Before you begin
Before you commit to a migration, you need to be aware that with OpenOffice, you get what you pay for. When you buy a copy of Microsoft Office, you're buying a mature suite of many different products. Your Microsoft Office purchase also entitles you to technical support. Although OpenOffice is comparable to Microsoft Office in many ways, there are a lot of places in which it's seriously lacking. For example, technical support is pretty much limited to whatever information you can find on the Internet.
Another major limitation to OpenOffice is that, although it offers programs that compete with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, it does not offer products similar to other Microsoft Office applications. The most notable example is that there is no OpenOffice version of Microsoft Outlook. You can also forget about getting OpenOffice equivalents to Microsoft Office 2003 products such as Microsoft OneNote, Publisher, InfoPath, and Access.
I'll be the first to admit that there are decent open-source database and desktop publishing applications. The fact that OpenOffice doesn't offer such programs might not be a big deal since you can get these types of applications for free from other places. However, even if equivalencies to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were all you needed, you should still think twice before giving up Microsoft Office in favour of OpenOffice. That's because the programs that come with OpenOffice do not have as many features as their Microsoft Office counterparts.
Unless you're a power user, you may never even notice the features that are missing from OpenOffice. The majority of the missing features are things that the average user doesn't tend to use. Even so, the missing features can make converting Microsoft Office documents to OpenOffice format difficult. For example, in Microsoft Office, macros are encoded in Visual Basic Script. However, OpenOffice doesn't support Visual Basic script.
Talkback
What technical support?
Have you ever actually called Microsoft's technical support with a real-life problem?
I'll take the free support the Internet has to offer any day of the week, thank you.
So bring on OpenOffice.
Oh, and just because 5% or so of your workforce can't migrate to OpenOffice just yet that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of cost savings involved in migrating the other 95%.
Of course, you're always free to opt for the Microsoft "upgrade" way. Full scale migration project that seems to be needed every so many years if you ask me. But still, your choice.
Say, you wouldn't happen to be faced with a legal requirement to keep documents available for more then 5 years would you? If so, good luck with keeping all your previous Microsoft Office versions up and running just to stay legal.
What about the 5 year legal thing - all versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint share the same format since 1997 - that's already 7 years. And Office 97 still runs well on Windows XP - so there are no problems saving files for five years.
Yes, a Word file created in Word 2004 for the Macintosh can open flawlessly on Word 97 for Windows - how much better can you get?
It's actualy more then 5 years in most countries for various kinds of data.
Ask various large (governmental) organizations why they spend so much (tax) dollars just on keeping historical data accessable. (investigating the problems within large organizations magnifies the problems smaller organizations migth face)
Question to ask: should you allow yourself to access data with a software product that's no longer supported by its vendor? And could thus lead to various unexpected results (or the other way around, unexpected results because of the time gap between the software product used to access historical data) which you yourself may solve? How do you search in such data? How do you inventory it? How do you avoid locking yourself into a certain vendor's product range? How do you communicate (historical) data with third parties that don't use your software products? What if there are unsupported commands (like macro commands) active in the historical file? Or have external links to resources that no longer exist (or worse, have been replaced)? Etc, etc.
It's not a question of being able to open A file. The question is being able to open THE file you're looking for. While maintaining overview of possible relations with other files in the right order.
Organizations that store data in open formats (as opposed to closed formats) right from the start have less problems to deal with. And face fewer business (and legal) risks. Although that will no doubt differ from country to country and from year to year.
As such Microsoft's DRM will lead to interesting additional problems in the coming years. Just imagine loosing access to your historical data, do as Dr. Microsoft ordered. or start a mass scale migration project (there goes the elaged time saved years earlier).
Useless article. IT people who done support know better and I am sure they are having a good laugh at this article.
Obviously the author has no idea what it takes to deploy MS Office to corporate desktops. The un-informed users are left with the impression that MS tools work like magic. Far from the truth.
On the other side, the author has no clue of the many ways you can roll out OpenOffice and how to deploy a uniform profiles to all users. This article is nothing but PR stunt written by MS markting. Smart responsible IT people don't take this rubbish seriously, they find the facts for themselves. Give OpenOffice a try and see how far off this article is from the truth.
Don't forget that there are a lot of userful features in OpenOffice that doesn't exist in Microsoft Office.
E.g. export to pdf and flash, a documented xmlbased file format that makes it easy to integrate into other systems regardless if they have Microsoft origin or not. Better interoperability with enterprice level databases.
And even if you don't plan to migrate fully it is very handy to have it installed as it often opens damaged MS-Office documents that MS-Office refuses to open.
>>When you install OpenOffice, the installation program does not offer to uninstall Microsoft Office, and the installer does not attempt to configure OpenOffice based on your Microsoft Office settings.<<
Why should it? If OpenOffice tried to uninstall Microsoft Office, you'd complain about how it was trying to hijack your computer, and remove any competing software.
And what other similarly complex program tries to import settings from other competing programs? The only type I can think of are email clients and web browsers, and then, only the non-Microsoft ones.
IE doesn't import Mozilla/Netscape settings when you install it, and Outlook/OE doesn't import Eudora and Thunderbird settings when you install it. Why the heck should OpenOffice import settings from Microsoft Office?
Blah, Blah, Blah,
Personally I have used Microsoft Office Suite 2000 and I don't see a need for it compared to Open Source Office Suites. How many people actually use more than 15 percent of the functionality in MS Office Suites? Fact is how many know how to setup even a Access Database? I don't think I would miss one bit of Microsoft Outlook seeing that my habits are such that I only use a small percentage of it. Not to forget mentioning other apps are more secure then Outlook, but we won’t go there.
However Open Office meets the majority of the needs out there and the fact is if I was going to design a 4-color brochure, I definitely wouldn't use Microsoft Word, however MS Publisher is ok and PageMaker is better!
I think what I get tired of, is the complaining about products when in actuality if you look at what the needs are. I think more people are willing to try something that is going to accomplish the same thing that can save them money, time, energy and stimulate the mind.
On another note, K office in KDE is just as comparable to MS Office. K-Word is excellent and appears to be even easier than MS Word that I have used for a few years. But over the past three years I haven’t seen a single article written about K-office in KDE compared to MS Office.
In summary most people wouldn’t even miss MS Office if they were in another environment and the change might even stimulate more productivity that encourages learning then just grow in complacency and laziness.
MDW
I've been using OpenOffice M3*-M41 at work for the last three months. These are the developer downloads (before alpha). I have had no problems. Everyone but me uses MS office 2000 and xp.
This article was written by a person who does not use OpenOffice.
Granted, OpenOffice may or may not have some problems when importing MSOffice documents; but that doesn't mean it has less features! For example, while it doesn't execute VBA macros, it has it's own comparable macro language. It's obvious that every migration from a product that saves it's file in an undocumented proprietary format may cause trouble on the way. Anyway, this is the way to escape from the lock-in these undocumented proprietary formats cause. The sooner you migrate, the better.
Give me a break. Around here, 'technical support' involves questions like 'what's the name of that file I made last week' and 'where did I save my report' Good luck getting on the phone to Microsoft (or any supplier) for an answer to that one.
OO installs perfectly and runs well. On Win 98 machines I've seen crashes, but they're always related to an over-use of resources, and I get around that by putting the Resource Meter in the task bar. I tell people - if it's yellow, close some apps. If it's red, save your stuff and reboot. I should point out that it's not down to OO or Mozilla or whatever, just a general resources problem which also occurs with IE, Outlook, Office, etc.
As for real tech support, in a major company with a huge IT dept there's probably more mileage in sifting through the source code than there is sitting on the phone listening to elevator music. Hell, if they do fix a glitch they can even submit the patch.
OpenOffice.org support?
If you go to http://www.openoffice.org/
and click on the "Support" link, you will get
free and paid support resources.
In addition, has the author tried to use the "support" system in MSOffice?
It's good to do better research when venturing in writing articles.
Microsoft's support is expensive and seriously lacking in my experience. I could work as a support engineer right away. First time you get a call you answer "Did you reboot", second time they call you answer "You have to reinstall.", the third time they call you say: "It's a know problem, wait for the next SP/upgrade."
Sure, converting old documents can be a pain, but only if some fancy stuff has been used. Sorry, but do you consider fiddling around with WordArt a real business activity? Another option is not to convert at all, but use a viewer for old documents. Usually, they are not modified at all after a certain period.
What I find most disturbing is applications built using these products. Those systems (in my experience) are hardly reliable and should not be used for critical business processes. A business which really relies on those things has a serious problem. Although some scripting may be handy, large applications should not be built on this platform.
Conclusion, support is seriously overrated and can be supplied by the commercial pendant of OOo, StarOffice. Conversion is not always neccesary, more often than not painless and if it is a big problem, it was a big problem in the first place. Don't put off people by pretending there are serious theoretical problems where in practice there are only a few.
why should OpenOffice uninstall MSOfiice? can you give one good argument for that? Or it would be normal to you if you install a game to uninstall every other game on your computer?
OpenOffice's number one feature for me is the open file formats (sxw, sxc, sxi, sxd). Thanks to these XML-based open formats, I can garantee I will be able to use my documents in year 2060. No vendor lock-in. No lost information. No binary format.
When i was using MSOffice and its closed, proprietary file format, the information I was producing wasn't really mine since I was dependent to Microsoft good will just to be able to read them again.
Thanks to its openness OOo file format can be implemented in any software, for example AbiWord and KOffice can import and export it.
Microsoft could too...
Tip : rename a .sxw file to .zip, unzip it, and you have access to the content to your document with a text editor !
You were incorrect when you said there is no support for Open Office. Sun Microsystems offers free level one support for both Open Office and Star Office. I have personally used it and solved my paticular problem. Call 800-574-3572
Ms should be paying money for this type of bias comment. Shame. Just think of money without social responsibility.
My MS Office 2000 on Win 98 often freezes or is unable to read documents that it created. The solution is to edit the file in Star Office or Open Office.
When I call for support the answer is reboot, reinstall and "what was teh credit card number agtain?" MS support is totally useless. MS software is so complex and intertwined how can anyone thoroughly understand it let alone successfully fix most problems ?
Nuff said!
Basically what this "journalist" is saying is:
- stay with Microsoft, pay the hefty fees
- because you're so dumb, user!
Really this kind of *journalism* is no journalism at all.
"Better don't buy that more -economic car, because if you switch you'll have to get adjusted to that new car"
"Better don't go to the one-time pain of having your rotting and smelling tooth fixed by the dentist - because it will hurt; no, better let it rot that's better for you".
C'moooon ....
p.s. This kind of journalism fits nicely in the "Get the FUD campagin". It's so sad if you have to sell out like this...
An absolute joke of an article, this 'journalist' obviously has little to no implementation skills, ROI modelling skills, and even more importantly, un-biased journalism skills.
Wow, never before have i seen such a bias argument.
In response to the journalists comments of incompatibility issues i must point out that you get what you pay for. In this case you pay nothing but get everything with a very few minor issues. How dare the journalist complain.
The costs of implimenting MS Office on every workstation for a business would be enormous. This is true for many corporations around the world. The possibility of moving to OO would cut this expendeture entirely.
If the journalist is really that worried about incompatibility issues may i reccomend businesses changing fully over to OO with the exception of one workstation in case these monster conversion issues do happen. Then you are still saving stacks of money without the threat of the satanic business bankrupting incompatibility issues.
Microsoft OneNote doesn't come bundled with any version of Office, so why does it matter that there isn't a comparable OpenOffice product? It's only branding.
In principle OO is great, but it's just those little keyboard shortcuts that keep reminding one - it's different!
Anybody who saves their documents in a closed proprietry format will have huge problems if they try to change to a cheaper alternative. It's not the fault of Open Office!
This article is obviously written by an idiot with very little technical knowledge.
It's a year later and OpenOffice 2.0 beta has an answer to your No Access complaint. What would you say now? I am looking at OpenOffice, but I am not sure yet. Do you happen to know if there are any major issues/conflicts when running both MS Office and OpenOffice together? Thanks