MS Office vs. OpenOffice (Re: [Leaplist] microsoft / novell -- Can I get a STFU?)

[Derek Konigsberg]

See below...
On Mon, 6 Nov 2006, ray wrote:

> Derek Konigsberg wrote:
>> I hate to say it folks, but while OpenOffice *is* a suitable alternative to 
>> MS Office, it is *NOT* a suitable replacement for MS Office.
>> 
>> The moment you get outside the SOHO environment, you'll find that MS Office 
>> is a deeply entrenched de-facto standard for everything.  Whatever you 
>> choose to use yourself, you likely need 100% perfect MS Office 
>> compatability.  I'm sorry, but OpenOffice does *not* offer this.  It is 
>> good enough for the basics, and does the job in my home environment, but 
>> just isn't an acceptable substitute at work.  At work, I *need* MS Office, 
>> no ifs, ands, or buts.  (right now that means MS Office 2004 for Mac, which 
>> is a 99.9% solution given my usage needs, but even that isn't 100%)
>> 
>> At home, of course I managed to get by using OpenOffice for everything. 
>> Thats because my interoperability needs are very different.  Like I said 
>> above, OpenOffice makes a great MS Office alternative, but does not make a 
>> great MS Office replacement.
>> 
>> -Derek
>> 
> Well the only 2 real things that OO does not offer that MS Office does are 
> Outlook tie in with Exchange server, and Access.
>
> As has been discussed with Access, that is a horrid solution for a data base 
> management system for anything that is critical.  As for Outlook, well the 
> worms that run rampant via Outlook are enough to dissuade me from ever going 
> down that path unless corp. forces Exchange on me.
>
> As far as Word, Presentation, and even Frontpage are concerned, OO is very 
> viable and in most cases BETTER then the MS offer as OO 2.0 offers pure XML 
> instead of the jumbled mess that is MSXML, plus you can not beat the free 
> direct to pdf that OO offers without the $450 -$750 price tag for Adobe Pro.

Sorry if I sound a bit like BJS here, but you are missing the point.  What 
I'm saying is that while OO *is* a suitable alternative to MS Office, it 
is *NOT* a suitable replacement.  What I mean, is that while OO itself has 
enough features such that you don't really need MS Office to "get the job 
done", OO does not have the necessary compatability to "interoperate with 
MS Office users" in a non-trivial environment.

-Derek

>> 
>> On Mon, 6 Nov 2006, Chris wrote:
>> 
>>> Damien McKenna wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 11/6/06 11:09 AM, William Warren
>>>> <hescominsoon at emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> actually I don't have any clients that embed other office apps inside
>>>>> other office apps.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> You don't need to be embedding apps within each other, there are other
>>>> limitations.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> Which don't apply to 90+% of the stuff I see office used for.
>>> Honestly, when it comes to SOHO, I swear all of the documents
>>> I've seen could have been produced as effectively in RTF
>>> using Wordpad. And much of the Excel work I see is pure
>>> abuse of use of a spreadsheet as a database, which kind of
>>> needs to be discouraged anyway.
>>> 
>>>>> The only hangup is access on my clients.  Once i can get access
>>>>> compatibility then ms office is gone..:)
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> You'll never get Access compatibility.  Rewrite the apps using 
>>>> Ruby-on-Rails
>>>> or something similar.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Thank goodness I'll never got Access compatability. That's
>>> kind of like one of those relationship breakups where the
>>> other person screams, "You'll never find anyone else like me!",
>>> And you're thinking, "Gee, I sure hope not." Dunno
>>> about Ruby, but I know from experience that Python and
>>> ODBC can be your friend in that migration.
>>> 
>>> The catch is - re-writing the apps, depending on their
>>> complexity can require deep pockets. And an organization
>>> with pockets deep enough to afford that is probably also
>>> big enough to have one or two MS Office power users whose
>>> carefully crafted empires are part of the corporate infrastructure.
>>> 
>>> The best you can hope for there is to nibble around the edges
>>> of the cheese. Fortunately, those are pretty big edges, and if
>>> you play your cards right, you may even be able to seduce
>>> the MS Office "power users" over to the dark side of the force.
>>> After all, they're geeks at heart - they just don't know any
>>> better ;-)
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> 
>>> Chris
>>> 
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>
> -- 
> Raymond L. Brunkow
> 5th Degree Black Belt
> Chief Instructor & Owner
> Sun State Martial Arts
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