Portable OpenOffice.org 2.01 Released 234
VeryVito writes "Portableapps.com has released Portable OpenOffice.org 2.01 -- the complete office suite you can run from a USB drive for complete access to both your files and your office apps -- anywhere you go. More than just a neat idea, some say it's a perfect example of "the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about selling as many licenses of their work as possible." I don't imagine we'll see a portable Microsoft Office suite any time soon."
Portable Microsoft Office (Score:5, Insightful)
Any computer will have a browser (and connectivity), therefore MS Office will be omnipresent. You won't need to carry it around on a flash driver.
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it may be a while before someone edits CorpFinancialsAndCustomerList.doc at a rented terminal.
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, there's nothing fundamentally different between running "mission critical apps" from a losable, stealable, USB drive than an online service.
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
Then let's conduct sensitive business meetings at the closest McDonalds, while we're at it.
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
My contention was that neither the Internet nor USB drives were appropriate mediums for "mission critical" apps and documents.
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
"Systematically promoted to the place they can do the least harm" I believe is how Scott adams described it.
Ho hum.
Not suprised (Score:2)
I know the the attitude "I'm the [CEO|manager|owner] don't bother me with trivial details. *I* have important work to do".
CEO's need to he held directly and personally resopnsible for the shortcomings of their company. After all, this is why they get the big bucks, right?
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
Tell me about these CFO's you know who are putting security ahead of cost...
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that a pretty big 'if' at this point, still?
then the browser (modified, perhaps) will be all that will be required to run Office on any computer
I somehow doubt that M$ are going to put out an online version of Office that is accessible through Firefox/Seamonkey/Safari/Opera/Konqueror/etc. At the very least online Office would require the latest and greatest version of IE. If they do go the WebApp route, I wouldn't be surprised to find Redmond charging for special c
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:4, Insightful)
And then when you read the fine print, you see that there is a clause that says that Microsoft now owns all rights to any data that is produced in this application. And for it to truly be portable, the data would have to be stored on their server as well, so how could you argue with the fine print after you discover it. Your document would simply disappear if you started to argue with them. Because they own the server, the application, and control the data.
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
Well, my company pretty much have that already via Citrix. It's amazing how often I need a document offline on my laptop though (I suppose we could all start using GPRS or the like, but we don't now). One of the nice things about an USB stick is that you can use just the stick, or stick + laptop for offline access. Now give me online access AND a good automatable
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:3)
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
And for those of us who find ourselves in a situation where we are at a computer without an internet connection are just plain screwed, right?
Although the project already seems
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
Have fun.
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:3, Interesting)
Any computer will have a browser (and connectivity), therefore MS Office will be omnipresent. You won't need to carry it around on a flash driver.
No, you won't need to carry around a usb key, but you might need a really long network cable to connect to the internet, since not everywhere has wireless (let alone free wireless). Plus, what happens
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:2)
That's MS's vision of "portable apps." Run them from as many Windows boxes as you can afford to license!
Re:Portable Microsoft Office (Score:4, Interesting)
Portable Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
This is very useful for me as I'm otherwise forced to use IE on the university computers. Neat.
Re:Portable Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Portable Firefox (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Portable Firefox (Score:2)
Re:Portable Firefox (Score:2)
http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/portable_ap
this is a great series (Score:2)
Suite! If I could only work on a beach in Hawaii (Score:5, Funny)
let me (Score:2, Insightful)
THIS JUST ROCKS!
Now I can:
# Carry my web browser with all my favorite bookmarks
# Carry my calendar with all my appointments
# Carry my email client with all my contacts and settings
# Carry my instant messenger and my buddy list
# Carry my whole office suite along with my documents and presentations
# Carry my antivirus program and other computer utilities
# Carry all my important passwords and account information securely
My system on USB (Score:3, Interesting)
I have taken this a step further, though. I have installed gentoo on my usb drive. It is very simple, just have all the usb support in the kernel, then make an initrd which makes the machine wait for a little while for usb mass storage devices to settle, before it tries to mount them as root ( "sleep 5
Re:My system on USB (Score:2)
Perhaps so, but it's pretty lax security if they have them set up that way. Any large installation of computers worth its salt will have access to USB mass storage devices (and in fact, any removable media) disabled from a regular desktop.
Re:My system on USB (Score:2)
Re:let me (Score:2)
Now I can conveniently, at the same time, lose (and have a stranger find)
# all my favorite bookmarks
# all my appointments
# all my contacts and settings
# my buddy list
# my documents and presentations
# my important passwords and account information
Fun, isn't it ?
Encrypt It (Score:2)
Re:let me (Score:2)
With a little work you can even rig yourself a portable cygwin [gdargaud.net] which allows you a real unix environment anywhere you go. That way you can have firefox in X with multiple desktops and proper middle button behavior, with a shell and everything
Does anyone remember when this was the NORM? (Score:2)
And then, came Windows... and the registry.
It's all been done before. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure this is better but it has been done before.
Re:It's all been done before. (Score:3, Interesting)
I see the connection you're making but I don't agree it's the same thing. It's FAR better.
Big achievment? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Big achievment? (Score:2)
Re:Big achievment? (Score:2)
Jon
Re:Big achievment? (Score:2)
1 GB USB for $60 USD at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0003009DK/ref=p
Re:Big achievment? (Score:2)
I think time is on the side of OpenOffice here. 256 is already so cheap, and tomorrow it will be almost free.
Re:Big achievment? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Big achievment? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Big achievment? (Score:2)
I haven't yet downloaded POO.o yet, and I haven't used any of these "portable apps" either, but are they just regular Windows binaries? Can they be UPXed [sourceforge.net] if not already?
Firefox, for instance, shrinks down from 7MB to a nice 1.5MB on my horribly space-limited computer here at work.
It is UPXed (Score:2)
Re:It is UPXed (Score:2)
Re:Big achievment? (Score:2)
Re:Big achievment? (Score:2)
While not *that* common, I have noticed that a number of projects pack their files since the speed-penalty is rather negligible, and the download/storage savings is a benefit.
Down from 206MB (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation (Score:2, Insightful)
"This is exactly the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about selling as many licenses of their work as possible"
Translation:
"This is exactly the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about how many people find their software useful."
Re:Translation (Score:3, Insightful)
For the mod who thought the comment was insightful: the comment should be translated as
"This is exactly the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't mind if people copy their software."
Please mod me "obvious".
Re:Translation (Score:2)
Re:Translation (Score:2)
There's a full release ahead of us?!? (Score:2)
How'd they get OpenOffice.org 2.1 (dropping the leading zero) when the rest of us only have 2.0.1?
Remember, folks, those periods are separators and not decimals.
</pedant>
Portable web server? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Portable web server? (Score:2)
Windows Only? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Windows Only? (Score:2)
It might not be the quickest way to run the apps, but PDAs are getting faster over time, so it gradually becoems more feasible.
Re:Windows Only? (Score:2)
Re:Windows Only? (Score:2)
for example I have a small website hosted on a linux box I made it as an unofficial resource for a course i was studying last year. now i think that if i could set it up on the pda it'd be
1)quiet
2)cheap to run
3)as it is battery backed It'd always be up when the power came back online.
to be honest cpu power isn't such an issue for me i have a couple of xscale pda's that will run upto 520 Mhz native is 400Mhz
but here i am writing this on a
Re:Windows Only? (Score:2)
Not if you had a "Portable VNC Client" that the host can read off the PDA (just make the PDA look like a USB mass storage device) and you'd probably only need that for windows, as if you on a *nix box you could just use X.
The PDA will have problems accessing the net (Windows is crap as router, really)
I think that's always g
Re:Windows Only? (Score:2)
portable MS Office suite soon (Score:2, Funny)
why not?
Copyright (Score:2)
Currently, MS Office is a mess of registry settings, DLLs in every thinkable system directory, etc, etc. Criminy, just try to back up office by simply burning the Program Files subdir to disk. I doubt it'd work so well once you copy it back after a format of your disk. You really need the Office install disks as
Re:portable MS Office suite soon (Score:2)
Even so, that will only be good for Windows only operating systems.
Author AND reference (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and the portable apps site seems to be 403. Slashdotted, maybe?
As the links seems dead now: (Score:3, Informative)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableoo/ [sourceforge.net]
can this work from other devices (Score:2)
with wireless built in I could see it working as a nifty little server.
What could you put in one gig?
If you could run apache on CE now that could be fun and quiet very quiet.
actually ahem
http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/software.html [rainer-keuchel.de]
looks like you can
just a thought
MS Office does not need to be portable.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I use it! (Score:2)
IE at my workplace sucks more than usual because all the settings are locked down & we can't change so much as the default start page.
Portable Firefox was a godsend, initially running off a flash drive, and then moving onto a USB hard drive, which subsequently received all the rest of the portable apps. OOo is a bit slow to start, but it's nice to have the ODF support available.
Now if somebody could just create an extension so I could use the same profile for both my home Linux FF and work XP FF, I'
Working on that (Score:2)
Integration (Score:2, Interesting)
That may truly give Microsoft's Office a run for its money.
Comments?
Re:Integration (Score:2)
Re:Integration (Score:2)
Re:Integration (Score:2)
"How did this gett modded informative rather than funny?"?
Damn Small Lunux on USB (Score:2, Informative)
linux thumbdrives (Score:2)
Re:linux thumbdrives (Score:3, Interesting)
Ask and ye shall receive (sort of).
http://www.projectblackdog.com/ [projectblackdog.com]
Another one bites the dust... (Score:2)
Google cache of home page is here: http://google.com/search?q=cache:4xtQ3HrcVacJ:por
Which begs the question (Score:5, Interesting)
Sell it for $5 more than the cheapest equivalent capacity stick, or about the same as a branded stick and let the profits go to the developers.
$50 for 512MB portable office is cheap, especially if all a noob has to do to install it is plug it into a USB slot and double click the application. My poorly wired consumer brain is reluctant to shell out for software on a CD, if only becuase they're slow and you know their practically free to make. I'd probably buy an office on a stick because I know if I didn't like the software at least I'd still have something that I still have some use for.
Re:Which begs the question (Score:2)
That's not what begging the question means.
Do we have to go through this EVERY [wikipedia.org] time?
Re:Which begs the question (Score:2)
Do we have to go through this EVERY time?
Apperently it does in modern usage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Site Down, Working On It (Score:5, Informative)
Until then, you can view the Google Cache of the older Portable OpenOffice release [216.239.51.104] and get the new release from the SourceForge Portable OpenOffice.org project page
SourceForge Project page... (Score:2)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableoo [sourceforge.net]
If it can be this small (Score:2)
I don't use much beyond the basic functionality of OO anyway. Maybe I should just use the portable version on my home PC
Why can't all Windows apps be portable? (Score:2)
I really miss the good ol' days of MacOS apps where you could just copy the stupid App folder (and in some cases JUST the app) and get a complete working copy.
Portable Open Office...It's Called CD rom (Score:4, Interesting)
btw...If you want professionally printed OO 1.1.4 in bulk, I've got'em.
2.0 Not working on FreeBSD (Score:2)
Slashdotted (Score:2)
When I looked for TFA just now, I realized that these roll-your-own "I'm slashdotted" pages just don't make sense on today's internet. Would someone please petition the W3C to expand the HTTP standard to include a
"409: Site Temporarily Unavailable: Blame Slashdot"
page?
TIA,
Don't need one (Score:2)
More portable apps! (Score:5, Informative)
Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
This one will run from your key, but it does write to the registry which portable apps should not do. Then again, they don't advertise this as a portable app. Once you use it on a machine and configure it, it will remember your settings on that machine of course. Handy if you are locked down at work from installing software but you need it occasionally.
Bulk Rename Utility - http://www.jimwillsher.co.uk/Site/Software/Softwar e_Intro.php [jimwillsher.co.uk]
a utility which allows the rapid renaming of files and folders, based upon flexible selection criteria. Download the zip version for portability.
FeedReader - http://www.feedreader.com/ [feedreader.com]
This project is currently dead, but it works from USB wonderfully.
FoxitReader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/bbs/index.php [foxitsoftware.com]
A PDF reader that works very quickly (kind of like Adobe used to about 6 years ago).
Miranda - http://www.miranda-im.org/ [miranda-im.org]
A powerful and flexible multiprotocol IM client with loads of plugins. Download the zip version for portability.
mIRC - http://www.mirc.com/ [mirc.com]
Everyones favorite IRC app. Has always been portable.
PortableFileZilla - http://portableapps.com/ [portableapps.com]
Portable FileZilla is the popular FileZilla FTP client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your server list and settings with you.
PortableFirefox - http://portableapps.com/ [portableapps.com]
Portable Firefox is the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser packaged as a portable app, so you can take your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords with you.
PortableNVU - http://portableapps.com/ [portableapps.com]
Portable NVU is the easy-to-use NVU web editor packaged as a portable app, so you can edit your website on the go.
PortableOpenOffice - http://portableapps.com/ [portableapps.com]
Portable OpenOffice.org is the popular OpenOffice.org office suite -- including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database -- packaged as a portable app
PortableSunbird - http://portableapps.com/ [portableapps.com]
Portable Sunbird is the handy Mozilla Sunbird calendar and task manager packaged as a portable app, so you can take your calendar and to do list with you.
PortableThunderbird - http://portableapps.com/ [portableapps.com]
Portable Thunderbird is the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your email, address book and account settings with you.
Snippy - http://www.bhelpuri.net/Snippy/ [bhelpuri.net]
Snippy is a small utility that captures an area of your screen to your clipboard to paste into other applications.
AleJenJes Countdown Timer - http://www.gonebowlin.com/freeware.html [gonebowlin.com]
It is a simple countdown timer where you enter the starting time in hours, minutes & seconds and it counts down to zero. Not needed often, but handy as can be for those few instances you do need one.
Unit Conversion Utility - http://www.jimwillsher.co.uk/Site/Software/UCU_Int ro.html [jimwillsher.co.uk]
Unit Conversion U
Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
And some people are paranoid.
Get some sense of proportion. It's a link. It's actually a link to a product you have to buy. And do you honestly believe that there still are people on this planet using computers that haven't heard about MS Office yet?
Christ. Talk about overreaction.
Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that must be it.
"This OpenOffice story, which focused on a feature it had that MS Office didn't, was brought to you by Microsoft."
"Microsoft. We're gonna mess with your heads."
Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? (Score:3, Informative)
Cheers.
Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? (Score:3, Funny)
Let's all go click on it now.
Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot deal with Microsoft? (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, you download/install once, but (depending on your job) you fire it up every so often.
Re:Shame it's still 144Mb Installed... (Score:2)
Re:World is round indeed! (Score:2, Interesting)
wow. This is in no way similar to the C=64 - it appears to have been superior in every way. I wish we had those here in the US in the '80s. I never heard of it until now. I thought I had it good with a C=128.