OpenOffice vs. MS Office for Education? 1039
dbrian asks: "I work in a large high school district where there will be some discussion on whether or not to purchase another term of 'Software Assurance' for MS Office licenses on thousands of computers. This seems to be an ideal opportunity to promote an alternative such as OpenOffice. It will not be an easy sell, even though OpenOffice should more than satisfy all curricular needs and save the district lots of money; like many other districts we have political and cultural 'challenges'. So, I ask you, have you been successful in moving your education or business organization from MS Office to OpenOffice? What were the pros and cons from your migration? What advice do you have in selling this to tech coordinators and administrators who are not enlightened by Open Source?"
there will be hell to pay... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's quite simple really: (Score:5, Insightful)
2. OpenOffice fully supports Microsoft Office file formats.
3. OpenOffice can be distributed to students without cost.
4. OpenOffice (and its sister project NeoOffice/J) run on ALL popular OSes, including Macintoshes.
5. OpenOffice is continually updated to have the latest features, again at no cost.
Free = better for low income students? (Score:2, Insightful)
PC's can be picked up dirt cheap these days (I've seen 299 retail in the UK) if your child can get the software that the school uses for free it can only be a good thing.
Compatibility (Score:1, Insightful)
MS Office - 100% compatibility with MS Office documents
Open Office - 99% compatibility with MS Office documents
It's the 1% that's going to go against use of OO in educational establishments.
What is used at home (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:what about technical support (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue you're seeing is not relavent in a school environment. Students will regularly start with a blank page, or a template created specifically for the course. They will NOT have three hundred page manuscripts that describe... actually, what the heck DO people put in those 300 page documents? I have never figured that out. The only document I've ever had trouble porting was a resume I did with Word 97. The formatting got screwed up in OpenOffice, but then again it got screwed up in MSOffice 2000 as well. *shrug*
THere are benefits to using industry standard programs...
Tough sell (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Source?
Short of "Don't even bother", I'd say that you have your work cut out for you. Undoubtedly these people will be familiar, even comfortable, with MS Office and you will face huge momentum because your target audience probably sees no problems with MS Office. All the benefits of OSS except price will likely fall on deaf ears, so you'd better do your homework and have a very compelling presentation.
I can't offer specifics because I'm not really familiar with OO. In my mind it is self-evident. Office sucks more ways than you can count. Period.
However, you can't make this sell by bad-mouthing Microsoft or Office. Most non-techie people won't see it that way, and in fact will probably have a high opinion of Office since it's all they know. OO can't be just "good enough" to replace Office. It has to be made clear that it is superior... and not in the ways that we computer folks tend to think, but ways that will be convincing to non-technical people. You got a "gimme" on price, but the rest will be a steep hill.
Good luck, I wish you well.
Re:It's quite simple really: (Score:5, Insightful)
I just wish this were true... It gets close, but there are still many, many problems.
Segragate your users! (Score:5, Insightful)
The ones that just need to write english reports would be well served by Abiword.
The ones that need just a bit more page layout flexability and a good spreadsheet could use OpenOffice.
The 'Power Users' that use Excell like a psudo-database, and have gotten used to Word's horrably random page layout should stay with MS Office. L
So...
Kindergarden through 8th Grade -> Abiword
8th through 12th -> OpenOffice
Normal Teachers -> OpenOffice
Crazy Teachers, Faculty etc with hard to port custom grading scrips, tables and other crap -> MS Office
why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Then you have to convince the people who hold the purse strings that this will save money. That's going to be a problem, because it won't save money. The cost of giving a secretary Word is negligible compared to the the salary you're paying her to be productive. There are also going to be training costs. This may seem ridiculous to Slashdotters, but this really is an issue. Where I work (at a community college), some of the secretaries and office managers (mostly the younger ones) are very smart and adaptable, but some of them are not. When we switched from WordPerfect to Word, our old office manager was completely unable to handle it. This was a lady who had trouble with cut and paste in the first place -- she would usually retype things rather than cutting and pasting, because she claimed it was faster and easier. They kept scheduling her to go to training classes, and she would always fail to show up.
And then you have to ask yourself why you want to do it -- is it to strike a blow for open source? Well, OOo is a badly designed, bloated project that has very little involvement from developers outside Sun, and can't be built using free-as-in-speech tools. It's hardly the poster child for the free-information movement.
Pros and cons (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy that one:
Case #1: students and/or personel work exclusively with OOo:
* PROS: OOo costs $0 and it's more than adequate
* CONS: None or nearly so
Case #2: student and personel want to exchange file to/from MS Office, to work at home or communicate with other non-OOo organizations:
* PROS: See above
* CONS: plan on commiting suicide soon after deploying OOo, when everybody comes to you and says "this documents looks like @*#& on Word, it's all your fault, it worked before!!"
Since case #2 is prevalent, as much as I enjoy OOo myself, I say stay the hell away from it if you're in any position to be blamed for problems.
Sad, but that's the way it is...
Re:Demo it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a testament to M$'s programming, but it a testament to their marketing department.
Re:Will it be useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:there will be hell to pay... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:OpenOffice of course (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm really confused, now. What did you find that wasn't compatible?
I'm seeing two different attitudes here: OO is fully compatible with MS or OO has some incompatablities.
I'm not trying to flame or anything, it's just that I really want to know why there's two differing opinions. Is it a version issue?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Appeal to the teachers. (Score:5, Insightful)
- It appeals to the "help the community" group by knowing that they are looking out for their teachers.
- It could be used to pressure the school board. "They are sending money to Microsoft rather than to our starving teachers."
- It helps the local economy by keeping the money, well, local.
Oh, and if it gets media attention then the pressure will really be on them. Just my two cents worth.Re:there will be hell to pay... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's quite simple really: Not all that simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
I used OO at university without problems for a year until I had to take a class that used a macro-filled Excel file. Had to break down and buy the student version of Office. I think macros, especially for heavy Excel users, are the showstopper. A lot of people with complex spreadsheets (sometimes inherited from former employees) are going to be the biggest group of 'No' votes in the article poster's project.
Re:Will it be useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what about technical support (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Demo it? (Score:1, Insightful)
1 - How much will it cost to reinstall everything? That's IT time, == $$$.
2 - How much will it cost to upgrade some computers, since OOo is usually more resource-hungry than Office?
3 - How much will it cost in money and grief to retrain everybody (yes, there are people who just get by with Word provided you don't ever change anything to their computers).
4 - How much grief will the remaining file format incompatibilities with Office bring to the school?
So please stop being the typical mindless free software drone and start being a bit more realistic.
Re:A Common Question, with Answer (Score:4, Insightful)
I've tried that. It was a very disillusioning experience. I handed out bootable Linux CDs with lots of cool apps on the first day of my physics classes, along with a brief sales pitch on how great open source was. I got absolutely no response. Not a single student even mentioned having stuck it in their box at home to try it. They see Windows and Office as being free -- typically the parents bought whatever computer the kid uses, and the kid couldn't even tell you whether their copy of Office (a) came bundled with the machine, (b) was bought separately by their parents, or (c) is pirated. It's not even a concept to them. They just know they "have Microsoft."
Re:Will it be useful? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is, pretty much all office suites are pretty much the same. Most people at my school had MS Office installed at home, but they were still able to pick up WP just fine. No one ever had any problems with it.
I think the same thing would be true for OOo. Sure, it won't be able to deal with MS Office macros or VBA script, but is that really a reason for high schools to spend all that money on MS Office? Not in my eyes. I'd rather see the extra money saved, used on things that are much more important than little disputes about differences in office suites.
Re:I've found (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Will it be useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's quite simple really: (Score:5, Insightful)
One word: Outlook
Re:Appeal to the teachers. (Score:2, Insightful)
For the most part, local media just accepts the press releases that the school board puts out, and ignores the teacher's attempts to bring discrepancies to light.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Having worked in a school system for several years (Score:2, Insightful)
This is my biggest compaint. Instead of teaching the skills neccesary to create professional documents, they are teaching the knowledge neccesary to do this. Yes there is a difference. Instead of teaching word processing they are teaching MS Word, or instead of teaching spreadsheets or databases, they are teaching MS Excel or Access.
To Answer your question. I don't think it will be possible to completely convert your users over to OpenOffice. I would start by deploying it to your labs and various other student desktops. Your Administration and some of your more proficient users will not want to switch. This is not something that is going to happen overnight.
Cheers,
Matt
Where is SpellCheck on this thing
Re:Crappy Tech Policies (Score:1, Insightful)
Its an office product! for Crying out loud! (Score:1, Insightful)
Its not something that requires much skill beyond clicking on "file-> open" and begin typing.
Any knowledge and skill development with OO *would* translate to MS Office product.
Just like learning how to add Two plus Two translates into how expensive Gasoline is at the pump.
Which translates into how expensive it is for School Systems to keep their buses running on the road.
We're all just meat.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's the problem. Employers will usually trade critical thinking, adaptability and just about any other virtue for a little bit of training in some crappy piece of software.
That's the problem with modern business in America. People just want the seats kept warm. More often than not, they have no interest in anything about a person other than keywords on their resume and how little they can get away with paying them.
I know firsthand. I've been told numerous times that my resume doesn't really reflect my skill and experience because I haven't listed every technology or software package I've so much as brushed up against a book on in Barnes & Noble, which apparently is the standard these days.
I made the mistake of writing a resume meant to be read, not just searched for the latest MS kludge of the month buzzword. Of course, the last time I was hired by such an employer, all I did was make them angry by repeatedly demonstrating how clueless they were.
Keywords. Keywords. Keywords. And "MS Office" is one of the big ones. No one cares if you're a halfwit, slacker or a cheat, as long as your resume has the keywords. You'll just be laid off in a year regardless when the next reorg or merger happens.
To most corporations we're all just meat.
My Thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)
#2 -- Clearly define the requirements. What features are being used in the existing productivity suite? What features are wanted? Does OOo meet these requirements? Are there any exceptions?
#3 -- Clearly show the benefit of the switch -- cost savings, standardized across all school systems and student home computers (if applicable)
#4 -- Get some case studies or contacts with others who have already made the switch.
Basically your job is to demonstrate that the new product can meet the needs fo the users, that the new product brings benefit and that it is already established and the risk of switching is minimal. If your able to do this, there is a strong chance of getting OOo.
Re:Will it be useful? (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate to be this way, because I agree with you (I'm fighting this battle at a community college at the moment), but most employers I've run into don't give a damn about your "skills."
Skills = profficiency in their package of choice.
If you can't convince the HR drone that you are proficient in MS Office, you're not getting the job. It sucks but it's true.
Paper size? (Score:2, Insightful)
some [of my Microsoft Word] documents were basically unreadable, as OO.org seemed to randomly flow the text.
Did those documents use hard returns to terminate the lines?
Sometimes if you take a Microsoft Word document from a machine with one printer to a machine with a different printer, even Microsoft Word will screw it up. Have you tried setting the default paper size in OOo first? (It defaults to A4, a size used more in Europe than in the United States.)
Re:It's quite simple really: (Score:5, Insightful)
Results: so-so (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, for some parts of the suite, like for the presentations part, the MS variant is still so much better interface wise that it saves a *lot* of time using the real variant - we are talking hours and hours here. And yes, doing presentations are a large bit of what the students do around here.
It doesn't really handle MS documents all that well either, in the sense that almost anything opens, but the formatting is often distorted and the same thing the other way around, plus that the warning everytime you try to save something back to doc can be really scary to the average user. To those who say that formatting shouldn't matter - it does. We are not talking about just being readable, but papers and mateial that should look a certain way, if only because the student wants it to look that way. And we are not talking advanced stuff either... a simple image can be enough to throw it off.
Personally I do use OOo exclusively, but then again I'm not the average user; I'm a geek. No amount of gentle education, helping out or poiting to similarities will get the average user to even try something new if it doesn't behave just like they are used to - at least that is my experience. A real pain in the ass.
On the plus side, we don't use doc as the internal format, we use HTML or in worst case PDF instead, which makes the situation a bit brighter.
Re:Compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true! Many documents don't open properly in different versions. The 4 most used right now are 97, 2000, XP, 2003 and going between these is still a royal pain in the ass. I'd say MS Office is closer to high 90's than 100% despite Microsoft's claims.
Open Office - 99% compatibility with MS Office documents
For Word Docs it's pretty close to real Office. It doesn't, however, handle Excel macros and a bunch of other different types. As a guess, I think this is closer to mid 80's in compatibility. Still really good, but not perfect.
It's the 1% that's going to go against use of OO in educational establishments.
I think you overstate the improtance. There are already major incompatibilities within Microsoft's own software. For example most budget machines ship with MS Works, which can't properly be read by MS Word at school. Besides any student can just download a copy of OO.o and install it on their machine if they want consistency. If they're on dialup, they can get a usb key and order a free cd from Ubuntu with OO.o included.
Not simple at all (Score:2, Insightful)
Use Word to prepare a document in a two column format, add some text, a couple of JPG images, figure captions and a couple of equations. A typical report. Then, import it into Open Office. You'll be lucky if the images aren't all over the place and equations are not complete gibberish because of some font incompatibility.
So far I've tried using Open Office at work twice. However, when even the simplest of legacy documents won't import/export, there's really no other alternative than to keep on using MS Office.
Get a plan! (Score:4, Insightful)
Two. Make sure you factor in the conversion (old files still need to be accessible) and retraining costs (users and support), including time and effort. Many users will complain loudly to their bosses if you give them a new app without training (easy to learn apps and well written user guides don't make a difference).
Three. Compare the cost of subscribing versus the cost of upgrading when the next version of office comes out (that you want to upgrade to). I know of a few organizations that skip releases because of the upgrade (mostly time and effort) costs.
Four. Consider reducing the number of copies. Doesn't always work if it drops you from a high discount category in a low discount one.
Five. The time may not be right. Microsoft is entrenched and people have to be ready to switch. You probably need a multi-year plan to slowly bring OpenOffice (and Linux for that matter) onto peoples desktops, and make the decision to dump Microsoft a natural decision.
Last. Make sure you don't end up on the pile with others who have made unpopular decisions. It just means your are no longer able to influence change.
Re:Demo it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop being the typical MS fanboy and apologist and start being more realistic.
Re:Since when does Office cost anything? (Score:3, Insightful)
Those who can realistically expect a visit from the BSA. That's everybody who isn't an individual at home.
Re:Since when does Office cost anything? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Demo it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they argue "but it might be different" say: (Score:1, Insightful)
ITS A SCHOOL !!! GOD FORBID IF THE KIDS ACTUALLY LEARN ANYTHING NEW!!!!!!!
US Letter vs. A4 is just as bad (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, some documents that are on one page in office might be 2 pages in openoffice.
I've read reports that Microsoft Word is just as bad about precise layout from version to version or even from printer to printer across the same version. Take a document formatted for US Letter paper and print it on A4 paper, and see what doesn't break. If you want pagination to be maintained, use PDF or any of several page-layout formats that represent the document exactly.
A few reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
* Download size. Firefox is under 5meg for Windows, OOo is approaching 100meg. Someone on a modem would download Firefox but most likely not OOo.
* "If it ain't broke". People visible see problems in IE thanks to popups, spyware, etc. MSOffice doesn't have the same problem.
* Piracy. IMHO most (home) users of MSOffice get their copy from friends or work, I've not known of too many people to buy it for themselves, even the educational version. With MSOffice perceived to be "free", why bother with something else?
* File formats. MS Office is considered the defacto standard therefore for interoperability reasons a replacement must offer perfect import/export support for its file formats. Public perception also plays a part in this, while OOo's importers have improved these past few years people may still think of what it was like two years ago and not consider re-investigating it.
* Laziness. People are lazy. If they perceive no improvement with changing then why should they put out the effort?
* "Oh-Oh-what?" How many people even *know* about there being alternatives to MSOffice?
Damien
Re:It's quite simple really: Not all that simple. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Demo it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Demo it? (Score:2, Insightful)
2 - BULLSHIT. Office 2003 is a resource HOG the only microsoft Office product that is less than OO.o is office 97.
3 - Oh come on. it's not like the menus are all different and written in swahili. care to make up another excuse? Everyone that I have given OO.o install Cd's to say it act's just like office.
4 - None, RTF works fine. Tell the whiney professors to take basic computer operation classes if they are too uneducated to understand basic computer operation.
So stop being a puppet of microsoft (tell dave in the next cube there in the microsoft PR department I said HI!) and try telling us something you didnt just make up and pulled out of your ass.
FUD (Score:0, Insightful)
Unsubstantiated. In fact, not even quantifiable (how many, exactly, is "many, many"). IOW, just plain ole FUD.
Re:Give copies to the students (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's quite simple really: (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm never...
Microsoft included Wordperfect and other similar formats as an encouragement for people to try switching TO Word and not having to lose their documents. Few are looking to switch from OpenOffice to Word, and offering compatibility would switch more away than to. Microsoft is not stupid.
Re:Demo it? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for format changes, most users I know (especially at the highschool level) only use the most basic of features. As such Abiword (no offense guys) and Siag could do the job as basic as they are. Heck even Wordpad would do for what most highschoolers I know need.
The resistance to OOo comes from people who see something slightly different and panic. Are there some real differences between MSO and OOo? Sure, but these aren't nearly as big at the introductory level. Also, I seem to remember a usability study which found that the two were just about equal for basic tasks. There is also this article [thechannelinsider.com].
Personally, I'm sick of having to be compatible with MS when plenty of other alternatives are there.
Former Word Perfect user - now OOo user
Re:Demo it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Presumably excepting the points where he insults the poster he replied to over things that the poster never said?
Re:It's quite simple really: (Score:5, Insightful)
That was in many ways Firefox's advantage over Opera and Mozilla, it looked a lot better and cleaner. And don't lecture me on how software should be judged by quality instead of prettiness, I know that. You know that. But does the average user know that?
Re:Demo it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Pros and cons (Score:3, Insightful)
For those that actually do work at home, as it costs $0, they usually can afford buying it.
So basically, the only problem is getting the brighter students that do homework and own a computer to install it as a 2nd option. But, being brighter students that do homework and own a computer, the school should encourage them to learn how to install OO.
Finally there is a subset of smart students who can't afford the most up to date computers and therefore have an OLD copy of MS at home that can not load the newest MS doc format. You are leaving them out in the cold, while if you give them a freebee copy of OO, you help them out.
The question is, who do we try and help: The lazy well off kids that own MS software at home but are whiny about it taking work to install OO? Or the hard working, poor kids that don'town MS software at home and are happy to install the free OO software?
Re:Demo it? (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Go to the above the tech support people. Despite the name, tech support people are amazingly a good collection of people watching their own interests. There are always exceptions, but my experience is, tech people dislike owning up that they don't know how to do things. They'd rather support products with 500 serious bugs they know how to deal with rather than admit they know nothing of working products with 50 bugs. They also get this self-importance thing going.
2. Identify administrators who are open-minded and cares about education instead of getting wined and dined by Microsoft. Prepare a good proposal with the comparative budgets to back it up and show that the money freed up can be used for other things such as libraries.
3. Go grass-root. Print up well-designed, well-written brochures and distribute them to the parents. Make them understand the advantages of using OpenOffice and assure them that in no way using OpenOffice prevents learning Microsoft Office should the product-used-in-the-real-world argument comes up.
4. Approach the superintendent. If s/he is an ardent MS supporter, you'd have a tough battle, but otherwise, try to convice him/her. Prepare a good presentation with proposals and budgets and good demos.
Re:Will it be useful? (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree very much. I think a first step would be to at least decrease the amount of Java it uses. I realize this would make some other things a little more difficult (ie. cross-platform compatibility), but if it was written entirely in C++, it would be much faster. I expect a few replies telling me why this isn't feasible/possible, and I probably won't dispute them, but Java is bad.
About eliminating features, I don't think this is a possibility. To remain competitive with MS Office, they need to keep all these features that MS has but nobody really uses.
Re:Demo it? (Score:5, Insightful)
This time would be the same time that it cost to upgrade to a new version of Word. (That's IT time too!)
2 - How much will it cost to upgrade some computers, since OOo is usually more resource-hungry than Office?
Do you really think that upgrading to a new version of Word will use less resources?
3 - How much will it cost in money and grief to retrain everybody (yes, there are people who just get by with Word provided you don't ever change anything to their computers).
It will cost what it costs... Once. Then whenever a new version of OO comes out there will be no cost. However if they were to upgrade to Word, they would have the almost the same cost, cause there's new features there too!
Also as it was pointed out in an earlier post, it's easier to move away from Word to OO then the other way around.
4 - How much grief will the remaining file format incompatibilities with Office bring to the school?
None. OO can read and write both formats. If the school wants to stay with
So please stop being the typical mindless free software drone and start being a bit more realistic.
So please stop being the typical mindless MS drone and start being a bit more realistic.
(and to think I've got you marked as a friend too
Use both! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're going to have a hard time pushing away from MSO when 95% of the professional office environments use it. The idea of this schooling is to get the student in the grove of what to expect in the real world. What's the chances of OO being the dominate or even having a large slice of the pie by the time they graduate? Pretty slim. By giving them the opportunity to use both you can at least expose them to alternatives. Who knows, a decade or so down the line you may even convince your district to convert.
Re:Demo it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why does everyone love Outlook so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Try really digging into Outlook and compare it to Eudora. The interface is a lot cleaner and more refined (especially in Outlooks 2003). The organization capabilities far outway Eudora. Calendar, Tasks, Notes, they all work great and if you have a Windows based PDA you HAVE to use outlook just for all the stuff you lose otherwise. As a PIM it is excellent. Eudora is far from being a true PIM since it has minimal if any real compatibility with either Palm or Outlook.
If you ask the true die hards though which program is the most powerful they'll tell you it is Lotus Notes. Having used Outlook/Exchange, GroupWise, and Lotus in business settings I will state that Lotus is the most powerful probably but it seems to diverge a bit from the norms setup by Outlook and GroupWise (that evil program from Novell).
I haven't used Eudora in ages, so feel free to enlighten me if they have actually added useable Rules, Spam Filtering, and cleaned up what was one of the worlds ugliest interfaces for a long while.
Re:Pros and cons (Score:2, Insightful)
OOo can export documents to PDFs. With PDFs, you are sure that everybody will get the document displayed correctly, and you will never get blamed for people screwing up your documents because its a read-only document format :)
Re:Demo it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Demo it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hard one (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's quite simple really: (Score:2, Insightful)
I've stretched OpenOffice more than your average zealot, choosing it to write a full report, as I had no M$ system available and needed to interoperate with the general LaTeX-phobic population. It was a disaster, and this was when it was considered "stable" and not beta. In fact, it was beta software. It had a bug that, misteriously, corrupted all page numbering. And I couldn't get the numbering correct again, ever, having to deliver it like that, apologizing for a "bug in the software." Of course, that penalized me.
Also, inserting a large amount of color images almost brought it to grind...I was definitely pissed off...And there wasn't any time to be filling out bug reports.
Recently, I've tested OpenOffice 1.1.3. It had such basic bugs still, like (for instance) I couldn't write "São Paulo" (I need the til in my native language - Portuguese). Frankly, I don't care what people say, OpenOffice is below standard. You can hype it all you want, you can go bezerk with open source zealotry (*), OpenOffice is beta software, period. Now, please, if all you do is write 3 pages and save in
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a Libre Software office package, but this isn't it. I'm hoping AbiWord will get there. I builds everywhere (unlike Java), and it has plug-ins, so I'm hoping it'll develop to be an interesting thing.
(*) Now, I'm not only pissed off with the bugs, I'm also pissed off with the Java dependency. This fixation on Java should develop in a C# (Mono) fixation because, frankly, I understand the point of avoiding C++, and Java is a no go in BSD (because it's not libre software).
Re:It's quite simple really: (Score:4, Insightful)
"Prettiness" is one of many crucial aspects of software quality. I'm not talking about prettiness only for the sake of being pretty, don't get me wrong. But a well thought-out, consistent, logical user interface indicates that the whole package was designed well.
Re:Demo it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Demo it? (Score:3, Insightful)
OOo 2.0 (currently beta) is an MSI based installer. Maybe you can use Microsoft management tools to deploy it to a thousand workstations at once.
This code is a one time cost. Microsoft's "Revenue Assurance" licensing is an ongoing cost.
How much will it cost to upgrade some computers, since OOo is usually more resource-hungry than Office?
A good and valid question. Will this cost as much as Revenue Assurance licensing? After one hit? Two hits? Is it a better use of limited funds to upgrade hardware, than simply give the money to Microsoft to continue using the same hardware and software? Is it a given that OOo's resource usage is always higher than Microsoft Office? Even if so, is it necessarily true that their computers must have an upgrade to run OOo?
How much will it cost in money and grief to retrain everybody (yes, there are people who just get by with Word provided you don't ever change anything to their computers).
Another good and valid question. A one time cost, vs. ongoing licensing costs. That retraining cost may not be as high as Microsoft fanboys would like us to think. I've read that it is actually very low for users who are not "deep" office power users.
How much grief will the remaining file format incompatibilities with Office bring to the school?
OOo 2.0 (currently beta) has even better file format compatibility than OOo 1.1.x. Conduct some tests on some of the school's more complex documents.
Also, just because you deploy OOo on a lot of workstations doesn't preclude, for example, the administration people from keeping some copies of Microsoft Office. It does not have to be an exclusively ALL ONE or ALL THE OTHER situation.
how new technology adoption works (Score:5, Insightful)
1. First thing you have to do is find a teacher who will be supportive of your efforts. It's best of the person has been around for a while and has respect among the other teachers and decision makers. You have to convince this one person to give Open Office a try. Once you've done this you have someone who will help you meet your goals.
2. Your teacher is convinced that they should use open office. Great, now you have to get them to introduce it to their students. It's easier to get approval to do a trial run than make a permanent change. So ask the teacher to run with open office for one of their classes for an entire semester. This will give both the teacher, the students and yourself some really good experience with using open office in this particular environment.
3. If the trial when well, it's time to tell a few people about what you've done. Find a couple more teachers who would be open to the idea of a non-ms office suite. With the help of your champion teacher tell this new group of teachers what you've done. Tell them about all the success you had and the problems you had and how you dealt with the problems. Problems are OK to have, so long as you have a way to deal with them.
4. Now maybe you have a half dozen teachers that are ready to try using open office. Get them all to run trials in one of their classes. You've now run 7 or so trials of open office. You have lots of real word data to build a case with now.
5. Now you have to introduce the idea to the executives and decision makers. Make nice reports with lots of graphs and pictures. Make nice presentations for them to view. Get your teacher friends to help you explain to the decision makers why open office is a good choice. Explain to them that you've already ran trials and they were successful. Detail the problems that you ran into and how you solved them.
6. Don't buy any more copies of MS office.
Re:Demo it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids don't need skills to be competitive in the corporate space as corporations don't hire children (for jobs that might require word processing skills). And, any application-specific skills will be outdated by the time they get to the "corporate space", no matter what application is used.
People are clearly only taught rote monkey skills and are unadaptable as everyone where I work is still using the same OS and applications they learned in high school. All of our servers and desktops are Apple II's. Except for those stuborn people who refuse to give up their Coleco's and PDP-11's.
Re:Demo it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Same with Word (Score:2, Insightful)
I have no problem believe that OOo can open some Office documents when Office can't...especially when you're talking about different versions of Office.
However, I think much more common, but less commonly reported, is the "OOo royally screwed up the formatting in my Office document when I tried to load it up. This blows!" story. The reason you hear so much of the former is that it is unexpected, while the latter is no real surprise. This does not mean the former is more common than the latter.
I know we all want OOo to be perfect, so we can convice the world how much better than Office it is. But let's be honest with ourselves. Hell, you can even chalk it up to MS using proprietary formats and not releasing all the specs. I don't care. But OOo's support for Office documents is very far from perfect. And as long as that is the case, there will be serious resistance to switching in most organizations.
Is this another tactic MS uses to protect their monopoly(ies)? Of course. But that still doesn't magically make OOo's Office document support better. Just makes you want it to be.
Oh, and yes I have used OOo to open Office documents, both
Government procurement by brand is illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
You might also discuss the legal and policy importance of procuring software using open file format standards, a subject discussed at length in the article. Microsoft Office's XML Reference Schemas, because of an overly-restrictive patent license, do not satisfy such requirements, which are critical to software interoperability in eCommerce and eGovernment. OpenOffice file formats do not suffer from that vulnerability.
There is also the important issue of vendor lock-in. OpenOffice, being cross-platform, is a giant step in the direction of freeing organizations from the necessity of using a proprietary operating system. Moreover, even should the school ultimately decide to continue using the Windows platform and Microsoft Office, it can likely receive a far lower bid from a MS Office vendor by using a specification that would allow selection of OpenOffice.
Drafting government specifications in such a way that only one vendor can supply the procured product, particularly in a time of shrinking government budgets, is wasteful and anti-competitive. You might consider developing or requesting an estimated cost comparison, using the previous MS Office licensing cost as the base. A substantial savings is likely, freeing funds for other purposes.
Re:I don't know about you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Even with the quick-launch loaded, it takes OO.o ungodly long to open. And on top of that, the quick-launcher takes forever to load. I have 16 programs that automatically load on start-up (everything from my wireless network connection, to Folding@home, to my firewall, to Firefox and Thunderbird), and 15 of them are up and running within two minutes of logon; the OO.o icon usually doesn't appear for another two minutes.
Re:It's quite simple really: (Score:3, Insightful)
Personal experience in terms of learning curve. Prior to using iTunes I had used: Real, Windows media player, Winamp; Dell Juke box and Real seperate Juke box app. I could never figure out why you would want an
That's good GUI design.
OO isn't Office (Score:3, Insightful)
In terms of total functionality and usefulness, I am completely happy with Office 2003. I don't like the alternatives. I don't even like Office 2004 on the Mac. For me to switch to anything else means I loose in overall user satisfaction.
Sorry, but I hope my school never tries to save money by going to OOo.
However, if you don't have Outlook/Exchange, and just use Office for Word & Excel, I'm not sure if it matters.
Re:I wouldn't use OpenOffice for a school (Score:5, Insightful)
And before you say, "Yeah, but what will they need to use in college?" consider what you used in college. Was there anything that OO.org in its current imperfect state could not handle perfectly well? Typing essays and reports? Including a simple table or chart of your chem lab results?
The problem with most schools is that they focus all their energy and resources in providing students with the "best" facilities, equipment, etc. and then miss the whole point of properly educating with an eye on the future.
Re:Why does everyone love Outlook so? (Score:1, Insightful)
I guess that makes up for the crappy interface and completely nonintuitive configuration process. And it satisfies the needs of, what, about 20 people in the world?
Re:Demo it? (Score:3, Insightful)
> incompatibilities you may think *school* kids may
> come across when converting from MS Office to OOo.
First off, I love OOo, use it daily, and think *all* schools should switch to it in preference to paying for another round of MS Office upgrades.
However, there is a reasonably big incompatibility that bites me regularly, and will almost certainly bite school users as well.
If I have a bunch of numbered paragraphs in a MS Office document as follows:
1.
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.3.1
1.3.2
2.
(i.e. three levels of "indentation"), and I load that same document into OOo, I get my paragraphs numbered as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
(i.e. everything gets "flattened out" into a single level).
This has been the case with OOo for at least a couple of years, and was still there as of the first OOo 2.0 beta a short time ago.
With school assignments frequently being numbered in the same fashion, it'd be painful to have to import old MS Office documents and fix up the paragraph numbering.
It's not insurmountable, but it's certainly a format incompatibility and it's pretty painful.
Cirriculum should be looked at too (Score:3, Insightful)
If the class is there to teach students to use MS Office then sticking with MS Office and having them memorize and regurgitate those patterns to accomplish a task is the way to go.
If the class is designed to teach students to create, modify, and present documents in an educational and professional manner then OpenOffice could be used. Instead of training them what tools to use to accomplish a task TEACH them to LEARN and DISCOVER what tools they need to accomplish a task.
By example:
-If I want to do a mail merge in MS Office, I start by clicking the insert menu, then clicking 'mail merge', then clicking.....
-If I want to mail the same document to multiple people without retyping each one I should look for a tool or template that will allow me to do this. I would first start by skimming the menu options for some likely candidates, then use help or the software manual to make sure that is the right tool. Once I do that, I will probably have to insert something to tell the word processor where I want names and addresses to appear.
I think that addressing it as a cirriculum and educational issue rather than a cost/philosophical issue will get you farther AND benefit the students. Teaching them problem solving skills rather than task skills will take your students much farther.
Re:US Letter vs. A4 is just as bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Word never seems to understand this. It's one thing to default to A4 when you create a new document, but another entirely to play nice with US Letter.
We have a printer at my work that has A4 paper. That's it. So if I get sent a document from America, I do not want to print it in US Letter. Please don't make me tell you every single time. Thank you.