Office Format not something backwards compatible with old copies of Word, yes this is an easy change but people when they are done just hit the save Icon and they are done, they don't want to go through tens of choices and find the document that everyone else uses.
Second, Individuals have invested time in older versions of MS Office. From those High School C
The real reason... (Score:2, Funny)
Can just imagine their posters "Wanted. Bank robber." And then it has a clipart pic of some guy in a stripey shirt holding a bag labelled "swag".
The important part: (Score:5, Insightful)
Aka, dominance brings it own appeal.
The Microsoft Heresies (Score:4, Insightful)
OpenOffice is pretty good, and I use it exclusively on my work laptop running Ubuntu, but my choice in running Linux and other open-source applications is all about my freedom to use, redistribute and modify the application as I see fit, unencumbered by restrictive EULAs and software patents and all the baggage that goes along with shrink-wrapped commercial software. I'm willing to take the time and effort necessary to re-learn how to copy formulas instead of values in a spreadsheet app, where the default save locations live in the word processing app, and how to turn off the @#$(*! assistant. Most people don't care that much, and are willing to spend the money to use something they're familiar with and that is a de facto standard instead of taking the harder path. And don't get me wrong, it is harder to use even something as pretty and polished as Ubuntu + OpenOffice for a user familiar with Microsoft products, although it's a damn sight easier than it was 5 years ago.
Most people are lazy, and want to get things done as simply as possible. Big software companies take advantage of that, both at a personal and a corporate level. There's a reason why Microsoft is the gigantic software behemoth that it is, and that's because it understands this and understands how to sell products to individuals and organizations. That doesn't mean that its software is technologically superior, or more fun to hack on, or more free to use; but it makes people buy more stuff from them.
Ach, laddie! (Score:5, Funny)
UK police use of IT (Score:3, Interesting)
You've spent how long exactly sitting in a UK police station watching policemen use computers? Your experience does not coincide with mine.
It was not a migration at all! (Score:4, Informative)
Even more astonoshing is the fact that Microsoft apparantly promised to help develop an application that according to the Scottish would cost £100.00!
They only paid £60.000 for the licenses so i would say they got a VERY sweat deal on this. Can you get any cheaper than to get paid to use a product?
Read this article for some facts:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/11/HNscott
Don't bleat on about Choice .... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is so tiresome to see everybody screaming about OSS providing freedom to choose software tools - but it is only good when the choice is excersized in favour of Linux. The instant a choice is made to MS (god forbid) the hue and cry appears condemning those regressive bastards as idiots or dupes.
Don't offer choice if you are pushing an agenda. It is their choice, they tried something different - and it did not work out for them. Lets stop getting the knickers in a twist simply because someone went against the
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft Already Won That War (Score:4, Interesting)
Man bites dog (Score:3, Insightful)
Because so many people and businesses are converting to Linux and FOSS it's not news any more, so stories about that movment are rarely published anymore.
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per capita death rates of Americans in DC and LA are greater than American soldier combat deaths in Iraq, so when are we pulling out of DC or LA?
Not surprised at all (Score:4, Interesting)
When you try to do something even mildly advanced in OOo (like using Avery Labels in Landscape instead of Portrait mode) or even something as simple as printing a #10 envelope, OOo often falls down, badly.
When these issues are brought up to the developers (via their bug reporting system), the report is either ignored outright (in the case of the envelope printing) or the report is dismissed as a "feature enhancement" request and not a bug.
Come on people, you can't ask people to submit bug reports only to ignore or dismiss those reports.
I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that this agency indeed had submitted bug reports and were summarily ignored and/or dismissed. Hint time folks: this tends to piss people off, especially decision makers!
Staroffice, and others (Score:3, Insightful)
Staroffice was terrible when we brought it in. Hard to use, with incompatability errors and a generally unpleasant interface. For quite awhile it propogated a mindset that anything that wasn't MS Office was frightening
Openoffice.org [openoffice.org] on the other hand (and perhaps more modern StarOffice versions), is very nice, better interface, decent (and improving) compatability, etc. Kids picked up Impress faster that I have, and design some *very* kickass presentations with it. The built-in PDF export facility from the document editors is nice too...
For those that prefer a slightly nicer interface than OO, depending on your version I've found quite a few people enjoyed Abiword [abiword.org] as a replacement for the just word component of office.
Seriously, even as an OSS advocate I really disliked StarOffice, but there were/are better alternatives out there.
Re:2+2.... (Score:2)
The costs are not in the '$300 software package' (MS Office), but in the other packages that link to and (ab)use MS Office functionality, e.g. some applications that 'need' MS Word as a report generator.
As soon as the Scottish police upgrades to the next MS Office version, they will find out how cheap MS Office really is - then they will have to upgrade *ALL* these nice 'I-need-the-old-office-to-run' apps.
Re:2+2.... (Score:2, Informative)
I don't think Star Office is free. I think you're confusing it with Open Office.
Re:2+2.... (Score:2, Informative)
b) Large organisations don't pay list price. This is software, Microsoft will have discounted it down to a point where they can regain the business.
Re:2+2.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:2+2.... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you RTFA, there's a very telling sentence:
Early this year, however, the agency reviewed its IT infrastructure as part of an effort to meet performance targets, comply with Scotland's Freedom of Information Act and work more closely with other law enforcement groups
OpenOffice is fine if all you're doing is opening up a letter or a simple form in Word format. But if you want to claim that it's faultless for all documents, I have many thousands o
Re:2+2.... (Score:3, Informative)
Of course this is not a problem with OpenOffice per se, it's a problem of imperfect interoperability between OpenOffice and Word, i.e. the Word loader in OO is imperfect. But this shouldn't be a problem if all your documents are in OpenOffice format, and all your users use it - provided you don't need to exchange many documents with other organisations using Word. I have many large and complex documents created in OpenOffice (which is far nicer to use than Word), and because I have no need to ever load them
Re:HA!!! (Score:4, Informative)