Linux office products ready to strike?

[Donshyoku]

I have been on Windows lately and have actually been testing out some of their new Beta/Vista products. It has been a pretty good experience so far, but nothing worth worrying about.

IE7 is just a horribly ugly version of Firefox.

WMP11 is a shiny new cover for a program that does everything, but nothing too well.

But Office 2007 is AMAZING! The promotional videos and screenshots were always cool, but I figured it was hype. I've been working on it a lot lately thanks to a spurt of my creative writing juices, and this product does an amazing job.

The "ribbon" is pretty cool. You have easy access to a lot of features. It makes things a little more simple for the user in terms of not having to dig (even if you know exactly where you are going) through secondary menus or dialog boxes to find.

What really takes the cake is the new Live Preview funtionality. Just by hovering over a font name, the font changes to show me what it will look like if I actually click. When I scroll through the box of font sizes, the screen shows me instant output. Spacing and formatting all follow the same lead. It makes things easy, simple, and attractive.

Especially as a creative writer and English student in college, I find the automatically updated word count at the bottom corner to be great functionality. It save me from the three clicks I would normally have to make in OpenOffice or Abiword to get the same result. Yeah, three clicks... so what!? When you need to know how many words you have after each sentence, it matters.

This is all in my opinion, but Office 2007 isn't going to be out until February of next year. OpenOffice, KOffice, and Gnome Office have quite a time window to beef up thier offerings. I really hope they take a cue from MS on this one!

[IYY]

I believe (or at least hope) that one day MS will stop producing Windows and just start making software for Linux/OSX. Why? Well, an OS costs a lot more than traditional software to produce, and also requires constant maintenance, unlike traditional software. At the same time, Windows costs less than traditional software for the user, especially if it's distributed with a new PC, in which case they're almost giving it away for free. The only reason they may want to do this is to maintain their monopoly, but it seems that the monopoly is slowly collapsing and it's time to abandon this sinking ship.

MS does make good software, but crappy operating systems. That's the way it has always been. I hope they figure this out soon, and do the right thing for the world and themselves.

[GuitarHero]

I believe (or at least hope) that one day MS will stop producing Windows and just start making software for Linux/OSX. Why? Well, an OS costs a lot more than traditional software to produce, and also requires constant maintenance, unlike traditional software. At the same time, Windows costs less than traditional software for the user, especially if it's distributed with a new PC, in which case they're almost giving it away for free. The only reason they may want to do this is to maintain their monopoly, but it seems that the monopoly is slowly collapsing and it's time to abandon this sinking ship.

MS does make good software, but crappy operating systems. That's the way it has always been. I hope they figure this out soon, and do the right thing for the world and themselves.

Microsoft isnt giving anything away when Windows is preloaded. You pay for it in the cost of the computer.

[darkhatter]

yes they are ready to strike but office 2007 is looking good...

[jISh]

Microsoft isnt giving anything away when Windows is preloaded. You pay for it in the cost of the computer.
Exactly why I will never buy another pre-built computer with Windows installed.

[Quillz]

I think that OpenOffice.org is at least comparable to Office 2003 at this point. While OOo lacks a lot of features, when was the last time you needed to make use of every last feature in Office 2003? I think for the "average joe," OOo is more than sufficient. I believe that commercial options like StarOffice will also continue to improve and rival Office.

[blastus]

I believe Microsoft Office is rapidly approaching the stage where there are little to no new features that can be added to it that adds more value to it--at least not enough for the average consumer to justify spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on an upgrade.

The only strategy Microsoft has is to even more tightly integrate MS Office with every other Microsoft product (SharePoint comes to mind) and hope that people are dumb enough not to realize that they are being locked into a whole range of Microsoft products not to mention Windows itself.

If they haven't already, OpenOffice, KOffice, GNOME Office and others will have all the functionality 95% of the population could ever want or need. At that point, MS Office will have reached the limits of its usefulness. It's just a matter of time.

[Donshyoku]

I am not really concerned about the functionality so much as the ease of use and simplicity of using the functions.

[ubuntuman001]

I am not really concerned about the functionality so much as the ease of use and simplicity of using the functions.yes but will you really be concerned with that if you have to pay $400 to use it? or you could use openoffice for $0, with maybe a little less easy-ness. What would you prefer?

[atrus123]

I believe (or at least hope) that one day MS will stop producing Windows and just start making software for Linux/OSX. Why? Well, an OS costs a lot more than traditional software to produce, and also requires constant maintenance, unlike traditional software. At the same time, Windows costs less than traditional software for the user, especially if it's distributed with a new PC, in which case they're almost giving it away for free. The only reason they may want to do this is to maintain their monopoly, but it seems that the monopoly is slowly collapsing and it's time to abandon this sinking ship.

MS does make good software, but crappy operating systems. That's the way it has always been. I hope they figure this out soon, and do the right thing for the world and themselves.

I think you're pretty much on the money. Microsoft Office is a really superb piece of software, and I've heard brilliant things about the newest beta. Meanwhile, the Vista leg is struggling. I hope Vista flops so that Microsoft will actually start opening some code and focusing some positive attentions on Linux.

If they keep everything closed, it's still oo.org for me.

[MaximB]

I'm pretty sure that by the time office2007 comes out ,open office will need a very little improvment to reach office's2007 features.

[Donshyoku]

yes but will you really be concerned with that if you have to pay $400 to use it? or you could use openoffice for $0, with maybe a little less easy-ness. What would you prefer?

Personally, that doesn't apply to me. I understand how it could be an issue for some, but I am part of a campus Microsoft agreement.

I can pay $0 for OpenOffice.org or $5 for Office 2007. I would say that the interface alone is worth my bill.

[jeffc313]

if you can get office 2007 for five dollars, by all means, go, run it on WINE, run it on your windows box, whatever. IMO, the general population, in time, will find alternatives to the 400 dollars that they will have to spend. I, myself would much rather spend 0$ on OO.o as It does all i need/want

[TeeAhr1]

Just my (typically uninformed) opinion: We're not even close. OpenOffice is feature-rich, yes, but it's slow as a three-legged dog. And by being such an MS Office clone (yes it is), I think it, indirectly, props up MS Office by inviting such comparisons (which never look very favorable to OOo). I also think too much development time is spent on compatibility with .doc, et cetera. I don't want a free MS Office clone. I want something better.

Furthermore, the codebase is a monolithic mess, and that holds people back who may otherwise contribute but are intimidated by the complexity and non-modularity of the codebase. It would take tons of time and effort, but I think in the long run, they'd be better served by rewriting the code, rather than trying to patch it. But, especially right now with MS Office 2007 coming down the pipe, that's not going to happen because of time and marketing pressures. More's the pity.

The only other FOSS office offerings I've used are Gnumeric and Abiword. They're great for me, because my needs are limited. But their lack of completeness and tight integration hold them back, as well as the fact that they're GTK apps, which, while they look lovely on a GNOME system, look like canned a** on Windows (or KDE, for that matter). But they're great, they're super-quick to load and run, and not hard for a newcomer to pick up (without falling into the MS clone trap). Give it time.

[Sethro]

Damn Office 2007 does look pretty sexy. But Open Office is gonna improve and kick ***... right??

[DoctorMO]

MS Office could be a feature rich drool worthy free (as in beer) gui dream. but it's not free as in speech and I won't have it, I won't use it. and the only things I think about are the features in OOo that could be done better.

For me, MS Office doesn't exist.

[GuitarHero]

Open Office does everything I want, slower of course, but for free I find its fine. I have tried the beta of Office 2007 and I agree, its really an improvement. I would never spend more than $50 on a program though, so screw that. I admit I illegally downloaded a TON of programs when I was using windows. In my mind no program is worth hundreds of dollars.

[seshomaru samma]

I was also very impressed with the new Office , it's very attractive .
I wish open-source application will be more beautiful .
It's true that XGL and Compiz are nice and we have many beautiful themes for Gnome/KDE/XFCE but the applications themslevs are very ugly ,with Gaim being the ugliest and OO not far behind (Firefox is the best looking).
I don't know about the "avarage Joe" in the west , but the "avarage Zhang" in China is very interested in eye candy. In China nobody pays for software so the financial factor is not a part of the question , people will convert OO or GIMP if it looks nicer ,has better features or runs faster. Many people took to Tencent browser and QQ for those reasons.
As far as Office features go, I wanted to convert our office (at work) to OO but couldn't because it doesn't support writing from top to bottom like MS Word.