Slashdot Log In
MS Thinks OOo is 10 Years Behind
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Mar 06, 2006 03:37 AM
from the one-office-to-rule-them-all dept.
from the one-office-to-rule-them-all dept.
greengrass writes "In a recent interview with IT Wire, general manager of business strategy for the Information Worker Group at Microsoft, Alan Yates expressed the opinion that Open Office is at the same level that MS office was around 10 years ago. Supposedly only suitable for the single desktop, isolated user. After all, it doesn't even have an e-mail client!"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Why, I never! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why, I never! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Just you wait! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, if I were to be brutally honest, I would say that this is one area where OO.o really isn't 10 years behind MS Office, it is jam-packed with seldom used functions, that however is the price of getting involved in a tick-box war with MS Office (which open office really has to).
Parent
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
I realize that this solution probably won't fly for everyone, or even most people, but if you really want a stripped-down, quick-and-easy, useless-menu-devoid word processing experience, and you happen to be up on web standards, there isn't much you can't do with notepad.
Parent
Maybe you should try Lyx... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Maybe you should try Lyx... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
?!?!? care to elaborate? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife is an attorney, and she has to deal with documents that repeatedly go through different versions of Word: at her clients, and at the other side, and at the other side's attorneys. All these different versions of Word frequently corrupt documents so badly that Word throws up its hands and says, "I can't deal with this.". (Back and forth between '97 and 2000 or XP is particularly troublesome...)
And the fix is to run them through abiword and save as rtf!
Parent
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Informative)
I now generally use Abiword as my main WP on Linux, at least for first drafts.
Parent
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
That way, you could build a minimalist version and add the features you want, while leaving off what you don't.. It would be very usefull for secure environments too, where support for such things as macros will need to be removed.
Parent
Re:Perhaps it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, more and more apps are leaping into the same style of user interface, and they're driving me nuts.
Parent
Quick everyone (Score:5, Funny)
big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Single, isolated users. (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting that he mentions OOo as suitable for single desktop, isolated users.. Isn't that a huge part of the MS office userbase he's talking about? Email client? Outlook express is for free, isn't it?
Re:Single, isolated users. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Single, isolated users. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about the rest of the Office suite, but for Outlook, my experience is exactly the opposite. When you have a small to medium business all with computers on an active directory domain, it's nice that your email client can authenticate from your logon, and the shared calendar / contacts / etc are done nicely.
I mean, I use thunderbird, and I think office is way overpriced. But, for what it is, outlook 2003 is a pretty good business product. It's relatively secure (compared to past iterations), the shared calendar is easy to use (yes there are open source alternatives [sourceforge.net], but integration and ease of use are hard to match here), and with Small Business Server, the outlook web interface has a lot of Ajax and DHTML type features which make it look almost exactly like you're at your computer. It's very well executed.
~Will
Parent
10 years behind? Sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:10 years behind? Sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
Multi-lingual support is better, especially Chinese and such using Unicode fonts. That may well not be a critical feature for many readers here though.
Parent
Wrong (Score:5, Funny)
-clueless
Parent
Access (Score:5, Insightful)
Access seems to be a real selling point for Office to a lot of people. To a certain amount I understand why; it's incredibly easy to set up a "database-application" within hours.
From a practical, DBA perspective Access is the devil though. It's absolutely horrid as a database engine and I'd bet you that umpteen companies curse Access on a daily basis, since that "clever hack" somebody implemented 10 years ago is unreliable, crashes, is virtually impossible to maintain, corrupts the data and for some unfortunate reason it's "business critical" nowadays.
Another horror is the Access front end when it's abused by end users to connect to a real database. The queries submitted are just dreadful and I've seen numerous times ghost locks on pages, or even tables by such applications, which only could be released by rebooting the database server and that's pretty bad news in a production environment.
While MS SQL Server is a pretty fine product, Access really, really sucks shit from a database perspective.
Parent
Well, where's the alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree Access has its quirks but why isn't there a good tool for doing the same that does this properly? The answer isn't to have to submit an IT project every time, instead of Access hacks you get Excel hacks. What you need is an easy migration path from "click-and-point" development to an IT supported "real" DB application, for those that need it. Most of them you won't ever need to migrate, the trouble is the business critical ones you do.
Parent
Its all relative (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want a word processor, then you wouldn't need care alot about the last 9 years of development (Office 97 had a pretty good WP).
If you do presentations, then Office is a few years behind Keynote, at least as far as slick graphics goes (and what is presentation software for if not to look slick?)
Its about getting the base function good enough
No flight simulator either (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No flight simulator either (Score:5, Insightful)
If some programmers at Microsoft with too much free time can slip an entire fucking _flight simulator_ into a business product and get it shipped past management, how safe does that make you feel about Microsoft products in general?
Parent
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Now you've gone and done it.. (Score:5, Funny)
Not sure I understand them (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the UK, MS has been running ads with people wearing dinosaur heads making comments like:
"I'm either here for the 11:00 meeting on the 12th or the 12:00 meeting on the 11th"
- Microsoft Office has evolved. Have you?
The thing I don't understand is that all the "problems" the ads show haven't actually existed since around Office '97. A simple PDA with Outlook integration (which has existed for... oooh, some time now) would solve the problem above, for instance. The only reason I've heard anyone in business give for upgrading for years is "we're receiving a lot of email attachments in the new format".
I would argue that, this being the case, OpenOffice doesn't need to get "on a par with Office $NEXTVERSION". It just needs Office '97 equivalence and good import/export filters.
Re:Not sure I understand them (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm either here for the 11:00 meeting on the 12th or the 12:00 meeting on the 11th"
- Microsoft Office has evolved. Have you?
The thing I don't understand is that all the "problems" the ads show haven't actually existed since around Office '97.
Exactly, because it's Office '97 that new Office (what's it even called now?) is competing against. If you look at some of those adverts, it even has a dinosaur saying "We've got Office 97, is that good enough?" and the other replies "not nearly!". People have been saying for a while that MS's biggest competitor are their own old products, well now we see MS 'fessing up to that. Googling around you find bloggers and commentators annoyed and insulted by the ads. I don't think they're a great idea.
Parent
Re:Not sure I understand them (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Snarky Response (Score:5, Insightful)
"Say, haven't you been having trouble convincing people to upgrade ever sicne Office 97? Does that mean OO is just one year away from being a software package everyone will feel comfortable with and have no need of new features, right about the time you totally change the interface for the newest Office and require offices to retrain workers?"
Oh, get be back 10 years. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll take a word processor from 10 years ago any day over any new word processors, thank you very much.
Back when I first got to PC world in early 1990s, we had some great word processors that were good for word processing. You wrote stuff. If you wanted it printed, you carried it to that Mac person with who did those "DTP" things. People realized the word processors sucked at typesetting. They were tools you used to produce ASCII files with for someone else to process properly.
While modern word processors try to be the ultimate solutions to all electronic communications. Microsoft wants Office users to be able to do everything - and only succeeds at users being able to do some tasks at some level. Want to write a little bit? Can do. Want to typeset? We suck. Want to add tons of numbers up? Can do. Want to do something a bit more complex with numerical data? Not that easy or flexible, come to think of it.
I'm not saying OpenOffice.org is much closer to Microsoft's utopia though.
My point is, I've written some stuff all of my life. I can sit in front of my Commodore 64 and be productive, dammit, all I need is disk space. I don't care if Microsoft comes up with new features. Word processing was finished 10 years ago. All you stack on top of that is glitter.
The only reason I'm not going back to WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS are that I think OpenOffice.org's style-definition stuff is niftier, OpenDocument rocks when you think of the future, and thirdly, I don't think I can find an easy way to get a proper license with the means available. Plus WP's file manager UI is kind of crappy.
Here is a chance for Evolution or Thunderbird (Score:5, Interesting)
If both upped things up a notch we could be in a position by the end of the year of having not one but two enterprise level cross platform email clients, both of which would work pretty well from Open Office.
Anyway, I reckon that Microsoft have realised that Outlook is pretty superfluous for most people. Windows Vista (finally) comes with a calendar app which would be sufficient for most people. Or perhaps they haven't - Vista does seem to be lifting a lot of features from Mac OS X.
Eh (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ok. It's not as great as people say it is. Organizations that have the money for MS Office and want it, honestly, have a bit better product.
I do most of my writing in LaTeX if it requires any formatting, and coding in gedit. I use Kile, though it's buggy as it gets, just for the completion feature.
If I need a presentation, I use PowerPoint. I find the OOo presentation software to be a bit clunky. It'll open a PowerPoint presentation, but it doesn't look very good on the other side (this is stock Gentoo Linux... perhaps there are other bells and whistles).
OOo seems to run slow and with a lot of overhead. The interface is a little clunky too.
Now, I don't do much in MS office, but if I'm not using LaTeX, and have a Windows box with it installed handy, I'll usually use MS Office prior to using OOo. Usually, I'll use KWord if I need to open or write a doc. Honestly, the KDE presentation tool seems better than the OOo one, but PowerPoint still smokes those two.
ThunderBird smokes Outlook, honestly... if it's compatible with your installation (I'm thinking university Kerberos auth still doesn't work). The guy is right about the lack of email integration, but, honestly, all that ever did was irritate me. It facilitates group writing... lovely.
Most of my writing with multiple authors is handled via CVS, in LaTeX.
For spreadsheets I use gnumeric.
Plots and charts, gnuplot, which I think everyone on the planet uses.
Did I miss some crucial thing that OOo does? It's a nice product and all, but, the truth is, it doesn't match the hype. Firefox probably made a big ripple for open source apps under windows, but Firefox is an awesome browser. Firefox offers a real improvement over IE.
My Linux solution barely involves OOo. I think that I uninstalled it it a while ago so I wouldn't have to wait for Gentoo to emerge the update. I don't really think that the hype is justified, and I used StarOffice back in the day and everything. There's just, simply put, better stuff available.
Re:Eh (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Price. There's no way I'm going to shelling out £100+ for something I use occasionally.
2. Open Document Support. I am very wary about storing things in proprietary formats.
3. It's not Microsoft. Well, I am a Slashdot reader, after all
For these, I'm prepared to stick with it; as others have said it's improving fast.
Parent
Re:Eh (Score:5, Funny)
Finally! Proof of extraterrestrial life at last. What's the lag time like to your planet?
Parent
They are probably right... (Score:5, Insightful)
While MS Office is '10 years' ahead of OOo, why are you afraid to compete with it head on through Open Formats? I'm betting MS has the resources to still stay ahead for a long time in the future and pave new ways of thinking.
The real answer I guess is that they find this to big a risk for their likings...
Which share... (Score:5, Insightful)
MS WORD is like MS Outlook, it might have very useful features, but 95 % of the users do not need them. They buy a PC and Word is included, whether they need it or not. And office solutions developed for huge enterprises are probably not the best choice for private desktops.
10 years ahead. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the progress goes in wrong direction, time to change the baseline of the "progress" and move on to alternatives.
To be unpopular (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a large (85,000 people) multinational company, and we simply couldn't get by without the integrated features of Office. I spend all day editing Word docs, Excel spreadsheets and occasionally Powerpoint, and without the tight integration I'd be in a mess.
I know how much of a mess, because 10 years ago O97 didn't have the Outlook integration, and I was forced to keep multiple copies of things on disk, and the review/formatting/comments stuff was really poor.
I suspect that 90% of the folks here on
Oh, and if you are at college writing your thesis, then I highly recommend using LaTeX instead like I did. In terms of typesetting and formatting Word doesn't even come close.
OpenOffice.org (Score:5, Insightful)
MS Office is a great lumbering beast. It has too many features that ordinary users -- the ones who do document layout using rows of spaces, type out tables of contents by hand and use spreadsheets as a substitute for databases -- are almost never going to use. It needs these features, because it is closed-source software sold for profit and every new version must have something that was absent from previous versions. {Software doesn't naturally wear out like cars or VCRs or steam irons, so alternative and possibly underhand methods are required to force users to replace old software with new versions.} The proliferation of "wizards" should already be sounding an alarm bell: if a task needs a "wizard" at all, then maybe, just maybe, some part of the user interface was badly designed in the first place. But the MS Office user interface is sacrosanct: if MS change it even slightly, then the alternatives will automatically become less unattractive {learning a new UI, vs learning a new UI and paying for the experience to boot}.
If OOo is ever to do anything other than play second fiddle, then it needs to innovate -- do something Microsoft Office cannot do. If the devs are canny, they will introduce a really useful new feature which would be very difficult to implement in Microsoft Office. {Note, I am not above a little "exercise of reasonable force" in the course of achieving this}.
I also think that my abovementioned pet peeves such as spaces-based layout are holding people back in ways they will never realise -- precisely because one of the things they are holding themselves back from, is understanding what they could be achieving. There needs to be a way to tell users "there is a better way to do this" -- and to figure out what they were trying to do, and do it properly. Preferably not by Clippit saying "It looks like you are trying to
It should also be borne in mind that OOo is no longer the only alternative to MS Office. KOffice is maturing rapidly, and has the advantage of having been Free Software from Day One -- there is no legacy closed-source codebase lurking in there to spoil things. As a part of the popular KDE desktop environment, it can easily find its way into many distributions. I have high hopes and great expectations for KOffice. Gnumeric and Abiword should not be discounted either -- they really fly on modern hardware, and Abiword can still hold its own on a Pentium 133.
On generation of immigrant hates the next (Score:5, Interesting)
After a year of DisplayWrite 2 in the amber screen dark ages, virtually all my office work has been with WordPerfect. Over 10 years ago I was creating quick-and-dirty laser printed trifolds with WordPerfect containing stuff like complex, rotated clip-off forms. Virtually everything was a frame. Essentially DTP. And maintaining merges for mailing lists and formatted committee listings and the like via macros. 20 years ago, we were using delimited dbase output to WordPerfect template merges to run a summer school of over 2000 students.
To me, Word has _always_ been crap. It shows it roots as a text editor. You can say "doh" but my conception, spoiled as I was with WordPerfect, was that the program should be a swiss army knife capable of everything from DTP to a rich macro programming language.
As a clone of crap, I didn't expect much from OpenOffice.org -- and 1.0.0 would crash out fairly regularly on my linux so it fit my prejudices. But now I see my attitude was shaped by WordPerfect. Since Scribus is coming along nicely, I can use that for anything cool. Text is text. They are all good now. And Abiword usually does most of what I want if I know I'm just putting some text/columns/tables/graphics on paper.
In a sense it is karma coming back on Microsoft. I once had a guy argue with me that having fewer features was Word's strength. However, by defining word processing as something simple and distinct from DTP they lowered the bar to where open source projects could reasonably hope to compete.
Re:Gates knows best (Score:5, Interesting)
I certainly wouldn't say the UI is 10 years behind - it's probably comparable to Office XP in most areas. And of course underneath the surface some features of OO are cutting edge, such as its support for a clean open document format, cross platform capabilities, export options and more. They just have to keep working on that UI, simplifying the common tasks, working on the startup time, polishing the wizards, improving the drag / drop behaviour etc.
Parent
Re:Gates knows best (Score:5, Informative)
I think Jakub Steiner would probably take offense at this statement. I mean, the dude spent all this time designing a huge set of icons [musichall.cz] for OpenOffice. Now, why OpenOffice doesn't actually uses them, that's another story.
Parent
Re:What's the wizz-bang features it's missing? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a big thing for everyone, but essential for some.
Parent
Re:What's the wizz-bang features it's missing? (Score:5, Funny)
Feature wise I can't say that I can name a single one, but like I said, it sure feels like the software is getting better. In fact whenever I look at somebody using the old Office 2000 I shake my head at the poor soul stuggling his way through life without the newest version. After all, his software is 3 years older than mine! Some might say that its more about the features and the color scheme or layout isn't all that important; but that wouldn't be true. I know this because I see many other people just like me who have paid hundreds of dollars for an updated version, this lets me know that I made the right decision in the upgrade. Ok I better stop now, this could go on forever.
Parent
Re:They think "Free Software" is "Spyware" too (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Perhaps it's ten years (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. Unix already had a blinding mail system before Windows ever existed. Exim is an MTA, also known as an SMTP daemon, which is to say that it does exactly what sendmail does {look that up elsewhere}; but it has a slightly nicer config file syntax than sendmail {note, I am biased: sendmail's unwieldy configuration was what drove me to try exim in the first place}. Evolution can use the native unix mailbox system instead of a POP3 server {which is no more than an alternative interface to native unix mailboxes on a remote machine} and a local MTA {an SMTP server is just an SMTP server.} Exim can be configured to look up other people's POP3 servers and deliver direct to them, as though it were a real unix mail server on the internet; or funnel all your mail through one SMTP server as though it were Outlook Express. Fetchmail is a POP3 client which grabs your mail from some remote system and puts it in your mailbox on the local system, so it integrates tightly.
Parent