MS Thinks OOo is 10 Years Behind

greengrass writes "In a recent interview with IT Wire, general manager of business strategy for the Information Worker Group at Microsoft, Alan Yates expressed the opinion that Open Office is at the same level that MS office was around 10 years ago. Supposedly only suitable for the single desktop, isolated user. After all, it doesn't even have an e-mail client!"

Why, I never!

[Anonymous Coward]

*monocle pops out*

Quick everyone

[LiquidCoooled]

Better contact OO.org and demand a refund.

Is it bad that

[Kasracer]

I think 10 years is about right?

good

[Anonymous Coward]

i didn't want my manifesto as a spreadsheet anyway...

They think "Free Software" is "Spyware" too

[rebeka thomas]

This from the company who equates "Free Software" with "Spyware" [danaquarium.com]. Who would expect them to massacre other definitions, like what an office suite is?

"Other computer systems without Microsoft AntiSpyware don't provide the safety that you get with Windows," he explains, in a swipe at the Linux OS. "when you download free software - even a free operating system - you double this effect. You are putting your computer and precious data at risk."

Single, isolated users.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now i understand why slashdot users tend to promote openoffice.org... :-)

Interesting that he mentions OOo as suitable for single desktop, isolated users.. Isn't that a huge part of the MS office userbase he's talking about? Email client? Outlook express is for free, isn't it? :-)

you do realize

[zyte]

that this company has around 60,000 employees. no shit some of them are going to say stupid crap, who cares?

No flight simulator either

[dotslashdot]

Nor does it come with an embedded flight simulator like Excel does. Sooo 1990s!

In other news...

[SeaFox]

Apple Computer thinks Microsoft is five years behind.

Right on the money

[Unsus]

Yes, OOo is certainly missing all the ground-breaking word processing technologies that emerged within the last 10 years. Honestly, both OOo and MSOffice have nothing on notepad, which sadly starts-up and runs faster than both of them.

Now you've gone and done it..

[erlando]

I think we just slashdotted .au ... :-)

Wrong

[Clueless Nick]

With MS Office you have at least evolved to the stage of dinosaurs. OO.o doesn't even consider you to be a lifeform, does it? Show me an advertising campaign that proves otherwise.

-clueless

Re:What's the wizz-bang features it's missing?

[dracocat]

The UI in the new versions of Office feels much more modern. Every time I upgrade I feel like I am getting a better piece of software since the UI is updated each time with a new look & feel.

Feature wise I can't say that I can name a single one, but like I said, it sure feels like the software is getting better. In fact whenever I look at somebody using the old Office 2000 I shake my head at the poor soul stuggling his way through life without the newest version. After all, his software is 3 years older than mine! Some might say that its more about the features and the color scheme or layout isn't all that important; but that wouldn't be true. I know this because I see many other people just like me who have paid hundreds of dollars for an updated version, this lets me know that I made the right decision in the upgrade. Ok I better stop now, this could go on forever.

Re:Which share...

[Vo0k]

95 % of the users do not need them.
Another 4% use them to write viruses.

Re:What's the wizz-bang features it's missing?

[Lord Crc]

Honestly, the only thing Office has that I really miss in Open Office is Access. Access is a great program to interact with other databases with via ODBC drivers, and I've yet to see a good open source replacement.

You don't have to miss it much longer, The Ultimate Address Book [thedailywtf.com] will be done shortly and will cover all your Access needs.

Re:Eh

[Kjella]

Plots and charts, gnuplot, which I think everyone on the planet uses.

Finally! Proof of extraterrestrial life at last. What's the lag time like to your planet?

Re:Is it bad that

[martin-boundary]

Depends. Do you throw chairs?

Re:Why, I never!

[onebuttonmouse]

That's my third monocle this week, I simply must stop being so horrified.

Re:Not up to Word 4 in many ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill, is that you? OpenOffice.org supports custom tab stops, Bill. You should really give it a more thorough try, I think you'd like it. Maybe someone can arrange a private demo for you and Ballmer. I'm sure you'll see that bullet point sizing is about the only thing it is missing that your last decent MS Word (that's 97, Bill) had.

Re:big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry - we all know you used Excel 2003 to calculate the dates...

Ha, MS Office ...

[xtracto]

Ha! MS Office is in fact 17 years behind my preffered user friendly office suite [wikipedia.org]!

Just you wait!

[FhnuZoag]

I guess OOo is getting the paperclip next year, then.

I don't know: pt_BR.UTF8 here

[hummassa]

I use it to write a lot of stuff in Portuguese, and the only complain I have is that the clipboard is a little "schizophrenic" WRT utf8 :-) As I don't use the clipboard a lot, I cope with it.

Re:Perhaps it is...

[Paradise Pete]

That's great, but when you actually work in a real company, you'll probably have to learn MS Office and Word. You'll wish you learned this before.

So you're saying that Microsoft's office and word processor are so complicated that you'll be staring at the screen, unable to process words or even officize, ruing the fact you didn't learn how to use them when you had the chance?

No email client?

[dbIII]

Outlook not so good.

Good!

[danwesnor]

You mean Open Office is like MS Office was, back before MS Office became a bloated mess of unwanted and unused features?

That's about the best advertisement for Open Office that anyone could have come up with!

Re:Perhaps it is...

[TheGhostOfDerrida]

I love the word "officize". It sounds like something you'd be embarrassed about if your wife caught you doing it.

Re:Perhaps it is...

[1800maxim]

Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here debating about word processors?

Well we had it tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and write our school papers entirely in binary. We had half a handful of freezing cold coffee beans, worked twenty-four hours a day at the unix print lab for four pages every six years, and when we got home...

Just like Linux is behind Windows ...

[Zero__Kelvin]

"After all, it doesn't even have an e-mail client!"

... and the Linux kernel is so far behind the Windows Kernel it doesn't even have a web browser!

Re:Perhaps it is...

[Randolpho]

This is a bad idea for anyone who doesn't compile from source (And for Ooo, I'm sure that's the majority!), but you do have the right idea.

If you don't compile from source, how do you compile at all?

Re:OpenOffice.org

[justins]

If the devs are canny, they will introduce a really useful new feature which would be very difficult to implement in Microsoft Office.

Given Office's release schedule, all they need to do would be to introduce a really useful new feature which Office hasn't implemented yet.