[THIN] Re: OT: OpenOffice 2/3
- From: "Greg Reese" <gareese@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:31:19 -0500
I ran NeoOffice at home for about a year or so on a Mac. NeoOffice is a
port of OpenOffice for the Mac. It was ok. I never found myself at a loss
wishing i had MS Office. it had a neat little predictive text feature that
i liked and wished Microsoft had. I never had any issues sharing documents
with MS Office when sending or receiving documents. I eventually ditched it
for iWork for no better reason than I could and I wanted to try it out.
IBM has also branded Open Office under the IBM logo. Same product but the
perception is an easier sell when it's IBM. Some people still think of open
source as unclean and the realm of hackers and hippies.
I also agree with the path your taking. I think MS Office has become to
big, too bloated, and too expensive for most users. Sure, there are power
users out there that will need MS Office. But the front line users who are
just typing the occasional memo, letter, or something basic, things like
Open Office, and Google Apps are powerful enough. Server apps like Zimbra
are even worthy alternatives to Exchange. I think exchange is better, but
for the money, Zimbra gets it done well enough for most people.
Greg
On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 8:14 AM, Evan Mann <emann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Has anyone spent any up close and personal time with OpenOffice 2 or 3
> (now at RC1). I need to seriously look at the product as an alternative
> for basic business users. It has the potential to save up to $10,000 in
> licensing costs.
>
> My basic business user runs e-mail and web based applications, and a lot
> of PDF viewing. Some of them may not even open up any office app aside
> from Outlook more then once or twice in a week. If they open
> Word/Excel/PowerPoint, it's usually to view and print, or generate an
> extremely low end document in terms of complexity.
>
> I have Outlook 2003 licensing through my SBS 2003 R2 Premium licensing,
> and all the desktop licensing is purchased OEM with that equipment, so
> the core needs of the basic business user are covered. I need to
> evaluate, and get real-world feedback on cross-compatibility of Office
> 2003 docs with OpenOffice 2, and Office 2007 docs with OpenOffice 3.
> Focus is on Word and Excel with this compatibility
>
> Power users will still have MS Office suite. I may setup a dedicated
> workstation or VM for the basic business users to have access to MS
> Office suite, should a compatibility issue arises. However, I don't
> want that to be a daily occurance, that needs to be a once a month type
> thing.
>
>
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