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Time:
00:00 EST/05:00 GMT | News Source:
*Linked Within Post* |
Posted By: Robert Stein |
As general manager, business strategy, for the Information Worker Group at Microsoft Corporation, Alan Yates develops and guides new business initiatives for the Office products group at Redmond. While we await the release of Microsoft Office 2007, promised to hit our shelves before the end of 2006, Yates dismisses open source rival Open Office.org 2.0 as being 10 years out of date.
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#1 By
2231 (72.66.24.229)
at
3/6/2006 12:54:53 AM
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He's a real disinterested party.
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#2 By
32313 (72.27.19.193)
at
3/6/2006 8:30:31 AM
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Its just the honest truth, Open Office.org is like Open Office97.og
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#3 By
15406 (216.191.227.68)
at
3/6/2006 8:48:05 AM
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It's also totally irrelevent. Nothing is obsolete if it still does the job you need it to do. As history has shown, MS will say & do absolutely anything to maintain its position. People are getting smarter at recognizing it for what it is though.
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#4 By
23278 (12.11.161.5)
at
3/6/2006 9:13:47 AM
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As apposed to what, Latch?
MS should come out and say that OO is just as good? Well it isn't. It might be good enough, but that all depends on the user. The last time I tried OO it wasn't good enough and I wouldn't recommend it to my family even if it was good enough for them at this time.
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#5 By
15406 (216.191.227.68)
at
3/6/2006 10:09:40 AM
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#4: MS should let their products do the talking for them. It's like negative politicking. I don't want to hear your opinion of your competitor; I want to hear what you can do for me. The funny thins is, while they're saying OOo is 10 years behind Office (which I don't believe in general), most users only use the features in Office that were there in Office 95.
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#6 By
1295 (64.207.240.90)
at
3/6/2006 10:28:04 AM
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OO is ten years behind... the argument that "to some users it is good enough" could be attributed to WordPad (which I use at home). OO is like using office 97. Most users only use features in office that were there since office 95 on a regular basis... however many of those do use some of the advanced new features from time to time (even if they don't know it), many users use the advanced features regularly, and ask any administrator which program they would rather deploy and support. Office 2003 is leaps and bounds over OO for business/home business applications. It is a small investment that provides a consistant return.
At home, MS Works will do just nicely.
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#7 By
3746 (71.19.43.237)
at
3/6/2006 10:44:04 AM
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#5 sure it is all spin but you make it sound like MS is the only company that does it. Any company that has advertising shovels this marketing BS. The smart people of the world just filter out the crap. I mean you hear the same marketing spin come out of the open source movement too. Everyone wants to show their product in the best light next to competition and the marketing reflects that.
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#8 By
7754 (216.160.8.41)
at
3/6/2006 2:06:48 PM
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I see the biggest hurdle that OO faces is file compatibility--I've said this a hundred times here, but this concept still seems lost on some. If it's not ONE HUNDRED PERCENT compatible, it simply is not worth the effort, unless you're in a completely self-contained environment. If you share documents with others, almost invariably (at this point in time) they use Word. If you need to spend 5 minutes on each document doing just a little bit of conversion clean-up work--or even 1 minute just making sure no clean-up work needs to be done--your savings on the product license will be burnt up in a flash.
Also, a lot of companies have investments in Office far beyond the functionality of the product--and Office 2007 will likely only increase those investments. Not only are there thousands of third-party commercial add-ons for Office across a broad range of industries, but most organizations create their own add-ons, such as plug-ins, macros, templates, or other customizations. And for those third-party add-ons that do exist for Office competitors, they are typically second-class status, always playing catch-up to Office in functionality and support.
The tired "most users use only 10% of Office" premise is not very well-argued. If that's the case, like Mr. Humpty and others (including myself) have pointed out, WordPad is also free and can do that 10%.
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#9 By
2459 (24.175.147.11)
at
3/6/2006 2:16:40 PM
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MS should let their products do the talking for them. It's like negative politicking. I don't want to hear your opinion of your competitor...
Isn't this a double-standard when practically everyone gunning for MS, both commercial and OSS, does what you've stated on a more frequent basis than MS?
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#10 By
15406 (216.191.227.68)
at
3/6/2006 2:45:22 PM
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#7: I'm not saying that others don't also spin things to their advantage, but in this forum we mainly talk about MS.
#8: Even MS Office isn't 100% backward compatible with itself, as has been documented numerous times over the years.
#9: Perhaps. Howeer, most of the OSS products I have been exposed to do not expend the energy with twisted comparisons to other products. They exist and you use them or you don't.
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#11 By
7754 (216.160.8.41)
at
3/6/2006 6:30:15 PM
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#10--versions 97-2003 play remarkably well with each other, and that is the vast, vast majority of what people use. Plus, if necessary, the older versions can save the file in a 100% compatible format for an older version of Word. We used to use WordPerfect--which actually has great Word compatibility, but again, not 100%. Going to Word was a business decision for us driven by our clients--great file compatibility with WordPerfect was just not great enough with any version of Word. We don't have compatibility issues anymore with any version of Word (however, we don't deal with anyone that uses version 95 or prior, so I don't have information about that).
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#12 By
23071 (222.153.81.179)
at
3/6/2006 8:39:51 PM
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RE: Latch
I don't know what you're getting at with Office, but here are some facts:
1) If you use a new feature, only found in the new version of Office, then save in an old format, then open it in an older version of Office, of course there is going to be some formatting lost! it doesn't understand a feature that according to when the software, wasn't written!
What is Microsoft supposed to do? back port major features from their new Office suite to the older version? wouldn't that kill the whole reason for an upgrade!?
2) The difference between OSS and commercial software is simple; commercial software want you to run their software so they can make money, OSS people want you to run their software to boost their ego and say, "hey, I built a widget that alot people use, obviously its a good widget.
Both parties get paid in the end, either through good old fashioned money, or qudos in the OSS community - take your pick on which one you hold to higher priority.
3) It is the media that starts up these storms between the different companies - you really think that the manager at Microsoft went out of his way to find a journalist who will write, "OpenOffice.org is 10 years behind Office!", of course not!
Both sides of the fence have better things to do than chance after attenting seeking journalists who would love to make a name for themselves by being 'the one' in IT journalism - when quite frankly, personally, I would prefer reading a persons blog - atleast it is, most of the time, devoid of mud raking and stiring.
4) As for 'users only use 10% of the features' - the same time, Microsoft has ALSO said that many users ask for features that ALREADY EXIST but can't access them - hence the reason they've given the whole interface an overhaul; to allow end users to get access to THOSE features - meaning, that will probably climb up to 20-25% now that the features can be easily accessed.
Couple that with the fact that not everyone uses the same 10/20/25% of features, one needs all those features to cover all the possible variations.
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#13 By
21055 (70.146.109.53)
at
3/7/2006 11:04:30 AM
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I will throw one more log on this fire: MS, beyond just shooting at OpenOffice, is also trying to persuade people who use Office/Word 97/2000 to upgrade by adopting an attitude of "that's so 10 years ago".
MS has a print/online campaign going on (the one with the dinosaur heads on office critters) to get people to upgrade. My comp came with a copy of Word 2000. I understand why many wouldn't see any great urgency to upgrade-no compelling reason to do so, unlike going from Win 9x to XP.
This post was edited by kyfho23 on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 at 11:07.
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#14 By
23275 (68.17.42.38)
at
3/7/2006 7:48:57 PM
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MS Office is a system and yes, it is really that much further ahead....
Native connections to collaboration and MS Sharepoint - in both directions
Native connections to Exchange and collaboration spaces beyond that
The IBF! merging existing data with Office applications [and really easily, too]
Single Click access to online meetings - Live Meeting
A rich development environment with tools embedded in the platform
Update Integration with Microsoft Updates and or WSUS
A deployment system - making it easy to roll-out
Rights Management integration
The list is really long and getting longer
If used as part of a system - MS Office simply cannot be beat at this time and the BETA for vesion 12/2007 indicates this is increasing.
MS Office is as much about "how" it is used as what it is and it is certainly far ahead of any other prodcut like it. If even a single user does not think they need it or all it can do, they just have not looked at how easy it is to leverage all it can do - even on a single box - I mean, dyn DNS and IIS for Windows XP Pro opens up a lot for even one user on one machine in what they can deliver to themselves and others.
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#15 By
16451 (67.131.75.3)
at
3/9/2006 10:35:13 AM
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#15 "I mean, dyn DNS and IIS for Windows XP Pro opens up a lot for even one user on one machine in what they can deliver to themselves and others."
How does dynamic DNS do this?
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