Microsoft puts out a video to smear OpenOffice [Archive]

Spice Weasel

October 14th, 2010, 10:20 PM

if i hear this quote once more i am going to eat a kitten.

Real men type binary anway.

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roggenschrotbrot

October 14th, 2010, 10:26 PM

spoons

October 14th, 2010, 10:29 PM

Unless they can take you to court and then they win because they have more money than you.

They have more money than IBM, Red Hat, Novell, etc etc?

Okay... maybe not Novell...

phrostbyte

October 14th, 2010, 10:47 PM

CharlesA

October 14th, 2010, 11:31 PM

All I see is the usual Linux vs Windows deal.

It's marketing.

@OP: The video is "claiming" that running Linux machines with OpenOffice vs Windows machines with MS Office was more of a hassle then running Windows with MS Office.

Take learning a new OS into account, along with the man-hours of troubleshooting/fixing problems you run into, etc.

KiwiNZ

October 14th, 2010, 11:31 PM

Before I retired I approved a trial of Open Office in our Head Office. That was for 360 staff. It was in the view of releasing to our full staff , 10,000 in the future. I have to say it was not a success.

First up the "power users" were complaining from day one. The conversion of Macros and the interoperability with other Applications was very problematic.

Calls to our Help Desk rose and continued to climb and got to a point where they impacted on call waiting and resolution times for all other faults to point where one Application was in affect dominating our operation.

After two months I scrapped the trial and scrapped the plan to use Open Office and the future. Simply put why make IT more difficult than it needs to be.

Half-Left

October 14th, 2010, 11:32 PM

You mean like hundreds of "smear campaigns" put out by Linux fanbois on youtube every single day?

Its called marketing. Everybody does that, including Apple and Microsoft.

Poor Microsoft, picking on Linux which has 1% desktop share. "Linux fanbois" act alone but Microsoft pick on the small boys.

matthew.ball

October 15th, 2010, 12:09 AM

Well, I'm convinced now.

_outlawed_

October 15th, 2010, 12:24 AM

It's all about money, nothing more.

earthpigg

October 15th, 2010, 12:37 AM

It isn't hard to cherry-pick facts and use them to prove anything.

The facts being cherry-picked here, of course, are that so-and-so holding such-and-such position probably did indeed say exactly what the advertisement claims so-and-so said.

I've seen Ghandi cited and used to support the claim that folks of African descent are inherently inferior to folks of Indian descent (& others, by implication). Here (http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html). Volume 2, Page 270, last paragraph.

Note that Ghandi can be considered just as much an expert in peaceful and harmonious human interaction as those "IT Managers" can be considered experts in IT stuff.

Does that mean either claim should be believed? Of course not, they where both clearly cherry picked as most convenient for the argument being made, and both are ridiculous claims when supported as such.

DeadSuperHero

October 15th, 2010, 01:06 AM

I just don't like OpenOffice's interface, or the fact that it uses Swing. It doesn't integrate very well.

MooPi

October 15th, 2010, 01:08 AM

Nice production value. :)

I think it's a good sign when a giant like Microsoft's Office division feels threatened enough by OpenOffice.org to put out a video like this. This video does however need some kind of coherent and principled response.
Got it covered. I just turned around and MOONED Redmond from my house. Now we just need a few million more and were good :)

kaldor

October 15th, 2010, 01:17 AM

A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzdykNa2IBU&feature=player_embedded) is a smear campaign video that includes dozens of quotes from people who claim they tried the OpenOffice suite and suffered from excess costs as well as IT resources, performance and compatibility issues.

I admit...it made me smile to know that Microsoft is feeling this threatened from open source software alternatives to their products.

:biggrin:

Claim to have used it? You make it sound as if OpenOffice is superior in every way.

I disagree with a lot of what was said (how many people are satisfied with OO.o afterall? :) ) and a lot of it is either based on experience or based on lack of knowledge.

One that stands out though... why does it matter if students submit files with OpenOffice? I *always* submit all documents as PDF and have yet to encounter *any* issues so far.

That being said, MS Office is one of very few Microsoft products I actually like. OpenOffice still has a lot to catch up on in some departments.

I know that for me and my family OpenOffice is perfectly fine. My mother uses OpenOffice and she's a teacher... no issues sending or receiving files yet.

Overall though, it's mostly FUD.

JDShu

October 15th, 2010, 01:49 AM

So remember kids, don't do OpenOffice.

TheNessus

October 15th, 2010, 01:53 AM

Lack of any MS Office equivalent is why I dual boot. :(

Brent0

October 15th, 2010, 02:25 AM

I have had much trouble with OO.o. Microsoft Office is faster, easier, more compatible, etc. I have Office 2010 and it's a great piece of software. Leaps and bounds better than OO.o. (In my opinion of course)

themarker0

October 15th, 2010, 02:31 AM

The real funny part, i bet almost half the views are from us FOSS viewers. Microsoft should put ads there so we can help them more.

smellyman

October 15th, 2010, 02:44 AM

for home use, open office is a great alternative. Do people really use complex macros and intense spreadsheets at home?

Business use has a ways to go and that is only because of interoperabilty issues with MS Office. Whish isn't OOo's fault.....

Bungo Pony

October 15th, 2010, 02:46 AM

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Jaecyn42

October 15th, 2010, 03:02 AM

Frankly, I don't care what minuscule kernel of truth there may be to this MS Office > OO hullaballo.

I'm not paying $150 for a Word Processor and a Spreadsheet Program...Ever. The day I pay $150 for a Word Processor and Spreadsheet Program is the day I flush my Star of David down the toilet and begin binging on pork. Never going to happen.

As for the business side, if I were an entrepreneur, FOSS would be our IT solution. Period.

If my employees can't handle Open Office, I'll find new employees who can. Given this economic climate, I'd have my pick of the litter.

Bottom line: MS Office may have nice features; but it's insanely over-priced and no amount of facility or ease would ever convince me to submit to that manner of highway robbery.

</rant>

FuturePilot

October 15th, 2010, 03:07 AM

I agree with this (http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2010/10/microsoft-gives-its-blessing-to-openofficeorg/index.htm?cmpid=sbslashdotschapman)

wkhasintha

October 15th, 2010, 03:17 AM

How pathetic-o..

NCLI

October 15th, 2010, 03:20 AM

mamamia88

October 15th, 2010, 03:21 AM

I use both open office and office 2007 in wine. don't see why whateer company this video was talking about couldn't use wine

adamjkok

October 15th, 2010, 03:28 AM

Notice the ratings. Also notice that cooments were disabled to avoid criticism. Didn't work too well, did it? ;)

KiwiNZ

October 15th, 2010, 03:35 AM

There is elements of truth in video. Many people believe especially for the Enterprise market that you can uninstall MS Office and install Open Office and you are away and the savings beging straight away with no cost. That is very wrong.

The implementation costs can be very high and correspond to the size of the enterprise.

There Infrastructure changes that must be planned and implemented through proper change control. Appropriated testing and end user acceptance testing. Many internal Applications that interface with Office will need to be considered and changed / tested.

Support structures will need to be reviewed trained and tested and in most cases new staff hired to cover the transition and implementation.

External interfaces will need to considered , in other words who outside of the business does your business do business with and how will changing this Application affect this and what will need to be done to ensure continuity of business. This is a big one and in many cases is the game breaker.

Then there is staff training, a long expensive stressful essential part of the equation. Get it wrong and your on going support costs will be high.

All this is for a "free" Application. This is why I say... Why Make it harder that it need be. In most scenarios for an medium to large enterprise to change it is just not worth it. For a start up and SOHO that is different.

Don't get me wrong I am not anti Open Source , I am a realist.

corrytonapple

October 15th, 2010, 03:37 AM

Noticed how the text was not straight? That was because they were using Office 2010! Not put out in a normal, readable, line. But in a crooked, falling down way. That plus it is a PC.
There are positves and negatives to both. That "Sigh of Relief" was mistaken for that "Sigh because it cost $170 to run things that can be done with open source" sigh. Maybe we should ask them how they know their way around Office. "I have used it before" is a typical response. Or, if they were clever, "It has an easy to use interface", is not a good excuse because Open Office's is almost the same. Either way, they have to adjust to new interfaces to, well, learn new things. If Open Office copied the Office 2010 interface, they would be sued. Sounds like they should learn or stick with Microsoft and friends. Ohh, and if Apple Or Canonical came out with an ad like that, MS would be suing them.

Mr. Picklesworth

October 15th, 2010, 04:27 AM

I watched that after printing the single most beautiful document I have ever made, using Lyx. I laughed. Silly people and their "office suites" :)

More seriously, it annoys me that they conflate Open Office and other open source / free software solutions. Anyone else catch that?

They also fall back on their usual trick the majority of the time: 'Use Microsoft Office because everyone else does and our document formats have no interest in supporting interoperability.'
More succinctly: 'Use us because we've forced you to depend on us. And we're making sure all today's students do, too.'

They assume few people see or care about the nastiness in that approach. It's a shame that they're probably right.

As for the thought of retaliating, they are right about a lot of this. OpenOffice is an ugly thing. It feels better in Windows, (really), but still ugly. If anyone wants to beat MS Office they need to change the question. Business software doesn't need another MS Word. The space has stagnated for decades, but there are many avenues that haven't been touched.

Merk42

October 15th, 2010, 04:27 AM

Ohh, and if Apple Or Canonical came out with an ad like that, MS would be suing them.

As long as the ad were truthful Microsoft wouldn't have a case.
Much like those old "I'm a Mac" commercials. Microsoft never sued Apple over those.

Oh wait, I forgot, I'm in ubuntuforums.org where everything FOSS is perfect and everything even remotely related to Microsoft is horrible :rolleyes:

Giant Speck

October 15th, 2010, 04:37 AM

I'd rather use Microsoft Office than OpenOffice, anyway. I just don't like how badly OpenOffice integrates in GNOME (and KDE, for that matter), and I don't like how lousy it is at interoperability with Microsoft Office.

Ctrl-Alt-F1

October 15th, 2010, 04:39 AM

I'd rather use Microsoft Office than OpenOffice, anyway. I just don't like how badly OpenOffice integrates in GNOME (and KDE, for that matter)

My feelings exactly. I don't like OOO at all with the exception of Calc, which I have been able to use as aptly as Excel.

KiwiNZ

October 15th, 2010, 04:44 AM

I use Lotus Symphony it does all I need it for and my wife gets it from work .

Giant Speck

October 15th, 2010, 04:52 AM

My feelings exactly. I don't like OOO at all with the exception of Calc, which I have been able to use as aptly as Excel.
The only thing I liked more about OpenOffice than Microsoft Office was Draw, but that changed with the releases of Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. I can make far better diagrams in Microsoft Word 2007/2010 than I could in OpenOffice Draw.

corrytonapple

October 15th, 2010, 04:55 AM

As long as the ad were truthful Microsoft wouldn't have a case.
Much like those old "I'm a Mac" commercials. Microsoft never sued Apple over those.

Oh wait, I forgot, I'm in ubuntuforums.org where everything FOSS is perfect and everything even remotely related to Microsoft is horrible :rolleyes:
The mentioning of MS is OK by me. The "I'm a Mac" commercials were truthful, unlike this commercial.

Merk42

October 15th, 2010, 05:13 AM

The mentioning of MS is OK by me. The "I'm a Mac" commercials were truthful, unlike this commercial.
How were they not truthful?
OpenOffice.org does have a problem with opening .doc files exactly as they appear in Office (though of course often different versions of Office have the same problem)
Maybe the other company had to hire all new IT staff that was familiar with OpenOffice.org since their existing IT people were only familiar with Microsoft Office

Basically I'm saying since you presumably don't work for the companies who were quoted, you don't know they were being untruthful.

Ctrl-Alt-F1

October 15th, 2010, 05:21 AM

How were they not truthful?
OpenOffice.org does have a problem with opening .doc files exactly as they appear in Office (though of course often different versions of Office have the same problem)
Maybe the other company had to hire all new IT staff that was familiar with OpenOffice.org since their existing IT people were only familiar with Microsoft Office

Basically I'm saying since you presumably don't work for the companies who were quoted, you don't know they were being untruthful.

Agreed. It might be considered misleading by some, simply because it only covers the opinion of those that had a bad experience, but I don't even know if I'd call it that. The video seemed pretty consistent with my experience of OOO. Not saying it doesn't work for everyone but it certainly hasn't worked for me or my employers yet.

alexfish

October 15th, 2010, 05:22 AM

The real funny part, i bet almost half the views are from us FOSS viewers. Microsoft should put ads there so we can help them more.
Post this at the same time ( next but one to Microsoft add )

Testimonial(I think) , can't remember what thinking Means

I used Microsoft office 97 , 2000, in those days its inter-polarity and the use of visual basic made it a one of microsoft all time greatest's,
in terms of rapid development of custom applications to suit the working environment , possibly second to none

I does not take much to work out the reason why , or where it stands today.

So what is lacking

Truth , Lies , Defeat , or Total Lack of reality

Reality check , MicroSoft are just starting realize that passed history is coming back to haunt them ,

people with vision , aptitude and invention are beginning to find a new way of what is mentioned in first paragraph,without the need to say , oh by the Microsoft I have developed this application (licensed to do so) , Ah ,

here's a penny for your thoughts.

Totaly Stuffed:

Not any More

ubunterooster

October 15th, 2010, 05:22 AM

For me the OOo was a flawless transition

slooksterpsv

October 15th, 2010, 05:27 AM

BOYCOTT MICROSOFT, BOYCOTT MICROSOFT, BOYCOTT MICROSOFT

Sorry but that is low, OpenSource is Free; people can charge for support or you can get it for free from the community. They totally are trying to take down Open-Source Software.

TNT1

October 15th, 2010, 05:28 AM

KiwiNZ

October 15th, 2010, 05:29 AM

For me the OOo was a flawless transition

How many users?

Ctrl-Alt-F1

October 15th, 2010, 05:29 AM

BOYCOTT MICROSOFT, BOYCOTT MICROSOFT, BOYCOTT MICROSOFT

Why do I have the feeling you'd do that either way? :lolflag:

JK...kinda.

Khakilang

October 15th, 2010, 05:30 AM

And when virus strike you can forget whatever you have in your computer. Regardless whether you have Microsoft office or OpenOffice. To get back again cost lots of money and time. While OpenOffice in Linux still running fine. So to me it just not only using an application, the whole computer system has to taken into consideration.

corrytonapple

October 15th, 2010, 05:33 AM

How were they not truthful?
OpenOffice.org does have a problem with opening .doc files exactly as they appear in Office (though of course often different versions of Office have the same problem)
Maybe the other company had to hire all new IT staff that was familiar with OpenOffice.org since their existing IT people were only familiar with Microsoft Office

Basically I'm saying since you presumably don't work for the companies who were quoted, you don't know they were being untruthful.
Good point. But, just like in most commercials, paid actors do the job. Refer back to the browser wars for a moment (Thinks back to when I recorded "Download: The True story of the Internet"). Microsoft is willing to lie about things. They are willing to threaten. And did you hear of the party they threw after-wards? You know more than I do, so I am willing to learn. :)
Also, my OO transition was flawless. I went on a normal. Everything worked fine and displayed fine.

KiwiNZ

October 15th, 2010, 05:42 AM

Good point. But, just like in most commercials, paid actors do the job. Refer back to the browser wars for a moment (Thinks back to when I recorded "Download: The True story of the Internet"). Microsoft is willing to lie about things. They are willing to threaten. And did you hear of the party they threw after-wards? You know more than I do, so I am willing to learn. :)
Also, my OO transition was flawless. I went on a normal. Everything worked fine and displayed fine.

MS are not referring to individuals, they are referring to medium to large enterprises as I was referring to in my earlier posts.

Canis familiaris

October 15th, 2010, 06:53 AM

There's an element of cherry picked truth out there in the video. It's actually true MS Office is actually preferred by most, due to the fact that it supports the old MS Office (Pre 2007)documents which are widely used in the world. Moreover the OOXML format has an insane documentation (in spite of being 'Open') and very difficult to implement for rival products.
Inteface plays a part too, people prefer using what they are used to. Furthermore even being used to OpenOffice, I personally (but bitterly) find MS Office to be better.

earthpigg

October 15th, 2010, 06:54 AM

As long as the ad were truthful Microsoft wouldn't have a case.

You seem to be under the impression that Truth and Legal Truth in the Courts of the United States of America are the same thing.

I find that to be cute.

jurialmunkey

October 15th, 2010, 08:12 AM

Home User is not equal to Enterprise User.
OpenOffice has heaps of faults, but its free. MS Office costs money so I expect it to be better, and it is.
Home Users rarely need to use Office suites past doing basic spreadsheets and basic word-processing
Training people costs money. When someone is training, they aren't working.
If a business already has MS Office licenses how can they save money by switching? They already paid the license fee.
OpenOffice disrespects themes is therefore looks terrible

Also, surely most people know Anecdotal Evidence does not equal Real Evidence. If someone can't see that, then I would rather they weren't using Linux or FOSS... Someone who believes everything they read is probably far more likely to click on one of those "Your computer is infected, Click here to clean now" malware ads, and those sorts of people are exactly who virus makers target. Windows has lots of viruses mainly because there is a large base of "technically challenged" users. Some of the things I've seen less technically literate people do on computers is incredibly ridiculous. Its mind-blowing the junk on some peoples computers and the general lack of concern for security on the internet; and then they wonder why their computer doesn't work!

So basically, If someone can't see through this advertisement and just simply believes everything they are told, then I'm glad they were swayed by Microsoft because I enjoy the fact that I don't have to have a constantly running virus/malware suite running on my computer.

KiwiNZ

October 15th, 2010, 08:34 AM

Home User IS NOT EQUAL to Enterprise User.
OpenOffice has heaps of faults, but its free. MS Office costs money so I expect it to be better, and it is.
Home Users rarely need to use Office suites past doing basic spreadsheets and basic word-processing
Training people costs money. When someone is training, they aren't working.
If a business already has MS Office licenses how can they save money by switching? They already paid the license fee.
OpenOffice is ugly as hell and disrespects themes

Also, haven't we all learnt by now that Anecdotal Evidence does NOT equal Real Evidence. If someone can't see that, then I would rather they weren't using Linux or FOSS... thats just another stupid user a virus programmer can target. Windows has lots of viruses mainly because there is a large base of "stupid" users. Some of the things I've seen less technically literate people do on computers is incredibly ridiculous. Its mind-blowing the crud on some peoples computers and the general lack of concern for security on the internet; and then they wonder why their computer doesn't work!!!

So basically, If someone can't see through this advertisement, then I'm glad they were swayed by Microsoft because I enjoy the fact that I don't have to have a constantly running virus/malware suite running on my computer.

Please do NOT call other computer users stupid and use tones like this on this Forum. Please refer our Code of conduct http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php?page=policy

Giant Speck

October 15th, 2010, 08:41 AM

Please do call other computer users stupid and use tones like this on this Forum. Please refer our Code of conduct http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php?page=policy

Wait... are you daring him to break the rules? :P

blueturtl

October 15th, 2010, 08:43 AM

Technically the ad is not incorrect, but it is misleading.

Most of the points they make about cost are actually costs relating to switching, not use. It's true that switching to OpenOffice.org will spike costs momentarily in any organization. Also staff needs to be retrained and the help desk will be busy for a while when the differences are sorted out. This just happens to be true of any migration.

What they kind of "miss" is that once you've gone through with the high cost and high maintenance transition, in the case of OpenOffice, you will not have licensing costs at all. Nor any other costs that wouldn't also apply to MS Office.

I'm not saying OpenOffice is necessarily even the best product to replace MS Office, but there are plenty of avenues where it is quite sufficient and could easily trump MS Office as the more cost effective solution.

NightwishFan

October 15th, 2010, 08:50 AM

I always feel like Kiwi is daring me to break the rules. :)

I found this video to be amusing. I think most businesses are careful and smart enough to roll the dice the right way.

KiwiNZ

October 15th, 2010, 08:59 AM

Wait... are you daring him to break the rules? :P

I like to lull people into thinking I am human ;)

beew

October 15th, 2010, 09:29 AM

All this is for a "free" Application. This is why I say... Why Make it harder that it need be. In most scenarios for an medium to large enterprise to change it is just not worth it. For a start up and SOHO that is different.

Don't get me wrong I am not anti Open Source , I am a realist.

"Realist" is so often an euphemism for the reactionary. There is always a cost in any transition, there is always an initial learning curve to acquire something new. If everyone has been a "realist" the world would have no progress, all new ideas and novel thinking would be killed in the cradle by your way of thinking.

KiwiNZ

October 15th, 2010, 09:38 AM

"Realist" is so often an euphemism for the reactionary. There is always a cost in any transition, there is always an initial learning curve to acquire something new. If everyone has been a "realist" the world would have no progress, all new ideas and novel thinking would be killed in the cradle by your way of thinking.

When you are running a Corporation you have commitments to the Shareholders to meet. When you are running the IT for a Corporation you have budget to operate within and SLA's to comply with. IT needs to be painless and invisible. That is what my back ground is , experience running IT units for medium to large Enterprises.

What I have tried to put forward in this thread is real life experience.

rjbl

October 15th, 2010, 09:59 AM

A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzdykNa2IBU&feature=player_embedded) is a smear campaign video that includes dozens of quotes from people who claim they tried the OpenOffice suite and suffered from excess costs as well as IT resources, performance and compatibility issues.

I admit...it made me smile to know that Microsoft is feeling this threatened from open source software alternatives to their products.

:biggrin:

Simple piece of knocking copy, not very well done in Powerpoint and broadcast in a medium that very few OA purchasing decision makers would ever bother to look at. Bit of an epic fail.

Let's take a real view on the whole 'controversy'. Star Office / Open Office is not, repeat not, David challenging Goliath in the OA market place. It is, on the global scale, one of the most widely deployed OA packages in the business world outside the English-speaking, North American world. It has been for a couple of decades and MS has made very little sales progress against it outside the US. Microsoft's business model requires their costumers to buy a brand new version of the package every two years. Business, world-wide, has never signed up to this and probably never will, the required functionality from an OA barely having changed in fifteen years and unlikely to expand much in the next ten or so.

Microsoft are, at present, showing classic signs of corporate stress. Their core products - their OSes and OA suite have had a faltering sales performance over the last four or five years. Looks like they are getting a bit frit.

rjbl

sanderd17

October 15th, 2010, 10:01 AM

Please do NOT call other computer users stupid and use tones like this on this Forum. Please refer our Code of conduct http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php?page=policy

Oh no, other users aren't stupid, just like a prof I have, complaining about the university infrastructure because she can't get her powerpoint to play on the beamer. She has to open ppt, drag it to the second (beamer) screen and scroll down.

Seriously, why does she use ppt if she can't work with it? I would prefer if she used LaTeX beamer. 100% portable and compatible since the early 90's.

(btw, you should know that prof is teaching us programming languages.)

Now on topic: openoffice.org has his problems and ms office has. People like office more because they're used to it, they use the .doc format and they have made special macro's. I sometimes use calc, for a fast calculation but I haven't used any other part of (open)office(.org) in years.

Wissem R

October 15th, 2010, 10:10 AM

and that's a score for OO , it shows that microsoft is afraid from the open source competitors .

KiwiNZ

October 15th, 2010, 10:24 AM

Microsoft are, at present, showing classic signs of corporate stress. Their core products - their OSes and OA suite have had a faltering sales performance over the last four or five years. Looks like they are getting a bit frit.

rjbl

The facts would disagree with you, here is their profit in Millions over the last few years

2010 =$18,760 , 2009=$14,569 ,2008 =$17,681 , 2007 $14,065 , 2006 =$12,599

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar10/10k_fh_fin.html

kio_http

October 15th, 2010, 11:17 AM

The facts would disagree with you, here is their profit in Millions over the last few years

2010 =$18,760 , 2009=$14,569 ,2008 =$17,681 , 2007 $14,065 , 2006 =$12,599

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar10/10k_fh_fin.html

True, but the Microsoft of today is not what it used to be years back. I find a lot of ideas originating from both opensource and commercial projects being copied.

Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-2C2gb6ws8) is Apple WWDC section in 2006 where they show good examples of vista features copied from OS X Tiger.

Also even though OpenOffice.org does not suit the needs of everyone, they should let people chose what they want and not advertise against opensource. See the amount of dislikes itself on the office video on youtube. They even disabled the comments so that people cannot see that the move of advertising against is not appreciated.

limestone

October 15th, 2010, 11:23 AM

That's why Microsoft sucks... They need to throw dirt at everyone else to make it.
And a huge company that still needs commercials to make it... they suck too..!

beew

October 15th, 2010, 11:30 AM

beew

October 15th, 2010, 11:32 AM

The facts would disagree with you, here is their profit in Millions over the last few years

2010 =$18,760 , 2009=$14,569 ,2008 =$17,681 , 2007 $14,065 , 2006 =$12,599

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar10/10k_fh_fin.html

Yes, the "realist" also invariably cheer leads for the established interest, quite predictably.

Half-Left

October 15th, 2010, 11:51 AM

Clearly, OpenOffice must be doing something right for Microsoft to put such a video out. Microsoft don't want OpenOffice to catch on and it is catching on.

It's not about saying your product is better, it's about making the other one look bad and Microsoft are king at that sort of horrid business strategy.

red_Marvin

October 15th, 2010, 12:02 PM

Meh. Real Men use LaTeX. (Perhaps Real Women use troff/nroff?)

NightwishFan

October 15th, 2010, 12:12 PM

He he. Attack ads are always so amusing I do not even mind them. Sometimes they even improve popularity. Negative publicity is still publicity.

Canis familiaris

October 15th, 2010, 12:18 PM

To be fair, Enterprise users rarely move from their existing production machines, particularly there is incompatibility. In fact you'll find companies hesitating to move within Office versions. Sad fact is that companies, will rather stay with the old Office 2003 and Win XP rather than Linux and OpenOffice.org 3.2.
I do feel however Open Source apps must be pushed on Schools and Universities by the education authorities, while that won't happen in the USA due to intense lobbying by MS, but certainly should happen in developing countries like India and China.

ubunterooster

October 15th, 2010, 01:19 PM

how many users?
5.

alexfish

October 15th, 2010, 01:51 PM

Edit

Negative publicity is still publicity.

>>X Factor

Another strategy MS got wrong

m4tic

October 15th, 2010, 01:57 PM

What about the time MS Office didn't have .odf support

NightwishFan

October 15th, 2010, 01:59 PM

Here is a joke ad I made in response to the vid. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1xmHia7McI

Grenage

October 15th, 2010, 02:08 PM

NightwishFan

October 15th, 2010, 02:14 PM

I use Open Office at home because it's fine for my needs; for our workplace, don't make me laugh. It's great when you want to just type a letter, or manage basic figures on a home PC, but for most large companies it is an untenable and infuriating product.

I don't doubt. However that is for the company to decide. :)

Grenage

October 15th, 2010, 02:20 PM

I don't doubt. However that is for the company to decide. :)

Absolutely; I question the competence of anyone who makes purchasing decisions based on advertising campaigns. :)

ubunterooster

October 15th, 2010, 02:22 PM

I would like to try to get another group of 4 to use OOo just to see how it goes :D

Half-Left

October 15th, 2010, 02:25 PM

I use Open Office at home because it's fine for my needs; for our workplace, don't make me laugh. It's great when you want to just type a letter, or manage basic figures on a home PC, but for most large companies it is an untenable and infuriating product.

What makes you think you're in a position to say that? And who cares about whether it's used in "large companies" that doesn't prove anything.

Grenage

October 15th, 2010, 02:29 PM

What makes you think you're in a position to say that? And who cares about whether it's used in "large companies" that doesn't prove anything.

Experience?

Are you suggesting that the Office Suite used by most mid-large companies has no impact on user-base? You seem a little naive.

zekopeko

October 15th, 2010, 02:38 PM

There's an element of cherry picked truth out there in the video. It's actually true MS Office is actually preferred by most, due to the fact that it supports the old MS Office (Pre 2007)documents which are widely used in the world.

MS released the specification to all of their Office formats some time ago. It's up to devs to implement it in their projects.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313105.aspx

Moreover the OOXML format has an insane documentation (in spite of being 'Open') and very difficult to implement for rival products.

This is pure FUD. You probably read that from some trolls. OOXML has detailed documentation that is several hundred pages (but that is IIRC with a wide margin and a big fonts on paper) long for each document format. That is considered a good thing since it minimizes mistakes that implementers can make and offers better portability between all the different Office suits.

Contrast that with ODF v1 that was chastised by FOSS devs because of lack of good documentation.

Inteface plays a part too, people prefer using what they are used to. Furthermore even being used to OpenOffice, I personally (but bitterly) find MS Office to be better.

Why bitterly? MS Office does have a better interface and that should be motivation enough to improve OO.org so it can rock!

NightwishFan

October 15th, 2010, 02:41 PM

Ribbon is... something. Not something I would ever use.

corrytonapple

October 15th, 2010, 02:43 PM

MS are not referring to individuals, they are referring to medium to large enterprises as I was referring to in my earlier posts.
OK, I have been taught.

Half-Left

October 15th, 2010, 02:43 PM

Experience?

Are you suggesting that the Office Suite used by most mid-large companies has no impact on user-base? You seem a little naive.

I didn't suggest anything other than the fact that business use a product based on many reasons. Most big business are locked into software that companies such as Microsoft provide, so switching is hard by that fact alone, not because the software isn't up to the job.

Tristam Green

October 15th, 2010, 03:00 PM

Got it covered. I just turned around and MOONED Redmond from my house. Now we just need a few million more and were good :)

Grats, you also mooned Omaha, Fargo, Boise, Seattle, Carson City, and Denver in the process.

2/3 of the nation doesn't thank you for your contribution :S

ubunterooster

October 15th, 2010, 03:03 PM

Got it covered. I just turned around and MOONED Redmond from my house. Now we just need a few million more and were good :)
MoonPi, that was not the expected reaction. LOL :lol:

alexfish

October 15th, 2010, 03:04 PM

Do you know what amazes me about Microsoft Campaigns

say , take an advertising campaign like Microsoft's windows7 ( "It was my idea" ,with a big grin )

in logical terms, If it was my idea , why the heck do i have to pay for it ?

should have been. ( "It was my idea ,,, :( ,,,)

or................(brainwashed,,, :P ,,, )

inobe

October 15th, 2010, 03:07 PM

MS released the specification to all of their Office formats some time ago. It's up to devs to implement it in their projects.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313105.aspx

now i'm hopelessly confused, it doesn't make sense unless one uses the opensuse version of openoffice.

http://en.opensuse.org/OpenOffice.org

asddf

October 15th, 2010, 03:08 PM

It's hilarious, they've even made it look like a horror movie trailer.

Grenage

October 15th, 2010, 03:17 PM

I didn't suggest anything other than the fact that business use a product based on many reasons. Most big business are locked into software that companies such as Microsoft provide, so switching is hard by that fact alone, not because the software isn't up to the job.

Most big businesses are not 'locked' into MS products, they use them by choice. Plenty of mid-sized businesses are, but it's rarely an issue for small businesses.

zekopeko

October 15th, 2010, 04:02 PM

now i'm hopelessly confused, it doesn't make sense unless one uses the opensuse version of openoffice.

http://en.opensuse.org/OpenOffice.org

You have to understand that are two versions of OO.org.

One is the Sun/Oracle one and the other is go-oo.org. They both support MS Office formats.

Now the difference is that Sun held a really tight control of what code gets in OO.org.

So all the patches that made OO.org behave nicer on Linux systems then went to go-oo.org. The version in, probably all, Linux distros is from go-oo.org and that includes the work Novell did to have more support for MS Office macros, using gstreamer for media content (gstreamer was only recently taken as the default media framework for Sun/Oracle OO.org; it was some Java framework before) and OOXML support. If you are using Ubuntu you are using go-oo.org and can open both binary MS office formats and the new OOXML.

Today go-oo.org is essentially LibreOffice.

I hope this makes it clearer.

angryfirelord

October 15th, 2010, 04:08 PM

Yes, the "realist" also invariably cheer leads for the established interest, quite predictably.
There's much more to an office suite besides typing. At my place of work, we use Access databases for some of our report generating. While it's not the best designed database in the world, it is relatively easy to use for someone who doesn't have a lot of coding experience and it does get the job done. Base at this point hasn't seemed to progress very far.

In addition, you also have macros and other automated user-designed functions that many employees use to accomplish the various tasks put upon them. Macro compatibility still remains a challenge in OO. You can't have your end-of-the-month report generator suddenly break because of an IT person's moral decision to use only FOSS. In many respects, Office still the upper hand.

Plus, you also have to factor in the employee's skill set. What is the chance that you'll get someone who's proficient in Office vs. someone who's proficient in OO?

OpenOffice might be nice for those who have few employees that don't have tons of word documents everywhere. However, for an existing infrastructure in a medium to large enterprise, dropping in OpenOffice isn't going to cut it.

inobe

October 15th, 2010, 04:11 PM

You have to understand that are two versions of OO.org.

One is the Sun/Oracle one and the other is go-oo.org. They both support MS Office formats.

Now the difference is that Sun held a really tight control of what code gets in OO.org.

So all the patches that made OO.org behave nicer on Linux systems then went to go-oo.org. The version in, probably all, Linux distros is from go-oo.org and that includes the work Novell did to have more support for MS Office macros, using gstreamer for media content (gstreamer was only recently taken as the default media framework for Sun/Oracle OO.org; it was some Java framework before) and OOXML support. If you are using Ubuntu you are using go-oo.org and can open both binary MS office formats and the new OOXML.

Today go-oo.org is essentially LibreOffice.

I hope this makes it clearer.

thanks, crystal clear

weasel fierce

October 15th, 2010, 05:05 PM

I know quite a few people that has spent well over a thousand dollars over the years upgrading each time a new version of office came out. "cost of ownership" indeed

night_fox

October 15th, 2010, 05:22 PM

That video makes me physically sick. In future, I will use it as an example whenever I explain FUD.

zekopeko

October 15th, 2010, 05:26 PM

I know quite a few people that has spent well over a thousand dollars over the years upgrading each time a new version of office came out. "cost of ownership" indeed

So what? If it does what they need it to do I see no problem with spending money on it. In the end it's up to the user to realize if it's worth it.

zekopeko

October 15th, 2010, 05:29 PM

That video makes me physically sick. In future, I will use it as an example whenever I explain FUD.

It's not FUD. It's only heavily one-sided. All of the quotes they took are sourced to real-life people.

You can look here for where the quote came: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/10/microsoft-posts-video-of-customers-criticizing-openoffice.ars

coffeecat

October 15th, 2010, 05:39 PM

Anyway, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

if i hear this quote once more i am going to eat a kitten.

Just you try it! :twisted:

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi.

weasel fierce

October 15th, 2010, 05:43 PM

So what? If it does what they need it to do I see no problem with spending money on it. In the end it's up to the user to realize if it's worth it.

When the versions have minimal improvements but file formats somehow kept changing to be incompatible, you're pretty much just getting screwed on the user end.

If the conversation at hand is "cost of ownership" and you are outright expecting your users to shell out 300 bucks every few years, you are pretty much just lying to people.

Canis familiaris

October 15th, 2010, 05:57 PM

I noticed one thing in that video is the comment about OpenOffice.org affecting students' grades because of the problems in the conversion. However is this really applicable? I thought MS Office 2010 supports ODF so students don't need to convert their reports and stuff to Microsoft formats. No?
I do remember Office 2007 did not initially support ODF and the support was added through a service pack or plugin? Someone point to me in that regard.
I guess that it was quite convenient for Microsoft on not mentioning why those reports submitted were converted on the first place. :)

Oxwivi

October 15th, 2010, 06:13 PM

Isn't specifically referring to a brand illegal?

donkyhotay

October 15th, 2010, 06:13 PM

Just you try it! :twisted:

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi.

MMM! Tasty!

weasel fierce

October 15th, 2010, 06:23 PM

Isn't specifically referring to a brand illegal?

How many millions have microsoft been fined for breaking various laws ? I dont think "legal" is a concern for them

Canis familiaris

October 15th, 2010, 06:28 PM

Isn't specifically referring to a brand illegal?
They are using actual quotes though which may act as a loophole. I am just guessing.

Frogs Hair

October 15th, 2010, 06:30 PM

Open office suits my needs for home use , at school an MS Office course is required for many study programs.

roggenschrotbrot

October 15th, 2010, 06:37 PM

It's not FUD. It's only heavily one-sided. All of the quotes they took are sourced to real-life people.

You can look here for where the quote came: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/10/microsoft-posts-video-of-customers-criticizing-openoffice.ars

though i don't understand the fuzz about this, it clearly is fud. for quite a few of these problems the problem is placed between chair and keyboard. examples:

"if an open source freeware solution breaks, who is going to fix it?"

sun?
novel?

also: open source does not equal freeware, and vice versa

i was especially having trouble with having macros not being supported enough
...riiiighht... we are talking about ms-office macros, if you need these you have to test prior to migrating; either they work, you get a replacement, or you dont switch. rtfm i'd say. on the same level i could be upset because ms-office doesn't follow my gtk-them ;)

...there was total uncertainty about the formatting of documents...
a well formatted document should not have any problems. if you don't know how to format text the right way, it's not the software that is faulty.

...and also about their inconsistency when sharing...
stupid! wordprocessor generated document formats are ment for temporary storing or direct printing. if you want to exchange or archive documents, use the portable document format, thats what it is made for. wan't to get it done right? use latex.

ive had students who turned in files that the've converted from open office with formatting problems
so whats the problem here? for exchanging documents a portable document format has to be used. if it is an it-class the teacher should be able to handle more then one file format. if it is an ms-office class, there is something really, really wrong with your curriculum - school has to teach people how to solve problems, not how to use a special tool.
ps: such teachers are the reason why you get (plain-text) .doc email-attachments and .bmp pictureposts. it is a horror how many university students, even in computer-science, think it is in any way acceptable to turn in a wordprocessor-generated document.

...

even by using real quotes this still is fud, as a lot of these quotes aren't biased but just plain stupid. they are trolls. i do agree with a few of the other points though.

i have developed migration solutions for half a dozen small to mid-size enterprises, so i know migration is not always the best option, sometimes even no option at all, but most of these problems source in a completely uneducated base-setup. this would not be a problem if they had not paid others ("administrators") to create this mess.

del_diablo

October 15th, 2010, 06:39 PM

weasel fierce

October 15th, 2010, 06:41 PM

"if an open source freeware solution breaks, who is going to fix it?"

When windows crashes, will microsoft fix it ?

zekopeko

October 15th, 2010, 06:44 PM

When windows crashes, will microsoft fix it ?

Yes they will.

Half-Left

October 15th, 2010, 06:47 PM

Yes they will.

Not if you're using some third party software or driver. The internal IT department fix most things, not Microsoft.

Glenn nl

October 15th, 2010, 06:49 PM

Thanks Microsoft.
Let´s kill OpenOffice.

roggenschrotbrot

October 15th, 2010, 06:50 PM

Just you try it! :twisted:

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi.

none left anymore :p

honestly, this got to be the most overused quote of the last decade. guess its something like godwin's law.

When the versions have minimal improvements but file formats somehow kept changing to be incompatible, you're pretty much just getting screwed on the user end.

If the conversation at hand is "cost of ownership" and you are outright expecting your users to shell out 300 bucks every few years, you are pretty much just lying to people.
true. if you want persistent files use tex/pdf. doc/odf are good for printing (awell, not good, but its the only thing they can be used for at all), but useless for exchange/archiving.

at school an MS Office course is required for many study programs.
this is the big problem imo. i had to do such a course when i started my university studies as well, to learn to "markup" my text the right way - switched back to latex right after.

these curses are ok as long as they teach how to use templates and automatic text formating the right way, but requiring a special tool to do so is plain wrong. also, if the teacher of such a curse requires .doc input, he should not be allowed to "teach" anybody.

zekopeko

October 15th, 2010, 06:55 PM

though i don't understand the fuzz about this, it clearly is fud. for quite a few of these problems the problem is placed between chair and keyboard. examples:

I think that we can safely say all of the problems are ultimately created by humans.

zekopeko

October 15th, 2010, 06:56 PM

Not if you're using some third party software or driver. The internal IT department fix most things, not Microsoft.

You seriously think that Microsoft doesn't have pull with various 3rd parties that provide drivers for Windows?

Half-Left

October 15th, 2010, 07:00 PM

You seriously think that Microsoft doesn't have pull with various 3rd parties that provide drivers for Windows?

Like any product, they won't fix third party involvement but as I said, internal IT fix these issues since that's what they're paid for.

CharlesA

October 15th, 2010, 07:05 PM

Closed for review.

CharlesA

October 15th, 2010, 07:20 PM

Thread reopened.

Stick to the CoC please.

Version Dependency

October 15th, 2010, 07:47 PM

"if an open source freeware solution breaks, who is going to fix it?"

sun?
novel?

Yea...clearly that line is especially deceitful. If you need it, Oracle does offer support (https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=ostore:product:2486168588204697::NO:RP,3:P3_LP I,P3_PROD_HIER_ID:3908448233521493514349,147554873 00180585563861) subscriptions for OpenOffice. Although, I guess the Microsoft video isn't "lying" about the lack of support if the persons in the video did not purchase a support subscription.

rjbl

October 15th, 2010, 08:00 PM

The facts would disagree with you, here is their profit in Millions over the last few years

2010 =$18,760 , 2009=$14,569 ,2008 =$17,681 , 2007 $14,065 , 2006 =$12,599

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar10/10k_fh_fin.html

Hate to disagree with a Kiwi - but you should be looking at turnover, specifically that of their software engineering divisions, and their sales volumes of OSes and OA products. Your quoted numbers, given the decline in the value of the USD over the time span, look like flat-liners.

rjbl

cprofitt

October 15th, 2010, 08:05 PM

The only truly acceptable thing to do given Microsoft's ad is to return to the original Office Suite. Word Perfect.

Spice Weasel

October 15th, 2010, 08:11 PM

The only truly acceptable thing to do given Microsoft's ad is to return to the original Office Suite. Word Perfect.

Latest versions look like Emacs for Windows. :P

CharlesA

October 15th, 2010, 08:13 PM

emacs.. *twitch*

I'll stick to vi! *hides*

Spice Weasel

October 15th, 2010, 08:14 PM

AbiWord has a vi addon! :)

CharlesA

October 15th, 2010, 08:19 PM

AbiWord has a vi addon! :)

Awesome! :)

cpmman

October 15th, 2010, 08:24 PM

The only truly acceptable thing to do given Microsoft's ad is to return to the original Office Suite. Word Perfect.

I have a working version of Wordstar on my cp/m emulator.

Cavsfan

October 15th, 2010, 08:27 PM

People in power make better liars, study shows

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35836844/ns/business-careers/

mm!

Whoda thunk? Politicians sure prove that point to the max! :P

toupeiro

October 15th, 2010, 08:42 PM

I find one thing very ironic about this video. When they complained about Macro compatibility, this is something that is HUGELY problematic in Microsoft office itself. Our organization is STILL fighting macro and formula compatibility issues from converting from v2003 to v2007 on a global scale that even hiring Microsoft directly couldn't resolve. All these things sound really good when choreographed and recorded on video, but anyone who has dealt with microsoft office complex data knows that they don't really do that much better at all than open office does at supporting their own formats.. The solution to this has nothing to do with the office suite, it has to do with fully exposed and open document frameworks and real framework standards with as much standard compliance done as reasonably possible.

Canis familiaris

October 15th, 2010, 08:44 PM

How good a job does Microsoft Office 2010 do with ODF?

alexan

October 15th, 2010, 09:01 PM

Openoffice is fine, Lotus Symphony is pretty good for usage.

Microsoft Office is perfect for viruses.

Microsoft's client are happy with their macros and antivirus which suck up 20~30% of system resource otherwise that stuff would crash their system :guitar:

Anyway: some things about msoffice

1. wouldn't (read: its different from can't') support open standards
2. you pay for what you don't get or at the last.. until it become (quickly) obsolete with the new version: then you need to pay again the update. microsoft solely choose the price: if you play nice they may agree a discount for you... or your competitors)
3. msoffice is ms-only: no escape. The best deal are made when you (as client-business man) can choose (OracleStarOffice/IBMlotusSymphony/Softmaker/GoogleDocs)
4. experts and support for msoffice come only from microsoft: people know about ms-office only what microsoft told them.
5. no one can add features to "your" ms-product: only microsoft has the keys... no matter how many software engineer you've in your offices.
(you can revert these point and see how apply to OpenOffice and/or other free Office suites)

Ehy, why don't we set up a "counter video attack" on this one?

corcomp84

October 15th, 2010, 09:09 PM

I agree, but dont stoup to there low,, just counter their claims of Open offices downfalls.. dont bash their piece of **** software because everyone knows how its expensive and worthless already..

corrytonapple

October 15th, 2010, 10:37 PM

How many millions have microsoft been fined for breaking various laws ? I dont think "legal" is a concern for them
It was on the Science channel, the show "Download: The True Story of the Internet". It is really good and shows what MS did. I think you should check it out.

JustinR

October 15th, 2010, 11:10 PM

weasel fierce

October 15th, 2010, 11:15 PM

More compatible? With what - Microsoft Office?

Office has a hard time being compatible with itself, as anyone who's attempted to open documents across versions can testify to.

Dustin2128

October 15th, 2010, 11:26 PM

MS released the specification to all of their Office formats some time ago. It's up to devs to implement it in their projects.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313105.aspx

This is pure FUD. You probably read that from some trolls. OOXML has detailed documentation that is several hundred pages (but that is IIRC with a wide margin and a big fonts on paper) long for each document format. That is considered a good thing since it minimizes mistakes that implementers can make and offers better portability between all the different Office suits.

Contrast that with ODF v1 that was chastised by FOSS devs because of lack of good documentation.

Why bitterly? MS Office does have a better interface and that should be motivation enough to improve OO.org so it can rock!
Er, I think you mean several THOUSAND pages. The OOXML format's documentation is over 6000 pages if I recall correctly. Despite disagreeing with most everything above, I could not agree more with the last bit, competition is good.

Half-Left

October 15th, 2010, 11:35 PM

The quality of Microsoft Office is not the issue here, like any product, there are good and bad points and OpenOffice should be allowed to co-exists with Office. As usual, Microsoft will try and cut off any competing product with such aggressive campaigns.

Microsoft has an immoral and anti-competitive business model and once any product like Open Office or Linux starts to take share away, they will sue.

smellyman

October 15th, 2010, 11:49 PM

You know what.... this is a terrible advertisement for MS. It may make more people try Open Office. Everybody knows about MS office, but they go on and on about a free alternative to MS Office and average users have no idea there is an alternative.

Its like free advertising for Open Office.

zekopeko

October 16th, 2010, 12:34 AM

Er, I think you mean several THOUSAND pages. The OOXML format's documentation is over 6000 pages if I recall correctly. Despite disagreeing with most everything above, I could not agree more with the last bit, competition is good.

I said it's several hundred pages per document format (so several hundred for .doc, several hundred for .ppt etc.). IIRC those 6000 thousand page are for the whole specifications printed on paper with wide margins and a pretty big font but don't quote me on that since I can't remember where I read that.

Dustin2128

October 16th, 2010, 03:12 AM

I said it's several hundred pages per document format (so several hundred for .doc, several hundred for .ppt etc.). IIRC those 6000 thousand page are for the whole specifications printed on paper with wide margins and a pretty big font but don't quote me on that since I can't remember where I read that.
yes, but the entire specification /* source for the font/margin things? */ for open document is only something like 600 pages.

jre6

October 16th, 2010, 10:21 AM

I'm not going to spend all my money on MS Office.

So:

For normal purposes I use OpenOffice.org
Otherwise, I arrange for a pirated copy with the product key.

armandh

October 16th, 2010, 11:35 AM

office has been a cash cow for MS BUT
everyone is looking to save a buck these days

my son
when faced with the cost of MS office or the few chalenges of Oo
kept the money

I would guess this is the tip of the iceburg.

the last hold up for many small businesses is
a native linux port of Quick Books

gradinaruvasile

October 16th, 2010, 12:26 PM

Hm. The very existence of this video means that Open Office is perceived by Microsoft as a threat to them (probably not a big one yet, but they try to root out the problem before it gets bigger).

I personally see OpenOffice installed on many many computers in small businesses. Most of it besides MS Office. People try it out because it is free and has no strings attached.
The problem is not right now, but in the future when some companies (small-medium mostly) might see OpenOffice a real alternative to MS Office.
Because if OpenOffice could implement a truly functional document interoperability, Microsoft would have their advantage reduced by a great margin. The format changes of MS Office come handy here - they prevent anyone implementing a good compatibility, including their own product... That has evactly the same interoperability problems between the older (up to 2003) suites and the newer (2007+) ones. Try editing a doc in 2000/2003 and 2007 see what comes out of it - after a while it will lose formatting.

Not to speak about the emergence of functional web apps like Google docs (dont jump on this, it has few features yet, but it will grow and mature no doubt) MS could lose quite some $$.
This is not the actual situation, but Microsoft has to think in perspective. Few people know what is Open Source now, so they have to be conditioned that FOSS=bad before it is too late.

nikstard

October 16th, 2010, 01:09 PM

It was on the Science channel, the show "Download: The True Story of the Internet". It is really good and shows what MS did. I think you should check it out.

Just like if the country is called "Democratic Republic of X", you can be pretty sure that it is neither democratic nor a republic, you can be pretty sure that any "The True Story of ..." is pretty much one sided and biased.

corrytonapple

October 16th, 2010, 04:04 PM

Just like if the country is called "Democratic Republic of X", you can be pretty sure that it is neither democratic nor a republic, you can be pretty sure that any "The True Story of ..." is pretty much one sided and biased.
Actually, no. They had interviews of both sides of the people who used to work for both companies. They would say one thing and the other company the opposite. It truly presents information the way it happened. That's why I say you should watch it or see if it is on Hulu or something. When you see it, you will notice there is no Bias.

:guitar:

98cwitr

October 16th, 2010, 05:17 PM

Ill admit that in a Windows environment, like when I was in grad school, OpenOffice did have formatting issues with PP 2007 and Excel. Nevertheless, I will never again go back to windows for my apps nor OS for home use.

ibuclaw

October 16th, 2010, 05:34 PM

I think the only weighty point the ad has is that OpenOffice is not "what people are used to". And with that, inertia wins again.

kaldor

October 16th, 2010, 06:01 PM

I think the only weighty point the ad has is that OpenOffice is not "what people are used to". And with that, inertia wins again.

This.

Merk42

October 16th, 2010, 06:12 PM

I think the only weighty point the ad has is that OpenOffice is not "what people are used to". And with that, inertia wins again.
Well that, and .doc compatibility.

Given Office 2007 introduced the ribbon, which was definitely not "what people are used to" yet a lot of people/businesses upgraded to it

beew

October 16th, 2010, 06:48 PM

Well that, and .doc compatibility.

Given Office 2007 introduced the ribbon, which was definitely not "what people are used to" yet a lot of people/businesses upgraded to it

.Doc compatibility falls under inertia as well. If not for inertia there is no reason why .doc should be the default standard, it is a closed format. It would be absurd if you have to pay a fee to use the metric system. Since now MS2010 is able to read open format, we should be sending out documents in open formats by default
unless there is a request for MS formats. I am already doing that except at work.

BTW, I don't know what kind of document you use. As long as there is no strange formatting or embedded mathematical formulae Open Office works fine with .doc document. If you use MSOffice for documents with math formulae then you are just a peasant anyway (no disrespect to farmers), the standard for math and science publication is Latex.

Given Office 2007 introduced the ribbon, which was definitely not "what people are used to" yet a lot of people/businesses upgraded to it
Not as many as you think considering many people/business we deal with still use MS2003 and we send all our documents in .doc,.xls formats rather than .docx, xlsx because we have had complaints about compatibility issues. Sure you can install the compatibility pluggins but that didn't exist for quite a while(and some of our clients don't even know how to install that) and it is crazy that you have to get a pluggin for the same product just because MS decides to change it formats in order to shut out competitors.

P.S. Wasn't this thread closed before?

ubunterooster

October 16th, 2010, 07:13 PM

P.S. Wasn't this thread closed before?
Twice at least

MisterGaribaldi

October 16th, 2010, 08:25 PM

For home users or businesses/organizations which have relatively limited needs, I can totally understand using OpenOffice or LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office. However...

And this coming from someone who is *not* pro-Microsoft...

Office for Windows (as opposed to Office for Mac, which has always sucked) just works. As a student, I can't imagine doing research papers without its ability to automate references, etc. Also, it actually (with 2007 anyhow) really gives decent tools for document appearance (now, whether users are inclined to make the most of them or not is another matter, of course) and OO/LO frankly have a LONG way to go in this regard.

I want F/OSS software to succeed. I really do. But I think the developers out there need to *want* to make their stuff high end and polished/commercial in nature for us to get something that's a realistic alternative. Look at Firefox, for instance. It's open source, and it's one of the single most popular web browsers out there. I prefer it to IE, Chrome (which ironically I'm using to type this), Safari, Opera, etc. A LOT of lessons can (and should) be taken from how Mozilla does things.

If OO/LO was as good as Firefox, then hands-down I'd be using it instead of Office 2007. But it isn't. What am I supposed to do, stick my head in the sand?

roggenschrotbrot

October 16th, 2010, 08:38 PM

As a student, I can't imagine doing research papers without its ability to automate references, etc.
LaTeX.

Neken

October 16th, 2010, 11:17 PM

Openoffice is fine, Lotus Symphony is pretty good for usage.
5. no one can add features to "your" ms-product: only microsoft has the keys... no matter how many software engineer you've in your offices.
(you can revert these point and see how apply to OpenOffice and/or other free Office suites)

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/7569/pluginh.jpg

Do I need to say more ?

Giant Speck

October 16th, 2010, 11:40 PM

Do I need to say more ?
Well, obviously you work for Microsoft and that's an in-house screenshot.

Obviously.

beew

October 17th, 2010, 12:01 AM

For home users or businesses/organizations which have relatively limited needs, I can totally understand using OpenOffice or LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office. However...

As a student, I can't imagine doing research papers without its ability to automate references, etc. Also, it actually (with 2007 anyhow) really gives decent tools for document appearance (now, whether users are inclined to make the most of them or not is another matter, of course) and OO/LO frankly have a LONG way to go in this regard.

Not to dismiss your pov since obviously only you know what works best for you, but I think you are generalizing a bit here.

I am working on a doctorate on math (with lots of Physics) and I never use Office for my research and as far as I know, none of my colleagues do. I also know Professors in some social science departments who have completely switched to Open Office. Now I don't know what they need in the social sciences but if it is good enough for the professors it is probably good enough for the students,--at least those who work in similar areas.

In fact I think the academia is where it is most realistic to adopt wide usage of open source software and in particular Open Office because it is where you are most likely to be free from the business culture, its inertia and brand prejudice.

zekopeko

October 17th, 2010, 12:09 AM

yes, but the entire specification /* source for the font/margin things? */ for open document is only something like 600 pages.

That the whole specification is only 600 pages should be an indicator of how complete it is/was. If you go the Wikipedia page on ODF here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODF#Criticism) you will find that a number of things where/are missing (specifically spreadsheets functionality).

Here (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%201st%20edition%20Part%204%20( PDF).zip) is the PDF that contains the bulk of those 6000 pages. It's actually pretty nicely formatted with decent spacing and what looks to me as good descriptions for the XML syntax.

I think it's better to have a well defined specification then not.

Sorry I can't find the citation for the font/margins thing. It's not even really important.

zekopeko

October 17th, 2010, 12:14 AM

4. experts and support for msoffice come only from microsoft: people know about ms-office only what microsoft told them.
5. no one can add features to "your" ms-product: only microsoft has the keys... no matter how many software engineer you've in your offices.
(you can revert these point and see how apply to OpenOffice and/or other free Office suites)

The most ironic part for these two points is that LibreOffice was created/forked specifically because Sun didn't want to accept the majority of patches from the community into OO.org and the OO.org codebase is massive which present an obstacle for coders to contribute.

Hippytaff

October 17th, 2010, 12:23 AM

alexfish

October 17th, 2010, 01:45 AM

The most ironic part for these two points is that LibreOffice was created/forked specifically because Sun didn't want to accept the majority of patches from the community into OO.org and the OO.org codebase is massive which present an obstacle for coders to contribute.

do you have a solution

Primefalcon

October 17th, 2010, 01:59 AM

do you have a solution
frankly I have both OO and MS Office 2007 installed on this Ubuntu System. Most of the differences between OO.o and MS Office are frankly cosmetic only

phrostbyte

October 17th, 2010, 02:50 AM

Who cares...the capitalists win as always...end of story...the public sector in the uk could reduce speniture by billions if it utilised open source software and payed developers to sort ict **** out...it aint gonna happen...I work in the public sector....they don't even realise theres alternative to Microsoft...let alone a brand they can 'trust'...so 'heads knocking brick wall against we are' as yoda might say

The US government is very strict about acquiring technology (or pretty much anything) from foreign companies - it is generally not allowed. Obviously Microsoft is not a foreign company, but I am surprised governments in the EU don't seem to have similar policies.

alexfish

October 17th, 2010, 02:56 AM

frankly I have both OO and MS Office 2007 installed on this Ubuntu System. Most of the differences between OO.o and MS Office are frankly cosmetic only

this not the deriving point for a solution I was looking for

I had mentioned in previous posts the benefits of integrated software and a link to a programing language

and also as to how such software can be adapted to suit the working environment, not just an office environment , where in general all they do is type letters,for me gedit would service that department,exept for pretty fonts,etc .etc

to quote:from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2007

linked to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29

Microsoft contractor Mike Gunderloy left Microsoft partially over his disagreement with the company's "sweeping land grab" including its attempt to patent the Ribbon interface. He states: "Microsoft itself represents a grave threat to the future of software development through its increasing inclination to stifle competition through legal shenanigans."[65] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2007#cite_note-64)[66] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2007#cite_note-65) He says that by leaving Microsoft, he is “no longer contributing to the eventual death of programming.”[67] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2007#cite_note-66)

So where in Linux do we have an opportunity to advance software of this nature

Austin25

October 17th, 2010, 03:55 AM

To be fair, OpenOffice is written in java. I use AbiWord for word processing, and OpenOffice for anything else.

GeeLo

October 17th, 2010, 05:16 AM

That video with all of those "quotes" that say this and that.. all of them are 100% not true.

As was said before, Microsoft is afraid and is starting their slander machine up. Just as Microsoft is losing out in the browser war to Firefox and Chrome, they are losing out in regards to OpenOffice gaining popularity in the public, private and government sectors.

If you don't mind this ad, and just want to dismiss it... without feeling just a bit outraged.. take all of your open source programs and your entire operating system, like ubuntu.. and toss them out.. just toss them all out, and then buy Windows 7 and all MS apps and the latest hardware to run it on.. and love the feeling of having a continuous light wallet, and unstable system. ](*,)

My 2 cents,
Geelo

Merk42

October 17th, 2010, 05:40 AM

That video with all of those "quotes" that say this and that.. all of them are 100% not true
Right because OpenOffice.org is perfect and it MUST be a lie by "MIKKKRO$OFT" that someone said they had a problem with it :rolleyes:

Giant Speck

October 17th, 2010, 05:49 AM

That video with all of those "quotes" that say this and that.. all of them are 100% not true.
How are anecdotes not true?

beew

October 17th, 2010, 05:57 AM

All good lies have to have a kernel of truth, that doesn't make them not lies. It all depends on how things are spun.

BenAshton24

October 17th, 2010, 06:12 AM

How are anecdotes not true?

The anecdotes might be true, in the sense that free software caused the company problems, yet at the same time entirely false due to the problems lying in other areas such as user familiarity and competent IT staff.

The main issue here is: why is there a baby crying at 1:50?

Windows Nerd

October 17th, 2010, 08:21 AM

Whilst some points featured are legitimately true concerns for users, many testimonials featured were speaking on the behalf of large groups, and the testimonials provided were from less than 20 different people. The experience is different for everyone for everything: nothing is the same to someone as it is to another.

Microsoft could have gone all out on bashing OpenOffice, but the presented a quite mannerly video and did not spend much FUD as they could. They worked with a logical argument that made me see their side of the argument to use professional document software, albeit with some inaccuracies.

kio_http

October 17th, 2010, 08:51 AM

While I agree with Ms office 2010 and its ribbon interface, .Net Office development etc is very nice, I find no reason to advertise against other products, let people chose what they want!

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 12:03 PM

Right because OpenOffice.org is perfect and it MUST be a lie by "MIKKKRO$OFT" that someone said they had a problem with it :rolleyes:

Nobody ever said OpenOffice was perfect and Office is better in many respects but like all products, you pick what's right for you.

As I said before, OpenOffice must be doing something right for Microsoft to attack it.

jrothwell97

October 17th, 2010, 12:09 PM

Right because OpenOffice.org is perfect and it MUST be a lie by "MIKKKRO$OFT" that someone said they had a problem with it :rolleyes:

This is true.

Yes, of course Microsoft put out this video because they are scared. They stand to lose revenue if people switch to OpenOffice.

Crying baby aside, however, most of the points are indeed valid. MS Office has had a lot more work put into user interface design (don't believe me? try doing a bibliography in Word 2010, then OO.o) and is also more stable. It has a document recovery system that actually works when it crashes (a far more rare occurrence than with OO.o). OOXML isn't really that bad - in many places, a longer specification is better because it is stricter and more well-defined than ODF. Of course, its backwards compatibility with previous BorgOffice releases is superb - this is, however, to be expected.

Along with this, it comes bundled with excellent documentation, OneNote (which Tomboy is not a like-for-like replacement for), superbly-designed templates, and tight integration between apps and with the host OS - without having to run all of them as one monolithic lump.

Am I saying it's perfect? No. Better than Open/LibreOffice, though? Definitely.

The trouble is, as Microsoft knows, customers will go for any old tut as long as it's priced right (in this case, free.)

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 12:29 PM

zekopeko

October 17th, 2010, 12:43 PM

Just remember MS Office can cost a £150+ for each upgrade, per computer. People seem to forget that.

For the customers Microsoft was targeting with that ad the price is maybe 1/15th of that £150+.

zekopeko

October 17th, 2010, 12:46 PM

To be fair, OpenOffice is written in java.

Most of OO.org is C++. Java is optional IIRC.

smellyman

October 17th, 2010, 01:02 PM

Just remember MS Office can cost a £150+ for each upgrade, per computer. People seem to forget that.

Also, most jobs offer training to use MS office apps, and people need training any way from version to version. A business will spend loads of money buying Office 2010 licences and will have to train their employees to use it, so it's a lie about training costs and switching time because that's part of the process, even with MS apps.

training users from one version to next is a nightmare. compatablitliy in file formats from one version to the next (are you kidding me? and ooo gets slammed for this)

All the custom macros that need to be rewritten in upgrades, changes to DMS systems etc.

document corruption is also horrible in MS office. Especially when sharing docs back and forth to clients who are using different versions. And this is their own system.

We are all willing accept that because it is Office and there is obviously no alternatives.

but it won't be changing. The investment to change is also huge and ou have to be able work with all your neighbors....

end of incoherent post....

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 01:03 PM

For the customersm Microsoft was targeting with that adm the price is maybe 1/15th of that £150+.

Businesses always get some form of rate which is cheaper than the retail but the fact remands the product doesn't cost zero like OpenOffice.

The point is, if you can get the job done with OpenOffice, the cost will be less and getting work done quicker is defined by all sorts of factors, not because MS Office is more productive.

MS Office is a good product, cannot deny that but like any product, 20 people can give you reasons why they prefer it, big deal.

alexan

October 17th, 2010, 01:10 PM

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/7569/pluginh.jpg

Do I need to say more ?

You did say nothing. Plugins have nothing to do with the product by itself.

They can be done for everything on everything.
Don't misunderstood what can be done with OpenSource (example: Google Chrome coming from konqueror/webkit/safari) to the add third party functionality (example (http://video.linux-noob.com/screenshots/ie7/ie7mess1.jpg)) :P

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 01:20 PM

And? :)

http://templates.services.openoffice.org/

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/

alexan

October 17th, 2010, 01:26 PM

And? :)

http://templates.services.openoffice.org/

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/

...and?

They can be done for everything on everything.

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 01:30 PM

And it's no big deal. OpenOffice can do tricks like that too.

pommie

October 17th, 2010, 02:00 PM

And Coke is better than Pepsi, no wait a minute, thats Ford is better than Chrysler, no thats not it, hang on a mo, lets try my farts are smellier than yours, nope thats not it............

/me staggers off mumbling incoherently towards the local loony bin to commit himself.

Its an ad for crying out loud, what do you want MS to do, knock their own product ????

Cheers David

superarthur

October 17th, 2010, 03:32 PM

I find this topic interesting, but can't be bothered to read 19 pages of posts. :P

I am just going express my viewpoint here (someone may have shared similar views already, but I haven't read through the 19 pages of posts yet)
The reason that you can't convert people to OOo in big businesses is that people don't want to change. They want everything to stay the same. It's like a common Linux vs Windows debate. Linux/OOo is not worse, it's just different, and requires time to adapt.

With that said, I also want to say that actually, I feel quite at home when I used OOo the first time. One time, I wanted to show my supervisor some data while I was in Ubuntu, and I used OOo's excel (forgot its name :P). I did it like I would in MS excel, and it worked perfectly.

It seems that people moan about macros, but aren't macros suppose to be insecure? I've heard somewhere that macros in MS office was a huge security flaw.

mrebanza

October 17th, 2010, 04:09 PM

Lotus Symphony looks promising . . . but the name Open Office just says it all . . . I really don't see people rembering Lotus Symphony or Libre Office for that matter:confused::confused:

zekopeko

October 17th, 2010, 05:13 PM

Businesses always get some form of rate which is cheaper than the retail but the fact remands the product doesn't cost zero like OpenOffice.

The point is, if you can get the job done with OpenOffice, the cost will be less and getting work done quicker is defined by all sorts of factors, not because MS Office is more productive.

MS Office is a good product, cannot deny that but like any product, 20 people can give you reasons why they prefer it, big deal.

Sorry but OO.org also doesn't cost zero. Re-training personnel applies to OO.org as does to MS Office. So the only difference you have is the cost of software itself which for the majority of MS Office users is minor.

BigSilly

October 17th, 2010, 05:59 PM

Blimey. Dunno if anyone's mentioned this here but look at the imagery they've chosen to use within that video. At around the 30 second mark (as far as I wanted to watch), there's some really suggestive Communist imagery in the background as the commentary wallops on about Open Source = bad.

Bloody hell Microsoft...

beew

October 17th, 2010, 06:05 PM

Sorry but OO.org also doesn't cost zero. Re-training personnel applies to OO.org as does to MS Office. So the only difference you have is the cost of software itself which for the majority of MS Office users is minor.

At least you don't have to retrain people when a newer version of OpenOffice (or Libreoffice as it is going to be) comes out and switch to formats that your older version cannot recognize.

Transition is always a bit costly but it is a one time thing, this is called short term pain for long term gain.

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 06:10 PM

Sorry but OO.org also doesn't cost zero. Re-training personnel applies to OO.org as does to MS Office. So the only difference you have is the cost of software itself which for the majority of MS Office users is minor.

Training people to use any software always costs money. What's new? I was referring to the cost of the software itself.

KiwiNZ

October 17th, 2010, 06:36 PM

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 06:43 PM

As MS Office is the most widely used office suite companies have a very small training requirement as staff in most cases come pre-trained. It is OO.o that is the odd one out that requires training and as such the added cost.

That's got nothing to do with OpenOffice, that's just new software in general. No matter how you put it, businesses have to train people to use MS Office in some form or other, especially 2010 and new versions which have new features they may have not learned.

KiwiNZ

October 17th, 2010, 06:53 PM

That's got nothing to do with OpenOffice, that's just new software in general. No matter how you put it, businesses have to train people to use MS Office in some form or other, especially 2010 and new versions which have new features they may have not learned.

Only if they chose to use all the new features straight of, which in most case they don't , only the power users do, and they train them selves and MS have excellent help and self paces self teaching modules. Knowledge of MS Office has become a "tool of trade" that you need to know to get jobs and to retain jobs so self training is essential. I used to add is a critical requirement when interviewing and in all Job Descriptions, therefore staff come pre-trained.

Microsoft also put out a mountain of training resources that its easy to set up low cost in house training if needed.

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 07:10 PM

Only if they chose to use all the new features straight of, which in most case they don't , only the power users do, and they train them selves and MS have excellent help and self paces self teaching modules. Knowledge of MS Office has become a "tool of trade" that you need to know to get jobs and to retain jobs so self training is essential. I used to add is a critical requirement when interviewing and in all Job Descriptions, therefore staff come pre-trained.

Microsoft also put out a mountain of training resources that its easy to set up low cost in house training if needed.

Depends on the job, but you'll find that a lot of jobs offer training and that training is needed to make you work their way with their needs, not on your own computer writing a few documents.

Just because it's the "tools of the trade" doesn't mean there is no room for other tools in your toolbox.

KiwiNZ

October 17th, 2010, 07:17 PM

Depends on the job, but you'll find that a lot of jobs offer training and that training is needed to make you work their way with their needs, not on your own computer writing a few documents.

Just because it's the "tools of the trade" doesn't mean there is no room for other tools in your toolbox.

Nothing wrong with learning OO.o at home and adding it to ones skill set. And for the average home user OO.o is all the need as they would only ever use 10% of MS Office anyway.

As I have already stated in this thread I use Lotus Symphony at home 99% , however I do have MS Office for times I need share material especially Access Databases.

HuttonIT

October 17th, 2010, 07:25 PM

Open Office works in almost exactly the same way MSO to the end user. Even my 8 year old can use MS Word at school then use OOo Writer at home with no difficulty.

Now the crunch... Many companies use templates, which have built in macros but they don't work in OOo. This is the IT guys problem they don't know how to use OOo to the same extent as MSO and could be that they are too lazy to find out.

Software, which requires the user to read the manual before use has failed from the beginning. MSS and OO both work well and the only difference for the end user is the slightly more modern look of MSS. 90% of users don't even know what a macro is so would never mean they need re-training it is the 10% who are MS Experts who make us all suffer the monopoly in the market.

In the UK I have complained to the schools because they teach kids from 5 years old to use MS products. Who will listen - no one as the schools get free software from MS and I wonder why.....?

The problem is far greater than a simple product difference or similarity the problem starts at the beginning of child education so they become brainwashed into believing that there is only one office suite resulting in the situation where MS and IT 'experts' simple continue to convince us we need them.

The imagery in the clip is very interesting as it says more about MS than it does about OOo.... Brainwashing....

Half-Left

October 17th, 2010, 07:28 PM

Can't deny you need software like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop to get a job but OpenOffice doesn't profit from being the de-facto office suit.

People forget that free software doesn't have some divine plan to be used by everyone and become the de-facto 'standard'. The fact that it's being used by millions is a great achievement and Microsoft should stop being so defensive about it.

fatality_uk

October 17th, 2010, 07:46 PM

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

Ctrl-Alt-F1

October 17th, 2010, 07:54 PM

Open Office works in almost exactly the same way MSO to the end user. Even my 8 year old can use MS Word at school then use OOo Writer at home with no difficulty.
Just because you can use OOO doesn't make it the best choice. If you're talking about basic features you could use anything. It's when you get under the hood and start using more advanced features, or not so advanced features--like styles, where OOO falls on its face.

phrostbyte

October 17th, 2010, 07:57 PM

Just because you can use OOO doesn't make it the best choice. If you're talking about basic features you could use anything. It's when you get under the hood and start using more advanced features, or not so advanced features--like styles, where OOO falls on its face.

I don't know if you ever heard of the 80/20 rule in software development. But in the case of MS Office I wouldn't be surprised if it was more like 99/1. :)

GeeLo

October 17th, 2010, 11:20 PM

Nobody ever said OpenOffice was perfect and Office is better in many respects but like all products, you pick what's right for you.

As I said before, OpenOffice most be doing something right for Microsoft to attack it.

Exactly. Thank You.

GeeLo

October 17th, 2010, 11:35 PM

After reading some member posts, it seems like some members don't have a issue with this sort of smear campaign by Microsoft. If you like to use Microsoft Office, that fine as that's your choice.. but imo this video insults a lot of good people out there that have put a considerable amount of time making Open Office as good as it is, for free, for the people. The integration and compatibility of Open Office with Microsoft Office is awesome, and even though I do not think Open Office is perfect, it is definitely is better over MS Office. One major irrefutable reason, it's free.

As for a learning curve for users, there is not any. Double clicking a existing Microsoft word file, the program opens up. edit it and save it back. The one major difference would be RDBMS as Oo 'base is different then MS access a bit. But if your working with databases in the first place, your not a new user.. and there is not that much of a learning curve.

Geelo

KiwiNZ

October 17th, 2010, 11:51 PM

I have one final comment for this thread. Many have said that the Microsoft Video was misinformation. But throughout this thread I have seen more misinformation from the Open Source supporters about MS Office than I have seen the other way. Quite ironic.

However one main observation is that there is the belief that what is easy in the singular is also easy in the Global and the just is not that case. And those with any IT Infrastructure Training and experience would/should know that and if not ,that is quite scary.

Of course Microsoft has put out some publicity concerning the benefits of MS Office over Open Office, think about it , Open Office has recently been acquired by one of its wealthy competitors it's logical to mitigate any risk.

Half-Left

October 18th, 2010, 12:04 AM

We'll see then if Oracle can push OpenOffice in to the enterprise market and make it stick, obviously Microsoft seem threatened by the thought of it.

inobe

October 18th, 2010, 12:21 AM

We'll see then if Oracle can push OpenOffice in to the enterprise market and make it stick, obviously Microsoft seem threatened by the thought of it.

i like that assumption, if we look at microsofts history it clearly shows they don't like being pushed around and hate competition.

they look at this company that's just as big and powerful, and if anyone knows about oracle they want to capitalize.

zekopeko

October 18th, 2010, 12:35 AM

zekopeko

October 18th, 2010, 12:36 AM

i like that assumption, if we look at microsofts history it clearly shows they don't like being pushed around and hate competition.

they look at this company that's just as big and powerful, and if anyone knows about oracle they want to capitalize.

Every company hates competition. Monopolies and oligopolies are the most profitable businesses and every for-profit company wants to be one or part of one.

alexfish

October 18th, 2010, 12:45 AM

Can't see anything constructive coming out of this thread

Just the same repetitive whatever this and that

only one place this thread will be heading if carries on the same course

Ctrl-Alt-F1

October 18th, 2010, 12:58 AM

I don't know if you ever heard of the 80/20 rule in software development. But in the case of MS Office I wouldn't be surprised if it was more like 99/1. :)

The few, the proud, the 1 percenters.

Can't see anything constructive coming out of this thread

Just the same repetitive whatever this and that

only one place this thread will be heading if carries on the same course

We appreciate your contribution :P

murderslastcrow

October 18th, 2010, 01:23 AM

OpenOffice.org and its derivations aren't perfect yet, especially if you expect it to handle everything available in a docx or newer Excel document. I wish it were true, but some people do some insane stuff with their documents to make things easier that don't yet translate. I hope these issues aren't too common.

But, even if you could do everything, they're right about the cost of trying new software to do the same things. It's not a cost of money, but a cost of open-mindedness. For most tasks, using OpenOffice.org instead of MS Office is the same jump into a new world as using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.

I hope that, some day soon, it will be just as acceptable to use OpenOffice.org or ODF formats as it is to use Firefox. But we need to acknowledge that, although the messages in that ad are blown out of proportion, there are issues we could solve to make OpenOffice.org/Libre-Office that much better. Hopefully Libre-Office takes that initiative to make a better Office Suite, and OOo can try to take the code back in for all the folks already used to having OOo.

GeeLo

October 18th, 2010, 01:51 AM

And how many videos are out there that smear Microsoft and their offerings? How many good people that worked on Microsoft products have been insulted?

Not the same.. those people are not programming code, fixing bugs and giving hours of support all for "free" for the greater good now are they?

I can understand some people having a difference of opinion, about what the video says about end user support ECT.

I also see that some people are saying, that Microsoft has to react to competition as they see OpenOffice is now a major threat, however that does not mean it is right, to just fire away and try to rip it apart.

The main thing here.. and that I would like you guys to at least acknowledge, these types of "promotion tactics" is a concern, not just in regards to OpenOffice, but open source software in general.

Docaltmed

October 18th, 2010, 02:06 AM

When you are running a Corporation you have commitments to the Shareholders to meet. When you are running the IT for a Corporation you have budget to operate within and SLA's to comply with. IT needs to be painless and invisible. That is what my back ground is , experience running IT units for medium to large Enterprises.

What I have tried to put forward in this thread is real life experience.

I was a journalist in the 1980s, and was one of the first employees of a newspaper that was to become the largest business-oriented computer newspapers in the world, eclipsing anything IDG ever put out.

I had the opportunity to watch first-hand the conversion of corporations to distributed computing, first as employees brought IBM PCs in the back door, then as department heads hid their purchase under the books, and finally as the IT execs were finally forced to acknowledge their existence and, while holding their noses, begin to deal with the pesky little things.

Without belittling your opinion, you sound *exactly* like those IT execs in the 1980s. Your posts are almost word-for-word the same as the quotes I scribbled in my reporters notebook at corporations from Boston to Berlin.

FOSS is going through a very similar process, but the impetus is coming from a different direction. And just as back then, the survivors will be the wise IT execs who see that the wind's direction has changed. The rest will be sleeping with the S/360.

Dr. C

October 18th, 2010, 04:40 AM

I was a journalist in the 1980s, and was one of the first employees of a newspaper that was to become the largest business-oriented computer newspapers in the world, eclipsing anything IDG ever put out.

I had the opportunity to watch first-hand the conversion of corporations to distributed computing, first as employees brought IBM PCs in the back door, then as department heads hid their purchase under the books, and finally as the IT execs were finally forced to acknowledge their existence and, while holding their noses, begin to deal with the pesky little things.

Without belittling your opinion, you sound *exactly* like those IT execs in the 1980s. Your posts are almost word-for-word the same as the quotes I scribbled in my reporters notebook at corporations from Boston to Berlin.

FOSS is going through a very similar process, but the impetus is coming from a different direction. And just as back then, the survivors will be the wise IT execs who see that the wind's direction has changed. The rest will be sleeping with the S/360.

How true. In 1980 it was IBM and the mainframe. In 2010 it is Microsoft and propriety software. Human nature just does not change.

Ahava591

October 18th, 2010, 04:53 AM

And how many videos are out there that smear Microsoft and their offerings? How many good people that worked on Microsoft products have been insulted?

I agree that there are probably many smear campaigns against Microsoft and its' products; I mean to say that there are actual smear ads, ones that distort the truth or lie. I believe there are at least as many legitimate criticisms of Microsoft and its' products.

I must sincerely doubt how good the people of Microsoft are at this point. However, you are correct in pointing out that it is rude to insult them; they are human beings. I would like to think that they are just doing their jobs, just trying to get that paycheck, working their 9 to 5 shifts to put out the product(s) that they are told to put out.

So instead of insulting the "good people of Microsoft," I will instead insult their mindless products, their mindless company policies and their mindless overlords in the boardroom.

As a home user, an end user, I have experienced difficulty when using OpenOffice to complete schoolwork when I have expected it to behave as MS Office behaves; this is my fault and there is a fault of the community in failing to provide both adequate media coverage and accessible, thorough documentation for the software. A particular problem I have had is with auto-spell features.

Also, another option would be to simply attempt to mimic MS Office more closely; I do not, however, expect this to be the case and, for reasons I will not enumerate here, am somewhat glad it is not.

I do not believe it should be an issue for administrators to deploy the software quickly and without any monetary cost. I do believe that their end-users will require approximately one to four hours of training with the software, such training including direct comparisons to the behavior of MS Office, so that said users will not need to consult documentation intermittently when they could, indeed may rather, be completing their normal work.

Ugluk

October 18th, 2010, 04:55 AM

There was no significant improvements in OO.o since its release. The LO beta 2 changed nothing, despite all 'community patches'. I can name 2 aspects where OO.o Writer loses to MS Works 2 for DOS.

The seems to be no people who are capable to make significant changes to its obsolete codebase, and all that we can expect is useless flutter to push version update.

Merk42

October 18th, 2010, 05:15 AM

Not the same.. those people are not programming code, fixing bugs and giving hours of support all for "free" for the greater good now are they?
The majority of work on OpenOffice.org was done by people that were paid.
A lot of the funding came from Oracle, Sun, and originally StarDivision.

So it's exactly the same.

ubunterooster

October 18th, 2010, 03:24 PM

Its an ad for crying out loud, what do you want MS to do, knock their own product ????Yes, actually; that would make me much happier :D

zekopeko

October 18th, 2010, 04:37 PM

Not the same.. those people are not programming code, fixing bugs and giving hours of support all for "free" for the greater good now are they?

75% of the Linux kernel is today written by paid developers. OO.org has historically been a tightly controlled Sun project with some contributions from the outside. We wouldn't have go-oo.org and LibreOffice today if that wasn't the case.

So there are more similarities then people like to admit.

zekopeko

October 18th, 2010, 04:46 PM

I agree that there are probably many smear campaigns against Microsoft and its' products; I mean to say that there are actual smear ads, ones that distort the truth or lie. I believe there are at least as many legitimate criticisms of Microsoft and its' products.

And yet this thread hardly provided any legitimate criticisms of MS and MS products. The best people came up with was that this is a crappy ad.

I must sincerely doubt how good the people of Microsoft are at this point. However, you are correct in pointing out that it is rude to insult them; they are human beings. I would like to think that they are just doing their jobs, just trying to get that paycheck, working their 9 to 5 shifts to put out the product(s) that they are told to put out.

Ha! More mindless bashing. There are 90000+ people working for MS today. That you would question the "goodness" of 90000+ people simply because they work for a company speaks volumes about your reasoning.

So instead of insulting the "good people of Microsoft," I will instead insult their mindless products, their mindless company policies and their mindless overlords in the boardroom.

"Mindless products"? Really? Only the die-hard zealots would refuse to acknowledge the merit of MS products. Simply because something is FOSS does not make the end product better.

As a home user, an end user, I have experienced difficulty when using OpenOffice to complete schoolwork when I have expected it to behave as MS Office behaves; this is my fault and there is a fault of the community in failing to provide both adequate media coverage and accessible, thorough documentation for the software. A particular problem I have had is with auto-spell features.

Also, another option would be to simply attempt to mimic MS Office more closely; I do not, however, expect this to be the case and, for reasons I will not enumerate here, am somewhat glad it is not.

If people wish for OO.org to be able to compete with MS Office on their turf it will have to mimic MS Office. But nothing is stopping them from innovating in other areas.

I do not believe it should be an issue for administrators to deploy the software quickly and without any monetary cost. I do believe that their end-users will require approximately one to four hours of training with the software, such training including direct comparisons to the behavior of MS Office, so that said users will not need to consult documentation intermittently when they could, indeed may rather, be completing their normal work.[/QUOTE]

Either way money is going to be spent.

Half-Left

October 18th, 2010, 04:56 PM

The attack is not at the people who do the work on the software here, since we know that high management level at Microsoft make the decisions. These people form the agenda to how the software will work and be marketed.

You can say the same thing about Apple software, in the fact that it's so low level, it needs to reboot the OS. Software designed like that are for a reason for lock-in, but people will say it's well integrated with the OS, which from what I've heard is not how software is supposed to be written(i.e you can integrate it well without hooking so low level into the OS itself).

mkendall

October 18th, 2010, 08:06 PM

And yet this thread hardly provided any legitimate criticisms of MS and MS products. The best people came up with was that this is a crappy ad.

I created a spreadsheet in Excel 2000. The spreadsheet contain many "tables", lists, pulldowns for verified data entry, calculations and lookups based upon entered data, and absolutely no macros. The file weighed in at over 10 MBs and took over five minutes of maxed out processing time when I shifted data or tried to save. The file was problematic when loaded into Excel 2003 and caused Excel 2007 to crash every single time.

I converted the spreadsheet to Calc 2.4 or 2.6. (I think. Definitely one of the 2.x series.) Even after adding near 50% more data and calculations, the file weighs in at under 1 MB and works perfectly in Calc 3.0 and 3.2.

There's my legitimate criticism of a MS product. It's bloated and incompatible between (costly) releases.

Jaecyn42

October 18th, 2010, 08:23 PM

And yet this thread hardly provided any legitimate criticisms of MS and MS products. The best people came up with was that this is a crappy ad.

As I stated earlier, my criticism of MS Office is that it is insanely over-priced.

No feature in the world makes an individual Spreadsheet program or Word Processor worth $75.00 (MS Office Home or Student runs about $150 retail); especially to a poor student whose school is not part of the MSDN Academic Alliance.

What's more. My school IS part of the MSDN Academic Alliance. I could buy MS Office 2010 Professional for $79.99; if I wanted it.

I don't want it.

I only need a good Word Processor and Spreadsheet program; and I'm not going to pay eighty bucks for them and a bunch of other programs I do not need or want.

There's my criticism of Microsoft Office. No word processor is worth that much. The only reason people pay that much is because many have no alternative.

KiwiNZ

October 18th, 2010, 08:31 PM

As I stated earlier, my criticism of MS Office is that it is insanely over-priced.

No feature in the world makes an individual Spreadsheet program or Word Processor worth $75.00 (MS Office Home or Student runs about $150 retail); especially to a poor student whose school is not part of the MSDN Academic Alliance.

What's more. My school IS part of the MSDN Academic Alliance. I could buy MS Office 2010 Professional for $79.99; if I wanted it.

I don't want it.

I only need a good Word Processor and Spreadsheet program; and I'm not going to pay eighty bucks for them and a bunch of other programs I do not need or want.

There's my criticism of Microsoft Office. No word processor is worth that much. The only reason people pay that much is because many have no alternative.

There is alternatives ....

Open Office
Libre Office
Think free Office
Word Perfect Suite
Lotus Symphony Suite

They select MS Office , maybe , just maybe ,,,,,,,,,, because they want to . Just like you chose not to they are exercising their freedom of choice. Freedom of choice works in both direction.

Dammit I said I wouldn't post in here again as this is going in never ending circles.

Half-Left

October 18th, 2010, 08:36 PM

Yay, our plan worked to get KiwiNZ back into the thread. :guitar: :D

Jaecyn42

October 18th, 2010, 08:38 PM

There is alternatives ....

Not when your professors demand that you use MS Office.

You either go to the campus computer lab everytime you have homework or you pay Microsoft's "Education Tax."

KiwiNZ

October 18th, 2010, 08:43 PM

If you are doing computer courses that require the MS Suite then yes , the same as if you are doing CCNA courses that require CISCO software , or Oracle Software or HP Software or IBM or Redhat .

Thus is the costs of getting degrees etc the pay back comes when you join the work force and your salary is reflected by your qualifications.

Footnote MS heavily discounts those suites for Academia.

Jaecyn42

October 18th, 2010, 08:49 PM

If you are doing computer courses that require the MS Suite then yes

I'm not.

Simple software documentation. No macros, no elaborate format, nothing special.

Just simple, 3-4 page word documents/spreadsheets with an occasional CLI screen-shot tossed in.

There's no legitimate reason why I could not do the documentations in OO. There's no legitimate reason for me to spend the greatly discounted $80 (which would buy me a lot of sorely needed groceries) on a Word Processor, Spreadsheet program and a bunch of other crap I have no use for. And there is no legitimate reason for my professors to demand we use MS Office.

Yet that's precisely the scenario I find myself in and you seem to think it's ok.

fatality_uk

October 18th, 2010, 09:10 PM

First they ignore you
then they ridicule you
then they fight you
then you win
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

whiskeylover

October 18th, 2010, 09:13 PM

I'm not.

There's no legitimate reason why I could not do the documentations in OO. There's no legitimate reason for me to spend the greatly discounted $80 (which would buy me a lot of sorely needed groceries) on a Word Processor, Spreadsheet program and a bunch of other crap I have no use for. And there is no legitimate reason for my professors to demand we use MS Office.

Just use OO. I doubt your prof will be able to tell you created a doc in OO and not in MSO.

Jaecyn42

October 18th, 2010, 09:33 PM

Just use OO. I doubt your prof will be able to tell you created a doc in OO and not in MSO.

I do and they can't tell the difference; only adding to the absolute absurdity of the situation.

All said, I find it morally unconscionable for an educational institution to "require" (read: loosely insist without any follow-up or verification) that students pay exorbitant sums of money (even at the discounted rate) for two programs whose functionality (as required for that class) is perfectly replicated in an Open Source project.

It's a freaking Pyramid scheme and nothing more.

Microsoft to Community College of Nowheresvile:

"Foist our software upon your students and we will give you free stuffs."

CCoN:

"Yes, sir!".

Student A:

"Why can't I continue to use Open Office? You opened the first project's documentation, written in OO, just fine."

Professor M:

"Microsoft has made Office 2010 available for a reduced price."

Student A:

"Reduced price and more restrictions in the EULA. Plus, I have to eat and I don't have a spare $80 lying around."

Professor M:

"Open Office doesn't support Macros."

Student A:

"We aren't using macros."

Professor M:

"...Have you seen this YouTube video about Open Office? You should really watch it."

Student A:

"I should have stuck with Liberal Arts."