I know a lot of Windows users that are using Open Source Office

[irv]

With the price of MS Office I know a lot of Windows users that have switch to using Open Source Office products. So I am not surprised to see this in the News today.
Microsoft expected to unveil update to Office suite (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/story/2012-07-12/microsoft-office-15/56173368/1)

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I'm not surprised either.

A friend of mine finally bought a new computer. It had Windows 7; but, not much else other than the bloatware that companies put on new machines.

She told me yesterday that she found an old email I sent her with a list of all the open source or no-cost products I had installed on a computer I had loaned to her.

Rather than pay for Microsoft Office, Norton, etc., she installed that list of open source or no-cost products on it.

Now, she finally has a computer of her own that actually works for her, and she is happy that it didn't cost more than the USD $400 (EUR €328) she paid for it.

If she finds that the open source or no-cost products don't do what she needs, she is willing to pay for products that do.

[irv]

I don't know if MS will admit it, but Open Source has hurt them in the pocket book. I know that it is maybe a small amount, but every little bit hurts.
The world is changing and more and more people are seeing the light when it come to software. I don't mind paying for software, but I believe Open Source has gotten better and better and supported because of forums like this.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

...more and more people are seeing the light when it come to software...

I am not sure what you mean by "seeing the light".

Most people I know will use anything that they don't have to pay for. They don't grasp the concept of "Free, as in freedom". "Open Source" means nothing to them.

They even unknowingly download software containing malware; because, they want something the software offers that they don't have to pay for.

______________________________
Sorry for being so pessimistic.

[HermanAB]

Well, if you add the 1 billion dollar fine that Europe levied on them, then OSS really does hurt them in the pocket book...

[Dragonbite]

This article is a lot of nuthin'.

Microsoft is working on Office 15.. yeah, they've been working on that for a while.

Office is their cash-cow...

Microsoft isn't releasing details...

(Speculation) it will only work on Windows 7 & 8 ....

Really there isn't anything new in the article.

I've used LibreOffice and honestly I find MS Office more capable and easier to use.

For ease-of-use, accessibility and collaboration though, Google Docs is really good. Unfortunately the offline-docs doesn't bridge the gap enough.

MS Office, combined with Windows Live and SkyDrive, provides more options for working with Office files than Google or Open-/LibreOffice; being able to open and save cloud files using the local application without having to download-edit-upload is really handy (means I don't have to install SkyDrive or use their online applications to edit my files :) )

[forrestcupp]

I don't know if MS will admit it, but Open Source has hurt them in the pocket book. I know that it is maybe a small amount, but every little bit hurts.

I think it's even a smaller amount than what you think. The main people who are using open source apps are the ones who weren't going to spend the money on commercial products, anyway. So it's really not affecting the bottom line at all.

The truth is, if I can afford to have a working copy of MS Office, there's no way in the world I'm going to use LibreOffice or OOo. If I can't afford MS Office, I'm not a prospective customer, anyway. I even use MS Office in Ubuntu.

I will say that LibreOffice is a great alternative if you can't afford MS Office, though.

[Grenage]

There are some great alternatives, but most of them are suitable mainly for home users. In the workplace, Office decimates the competition - at least with anything that requires more than notepad-level editing.

[madjr]

too bad Dell (and others) didnt approve the idea of preloading Open/libre office into their computers (specially windows pc)...

http://www.neowin.net/news/openoffice-to-dell-pre-load-us-youll-like-us


http://www.slipperybrick.com/2007/02/dell-ideastorm-linux-operating-system/

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2009/04/an-open-letter-to-larry-ellison-about-openofficeorg.html

[irv]

Old Gray Wolf, what I meant by seeing the light was that there is more out there then MS office. There are other options. Yes, there are a lot of people who just want freebies, but that's not what I was referring to.

HermanAB, never thought about that seeing I am not from the UK. Yes any finds would hurt them.

Dragonbite you are right, the article really didn't say much, but the fact remains that office for MS is a big part of there business. They have a whole division for this product and a separate one for Windows.
Like you said MS office has some nice things going for it in the business world and private world also, but things are changing now that cloud computing is starting to take hold. I have a thread on this subject. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2008416&page=11
In order for MS office to move forward it will have to have it tie together with cloud computing, which I think they will. They already have features that work well with HTML code but it will need to go far beyond this.
But getting back on subject open source office products will also advance into the cloud, which some are doing already. And you have mention Google docs for one, but more are coming. I have started using Google docs and find it very useful for sharing files with others. In fact I have one doc out there that many update. You could call it a community document.

[Dragonbite]

There are some great alternatives, but most of them are suitable mainly for home users. In the workplace, Office decimates the competition - at least with anything that requires more than notepad-level editing.

Or collaboration with other MS Office-using documents. Our office gets a lot of back-and-forth especially regarding legal documents and most of the time the people working on them are not the tech-savvy that can easily grasp alternative suites.

I'm hoping Calligre can grow into a viable alternative if not for anything more than more comeptition:guitar:

[Dragonbite]

Like you said MS office has some nice things going for it in the business world and private world also, but things are changing now that cloud computing is starting to take hold. I have a thread on this subject. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2008416&page=11
In order for MS office to move forward it will have to have it tie together with cloud computing, which I think they will.

There are rumors of LibreOffice working on a cloud-based version (like Google Docs) which if successful can put more pressure on MS to improve their online applications (which really suck at this point, compared to Google docs).

OpenOffice used to have a plugin that allowed opening and saving Google Docs through the applications, but I haven't gotten that to work with LibreOffice.

When comparing Microsoft's and Google's office suite thrust, keep in mind that Google, starting in the web, is working "top-down" while Microsoft, whose strength is local OS and applications, is working "bottom-up". This makes direct comparison of the two difficult.

Now, LibreOffice + OwnCloud could be an even more formidable force that is free (unlike MS Office) and open source (unlike Google Docs) to boot!:popcorn:

[irv]

There are rumors of LibreOffice working on a cloud-based version (like Google Docs) which if successful can put more pressure on MS to improve their online applications (which really suck at this point, compared to Google docs).

OpenOffice used to have a plugin that allowed opening and saving Google Docs through the applications, but I haven't gotten that to work with LibreOffice.

When comparing Microsoft's and Google's office suite thrust, keep in mind that Google, starting in the web, is working "top-down" while Microsoft, whose strength is local OS and applications, is working "bottom-up". This makes direct comparison of the two difficult.

Now, LibreOffice + OwnCloud could be an even more formidable force that is free (unlike MS Office) and open source (unlike Google Docs) to boot!:popcorn:
You make some very good points with this post.

[irv]

too bad Dell (and others) didnt approve the idea of preloading Open/libre office into their computers (specially windows pc)...

http://www.neowin.net/news/openoffice-to-dell-pre-load-us-youll-like-us


http://www.slipperybrick.com/2007/02/dell-ideastorm-linux-operating-system/

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2009/04/an-open-letter-to-larry-ellison-about-openofficeorg.html

I checked out all your links in your post, one was hard to read because of the background color and the text color. Yes, it would be nice to see computer manufacturers pre-installing open source OS and apps on their products but I don't see that happening on a large scale. We could hope that it would.
If I was younger I would start my own manufacturing business doing just this. Hey maybe one of you young ones out here will take the idea and do it. Start making and selling a complete open source computer line. Go for it.

[forrestcupp]

There are rumors of LibreOffice working on a cloud-based version (like Google Docs) which if successful can put more pressure on MS to improve their online applications (which really suck at this point, compared to Google docs).

I think it would be more worth their time to put a little more effort into getting their Android version out. LibreOffice for Android would pretty much blow away anything already out there, but it seems like they're not coming along very fast with that. I would think that the trend in tablet purchases would make them want to work more on that project.

[Frogs Hair]

I think this has been posted here and it's a bit dated . I'm not taking a stance on the video ,but I think MS must be a bit concerned about open source products or thy wouldn't have put forth the effort.

http://www.wimp.com/attacksopenoffice/

[screaminj3sus]

I'd say the majority of home users that use MS office don't even use half its features, for many libreoffice is more than enough.

[nec207]

What happen to Microsoft works ? That is what they used when I was in high school and a lot home users used Microsoft works that free when you goot new computer running windows.

Most home users will not even use 40% features of office.

Also what is point of cloud computing or google doc when only one person will be working on it.

[Dragonbite]

I'd say the majority of home users that use MS office don't even use half its features, for many libreoffice is more than enough.

It doesn't matter if you use 50%, 20% or 80% so long as the program does what you want.

I moved my wife to MS Office 2010 because it did for her what she needs it to do, and Open/Libre-Office just didn't make it easy or comfortable enough.

She has been using OpenOffice for a few years but I sat her down in front of Publisher 2010 and in a few minutes she not only was doing what she wanted quickly, she was having fun doing it (where she didn't when using OpenOffice). That told me that keeping her on Open/LibreOffice was not in her best interest and so I did something about it. FOSS philosophy means nothing to her, just how to do what she wants to do.

She still prefers Thunderbird and Firefox over Outlook and IE.

[irv]

I remember Word Perfect, Star Office and many more when I first started in computing.

Now when it come to cloud word processing we are starting to see a lot of them popping up thanks to Chrome. My wife's Chromebook and the Chrome Browser have these available and more on the way. There will be more showing up for Android also.
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[azangru]

Office 15? Gee, they really take pains to avoid number 13 :D

[offgridguy]

my last computer which i bought with windows 7, was a disappointment, which resulted in ressurecting
an older acer with new hard drive and installing ubuntu 12.04. Glad I did, though still working my way
around some compatibility issues.

[forrestcupp]

It doesn't matter if you use 50%, 20% or 80% so long as the program does what you want.

Or even how you like it. I don't care if I only use 10% of the features. If I like MS Office better and have a copy of it, I'll use it over LibreOffice. I used to have a nice Gerber multi-tool that had a bunch of things in it I didn't use. But I still liked it more than a plain pocket knife.

[Petro Dawg]

I really like the open office suite, but I still think Excel is the best spread sheet with its integration of VBA (it is the one and only reason I log into the windows side of my harddrive).

I've tried using Calc/Basic as a replacement, but it's just not as easy for me to use.

However, I probably wouldn't have Office2010 on my computer at all if I couldn't get it through the university at the student's price of $10.00. Before attending school again, I just used Open Office and was happy with it (its fine if you don't need VBA).

[t0p]

I bought a new laptop with Windows 7 installed, and it didn't come with any word processor on it. No biggie for me, I'm gonna make it a dual-boot with Ubuntu, which will come with LibreOffice. But if I was gonna keep the lappy 100% Windows, I really doubt I'd pay for Office software. Libreoffice/OOo is good enough for the stuff I do (and I do a lot of writing).

Interestingly, the lappy came with Photoshop Elements 8 or 9 (my feeble brain can't recall right now). As a long-time user of Gimp, I am interested to see how PSE measures up. I like Gimp... is Photoshop Elements really better?

[smellyman]

It doesn't matter if you use 50%, 20% or 80% so long as the program does what you want.

I moved my wife to MS Office 2010 because it did for her what she needs it to do, and Open/Libre-Office just didn't make it easy or comfortable enough.

She has been using OpenOffice for a few years but I sat her down in front of Publisher 2010 and in a few minutes she not only was doing what she wanted quickly, she was having fun doing it (where she didn't when using OpenOffice). That told me that keeping her on Open/LibreOffice was not in her best interest and so I did something about it. FOSS philosophy means nothing to her, just how to do what she wants to do.

She still prefers Thunderbird and Firefox over Outlook and IE.

That's odd. Should've been using Scribus anyway

[click4851]

Love Libre Office, used it or its Open Office version for years.

[forrestcupp]

Interestingly, the lappy came with Photoshop Elements 8 or 9 (my feeble brain can't recall right now). As a long-time user of Gimp, I am interested to see how PSE measures up. I like Gimp... is Photoshop Elements really better?

Photoshop Elements is no where near as good as Gimp. It's made for the average user's most basic needs. If you're going to use Windows, you'll probably want to install the Windows version of Gimp on it.

[irv]

Office 15? Gee, they really take pains to avoid number 13 :D

Ballmer May Launch Office 2013 Beta on Monday (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Office-2013-Office-15-Windows-RT-Windows-8-Steve-Ballmer,16295.html)

[Dragonbite]

That's odd. Should've been using Scribus anyway

Scribus is like trying to use the latest Adobe Creative Suite just to remove red-eye from a photo; overkill.

Publisher, and most of Office, is more intuitive for her than L/O Office. Other than that, she would be fine with Linux (well, she hasn't seen Unity yet, but I think she would be able to catch on fairly quickly (for her)).

If I could get a fully-compatible (preferably not through WINE) version of MS Office that runs on Linux 100%, I think that would be the best solution but until then this works. Oh, and I have to test my Ubuntu 12.04 installation to see if it could connect to the wireless MFP.


Ballmer May Launch Office 2013 Beta on Monday (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Office-2013-Office-15-Windows-RT-Windows-8-Steve-Ballmer,16295.html)

Should have launched it on Friday (the 13th). Then he could have blamed superstition if it fails! :P

[forrestcupp]

Office 15? Gee, they really take pains to avoid number 13 :D

Well, actually, you're right (http://apcmag.com/microsoft_to_skip_unlucky_office_13.htm). Office 2007 was Office 12, and Office 2010 was Office 14. I guess if this one ends up being called Office 2013, they won't be able to get around it. ;)

[Dragonbite]

Well, actually, you're right (http://apcmag.com/microsoft_to_skip_unlucky_office_13.htm). Office 2007 was Office 12, and Office 2010 was Office 14. I guess if this one ends up being called Office 2013, they won't be able to get around it. ;)

Unless they can rush it out and deliver it in October (when Win8 comes out) through December! Fat chance of that happening or of them waiting until 2014.

[azangru]

Unless they can rush it out and deliver it in October (when Win8 comes out) through December!

No way they are going to call it Office 2012, that would be so retro! :P
I bet they will either switch to a different numbering system (like calling it Office 15 without even mentioning 2013) or wait till 2013 comes and then call it Office 2014 :)

[smellyman]

Scribus is like trying to use the latest Adobe Creative Suite just to remove red-eye from a photo; overkill.

Publisher, and most of Office, is more intuitive for her than L/O Office. Other than that, she would be fine with Linux (well, she hasn't seen Unity yet, but I think she would be able to catch on fairly quickly (for her)).

If I could get a fully-compatible (preferably not through WINE) version of MS Office that runs on Linux 100%, I think that would be the best solution but until then this works. Oh, and I have to test my Ubuntu 12.04 installation to see if it could connect to the wireless MFP.



Should have launched it on Friday (the 13th). Then he could have blamed superstition if it fails! :P

still very odd to use LibreOffice as an alternative to MS Publisher and not use Scribus...

[mr john]

I used it alot in work, but I was never able to really roll it out to other people in work due to the lack of a good email client and some compatibility issues. Non-power-users would've needed to be retrained saving and opening files from clients. Outlook is by far the best email client for Exchange & global address book compatibility.

[Pinoy Tux]

still very odd to use LibreOffice as an alternative to MS Publisher and not use Scribus...
I don't get it either. If the nature of her work is geared more on desktop publishing, then Scribus should have been used in the first place (which MS Publisher is the Windows' analog) and not LibreOffice Writer. A user will only get frustrated doing page layouts in Writer (or MS-Word for that matter).

Use the right tool for the job.

It just so happened that MS Publisher is part of the Microsoft Office Suite whereas LibreOffice doesn't have an equivalent for MS Publisher.

Comparing Scribus to [sic] "like trying to use the latest Adobe Creative Suite just to remove red-eye from a photo; overkill" is an over-exaggeration and just bad example to use as an analogy, TBH.

Again, use the right tool for the job:
Scribus/MS-Publisher/Adobe InDesign/Adobe PageMaker/etc. = desktop publishing/page layouts.
OO/LO-Writer/MS-Word = word processing.

Sorry if this has gone off topic. Some things have to be clarified and not be misconstrued.

[Dragonbite]

still very odd to use LibreOffice as an alternative to MS Publisher and not use Scribus...

She found Publisher way more intuitive and easier to use than Scribus, which is less intuitive and easy to use as LibreOffice.

[forrestcupp]

still very odd to use LibreOffice as an alternative to MS Publisher and not use Scribus...

If Scribus had a thousand wizards and templates to help you quickly create a lot of different things, then it might come closer to comparing to Publisher. But it has absolutely nothing in that area, which makes it a pain to use.

[irv]

Microsoft Office 2013 to include social, cloud features (http://www.washingtonpost.com/microsoft-office-13-to-include-social-cloud-features/2011/04/07/gJQAFU4PrW_page.html)


Microsoft Corp., the world’s biggest software maker, unveiled the next version of its Office software with social and cloud features that will work with touch-screen devices powered by its Windows 8 operating system.

[irv]

I could remember when I was still working in IT, my manager said this would never happen in the corp world, but can see he was wrong. This is what I am talking about:


The updated Office will save documents to Microsoft’s Internet-based cloud storage service SkyDrive, enabling access to files via tablets, computers and phones. Customers will also be able to buy the software as a subscription, which will let them use the cloud to stream applications to any Windows-based PC. Subscribers also get future upgrades automatically.

Just look at what Google is doing with Google Docs and coming out with Chrome OS and the Chromebook. And look at Android and Android is coming to a device near you.
http://www.webupd8.org/2012/07/android-x86-404-ics-rc2-released-with.html