[Leaplist] MS Office vs. OpenOffice -- Guys, get your *FACTS* straight (and stop marketing for Microsoft) ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

Sorry, but TheBS has gotta cut through the BS.  ;->
[ And yes, I'm YELLING because I can't stand to see these *LIES*
PROLIFERATED!!! ]


William Warren wrote:
> actually I don't have any clients that embed other office apps inside
> other office apps.  The only hangup is access on my clients.  Once i
> can get access compatibility then ms office is gone..:)

But can you get MS Access 97 "compatibility" with Access 2000?
With XP?  With 2003?

Microsoft has *NEVER* delivered solid "backward compatibility" with Access.
So WTF did you stick with Access?  Or didn't you realize that
Microsoft Access is not just Hostageware, but *ABANDONWARE*?

I really got tired of having to maintain 2 VMWare sessions just so
someone with Access XP could run an older vertical apps with Access 97
and even Access 95, respectively, and their MDACs.  Again, WTF world
do you live in?!?!?!

Stop marketing total BS for Microsoft!  This is what pisses me off
about so-called Linux "advocates."  They don't even have their facts
straight on the *TOTAL*NIGHTMARE* of Microsoft solutions.

There are _better_ solutions -- even commercial -- for Windows than Microsoft's.

> Actually my invoices were originally made inside Excel97 before i knew
> about OO.  Now that same document has been ported to OO in Office mode
> and the macros run just fine.  I even get the same warnings about it as
> i did in excel.  Now i jsut export that to pdf inside OO and send the
> pdf to my clients..:)

Well, I knew about StarOffice 3.0 because it had HTML export.
Microsoft "slapped HTML on" for MS Office 7.0 (95) and it was still
crap in 8.0 (97) years later.  It was total junk, unlike StarOffice
which did HTML 3.x very early on.

This was before Adobe Acrobat became popular.

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.

Reverse that ...

I hate to say it folks, but while MS Office *is* a suitable,
"short-term" (i.e., less than 3 years of document longevity)
alternative for OpenOffice/StarOffice, it has *NEVER* been as well
integrated, had the document longevity or the platform support of
OpenOffice/StarOffice.

MS Office is *HOSTAGEWARE*.  It does *NOT* even maintain "proprietary
standards."  Microsoft has no control whatsoever of its own,
underlying document formats.  That's why MS Office 11 (2003) XML was a
*JOKE* and 12 (2007) is getting a lot of criticism for the same reason
("show us and we'll believe you").

> The moment you get outside the SOHO environment, you'll find that MS
> Office is a deeply entrenched de-facto standard for everything.

There is *NO* "de-facto standard" in MS Office.  There is only
"de-facto *VERSION*SPECIFIC* standard."  It's the ultimate PITA to
deal with document incompatibility between MS Office versions.

Even AbiWord, Corel, OpenOffice/StarOffice and countless other
programs have to use the *MS*WORD* import for RTF, because MS Office
does _not_ export actual RTF.  (don't get me started).

Let alone let's visit the Mac!  Utter ignorance of data-alignment will
do that to a software app, let alone an entire API/development
platform like Visual Studio/Win32.  Don't believe me?  Just ask one of
Microsoft's developers who work on the MacOS X port!

It's "easy" to sent Windows to Mac, but going the other way is a PITA.
 It's better than it was pre-XP/X, but it's still not perfect.  It's
overwhelmingly an one-way street because the base Windows port is data
alignment ignorant, the latter is not.

It's the same reason why reading in OpenOffice/StarOffice is fine but
sending back is not always perfect -- much less between different
builds of MS Office itself!

> Whatever you choose to use yourself, you likely need 100% perfect MS
> Office compatability.  I'm sorry, but OpenOffice does *not* offer this.

But does MS Office?  *NO*!  Show me a version of MS Office that does!
Seriously!  You have to be running the _exact_ same version to get it,
period.

> It is good enough for the basics, and does the job in my home environment,

This is *UTTER*BS*!  I'm sick and tired of Linux advocates spewing
this non-sense!
StarOffice has been better integrated and more powerful than MS Office
since the mid-'90s, _leading_ in features, conversions, file support,
etc...

So get off this "free marketing for Microsoft" BS kick!

> 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%)

Correct.  And it used to be far worse just a few years ago.

> 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.

But does MS Office offer a solid upgrade path?  No!  That's what
Boeing and countless other Fortune 20 companies I've worked at bitch
about.  Stop telling the same song'n dance that is *NOT* technical
reality.

I'll never forget the time Microsoft's own on-site tech support at
State Farm told me to use Adobe Framemaker instead of MS Word, because
MS Office's own documentation is written in it!  And a major reason is
forward compatibility.

I *REFUSED* to use MS Word from 1998 on-ward when I lost *ALL* of my
existing MS Word 7.0 (95) templates when I was forced to upgrade to MS
Word 8.0 (97).  After 4 hours of re-creating just 1 of my technical
report templates, I had enough.


ray wrote:
> Well the only 2 real things that OO does not offer that MS Office does
> are Outlook tie in with Exchange server,

Actually, many major enterprises don't use Exchange because it is
*NOT* an enterprise scheduling system.  It's a server store that
relies on "fat client scheduling."

> and Access.

Access is typically _outlawed_ by many organizations and a _real_
client-server design is used.  Access is just too data-corrupting
happy and adding MS SQL only adds the Atomicity part of ACID, not the
rest of the CID.

Access on its own, using Jet client-side coherency, costs companies
the 2nd greatest amount of data and productivity loss per year --
second to only word processing (namely Word) formatting/re-formatting.

> 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.

Why not use Evolution to connect to Exchange?

> As far as Word, Presentation, and even Frontpage are concerned,

StarImpress kicked PowerPoint's ass over 10 years ago.  It's the main
reason I started using StarOffice 3.0 back then.  I was an Ami Pro
user (which Lotus killed, long story), and preferred 1-2-3 over Excel.
 But I always liked PowerPoint over Freelance or Harvard -- *UNTIL* I
discovered StarImpress with powerful graphics and native HTML export.

> 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,

Er, it's not "pure XML" -- it's "fully OASIS-standardized XML."  XML
is just XML.  Documenting DTDs, namespace, stylesheets and other
details that allow you to re-create the document is the difference.

The heart of Microsoft XML has been the continued requirement of the
"fat client" software.  And that continues with MS Office 12 (2007).

> plus you can not beat the free direct to pdf that OO offers without the
> $450 -$750 price tag for Adobe Pro.

Er, um, not the same dude.  Sorry.  Adobe Acrobat products are not
just an export/print utility.

But yes, it's nice to have a near-native PDF export.  Scribus is far
better though for professional publication and can import OpenDocument
XML.


Derek Konigsberg wrote:
> Sorry if I sound a bit like BJS here,

First off, it's BS, not BJS.  Don't attempt to make me respectable.

> 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.

Do differnet MS Office versions?  *NO*!

In fact, Corel PerfectOffice and Sun StarOffice have _better_ 2-3+ MS
Office version backward compatibility than MS Office itself!

How many *BILLIONS* of dollars of lost corporate investement are *YOU*
willing to see before you realize this?  Before the companies you
consult for realize this?!?!?!

Engineering companies have to maintain documentation for 10+ years,
not just the standard 3+ years of most American companies.  They
can*NOT* afford to see their documentation *LOST*.

The solution is to *STOP* upgrading MS Office, stick with an older
version, and use alternatives that not only read those old versions
*BETTER* than MS Office itself, but provide a forward path of
compatibility of their own.

Over 10 years of StarOffice compatibility here.  Over the same number
of years, MS Office has given me *UTTER*FITS* when it came to
compatibility.  So much so that after *LOSING* core info from MS Word
4.x to 7.0 (95) and then again to 8.0 (97), I finally called it quits.