| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
khelben1979
Power User
Joined: 26 Feb 2008
Posts: 54
Location: Sweden
|
 Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 9:20 am Post subject: OpenOffice VS MS Office 2008 - Who wins the battle? |
 |
|
| What do you people think? |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
AndrewZ
Moderator
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Posts: 4140
Location: Colorado, USA
|
| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 10:48 am Post subject: |
|
|
These programs and people's needs for them are too complex for a pat answer. You might as well ask which color or political party is best.
_________________
<signature>
* Did you solve your problem? Do others a favor: Post the solution
* OpenOffice.org Ninja
* BleachBit
</signature> |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
keme
Moderator
Joined: 30 Aug 2004
Posts: 2732
Location: Egersund, Norway
|
| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 1:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Is there a battle? Where? Why? What's it about? ... and where's CNN?  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
khelben1979
Power User
Joined: 26 Feb 2008
Posts: 54
Location: Sweden
|
| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 1:48 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| AndrewZ wrote: | | These programs and people's needs for them are too complex for a pat answer. You might as well ask which color or political party is best. |
Yes, but I was thinking more about comparing the speed with Open Office applications against MS Office and I was also thinking about the usability. For example, if I want a person to switch from his commercial MS Office to Open Office, what should one say in order to make Open Office a more attractive choice?
I don't have any version of MS Office myself so I am unable to make any tests myself, but I guess there should be some information about this on the net, somewhere, hmm..
Anyway, for me Open Office is the most friendly Office application I know and I don't like MS Office. I have worked professionally with MS Office 2003 and it was buggy and it wasn't fun at all, although it worked.
Last edited by khelben1979 on Mon May 19, 2008 3:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
AndrewZ
Moderator
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Posts: 4140
Location: Colorado, USA
|
| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 3:13 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I would assume a typical business person's priorities are more in an order like this:
1. Productivity
2. Return on investment
3. Compatibility and integration
4. Usability
5. Speed
| Quote: | | what should one say in order to make Open Office a more attractive choice? |
It depends a lot on the person with whom you are speaking. Each person has different needs and priorities. Here is a place to start: http://why.openoffice.org/
_________________
<signature>
* Did you solve your problem? Do others a favor: Post the solution
* OpenOffice.org Ninja
* BleachBit
</signature> |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
esperantisto
Super User
Joined: 26 Dec 2003
Posts: 772
Location: Belarus
|
| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 4:18 am Post subject: |
|
|
MS Office 2008? Do you mean that funny version for Mac with VBA support removed by Microsoft? Give me a break There's no battle, because Mac won't win ever
_________________
AOO 3.4.1, LibO 4.0 / Windows 7 & openSUSE Linux 11.3, 12.2 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Villeroy
Super User
Joined: 04 Oct 2004
Posts: 10065
Location: Germany
|
| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 5:18 am Post subject: |
|
|
There is a battle indeed. It is the battle for file formats, which may be seen as a battle for co-ownership: Whenever you save your work in a proprietary file format, you grant co-ownership to the file format's owner. New PCs come with Vista and a test version of Office2007. You create some documents and when the test version expires your files are hijacked until you buy the software. On the long run this imposes many threats ("vendor lock", losing information in the future).
In my opinion, the ODF file format, derived from StarOffice's formats, is one approach to tackle this type of problem. OOo2 was built around the ODF file format, explicitly allowing for any 3rd party software to read and write ODF documents. If there is a zip-algorithm and methods to process XML (tagged ASCII) there will be some way to read ODF documents for all future.
Well, we all know Microsoft's answer to this threat ... They do not support ODF (although it covers a sub-set of their own document features), they declare their own XML-standard by means of corruption and lies. In effect thousands of developers work on OOXML (which describes a vendor specific implementation rather than a file format) and ODF is effectively dead.
P.S. In short terms: I don't care about which office tool your prefer as long as it produces data for colaborative editing with my preferred office tool (right now and preferably 20 years in future). It's a battle for non-predominance, so to say ...
_________________
Rest in peace, oooforum.org
Get help on http://forum.openoffice.org |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ed
Super User
Joined: 28 May 2003
Posts: 1040
|
| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:38 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Villeroy wrote: | | There is a battle indeed. It is the battle for file formats, which may be seen as a battle for co-ownership: Whenever you save your work in a proprietary file format, you grant co-ownership to the file format's owner. |
The file format owner only has rights over the format specification, not over individual works created using it. The rights of any individual work reside with the creator of that work and whoever they choose to share those rights with.
| Villeroy wrote: | | New PCs come with Vista and a test version of Office2007. You create some documents and when the test version expires your files are hijacked until you buy the software. |
There is nothing to stop you from opening any files in any other program that supports whatever format the files are saved in, or on any other machine you can get access to.
Obviously if you know you will need your files after the trial ends and you don't want to buy the full version you would save in a common format that can be opened with another program. Or get rid of the trial version straight away and use another program from the start.
Also, your files are hardly "hijacked". No one else has access to your files unless you explicitly shared your files. "Hijacked" implied that someone else has control. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
