Microsoft puts out a video to smear OpenOffice

[phrostbyte]

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.

[CharlesA]

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]

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]

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]

Well, I'm convinced now.

[_outlawed_]

It's all about money, nothing more.

[earthpigg]

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. 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]

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

[MooPi]

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]

A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org 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.

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.