Is it Time for Open Office? 449
lazyron asks: "I've been using Open Office a bit more lately, and got to thinking: this is much more like my current version of Microsoft Office than Office 2007 will be. Could it be time to try Open Office in the workplace, especially since there is still some time left before Office 2007 will be forced on us by the demands of the product cycle? Are there any IT admins out there thinking about trying Open Office, either with a few users or all of them?"
Everthing 'cept Outlook (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I concur.
When I am onsite for service calls I always load up OOo for new installs. Most of my customers have peer-to-peer networks or are running Small Business Server. Outlook is a great program and if you have a SBS controlled domain every client gets their own copy of Outlook automatically. I do try to save them money on software so I can charge more for service calls:)
Lack of Customer Support=No (Score:4, Interesting)
is support really an issue? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anybody out there know of an instance of someone actually utilizing an MS Office (or any office software, for that matter) support contract? This argument strikes me as one that just doesn't hold water
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I did, a couple of times at my last job, for strange problems we couldn't figure out.
Of course, it didn't help. Even after 3rd-tier escalation, one problem we eventually figured out ourselves, and another one I got a solution to a couple of weeks later from a ClearCase mailing list...
OO (Score:2, Informative)
If all you need is a standard word processing program, spreadsheet, and presentation maker (which is true of almost everyone that uses Office) then OO is the way to go.
OO gives you a database as well (Score:2)
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It's pretty hard for anyone, valid point or not, to reply in the middle of you typing a post.
In your case - not. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Depends on the size of your shop (Score:2, Informative)
We mostly use open source software in our shop, but a number of us have Windows boxen - or dual boot Linux/Win boxen - so that we can use Microsoft Office.
At home, a lot of us use Open Office - even on our Windows PCs.
It really depends on how your work is organized. For a small shop, changing over is fine, if you're mostly just using DOC and XLS formats, but not coding for Access (MDB) or doing add-ons for Word and Excel. But if your DBMS is something like MySQL, and you just need t
Not happening (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not happening (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unless OOo is better at reading and converting documents from previous versions of Office than MSO 2007, or at least not worse, which I doubt, it may be a better time to switch than anytime in the past, but most businesses still won't want to do it.
OOo is never going to be a "closer upgrade" than the next iteration of MS Office in the ways that matter
Try opening Office 2007 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: Easy to Implement? (Score:3, Informative)
I think at least one of the benefits they will get is the forced incompatibility of the new formats.
Re: Right Times (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that the RIAA *has* won several cases now, despite their subsequent silliness, means anyone *now* starting a pure clone of Classic Napster better have a legal trick up their sleeve.
There was a heady day of Microsoft - 95-2001. They delivered the famous series of OS's, established (however sneakily) the Blue E, and completely cemented the corporate world.
Then Microsoft effectively went into Semi-Limbo for 5 years. No new major OS. No new major browser update. Lots of problems hit public awareness.
Here comes 2007, with Microsoft's "Bet the Bank" coordinated suite. Vista, aka Windows '07, Office '07, and related items. And we get
Vista, starting to draw uncertain looks from DRM critics, and information freedom observers. Office completely annihilates the sacred Microsoft Guidelines that MS forced upon all vendors for a decade or more. I find both Word and Excel *completely unusable*. Vista looks "usable", but it just feels sneaky as hell. IT generates the kind unease normally seen in Faustian contracts. MS IE7 looks like the improvement that should have been released 4 years ago, and barely matches the status quo set by FireFox.
Things are different than 2001, the year I think Microsoft "jumped the shark". FireFox was successful first. People noticed. It's on the map. Given the jaw dropping re-work of the Office Interface, I think this *is* the chance Open Office needs. It just came out of Beta, and is now at the solid 2.1 mark.
Value is based on perception. Microsoft's Deadly Trilogy used to be Browser, Office, OS. In that order. I think there could be real value squeezing MS from the outside in. I just realized that my KillerApp is a thin client to a remote system, which might have a Linux version either ready/in the works.
My workplace can't be the only one that "just builds documents and makes phone calls" to do work. These kinds of businesses might actually be the first to survive without MS.
Open Office is already on our MultiUser server because when put to the test, Management didn't REALLY want to pay a $5000 license fee for all the user instances of Office.
I changed my Sig recently. I think I want to take my whack at building a Linux replacement for the MS monopoly. This is SlashDot's Mission, right? So bear with me on the NervousNewbie questions.
so far, so good... (Score:2)
In fact, I really
Excel has much better charting (Score:5, Insightful)
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In my opinion (or maybe the business where I am at) charts in Excel are mostly used for marketing purposes - and (I am talking about MSO 2003 here) that w
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New Chart module in OOo 2.3 (Score:3, Informative)
Hopefully they'll revamp the equation editor at some point too. It has good potential, but clearly it's another module that hasn't been touched for a long, long time.
Scientific/engineering office? Answer is no. (Score:5, Informative)
For one, charting (especially X-Y scatter plots) is very, very painful to use and doesn't have all the features that are required.
Then there's the VBA macro issue, which judging by some of the comments may or may not be an issue.
Writer doesn't seem too limiting, and I haven't really used Impress too much, but without the functionality of Excel, it's a non-starter.
Excel's crap for scientific data (Score:5, Informative)
Yes as you mentioned, there are better tools for the job and frankly as hard as they might seem, they just work.
Re:Excel's crap for scientific data (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone trying perform data analysis on anything more than a few thousand data points in *any* spreadsheet deserves what they get. It's all about using the right tool for the job.
A Thousand Times, No! (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenOffice.org is, in my opinion, the weakest part of the free software desktop experience. It is huge and bloated. It takes 100 MB - 200 MB to install (depending on your operating system), which is way more than it should. It doesn't use any platform's native graphical toolkit. Fonts look like crap in it. Etc, etc.
Honestly, I think that Abiword is orders of magnitude better -- not just in the obvious areas of size and memory footprint, but also in terms of the UI. It looks great in Gnome, and runs on Windows too (and it has a grammar checker!). I'm not a KDE user, but KWord also looks better than OO.o
I don't understand the fixation that people have with Open Office. It's slow. It looks bad. It retains all the things you hated about MS Office. The only things that it has going for it is that it has the most faithful .doc import of any open source office tool, and that it has the best ODT support at the moment. But the day that OO.o dies will be a happy day in my book.
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It doesn't use any platform's native graphical toolkit
NeoOffice (OpenOffice port for MacOS X) uses Aqua and looks great - no need for X like the main OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org itself will be supporting Aqua in the not too distant future as well.
You're right about OpenOffice looking a bit "off" due to the toolkit if you're looking at Windows though - I'd like to see this improved in future versions somehow.
Honestly, I think that Abiword is orders of magnitude better -- not just in the obvious areas of size and memory footprint, but also in terms of the UI.
The main problem with AbiWord is that it IS a very lightweight program and as such doesn't have too many features. As has been discussed elsewhere,
Well d'uh! (Score:4, Insightful)
You see, that's the great thing about most Microsoft's users: They have built in fault tolerance.
Adequate but not great (Score:5, Insightful)
I just fired up Excel to compare the experience, and I had the same graph in under a minute with no after-the-fact fussing around with properties panels. Its defaults were what I wanted and it let me put my columns in any order (though the UI for specifying column ranges needs a little help IMO).
This was the first time I'd used Excel in maybe a year, and the first time I'd made a graph in Excel in... well, I can't remember the previous time. Whereas I use OOO pretty frequently. So I am no MS fanboy -- but OOO does have some catching up to do in places.
Notice, by the way, that the above example has nothing to do with file formats or proprietary languages. I'm willing to cut OOO some slack when it has trouble rendering a document that uses some obscure undocumented formatting feature of MS Word, but that wasn't the case here.
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Excel :Adequate but not great (Score:3, Informative)
It's funny, but just this afternoon I tried to help someone make a simple graph with Excel and can say most of the things you did about Open Office. The graph defaults sucked and while I remembered every one of the tweaks to fix it, it was irksome to have to. Calc is not that much better but Gnumeric is. It requires substantially less modification to have something that looks good. The long and short of it is that everything takes time to learn, you might as well learn the one that's free and improving.
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I started typesetting mathematical formulae with OOMath and absolutely loved it - until I tried LaTeX. For my needs, I've found LaTeX to be more powerful and versatile - the typeset formulae are nothing short of beautiful. Perhaps you've tried both and find OOMath to better suit your needs, but if y
Openoffice should learn from Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody used Mozilla, because it was big and slow and looked a lot like something from five years before (Netscape Communicator 4.7); people running GNU/Linux systems used it because it was all they generally had (not trying to throw flamebait). If Openoffice and its developers (mostly Sun) learned from Mozilla, we could see a great, useful, usable, and popular product come out of what Openoffice is today.
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Bias: I'm an AbiWord dev because I like it a lot.
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Re:Openoffice should learn from Mozilla (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks so much!
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OpenOffice 2 is not bad, but is not too compatible (Score:3, Insightful)
If you use OpenOffice 2 Writer and nothing else, you're fine. But interchange with .doc files still doesn't work all that well. Something readable usually makes it through the conversion, but it won't look quite right.
Impress and OpenOffice Draw are OK, but, realistically, PowerPoint and Visio are better. PowerPoint has all those provided templates and graphical items which make it possible for suits to make up elaborate-looking presentations without much effort. With Impress, you start with a blank page and a few basic layouts. This is fine if you have the graphic design skills to start with a blank page, but that scares most people.
The help system for OpenOffice is still terrible. The typical help page describes how to do something, but doesn't tell you under what menu item or button to find the indicated command. The help system is a manual chopped up into bits, not a coherent help system.
OpenOffice's little star popup thing, their answer to Clippy, is just as annoying as Microsoft's, but dumber about figuring out what you're doing.
It's classic open source. The essential stuff works, and everything else is kind of half done. It's far better than OpenOffice 1.0, but it still has a ways to go.
Users don't notice the difference. (Score:2)
--
U.S. government violence has stopped the centuries-long violence in Iraq
Look at it this way (Score:5, Insightful)
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Features are not important - OOO does not lack any significant fature. But it is quirky. F.e. in MSO you can set entire document language (that your spellchecker will use right dictionary) or just one paragraph using menu (it is in quite obvious place). In OOO if you need to change language you need to go (it took me 10 minutes googling) into *character* properties. That is right - to change language, you need to change *character* properties. O
Scrooge response will do it (Score:2)
What Office 2007 delivers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sharepoint is the new cashcow.
Microsft Sharepoint is an all in one company intranet, document management, CRM and internet portal system for medium to large companies that has been gaining significant market in recent years. Sharepoint entrenches a company in Microsoft technology far more than Office ever could or ever will.
Much of the killer features on offer in Office 2007 are features leveraging Sharepoint.
If your company has already invested in Sharepoint or is thinking about using it, the choice of Open Office versus Office 2007 is a no brainer. Choosing Sharepoint and then Open Office instead of Office 2007 would rate as a category 5 blunder.
If Open Office supporters want to see it thrive they better keep their eyes on the ball and not the man because MS Office has passed the ball to Sharepoint [redmondmag.com] some time back now.
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Sharepoint is all about interoperability, it utilises SOAP/XML [csharphelp.com] heavily and utilises many open standards such as RSS [msdn.com].
Not to mention the host of third party components that offer interoperability with other systems.
You probably shouldn't make comments about Sharepoint unless you have a clue about it. Your commment is utterly ridiculous, I guess you posted anonymously for a very good reason.
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Which is it?
Re:What Office 2007 delivers... (Score:4, Insightful)
The scope of Sharepoint encapsulates not only a company's document formats but also the company's corporate filing system, the way it is managed, how people collaborate together, CRM, intranet, and internet etc etc.
When Sharepoint is implemented in a company it totally shapes the culture of the company. People live and breathe Sharepoint in a company using it.
In the past MS Office has always faced cheaper competing products that can load and save MS Office document formats. The vast majority of companies out there haven't switched because the benefits of competing products didn't warrant the effort to shift the portion of a company's culture that had reliance on MS Office to something else.
It is the culture of a company that is hard to change, not the format of it's documents.
This is why I say Sharepoint entrenches companies in MS technology, it is the penetration of the product into the corporate culture.
Could be the first time ... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are licensing issues and business practices and so forth that everyone around here gets all in a lather about, but from a purely user-experience standpoint I think it's pretty great.
Either way, things are at a crossroads. The Open Document Format (ODF) is what OpenOffice uses, and Office 2007 uses Microsoft's own more proprietary version of this, OpenXML. Instead of things getting closer together, it's getting harder and harder (really, due to the minor differences more than the major ones) to transfer documents back and forth between OOo and Office. And since most interaction with the outside world requires Microsoft-specific file formats, I think you may as well stick with Office. Purely from a practicality standpoint -- not ethics, not right vs. wrong, just what's going to cost you the least number of hours over the long haul. I'm sure converters will start to come out, but for pure ease of use and reliable translation, Word to Word is always going to work better than OpenOffice to Word.
I run both and like them both for various things -- still, I think I'll probably be using Office 2007 more than anything else as time goes on. I don't have much call for a word processor or spreadsheet app, but what little I do with these is easier in Office. Just is.
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Err, this seems wrong somehow. If OpenOffice switches to a new file format and calls it MS_XML, do you think Microsoft would mind?
I would actually say compatibility has significantly increased as time has progressed. I do
I switched our Office (Score:2)
Visio Competition Sadly Lacking (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd love to replace Office with OpenOffice. Unfortunately, Microsoft has bundled this stuff so tightly it's difficult to displace.
Visio has no viable competition.
Yes, I've tried Dia, and frankly it's nowhere near as usable as Visio. I wish there was competition here, but there isn't.
Usually I just need the features found in the version of Visio from about 1996. Then, it was just coming out and not owned by MS yet. it worked fine. it allowed me to do the simple flowcharts and connectors that moved nicely. I mostly do
- data flow diagrams
- systems schematics, or
- database schemas
. This is pretty simple functionality but Dia doesn't do it yet. Yuck. I want arrows with different size arrowheads, lines that stay attached to objects as you move them, and the ability to make them curved / bendy or straight. That's it.Likewise, MS Office has Outlook which has an integrated calendar function that invites me to and reminds me of meetings. If Thunderbird did that, I'd switch quite quickly. I use Tbird at home and love it.
That's the functionality I need. I'm sure I'm not the first one to mention it, but I hope that Sun or IBM or Redhat or Novell is listening. This functionality can't be that hard to develop, and they'd get much more users for their products if they did that. It can't cost more than $20 million to field a product with that minimal level of functionality - that's 20 developers for 2 years plus infrastructre, management, and QA. Put it in OpenOffice at $free instead of $400/seat MS Office and their market segment would be... HUGE (the planet).
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Re:Visio Competition Sadly Lacking (Score:4, Informative)
Evolution for win32 [sourceforge.net]
we use it at work (I know using a early beta in an office YIKES! all our vertical apps we paid huge $$$ for are early alpha quality) and are quite happy with it.
Not without integration (Score:2)
Why?
Integration with various "Office Helpers" - document management systems (keeping track of client/matter), contact management (keeping track of mailing addresses, fax numbers, etc.), cost recovery/time docketing....All these third-party apps are written using Office API and show as buttons in Word, Excel and other Office apps.
Until vendors start writing plug-ins for OpenOffice apps, I w
Depends on the users... (Score:2)
Tried and failed (Score:3, Interesting)
The sad thing is that the year I tried to do this I participated in National Novel Writing Month [nanowrimo.org] for the second time, this time I did all my work from OOo in OS X. Except some minor learning issues with the way styles are defined and applied, my experience was overwhelmingly positive. Still, it was not enough to impress my users into even trying OOo.
If you want to see a book written and typeset in OOo, you can download mine here [veraperez.com]. It is licensed under Creative Commons, feel free to pass it around.
Now with NeoOffice we don't even have to keep X11 running, and eventually the main OOo branch will be offering a X11-free version for OS X.
One thing I know for sure: it's going to be one cold day in hell before I purchase another MSO:mac license for any of my personal macs. There is no reason for a home user to be shelling out for MSO:mac just to write letters and make spreadsheets when both OOo and NeoOffice are completely capable, easy to use and completely free.
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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i created my resume in MS Office (2k iirc)
when i opened it in OO there were slight formatting errors.
(bullets were all off line from eachother, tab 'deadspace' was also incorrectly presented)
so, of course, i corrected them in OO and saved it.
because im meticulous i opened it in MS Office (since no doubt thats what it would be opened with by the potential employer). to my surprise it was jacked up way more in MS Office after saving it in OO than it was simply opening it in OO
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Funny)
Because asshat HR departments require Word format to the rational exclusion of all other formats.
What kind of places do you send your resume to? We always ask for PDFs and when I was last looking at permanent jobs so did most of the places I looked at. The only really good reason I know of to send a Word doc is if it is a security post working someplace full of incompetent people, then you can put a web bug in it and call them when they look at your resume and say, "so I noticed you're looking at my resume..." :)
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Re:Of course.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Might be because that is what the job posting says to do. If I want to work for some company about the last thing I'd want to do is show them right up front that I can't follow simple instructions.
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I've done pretty well for myself and I've just recently started a job that doesn't pay as well as previous jobs I've had but it's definitely a g
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've hit on a jangly nerve which is typically overlooked by Microsoft fanboys and shills. You can NEVER count on a Word doc showing up the way it's supposed to on someone else's computer, even when running the same version of the program. It isn't even that uncommon for the file not to open up at all.
So: If the formatting is important, you should make sure it's there (i.e. use pdf or maybe ps). If it's not important, you can use any text or html editor. Either way, it is unnecessary to use Word.
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Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that you are trying to troll but honestly you are giving me a great chance to show how easy Open Office is. It doesn't take a developer to install or know about it or maintain it... only an open mind who takes the time to try it out and see for themselves. That how Firefox happened. People tried it and it just worked. Same thing with Open Office. It just works.
Maybe thats why Microsoft is so panicky.
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"I've been using Open Office a bit more lately, and got to thinking: this is much more like my current version of Microsoft Office than Office 2007 will be. Could it be time to try Open Office in the workplace, especially since there is still some time left before Office 2007 will be forced on us by the demands of the product cycle? Are there any IT admins out there thinking about trying Open Office, either with a few users or all of them?"
Notice the aim is looking at business, not
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Isn't there licensing already pretty stringent? I haven't gone through the registration process recently, but I do recall in the past having to call up MS to re-register because I installed a new motherboard. Granted the CS people I've talked to have been friendly friendly, and it was relatively painless, it still was pretty damned annoying that I had to phone in my copy
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Informative)
In all, it took longer to activate office again then it did to clone the drive and replace it. This may be a one time issue but i pass it off onto someone else when it comes up again. And also, the strange thing is that office doesn't need reactivated on every clone. sometimes windows needs activated and sometimes other MS software. Sometimes nothing needs activated. There doesn't seem to be to much of a pattern to it.
Re:Of course.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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From my experience, many businesses could get away with running OO, unless they deal regularly with other com
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, I have many users still using Lotus 123 because of macros. I've given up trying to get people to convert to one app.
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Of course.... (Score:4, Informative)
Person A is a Developer using Linux.
Person A can use OpenOffice.
it does not follow that you must be a linux using developer to be able to use OpenOffice.
Incidentally, to add one more anecdote to the pile - I'm right this minute using MS Word 2003 to look at a document created by someone else using MS Word. For them it looks fine, for me, it's horribly wrong - in OpenOffice it also looks horribly wrong, but equally as horribly wrong as Word 2003, but once I've managed to correct the wrongness (people that use a word processor as a page layout tool need to be stabbed repeatedly until they stop it), I'll at least be able to export it to PDF from OpenOffice writer.
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We're talking about financials and receiving... Is there a VBA emulator for Open Office, or any open source editing engine? I mean, that actually works properly.
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then again, is a CPA's job for debugging an interface that isnt even properly implemented, or is it to be a certified public accountant (that processes fincial data)?
If I have licenses for 20 machines for Office 2000 and my Excel apps run fine, and they don't run on Open Office, do you think I'll switch?
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As for me, I have yet to get a excel doc from a CPA or any other person where their little scripts won't run. So i don't know what you are talking about. But if you want to avoid this guessing that you keep doing, just go to t
You see... Microsoft discovered this exact fact... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your Open Office system will work fine for about 18 months until the new version starts to become more common, then you (and every other existing MS Office user as well) will start running into problems as the network effect [wikipedia.org] with the new version really kicks in.
I say it's meme-time for "Closed Office" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Of course.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I have introduced OO.o to many users who wanted to create PDFs from their word documents. Rather than install any of the free PDF makers out there, I showed them that they could save as PDF using OO.o. Many users just kept using it for more than just that utility purpose.
On an aside, I find that it's an exceptionally easy way to ease the use of OO.o into the workplace. It simply works well enough for most people.
Re:Of course.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If your average user saw this [vgmusic.com] screen, what conclusion would they draw?
Heck, I work in programming, and the conclusion I drew after I started to read this dialog is that OO.org doesn't work well with
Re:Of course.... (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I'd prefer if they'd figure out which features don't save well in .DOC (or whatever) and only complain when those features are being used in the file that's being saved.
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...and btw. you may choose to ignore the warning in the future.
Re:Yes, but No. (Score:4, Interesting)
> update to 2007, you will be "old", "incompatible" and "cheapskate".
> Just as strongholders of Office 97 were.
It depends on how you relate to those dorks. We use (small company - 20 users) only OOO. We exchange documents internally and it works fine (since everybody is on OOO). With other guys (you rerfer to them as dorks) we do not exchange documents. All we send are PDF documents like offers, letters, manuals and other types of documents that we do not want them and don't expect to edit.
Now for dorks sending us MSO documents - they don't. Any interaction with clients that supply some kind of data is via web forms and their portal. So we do not need to recive MSO documents from our clients.
We do exchange documents with parties we pay for service - we pay them. So we tell them to send their stuff in format we can read.
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I do care that it took a team of us a few hours pouring through google and forums trying to see how to get a hyperlinkable table of contents keyed off of custom paragraph styles. The interface and the procedure are abysmally *not* i
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I am actually a Mandriva fan, since the Mandriva wizards are better, so it is far easier to install and maintain a Mandriva system than anything else, but from a user point of view, it doesn't matter what kind of Linux is underneath.
For large users with thousands of Linux machines, Redhat is better, due to the Redhat Network Satelli