NZ Outfit Dumps Open Office For MS Office 581
(Score.5, Interestin writes "The NZ Automobile Association has just announced that it is dropping Open Office and switching back to MS Office. According to their CIO, 'Microsoft Office is not any cheaper, but it was almost impossible to work out what open-source was actually costing because of issues such as incompatibility and training.' In addition, 'you have no idea where open-source products are going, whereas vendors like Microsoft provide a roadmap for the future.'" About 500 seats are involved. MS conceded to letting Office users run the software at home as well.
Sniff, sniff... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think MSO and OO.o are "just word processors", just stick with Wordpad. It came with Windows.
Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:5, Insightful)
He could... if WordPad, err, wasn't so incompatible with reading default MS Office - generated .doc files...
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You are wrong.
All of Windows 95/98's READMEs were in
Having used those tools... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Oh, really? Do go on about those back-end collaboration tools and the ten people in the world that use them. Unless you strictly mean Exchange, there's only a handful of people that even know what Sharepoint or any of the other even more obscure Backoffice components do. In my experience Microsoft Office primarily consists of Word and either Excel or PowerPoint (or both) for most people, with Access, FrontPage and Publisher barely registering on anyone's
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Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in other words, you've never worked inside a modern corporate office.
Users use of the suite of applications that come in Microsoft Office to do complex things, from presentations, to databases, to collaboration, to complex spreadsheets, etc etc. There's a *lot* of functionality present in OO or MS Office and it's not all trivial to use.
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I have seen a few power point presentations. They were all overblown, and everyone except the sales guys ignored them. Excel was used to make tables. No spreadsheet features used, just as a way to line things up in rows. Other than that, its all using word to write documents. Notepad would fill the same need if it allowed you to insert pictures.
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Banging together a quick presentation is pretty easy to port from Powerpoint to Impress or vice versa. However, complex presentations may not be. There's a *lot* of functionality in, say, Powerpoint that isn't going to be easy for most people to transfer directly into Impress with zero training.
The same goes for Writer, Calc, Base, etc. Expecting to simply drop users who do a lot of in-depth work with these applicati
Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's easy to bang together a quick PowerPoint presentation if you want to put some slides up for a presentation you are doing to your class. It's easy to bang together a presentation if all of the data that you need is stored in a single location, or in a single spreadsheet. On the other hand if you need to draw together data from multiple business units spread across the globe that are stored on servers spread across the globe, you might want some collaboration tools. You might want something like SharePortal and Office 2007. Your board of directors might expect to see things like trend data, and market capitalization, and ROI, and all sorts of other information that people often store in Excel, or Access or SQL, or Oracle, or whatever. You might a tool like Excel that can pull data from multiple data sources and correlate it before you dump it into something like PowerPoint to display it.
You are right when you think that the individual, specific tasks in and of themselves may not be all that complex. However tying all of those tasks together in an enterprise environment is a completely different story.
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Not quite. They are still whining about the 'change' to StarOffice from what they are used to elsewhere (be it at home, a former job, or whatever...).
If you put these same people on a Mac with Microsoft Office, how many of them do you think would still complain?
But saddest of all, is if you put a lot of these people onto the Office Suite they are whining for
Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because TFA specifically said that MS "conceded" to letting their users run office at home.
I'm not saying the points for switching back to MSO aren't potentially valid but this story reminds me of a lot of recent trends. Companies/governments only have to mention the word "Linux" or "Open Source" around MS these days and suddenly they are falling over backward to give a better deal, concede on a license issue and in general make people feel like their getting a better deal then the rest of the world. It's a great new procurement strategy:
1. "Evaluate" open source for next upgrade cycle
2. Negotiate with MS for lower license fees
3. Cite training/hidden costs as reason for giving up on Open Source
Again, not saying that some reasons for sticking with MS aren't valid but some of this is just plain gaming the system.
Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is MS offering a discount/incentive/license concession any different? Some MS sales rep had a potential sale of 500 seats, and had to sweeten the deal to get a sale. Purchasing people are always pushing for a better deal, and threatening to take their business elsewhere if they don't get it.
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And from this point, We can see how many other places have done similar things with similar results. So it is now like you telling your f
Microsoft's Home Use Program (Score:4, Informative)
There is nothing new in this.
Employees can get a licensed copy of Microsoft Office desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Visio Professional, to install and use on a home computer. The only cost to employees for the Home Use Program benefit is the cost of media (CDs), shipping, and handling. Volume Licensing: Home Use Program [microsoft.com]
Employees are encouraged to discontinue use of the software on termination of their employment, but there has never been a mechanism in place to enforce the rules.
If you work for the NHS you can order Office 2007 on-line for a S&H cost of eighteen pounds, Microsoft Home User Programme [microsoft.com]
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There are ample help files in Open Office and the system works quite well. I search the words I seek, find the "how to" on any given topic and go with it. I cannot i
Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:4, Insightful)
> as rocks. And I'm not writing flame-bait here. I dead serious about that.
By writing that you make it clear that you have never had to deal with 'normals'. Wish I worked where you work, but I don't live on a planet where everyone is computer literate[1], capable of independent learning and posseses above average intelligence and reasoning abilities. Thankfully we never allowed Microsoft in the front door though so we manage to get along with OO.o/FF/etc running on networked Linux workstations. We didn't have to deal with the whinging due an inability to deal with change but do training? What fantasy world are you living in. It can take sometimes take a week to get a new hire to learn that logging in with CAPS LOCK on won't work.
[1] I define 'computer literate' much the same way as I define 'literacy'. Literacy in the sense of the English Language means one able to read the language, speak it, reason in it and express thoughts in writing using it. Computer literacy means the ability to read and write PROGRAMS, even simple ones, understand the ideas underlying common applications i.e. understand what cut/paste DOES, not memorizing the keystroke. Know the IDEA behind a spreadsheet. Knowing every function isn't required, knowing enough to figure out the help system IS.
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My company hires a lot of people who have little to no prior experience using computers, let alone extensive experience in Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice Writer or anything else. Which means that not only do we have to bring them up to speed on the tools that they'll ne
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I do *NOT* consider myself to be anything "above average" in any capacity
I'm going to have to beg to differ. A clearly written post with four-syllable words, no spelling errors, complete sentences, and (except for unusual use of ellipses) excellent punctuation, make it clear that you are above average for Slashdot at least. Although it's not always evident from the postings here, that means you are way above the general average.
It's not politically correct to say so, but half of the population suffers
Seconded. Furthermore... (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of intelligence, when people learn how to use a tool in an adhoc manner (or even if they have training) they will fall into a habitual usage pattern, their comfort zone. They may not even be aware of features to solve problems they use inefficient methods for (page numbering, etc.) and will no
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I wholeheartedly disagree...
"The first, with Open Office, is compatibility -- sharing information with Microsoft products, both within the organisation and with external parties."
Which it does pretty decently. Compatibility with the next release of MS Office is a moot point (as I also touch on in the third section below) especially when no one knows when the next release will be out. This same compatibility is an issue with every new release of MS Office - so how is that any different? Go open an Office 2007 document in Office 2000 or Word 98 or any previous version. Sure, you can save the document in Office 2007 using an older format - but the same c
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We can use the state funds we are provided and hire trainers to show our technophobic teachers how to use Microsoft Office. We've tried for two years and can't locate anyone who will provide the same level of training for an open-source solution.
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Now, I just got that from a Google search, so I'm not sure about the quality of the videos, but it should be enough to get most "typical" users over the superficial differences between Microsoft Office and Open Office.
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That said, I find it kind of funny that a roadmap is suddenly invoked. Not that it isn't a valid point, but since when has there ever been a roadmap w/ MS Office - or rather, one that didn't include lots of potholes (e.g. incompatibilities w/ earlier versions of the same product, a HUGE spike-strip between the MS Office and MS Works lanes, etc).
Given the context, that part sounded far, far t
Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sniff, sniff... (Score:5, Informative)
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Feel free to contact the magazine's editor [fairfaxbm.co.nz] so they can fill in this gap in the article (specifically, in the third paragraph).
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wait wait (Score:5, Insightful)
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There. Feel better?
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They gave the company another 500 seats for free
Though I wonder just what this company is thinking if their idea of "maintaining" a website involves only Office and Word.
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Re:wait wait (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, I worked at a company that still thought they had home copies (big 5000 person company, big volume license deal), and they had to pay almost 10 million in fines to the SBA for their "home" copies.
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It all depends on how much clout you have with them. I work at a college, and between our employees computers, our students computers, and the many hundreds of lab computers around campuses, the multi-year contract for our site is worth millions. With money like that on the line, it's pretty e
Not trying to defend MS or anything... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:wait wait (Score:5, Insightful)
They have a few valid points but they are hard to work around.
1. OpenOffice will never be as compatible with Office as Office is.
2. If you know Office you must learn OpenOffice. Office is taught in every school I know of.
3. I still don't think Calc is even as good as Excel in Office 2000 but then I haven't really used it a lot in a long time.
4. Outlooks+Exchange are a better Enterprise calendering system than anything I have seen from FOSS.
5. Sharepoint. I haven't seen anything as easy to use from the FOSS community.
Microsoft had done some good things, give the devil his due.
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Office, Outlook, and Exchange are big reasons to not use Linux. That and frankly VisualBasic are really deal killers for a lot of places as far as Linux on the desktop.
Sharepoint and Exchange are great weapons to use to get Linux off servers.
It is a problem for Linux in that if All of your software will run on Linux there is no reason to keep Windows If you have to keep Windows then you have to keep Windows.
Re:wait wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sharepoint (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sharepoint (Score:4, Interesting)
Customizable, expandable, and portable. It can even easily be made rather secure. I've installed this combo many times and not a single dissatisfied customer.
Re: Sharepoint (Score:3, Informative)
If you use Gnome, however, any Gnome program will access WebDAV for you without having to do anything particular, because of libgnome-vfs. Just browse to dav://somewhere.net/ in Nautilus (or davs:// for HTTPS). If your DAV server supports Content-Type properly, it'll open everything in the right program (if it doesn't support Content-Type, it may or may not open in the right program, but it
Re: DAV in windows... (Score:3, Informative)
Some valid points. (Score:5, Informative)
Doug Wilson is the Chief Information Officer, The New Zealand Automobile Association Incorporated
Since then he has been the CEO of a PC company (Gateway) and APL+, a software development company that was a Provenco subsidiary. He has also had senior roles at Microsoft [tuanz.org.nz] and EDS.
Doug is currently the CIO of the NZ Automobile Association, a new role that was created last year.
Roadmap? the Japanese had a roadmap... (Score:3, Interesting)
Window 95 - the last Consumer OS before merging with NT.
Windows 95 OSR2, ditto.
Windows 98, ditto.
Windows 98 SE, ditto.
Windows ME, yeppers.
Thanks for the precision and accuracy! And for the extra dimensions in the test cases.
Sure, MS provides you a roadmap, but it's for a different city! Even they don't know where the fsck they are going. I was testing a BackOffice product back in the day. They gutted
Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, I don't see what the big deal is. Perhaps the folks that make OO.o can learn something from this and give potential customers some kind of assurance that their product will still be around/supported/updated for the foreseeable future.
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Anyway, I don't see what the big deal is. Perhaps the folks that make any given Linux distribution can learn something from this and give potential customers some kind of assurance that their product will still be around/supported/updated for the foreseeable future.
Roadmap to the future? (Score:3, Funny)
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That was both witty and insightful, my friend!!
IT team can't handle metrics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like there's a disconnect between the IT staff and the business side of the house. Any CIO worth their salt would have had before-and-after metrics to compare.
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it was almost impossible to work out what open-source was actually costing
Sounds like there's a disconnect between the IT staff and the business side of the house. Any CIO worth their salt would have had before-and-after metrics to compare.
I think that should not be overlooked.
If it was almost impossible to work out the cost, it can't be a problem with the software, but with their metrics.
And it isn't a real reason to change their packages. The issue is orthogonal to the products used.
Just because msoffice has a licensing cost, (OO does, too, zero), it doesn't mean the other costs are more easily accounted for.
Of course, in any office package change, there should be more money devoted to support, but with OO it could be easier due to licensi
no roadmap? (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps someone should send them this: Open Office Roadmap [openoffice.org]
I don't think it could be any more clear or easier to find....
Re:no roadmap? (Score:5, Informative)
With a Free Software project, anyone with some money can set part of the roadmap. Need a feature? Pay one of the developers to implement it. With a proprietary product, you need to be one of the biggest customers to have any input into the roadmap, and 500 seats doesn't cut it. Assuming they are paying $100/seat (they must be getting a fairly sizeable discount), that's $50,000, which buys a fair amount of developer time on something like OpenOffice.org.
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The `Free' in `Free Software' is quite uncorrelated to `free as in free beer' freeness.
On the other hand, it is directly related to the fact that you can pay a developer to add the feature you want.
That you find something laughable in what you quote only shows that you do not understand what you are talking about.
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Isn't obvious where MS is going though? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Where it 's heading (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do I think the exact opposite? I have more faith in ODF being supported by multiple apps, say, twenty years from now.
roadmap?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:roadmap?? (Score:5, Funny)
You can look into previous roadmaps, and measure how much they have come through in the past.
You can do the same with open source, and free software projects.
OO didn't have any issues coming through with planned features in the past.
I don't think MS had any issues with roadmaps, my Longhorn Tablet PC works great with WinFS right now.
No roadmap? (Score:2)
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/ [openoffice.org]
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"* date for creating a new code line SRC690
is not available yet (2007 ?)
* OOo 3.0 in 2007 ?"
That's what a manager loves to see.
The reality is that they have a point.
I mentioned this last time... (Score:4, Informative)
When OpenOffice can step up its interface, design, compatibility, and market share, then we might have something to talk about. But as we sit right now, Microsoft Office is the only game in town that does what it does.
It only helps Microsoft to build products on top of Office, like Sharepoint, Project, etc... because they leverage an already existing knowledge of the UI and functionality. Office 2007 is a drastic departure from prior versions, but as I have been using it since the RTM date, it's been rock solid and I'm exceptionally pleased at how much more intelligent it has gotten, in particular with Excel and figuring out what I want to do, or in Word with how I'm formatting a document.
I still am hoping for a kickass version of OpenOffice though, just so that Microsoft doesn't rest on its laurels. Office 2007 indicates that they did anything but, and the polish of that product is something that I'm very surprised by, especially by Microsoft. Kudos to them for this round.
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I say this, as a open source nerd.
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What exactly were they expecting??? (Score:2, Insightful)
MS Roadmap (Score:2, Insightful)
2. The next version is going to be much more colorful, but will need 4x the memory and CPU power. We're also planning to make a 3D graphics card mandatory.
3. Just when you got comfortable with the present version, we'll stop supporting it. We'd also deactivate it over the internet if we could get away with it.
Just becasue it's free... (Score:5, Insightful)
My employer pays something like $40/hr (I think..I'm salary). So if I spent even 10 hours getting as good with Gimp as I already am with Photoshop, then the closed-source product is cheaper. But I do use all open source at home when time is less important than money.
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It would be... until CS4 comes out.
Both Photoshop and GIMP's next respective iterations will likely cost just as much as the current ones. In P-Shop's case, it may be more.
You mean MS Office is generally better than OO? (Score:5, Informative)
I like Openoffice, and I appreciate everything they're doing.
On the other hand, if I could buy MS Office for Linux, I would. It really is just better.
For all that OO tries, it just isn't as compatible with MS Office formats as it needs to be for me to use it. I always have formatting errors with word documents, sometimes I have entire excel spreadsheets that are useless, and I just can't have that.
I have MS office on my powerbook, and I use that for the documents that OO can't handle. I produce the vast majority of documents on there too. If I had Office on Linux, I would use it instead, but I don't.
Re:You mean MS Office is generally better than OO? (Score:4, Insightful)
As for OpenOffice's compatibility with Office, it really comes into its own when Office is incapable of opening an Office file. It does happen. And in that case, OpenOffice will frequently be able to come to the rescue.
I'm sure it's much more preferable to be on the office treadmill, where you're eventually forced to upgrade by being sent files from the newer version.
I find it amusing how there is this attitude that OpenOffice sucks because it can't always perfectly handle a closed proprietary format, but how the situation that people are being locked into that format is somehow perfectly acceptable. Despite all its flaws. I can't help but stifle a laugh when I hear about the perfection of MS Office. The suite has so many problems, I truly do not know where to begin. It's merely entrenched, highly overrated and as buggy as hell.
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You see compatibility from a technical point of view, where OpenOffice surely does a better job opening Office documents than Office does opening OpenOffice documents.
People who use Office as a tool for business see compatibility from a social point of view. Office can open 99.99% of documents that are sent to them. Open Office can only open 90%. And that's really the end of the story.
no idea where open-source products are going... (Score:4, Insightful)
May I point out (Score:5, Funny)
*Version +1. Just like the current version, but with slightly more features and shiny icons!
*As above.
What are they worried about? That the OpenOffice roadmap might include:
*Given up on office suite. This version is a badger tracking application. Enjoy!
Familarity... (Score:2)
Different/Better/Worse? (Score:2, Insightful)
Open Office isn't as good because it doesn't do [something] the way MS Office does it
or
OO isn't as good because it won't render MS Office stuff properly.
Now, I have no real preference for either (I have both on my Machine, since the other half needs MS Office to be compatible with a course she's doing, and I had OO originally cause it was free...)
But why are these things that make *Open Office* 'worse'?
Why are there never winges about 'MS
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Brilliant! (Score:3, Insightful)
*They weren't sure if it was cheaper or not, so they bought MS Office (again), which guarantees that OOo was cheaper.
*MS told them some stories about future plans that MS may or may not do with MS Office, and OOo didn't.
*Someone wanted to use Word and Sharepoint as a CMS for their website.
*They didn't actually switch 100% to OOo, so there were occasional internal compatibility issues between OOo users and MS Office users. It would also seem that some employees were sending ODF docs to the outside world, and people didn't know what they were.
So, basically, this organization switched back to MS Office because of some formatting issues with MS' undocumented file formats, some features that aren't actually available yet in MS Office looked interesting, and improper use of OOo by employees.
I've heard a lot of reasons to use MS Office instead of OOo, but this looks to be a pretty sorry collection of excuses. So far, the only two that come up in my line of work are lack of training, and poor VBA support. There isn't really any way around the VBA problems at the moment, either.
Honestly, Both of Them Kind of Suck (Score:3, Insightful)
Important data tends to be stored in other systems anyway. You probably have a financial system where stuff like payroll data gets stored. I'm seeing more use of wikis for shared documents and that sucks a lot less than passing a word document around like a bong. The MS Office calendar and sending meeting invites is perhaps its strongest capability but even that isn't anything that a company like Google couldn't duplicate easily enough. Perhaps they'd find they'd get more work done if they jettisoned both MS Office AND Open Office and rolled some of their own well integrated tools if there were any gaps left (I doubt there would be, though.)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing more to say after this: (Score:5, Insightful)
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SharePoint is primarily for intranets and extranets, where the content consists mostly of Word/Excel/PowerPoint files. Using Word to edit this "website" is precisely what you're supposed to do with it.
.DOCX. XLSX, and PPTX files (Score:3, Interesting)
My observation is this is an insanely major hurdle for OpenOffice. And even a major factor for people switching from earlier versions of MS-Office.
pricing opensource (Score:5, Funny)
They kept getting a div by $0 error.
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Says the AC...
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Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
* Nearly all female users will refuse to switch and complain at every little difference. At a school, we decided that the school would provide OpenOffice.org on all teacher computers, if the teacher wanted to use MS Office they would have to come up with the funds somewhere else beside the Technology related budgets. All of the Male teachers (except 1) happily switched to OOo. All of the Female teachers (except the handful that had no experience with MS Office) chose to purchase MS Office on their own.
* Most people use a word processor by typing something in, highlighting text and changing fonts, spacing, etc. A well instructed lesson in Styles will lessen the impact people have when switching to OOo. It will probably increase productivity once they learn to use styles instead of micro-managing their documents.
* If you are seriously planning a deployment, test out users on a Linux Distribution. In my experience OOo works much better (and much faster) within Linux than it does in Windows. Also, I have (surprisingly) found that many people find Linux easier to use than Windows (using Novell's SLED 10).
* Show your users how to use the Help Documentation. It actually works with OOo.
If you are considering a switch, do not be too high strung. People will complain, but that is human nature. Also be sure to keep at least a few workstations that run MS Office, not for compatibility issues, but to have the user's show you how they do something within MS Office that they cannot figure out in OpenOffice.org (Most people think they are experts in Word, but usually aren't and this will weed out the idiotic problems).
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