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Associated Press Reviews OpenOffice
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri May 06, 2005 02:35 PM
from the i-think-they-like-it dept.
from the i-think-they-like-it dept.
blacklily8 writes "Peter Svensson of the Associated Press has reviewed OpenOffice and declared it a Microsoft Office killer: 'Microsoft Corp. killed off the competition for office software suites and became a de facto monopoly in the area, with what result? The competition is back and, this time, it's free!' Svensson thinks the better Word/WordPerfect file conversion, ability to save as PDF, and new BASE database component make the beta a better candidate for success than the previous versions--and when the kinks get worked out, step back!"
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Open up the champagne! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Open up the champagne! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you are being sarcastic, but the fact is that Microsoft Office is destined to be a niche product like WordPerfect. In the case of WordPerfect it's law firms, for example. In the case of Word, it'll be the businesses who got sucked into Microsoft's "business automation" lock-in strategy too deep to bail out.
In a way, this reminds me of all the proprietary TCP/IP-work-alikes back in the day. There were lots of proprietary networks, and some companies even invested millions into their infrastructures. Now, those proprietary networks still exist, but in very limited numbers and the companies using them pay rediculous sums of money to maintain them. This is the future for Microsoft Office.
For everyone else, such as myself, my family, university students, huge numbers of small businesses, large corps looking to save a few million dollars, and governments looking to control their own data, OO.org really is an Office killer.
Yes, soon, we can break out the champagne!
Parent
Re:Open up the champagne! (Score:3, Insightful)
My biggest problem with applications like Open Office and Microsoft Word is that the general way they're put together sucks. It seems everybody thinks that applications always have to be built based off of what people are familiar with. Certainly there are strong arguments for that.
But wouldn't it be cool if one of these "Microsoft Killing Apps" would strike out in a truly new, really interesting direction, rather than focusing on reimplementing everything Microsof
Re:Open up the champagne! (Score:3, Insightful)
If the point is to get everyone to move off of Office, then you *MUST* emulate Office to a large degree, and yes this includes look and feel.
I'm not saying that innovative new ways to handle the UI are bad, I am saying that the average joe needs them in moderation in order to be able to cope with the least amoun
Re:Open up the champagne! (Score:4, Insightful)
In MS Office to change the format of a page (width, length, orientation, etc) you must acces the FILE/PAGE CONFIGURATION (or something similar, I use the Spanish version); while in OpenOffice you use FORMAT/PAGE.
For me, the MS way is nonsense, the FILE menu must be for everything related to the SYSTEM file tools, open, save, save as, etc; and the FORMAT menu is the right place to put the option to modify the FORMAT of the page.
Another menu I think is kind of stupid is the VIEW menu, View??? I think you could put everything in that menu View/Page properties, View/Windows List, View/Language Options, etc. So it is another stupid menu.
Because of that, I agree with you, btw, have you seen that all the menu bars have at MOST 9 or 10 menus?? usually they have like 5 (File, Edit, Options, Tools, Help). And then those menus have like 20 options and more submenus!!! (just look at the View menu in OO or in Firefox). Now that really pisses me off.
Parent
When the kinks get.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean it's still buggy?
Yes it is, but it's already a lot better MS Office, and doesn't have annoying clips, dogs and cats either.
Re:When the kinks get.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But OO.o isn't better. It's not nearly "as good" even, and until those that promote open source products figure out that advocacy isn't a replacement for solid code and high-usabilty, highly-polished interface, it won't get there.
Re:A good reason NOT allow Anon posts.... (Score:3, Funny)
Ugh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux has been chugging right along happily without any help from OSX. OSX is just a distraction. I mean, it's okay and all, but the entire UI is closed source and that just won't work anymore.
So I'd pipe down and relax. If Apple didn't have this closed source proprietary UI that only Apple uses, OO2 would already be on OSX. Until then, you're stuck in X.
Re:A good reason NOT allow Anon posts.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Overall though, the biggest complaint was that when you boot up OO all you get is a big blank grey screen with no instructions on where to go from there. For a beginner computer user, this is a big stumbling block. Very little problem technically, but it does seem to create a bit of a barier to learning how to use the software, particularily for new computer users. I find this is a fairly common problem with open source software in particular (although I can mention a few pieces of commercial software that have this problem in spades).
Parent
Re:When the kinks get.... (Score:5, Funny)
No, it just has that stupid sun that appears anytime you do anything and says, for example, "If you want to type, press the keys on your keyboard."
Parent
Re:When the kinks get.... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Um, where is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone care to point out where this was said, because I obviously missed it when I RTFA...
Re:Um, where is this? (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone care to point out where this was said, because I obviously missed it when I RTFA...
Welcome to Slashspin, do you want lies with that?
Parent
Re:Um, where is this? (Score:5, Funny)
OpenOffice is the fruit of a collaboration between Sun Microsystems and volunteer programmers around the world. Sun bought a German company in 1999 to get office software to bundle with its computers but figured that it wasn't going to make big bucks selling the software to a wider market because of Microsoft's grip.
Next time read within the lines.
Parent
Re:Um, where is this? (Score:5, Funny)
You Say: "Our company is skilled in many other things that are never reported by the biased media."
Media Reports: "Our company ____killed __m____other t__________________er_______________e____s_______
Parent
Re:Um, where is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same."
Parent
if only it were SLIGHTLY more ms word compatible.. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Ironically, I got hired by a company that uses Open Office instead of MS office)
Re:if only it were SLIGHTLY more ms word compatibl (Score:3, Informative)
Or heck, you can even save it in MS Office doc format.
Re:if only it were SLIGHTLY more ms word compatibl (Score:3, Informative)
Re:if only it were SLIGHTLY more ms word compatibl (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything that can make your resumé stand out from the others in a good way is well worth pursuing.
Jedidiah.
Parent
Re:if only it were SLIGHTLY more ms word compatibl (Score:4, Funny)
Dan Rather found this out the hard way, didn't he?
Parent
Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly, the actual format it's submitted in does matter, and not so much for the look. The format they use is the format one should submit into so it doesn't go thru multiple conversions or even OCR. If you use another format, it may come out looking VERY crappy after conversion (all formatting and basic layout may be lost, words split across columns,
Besides, unless you're applying as a graphics designer job or something like that, experience, knowledge and interview skills will matter a lot more than some fancy looking resume. I doubt it'll really help landing a job. I've used the word format most of the time as I was told to, and I never had much problem finding employment (haven't been unemployed over the last 10 years).
Parent
This is good news but OO.o has a ways to go still (Score:5, Insightful)
By drawing attention to it, it incites review. A good thing. But if CIOs and CTOs have a team review these early versions of OO.o for deployment in their enterprises, and the teams recommend against them, it will be that much harder to have a further review at a later date. "We already looked at OO.o, we didn't want to use it. Move on" they might say.
Timing is crucial in marketing and the FOSS community has made great strides with Linux, but only when Linux got to a maturity level somewhat past what I see from NeoOffice/J and OO.o
It's a side effect of the organization (Score:3, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I am a Mac OS X OpenOffice.org developer and a founder of the NeoOffice [neooffice.org] project.
I personally agree with the parent...marketing something that's not yet ready is a horrible idea and bad impressions have worse long term damage than no impressions at all. Part of the problem lies with the way that OpenOffice.org was built as a community. Unlike Linux and some other FOSS projects, the community wasn't built up around engineers. There are very few engineers outside of Sun that actually are rea
Re:This is good news but OO.o has a ways to go sti (Score:3, Funny)
Not only Office (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not only Office (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Doesn't look like that in-depth a review... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Doesn't look like that in-depth a review... (Score:3, Informative)
In my office, we use Word and Excel, a lot. I regularly use 5 spreadsheets totaling 15MB in size (one is 10MB). Fear of loosing something (and not noticing it) has kept us from trying other office suites or even upgrading from Office 97.
That's the minor of the two issues however. IIRC, OpenOffice doesn't even have any OLE Automation, so I can't call Calc from Writer
OpenOffice.org Rules. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I've used OpenOffice.org's document format, I've been very pleased. Especially since sxw is just a zip package that you can open up and edit by hand.. this make automating document processing really easy..
I'll be perfectly fine if MS Office disappears and never returns.
Re:OpenOffice.org Rules. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am one of these people who complain about exactly that. Well, not exactly complain, because what you say is true (it's not OOo's fault that the
However, the result is the same: as long as OOo doesn't reach 99.999% compatibility with some version of the
My opinion is that the OOo guys should drop whatever they're doing for a while, choose one version of the
Parent
Re:OpenOffice.org Rules. (Score:4, Insightful)
I hear people say this all the time but I don't buy it. The fact is people have shown a willingness to do painful conversions when there is substantial benefit. That's how PCs replaced minis and mainframes in corporate America on desktops (and yes that was a very difficult transition). That's how Word replaced WordPerfect. That's how Excel replaced Lotus 1-2-3. That's how WWW replaced dialup boards. etc...
A free office suite will replace MSOffice in corporate America when it becomes substantially better. We are a long way off from that. 90% is an impossible goal given how closely tied Word is to Microsoft technologies.
Parent
Nice review (Score:5, Insightful)
What they really need to do is stop trying to emulate Microsoft Office. You'll never make the MS Office killer by making MS Office.
Here's how average Joe Idiot thinks:
"So you're saying it's exactly like office except free? I don't trust it. I'll just pirate Microsoft's instead."
MS Office is bloated, awkward and confusing. They need to make it *better* than MS Office. Do something innovative, instead of just copying.
I don't know how well Apple's iWork is selling (I heard not so well), but it's a hell of a lot nicer to use than Office because they looked at it from a different angle. It's missing some stuff, but Pages is a hell of a nice app for version 1.0.
OpenOffice needs to do the same thing.
Re:Nice review (Score:4, Informative)
NeoOffice/J uses a combination of Carbon and Java and features Aqua menus.
Parent
Re:Nice review (Score:4, Insightful)
Office is not bloated. On my system, Word takes 9MB. Hell, that's less than half of what Firefox takes. That's less than AbiWord.
OOo takes over 100M. That's nearly ten times more memory than Word. It also takes about 15 seconds to start - 3 times more than Word.
The installation directory is 95MB, considerably less than OpenOffice. The entire core suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook) installs from a 200MB CD - and that's with the dependencies, clipart, templates, and extras.
As for awkward, what exactly do you mean? For myself and nearly 400 million others, Office is perfectly normal. Style handling is considerably better in 2003, and the overall suite feels polished and clean.
After 6 versions for Windows, Office looks, feels, and behaves like a mature office suite. It hasn't crashed on me in months, it doesn't have any wierd quirks, it's feature-rich, and everything generally works pretty well.
Don't impugn Office unless you *really* use it. You'll find that OpenOffice.org is clumsy, buggy, and bloated.
Parent
Re:Bloated? (Score:3, Insightful)
They are fast, lean, powerful, ellegant, and really damn rock-solid alternatives to those, uh, slightly overweight programs of debatable reliability. And much cheaper than Microsoft's stuff too. Not as cheap as OpenOffice, sure, but this much quality deserves a reward. So, say to to bloatware, try Mariner's
Office killer? Hardly! (Score:5, Insightful)
"My colleagues and I encountered some other problems with OpenOffice. Installation was difficult on some machines because OpenOffice relies on Sun's Java software, which does not come pre-installed on all Windows PCs....
"Write crashed a few times while saving documents, but we were able to recover the files. Hopefully, this is an issue that will be solved in the final version.
"OpenOffice was also slower in opening and saving documents. For example, a large spreadsheet took 4 seconds to open in Calc but only 2 seconds in Excel. That's not much, but the difference can be magnified if your computer is old.
"Base, the database program, has a confusing interface but Access isn't much better in this regard. The "help" files for the entire suite are not as thorough as those for Office."
Yup, sounds like an Office killer.
Honestly, how does tripe like this summary get published?
Re:Office killer? Hardly! (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, the prerelease beta has a few rough edges but costs $334.95 [newegg.com] less.
Yeah, that actually does sound like an Office killer for 99% of potential users. Basically, if you still fork over serious money for an only slightly better office suite without any substantial reasons (like you require VBA support for legacy reasons), you're an idiot and deserve what you get. OpenOffice.org is what pretty much every home or small office should be using, and it looks like people are starting to realize that.
Parent
Killer, indeed. (Score:5, Interesting)
The only problem I've really had with previous versions (other than a less pleasant interface than it now has) is the somewhat poor format conversion ability. Importing MSOffice files of various types were a pain to an impossibility. So far, I've had no problems importing them with the new beta.
I was talking to someone who operates a small office the other day and he was complaining about the thousands of dollars it was going to cost to equip a handful of users with Office on their machines - when all he needed to do was some spreadsheeting and office memo/document type stuff.
I pointed him at OpenOffice.org and he was blown away. Everyone in the office had it installed, operating and using it productively by the end of the week. It was difficult convincing them, however, that there was no catch. That it was really free. After all, you have people like some random guys on G4TV and radio-based "computer shows" and some websites spouting idiotic bullshit like "If a program is free, you can be sure it has adware, spyware and maybe viruses". Talk about hyperbole.
better marketing is really what's required (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue I run into though when recommending it to people is that they instinctively believe it will be crap because it's not from MS. I'll reply with something like "But it converts most Word documents perfectly," but they just aren't interested.
For OO to succeed it needs to have a marketing campaign similar to FireFox. It needs to be a product that people get recommended to them from non-geeks.
I've got to hand it to MS. They've done a top notch job scaring people into using their products.
Just wait until they review Tux Racer! (Score:5, Funny)
Not quite there yet (Score:5, Informative)
OpenOffice isn't quite good enough yet.
The look and feel of the program is a bit too rough. For example, they inexplicably have a huge "Styles" pane on by default that covers 1/4 of the document.
Also, the compatibility is not what it should be. I create Word docs in oowriter, but then when I open them in real Word, the page breaks are all wrong! What used to fit on one page wraps to a second, or vice versa. It's quite frustrating when I prepare a lot of Word docs for printing by others, when I know that essentially all the others are using real Word. I have to reboot and examine the document to make sure of what it really looks like.
Ditto for ooimpress, the PowerPoint clone. It is hard to use it for lots of small reasons; death by a thousand cuts. It isn't easy to pull up a Slide Sorter view and move the slides around, cut and paste them, select ones from one file and put them in another file, and so on. When I create a new slide, it ignores my Master Slide template and the dimensions of the text areas come out all wrong. It also again doesn't look the same as a real PowerPoint file, and when I view the same slides in real PowerPoint, the text falls off the edge or bottom of the slide. Argh!
I realize the challenge OOo is up against, and I applaud their efforts. But OOo is no Office killer, not yet. More work needs to be done.
Wow. (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot declares imminent demise of Microsoft or one of their products. I don't know if I've ever seen such a thing.
OO is STILL lacking some features (Score:5, Informative)
To get me to completely stop using MSFT Office, FrameMaker, and a few other programs, here's what OO has to add.
Re:OO is STILL lacking some features (Score:4, Informative)
Use An F***ing TEXT EDITOR!!!
Parent
OO may be in striking distance this time... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have friends for whom I've set up their Office Suite on their home computers.... I have given (installed for them) the various generations of Open Office and watched in disappointment as they repeatedly gravitated to the "free" Microsoft Works (ironic name) to create documents.
But last night, a breakthrough! My friend's daughter had written an assignment with WordPad and was having problems with it, especially wanting to spellcheck, have tighter formatting, etc. Her mom immediately imported the document into Open Office and showed her how to use THAT and told her to use Open Office as a first choice! (And this was without my "influence". In the past, to get anyone in that household to use Open Office I'd have to be there pointing it out and asking them to use it.) Reaching a tipping point, perhaps.
I keep hearing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When the kinks get worked out? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most likely. I asked my wife to try it out as an alternative to PowerPoint, but it didn't work well for her because she had to keep saving things in PP format (because OO isn't on the computers she uses for presentations) and was especially freaked the first few times when OO complained that if she converted things to PP format then she might lose stuff.
If you can work in an OO-only environment, it's probably OK, but the OO-PP interoperability was not good. Some of the slides it made (and she started editing presentations made with PP originally) weren't showing up in PP. Ah well...
EricMake Easy Money with Google [memwg.com] -- out on June 17!
Parent
Re:ONE MAJOR KINK: (Score:3, Insightful)