MS Thinks OOo is 10 Years Behind 736
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!"
big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, get be back 10 years. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll take a word processor from 10 years ago any day over any new word processors, thank you very much.
Back when I first got to PC world in early 1990s, we had some great word processors that were good for word processing. You wrote stuff. If you wanted it printed, you carried it to that Mac person with who did those "DTP" things. People realized the word processors sucked at typesetting. They were tools you used to produce ASCII files with for someone else to process properly.
While modern word processors try to be the ultimate solutions to all electronic communications. Microsoft wants Office users to be able to do everything - and only succeeds at users being able to do some tasks at some level. Want to write a little bit? Can do. Want to typeset? We suck. Want to add tons of numbers up? Can do. Want to do something a bit more complex with numerical data? Not that easy or flexible, come to think of it.
I'm not saying OpenOffice.org is much closer to Microsoft's utopia though.
My point is, I've written some stuff all of my life. I can sit in front of my Commodore 64 and be productive, dammit, all I need is disk space. I don't care if Microsoft comes up with new features. Word processing was finished 10 years ago. All you stack on top of that is glitter.
The only reason I'm not going back to WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS are that I think OpenOffice.org's style-definition stuff is niftier, OpenDocument rocks when you think of the future, and thirdly, I don't think I can find an easy way to get a proper license with the means available. Plus WP's file manager UI is kind of crappy.
Here is a chance for Evolution or Thunderbird (Score:5, Interesting)
If both upped things up a notch we could be in a position by the end of the year of having not one but two enterprise level cross platform email clients, both of which would work pretty well from Open Office.
Anyway, I reckon that Microsoft have realised that Outlook is pretty superfluous for most people. Windows Vista (finally) comes with a calendar app which would be sufficient for most people. Or perhaps they haven't - Vista does seem to be lifting a lot of features from Mac OS X.
Re:Gates knows best (Score:5, Interesting)
I certainly wouldn't say the UI is 10 years behind - it's probably comparable to Office XP in most areas. And of course underneath the surface some features of OO are cutting edge, such as its support for a clean open document format, cross platform capabilities, export options and more. They just have to keep working on that UI, simplifying the common tasks, working on the startup time, polishing the wizards, improving the drag / drop behaviour etc.
Isolated users? (Score:3, Interesting)
I still have the opinion you should not embed a e-mail application in open office as this is a mail application and has nothing to do with the things you do in a office application. The beauty of opensource projects is that the final application is build upon users input, not only code but also expectation. If, please read IF, there was a need for a e-mail application within open office the community would have made sure this was a building option.
In my opinion is the fact nobody has implemented this evidence that there is no need for this in the open office user community. The moment it will be embedded it will be done because of users requesting this and start building this. Maybe Microsoft should pay some more attention on opensource to look what people are building if they have the freedom to do this themselves... and maybe Microsoft should find out that some of there products do not "completely" satisfy the needs of there users...
Regards,
Johan Louwers.
Re:Perhaps it's ten years (Score:4, Interesting)
oh wait....
I hate to break it to microsoft, with the glaring exception of a decent crossplatform exchange/outlook replacement, frankly I consider MS Office legacy at best.
Re:Its all relative (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish that there were KeyNote for Linux, or an open source presentation package that was half as cool. I've even thought of starting such a project once I get a moment free from school.
Re:Gates knows best (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They're right. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:10 years behind? Sounds about right (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd normally let this go, but I've just finished doing project documentation for a MS only company, and I have to ask you, ARE YOU ON CRACK?
MS Office clean, polished and reliable? It's a fucking dog's bollocks of an interface! Excel has that wierd implimentation of MDI that's inconsistent with everthing else out there. It's cut/copy/paste is borked and wierd as well. Word has crap all over the place. There's bugger-all consistency of purpose. Tools like the org chart designer are almost satanic in their ability to do exactly what you don't want them to do, while Powerpoint manages to hide virtually every funcionality that might allow you to make an interactive presentation.
And reliable? We were trying to paste client-supplied Word tables into Excel to get some total figures. It crashed every time. We ended up sneaking portable OOo in on a thumb drive and pasting them into Calc. Word would choke on some of the documents too - they were table heavy, and word would get stuck in some repagination cycle. It'd be unusable except in "Normal" mode, but then you couldn't see what your output would look like. An Access database would randomly change date formats (US or Aus) depending on which computer it was run on. It wouldn't be so bad if it was consistent, but half the dates would be in US, while the rest were Aus.
I'm not saying OOo is that much better, but christ, the only thing MS Office has going for it is that every man and his dog already has a copy and knows how to work around the freakish bits.
Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer is simple:
Private users, small firms, medium-sized firms: OOo. Cost of ownership, fulfilling all needs.
Big firms: MSO. OOo doesn't fulfill their needs, cost of custom solutions too big.
Huge firms: Custom-modified OOo tailored to their needs. (after all, it's open source. You can't modify MSO because you don't have the sources.)
So if OOo grabs 90% of the market and MSO retains the remaining 10%, I'm perfectly fine with it
Re:10 years behind? Sounds about right (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you know how that compares to OOo's multilingual support?
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
I realize that this solution probably won't fly for everyone, or even most people, but if you really want a stripped-down, quick-and-easy, useless-menu-devoid word processing experience, and you happen to be up on web standards, there isn't much you can't do with notepad.
To be unpopular (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a large (85,000 people) multinational company, and we simply couldn't get by without the integrated features of Office. I spend all day editing Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and occasionally Powerpoint, and without the tight integration I'd be in a mess.
I know how much of a mess, because 10 years ago O97 didn't have the Outlook integration, and I was forced to keep multiple copies of things on disk, and the review/formatting/comments stuff was really poor.
I suspect that 90% of the folks here on
Oh, and if you are at college writing your thesis, then I highly recommend using LaTeX instead like I did. In terms of typesetting and formatting Word doesn't even come close.
Re:Eh (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, where's the alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree Access has its quirks but why isn't there a good tool for doing the same that does this properly? The answer isn't to have to submit an IT project every time, instead of Access hacks you get Excel hacks. What you need is an easy migration path from "click-and-point" development to an IT supported "real" DB application, for those that need it. Most of them you won't ever need to migrate, the trouble is the business critical ones you do.
Re:Maybe you should try Lyx... (Score:2, Interesting)
BRANDING is important here (Score:1, Interesting)
Sure, I personally dont have a huge need to upgrade to the newest Office.
But the dinosaurs are cute, and that is all that most people really see in the ad.
Also, Open Office has inferior branding, IMHO. And if a product has inferior branding, you wont have as much confidence in using it, thus reducing your capabilities, and your general levels of creativity.
So strong branding is a HUGE thing that MS has built up since Office 97, and if that is going to make my employees feel better about the stuff they are using, and make them more productive, GREAT!
Of course with these ads, MS are negatively branding Office 97, which means that the whole thing is a bit of an artificial push to buy the new Office... but the dinosaurs are still really cute.
Re:Single, isolated users. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do a lot of editing of peoples' ms, the more professional ones can use the revision tracking feature which has been in Word since at least 97 (and that's what I usually open them with). But many blank out on this whe I try to explain it and fax me printpouts with scribbled annotations. And these are university lecturers and lawyers; not geeks but not idiots. I've never had any occasion to use the touted "collaborative" features beyond that, and find it hard to imagine when they might be useful in real life.
Re:Perhaps it's ten years (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. Unix already had a blinding mail system before Windows ever existed. Exim is an MTA, also known as an SMTP daemon, which is to say that it does exactly what sendmail does {look that up elsewhere}; but it has a slightly nicer config file syntax than sendmail {note, I am biased: sendmail's unwieldy configuration was what drove me to try exim in the first place}. Evolution can use the native unix mailbox system instead of a POP3 server {which is no more than an alternative interface to native unix mailboxes on a remote machine} and a local MTA {an SMTP server is just an SMTP server.} Exim can be configured to look up other people's POP3 servers and deliver direct to them, as though it were a real unix mail server on the internet; or funnel all your mail through one SMTP server as though it were Outlook Express. Fetchmail is a POP3 client which grabs your mail from some remote system and puts it in your mailbox on the local system, so it integrates tightly.
Re:Perhaps it's ten years (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh, Office XP does have one feature OOO doesn't: the instability. Word gets hung on pasting text and simply closing a document (while leaving Word open) all the time. Swriter doesn't. Well, I suppose Word does have another feature that swriter doesn't on Windows too - all those damned annoying macros that other apps will install to Word. If you don't want them, you can disable them and then Word prompts you for each diabled macro every single time you start it up afterward.
I got Office XP about three months after it came out. I used Word on average four times a week, sometimes quite a bit more. It often drove me nuts. At that time, OpenOffice.org on Windows didn't have the formatting capability that I wanted; that is, if I had a .doc formatted just the way I wanted it, when I opened it in swriter it would screw up the formatting. OpenOffice.org 2.0 fixed that and now it preserves formatting perfectly. A .doc made with swriter opens in Word without any problems and vice versa. Since 2.0 came out I have used it regularly. I still have Office XP but I almost never use it now. The next time I reinstall Windows I probably won't bother with Office XP.
Bright cutesy icons? You can keep 'em. If you consider those RAM-hogging glossy icons a feature, good for you, but I don't. I don't need that crap just to write out a document. Give me functionality over icons any day.
Lastly, there's no email client like Outlook with OpenOffice.org. I guess it's because he works for Microsoft that he seems to consider that a bad thing - any other sane person would be glad. I've never, and I do mean NEVER, met anyone online or off who liked Outlook. Many liked the concept of what Outlook was supposed to be, but not Outlook itself. It's a huge memory hog, unstable and has no spam controls whatsoever. Thunderbird does. And a PIM? You're better off doing that the old-fashioned way, a little book with a pencil. Far more portable, convenient and you don't have to worry about a laptop battery, instability or a virus wrecking your system and losing your important information. It's only because of our "tech is so much better!!!!" mentality that people seem to think they need a computerized PIM and never even think that simple paper and pencil might actually be better.
Re:Single, isolated users. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about the rest of the Office suite, but for Outlook, my experience is exactly the opposite. When you have a small to medium business all with computers on an active directory domain, it's nice that your email client can authenticate from your logon, and the shared calendar / contacts / etc are done nicely.
I mean, I use thunderbird, and I think office is way overpriced. But, for what it is, outlook 2003 is a pretty good business product. It's relatively secure (compared to past iterations), the shared calendar is easy to use (yes there are open source alternatives [sourceforge.net], but integration and ease of use are hard to match here), and with Small Business Server, the outlook web interface has a lot of Ajax and DHTML type features which make it look almost exactly like you're at your computer. It's very well executed.
~Will
Honestly, Office is way too ahead (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:3, Interesting)
I boot Windows only for gaming and syncing Palm.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not sure I understand them (Score:3, Interesting)
When you buy a car, one day the engine or the transmission will wear out. When you buy a VCR, one day the rubber tyre on the idler wheel will wear out. When you buy a steam iron, one day the water passages will clog up irretrievably with limescale. When you buy a microwave oven, one day the magnetron will fail. You get the idea: real, physical appliances wear out with use. To some extent this behaviour is designed-in {a short MTBF increases the number of units sold}; in a free and fair marketplace, it is not likely to be overused {a long MTBF adds perceived value; people generally will not buy from a company whom they believe to have short-changed them}.
Software is not susceptible to this kind of in-built obsolescence, since once a user has obtained a copy they have it forever; and in any case the closed-source software marketplace is neither free nor fair. In-built obsolescence instead has to be crudely emulated through the introduction of new features and incompatible saved file formats. The new features will necessarily get more and more obscure, esoteric and useless. File formats are the important one. As long as you can persuade someone to get a new version of Word, then you can always get a new and incompatible version of
Long-term solution: Document exporter written in MS Office's own macro language {which provides access to every feature of a document in an object-oriented style, a bit like the DOM in HTML/JavaScript but different}. Step through existing document, inserting text representing XML representation of document into a new, blank document which will export cleanly though under protest as plain text. If macro language is Internet-aware, give exporter the power to: talk to a server on the LAN; download Office 2007 document {extracted from incoming e-mail} from server; translate to alternate format; and re-upload to server which then makes translated document available to intended user. One MS Office and Windows licence required for translation machine. Rest of office LAN can run 100% OSS. Saving depends how many MS Office licences your business was using. {In middle term, as soon as a reliable exporter is ready, run similar service as bureau where customers e-mail in documents. Experience of doing job by hand will be valuable in determining how best to automate.}
Re:MS Office wins on manageability (Score:2, Interesting)
While Microsoft apps need to be watched to prevent illicit extra copies, you can just hand out OOo as needed. No reason to worry about possible under-licensing. This makes things easier on the IT department.
On generation of immigrant hates the next (Score:5, Interesting)
After a year of DisplayWrite 2 in the amber screen dark ages, virtually all my office work has been with WordPerfect. Over 10 years ago I was creating quick-and-dirty laser printed trifolds with WordPerfect containing stuff like complex, rotated clip-off forms. Virtually everything was a frame. Essentially DTP. And maintaining merges for mailing lists and formatted committee listings and the like via macros. 20 years ago, we were using delimited dbase output to WordPerfect template merges to run a summer school of over 2000 students.
To me, Word has _always_ been crap. It shows it roots as a text editor. You can say "doh" but my conception, spoiled as I was with WordPerfect, was that the program should be a swiss army knife capable of everything from DTP to a rich macro programming language.
As a clone of crap, I didn't expect much from OpenOffice.org -- and 1.0.0 would crash out fairly regularly on my linux so it fit my prejudices. But now I see my attitude was shaped by WordPerfect. Since Scribus is coming along nicely, I can use that for anything cool. Text is text. They are all good now. And Abiword usually does most of what I want if I know I'm just putting some text/columns/tables/graphics on paper.
In a sense it is karma coming back on Microsoft. I once had a guy argue with me that having fewer features was Word's strength. However, by defining word processing as something simple and distinct from DTP they lowered the bar to where open source projects could reasonably hope to compete.
Unfortunately they have a point (Score:2, Interesting)
To write a quick one-page document, Open Office is adequate. However, installing dictionaries is a pain; it replaces MS Word's quircks with its own. The interface is not as efficient (I'm not saying MS Office is perfect, but this is definitely worse); last but nost least, Calc is a joke compared to Excel... sorry, but I had to say it. I needed to do some statistical stuff in Calc and I found it pain.
And what about the equation editor? Yes, you can get used to it, but it's still crude.
Yes, it's free. Yes, I can do with it about 90% of the things I need. But the other 10% are infuriating.
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife is an attorney, and she has to deal with documents that repeatedly go through different versions of Word: at her clients, and at the other side, and at the other side's attorneys. All these different versions of Word frequently corrupt documents so badly that Word throws up its hands and says, "I can't deal with this.". (Back and forth between '97 and 2000 or XP is particularly troublesome...)
And the fix is to run them through abiword and save as rtf!
Re:10 years behind? Sounds about right (Score:2, Interesting)
OOo certainly works fine to mix Cyrillic and Western (Latin-based) languages in Unicode. I use it for that all the time.
Re:Gates knows best (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:1, Interesting)
You're trying to be l33t plain and simple.
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
My mother is a lawyer and I convinced her to move from MSOffice to OpenOffice exactly for the same reason. Many of their documents got corrupted by different versions of Word, or by anti-virus software trying to repair macro-virii infected files.
I'd like to point out that several of her files that Word couldn't open anymore were opened flawless by OpenOffice.
She was so glad that now she refuses to use anything but OpenOffice.
This is good news! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Maybe you should try Lyx... (Score:3, Interesting)
Publisher? (Score:2, Interesting)
Any suggestions?
Re:They're right. (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenOffice.org will have an uphill battle with this type of requirement, because of market forces. The only thing I see that could break this open is Open Document Format, such as what is happening in Massachusetts.
Built a small company on MS Office (Score:3, Interesting)
We have a small division that does basic mail processing. We have gone from doing just small batches a day to now large batches. We process data to and from our pgsql database with Excel, I have processed some small scripts to do the transfer, as well as the formatting from various channel partners.
I then integrate with some software from Pitney Bowes to scrub the data, then re-export and process again into Excel and then into Word.
Overall the process is fairly quick and i have been able to train a very non-technical person to do the process in less than 20 minutes before it hits the printers and goes to the mail processing equipment. not to mention, no hassle dealing with things like postal bar-codes, and 4-8k pages of merged data pushed off to the printer. It chews through the merge in literally seconds and generates multiple multi-thousand page document without breaking a sweat on an older machine.
The license cost for me on that software from MS is about $250, thats a clear ROI on that software within days of use.
I have tried the process on OpenOffice, as well as Office on Mac. I found that the mac would take almost 30 minutes just to spool the document to the printer and took FOREVER to do the merge (Office Mac). OO worked ok, but it felt clumbsy and would sometimes do strange things if the documents where too big and printing wasn't as fast.
Overall, MS Office is worth buying and using. And I would laugh if one of my IT guys wanted to migrate us over to OOo or anything else when what we are using is working, and from a business standpoint the ROI is clear. Even as my business grows and I need to license more workstation, 1-2 hours a week of an employing futzing around with OO or some alternative isn't worth the savings of license fees. And people that say that Office 2003 is more difficult to use than OO have probably never used Office at more than a passing glance or as a glorified text editor.
Re:Snarky Response (Score:3, Interesting)
Office 97 is functionally completely adequate, but MS made sure that it's unstable running on XP, so if you want it to work with long documents (and can't use a tool like WordPerfect that can deal with them correctly), you have to upgrade to at least Office 2000.
Although I'm impressed by the UI streamlining of the "Ribbon" in Office 12 (or whatever they call it), I really don't want to get on the MS upgrade treadmill by placing critical reliance on apps that have enforced license policies that prevent me from using them (legally) on many machines over many years, as I've done with Office 97 and 2000. This "anti-piracy" crap is really just designed to force me into a $400 upgrade every other year whether I want it or not.
It's enough to make me seriously consider doing without MS Office, but I'm really not prepared to go the hair-shirt route just yet - although I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Unix bigot, MS really is the best desktop environment going. (Yes, even better than the Mac, since there's a lot more quality software, and a much higher percentage of that is free, or at least much more reasonably priced than Mac software which can get expensive in a hurry. Besides, can you imagine the outcry if MS tried to charge $129 for security updates and fixes of really nasty sloppy bugs like Apple does with their OS X upgrades? And no, no desktop based on Linux, BSD or Unix is really even close - I've been hoping for a decade now, but am still waiting.)