No More MS OFFICE, Get Start OFFICE!!!

[darkjester]

<< I tried it. Sorry, it sucks compared to Microsoft Ofiice - or Corel for that matter. >>


Ditto. When I started fooling around with Linux I put that on my machine and it just didn't work as well as MS Office. Say what you will, MS Office works pretty well, and a lot of people use it. That's important because if I'm getting docs from a prof or from work or something, I need to be able to work with it without compatibility problems. I've run into some problems with Star Office. Maybe if I ever start messing with Linux again I'll give it another shot... but until then, MS Office all the way (well, except at work, where we have to use the Lotus SmartSuite --poop!).

 

[LuckyTaxi]

staroffice is slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

 

[jjones]

thanks for the tip. sometime in the next 20 years when i want to upgrade my office suite i'll check it out.

 

[Elledan]

I've been using StarOffice for a couple of years now. I used to use Office before that time and I've used Office 95, 97 and 2000.

My thoughts? For 99% of all users of office suits, Star Office is more than just good enough.

Ah, and I haven't yet seen a version of Office for Linux

 

[Martin]

personally I am waiting til OpenOffice 6 final is released along with KDE3 and Gnome2 (they should be out by mid-march).

These, combined with Linux Wolfenstein binaries might finally get me to switch nearly full time to linux.

 

[Descartes]

It's funny how anti-MS zealots bend their requirements to fit around the overt lack in open-source software. Personally, I hate MS Office and Staroffice, but then again, I'm not a business user, and I have little need to do anything in any (MS|Star)Office product other than your basic documentation.

Ever notice that when anyone promotes Linux or any of it's constituents, it's usually followed up w/ MS slander? It's not uncommon for the lesser to criticize the greater. People use MS Office because it works, and they do so w/o the bigotry.

 

[SpecialEd]

MS Office IS the buisness standard. At my firm, EVERY ONE uses MS office for everything. And so do all our clients, partners and consultants. Hell, my office gets enough headache just trying to convert Word Perfect files to MS Word. There is no way we could ever deal with other format. The business world isn't your personal computer. You can't just pick up a new program and roll with it.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

<< It's funny how anti-MS zealots bend their requirements to fit around the overt lack in open-source software. Personally, I hate MS Office and Staroffice, but then again, I'm not a business user, and I have little need to do anything in any (MS|Star)Office product other than your basic documentation.

Ever notice that when anyone promotes Linux or any of it's constituents, it's usually followed up w/ MS slander? It's not uncommon for the lesser to criticize the greater. People use MS Office because it works, and they do so w/o the bigotry. >>



Hmm, it looked to me like the people bashing MS did so in defense of StarOffice because MS users were bashing it.
Further, it is quite common for a product to be compared to a similar, more popular product already in existance. That's why people compare it to MS Office and nor Corel, not because MS is better but because it is becoming the defacto "standard".

 

[Elledan]

<< MS Office IS the buisness standard. At my firm, EVERY ONE uses MS office for everything. And so do all our clients, partners and consultants. Hell, my office gets enough headache just trying to convert Word Perfect files to MS Word. There is no way we could ever deal with other format. The business world isn't your personal computer. You can't just pick up a new program and roll with it. >>

Star Office has no problems opening and saving .doc files. Well, unless you start with really complicated documents, but in that case you're just asking for it.

I wouldn't know why I ever would want to switch back to MS Office, especially not when MS is asking such ridiculous high prices for such a bloated piece of software.

BTW, I'm by no means bashing MSFT and its products. I merely point out some flaws.

 

[Skel]

<< And sometimes I really miss MultiMate..... >>



I'm scared now....

 

[SpecialEd]

<< Star Office has no problems opening and saving .doc files. Well, unless you start with really complicated documents, but in that case you're just asking for it. >>




For most people here at these forums, picking up and using new software is no problem at all. However, for the average joe working at the office wouldn't even know how to open his word processor if the icon was missing from the desktop. Any slight change in buisness software totally kills the production of a company.

one of the biggest problems working between software is pagination. You open up a word file in word perfect and all of a sudden your pretty outline structure is thrown off by a line or two and has to be slightly adjusted to look pretty again. No big deal right? Now do that for 20,000 documents that are all 100 pages long that are stored on 3 1/4 inch floppies. My point is, once a buisness is deep rooted in a program and production is flowing normal, its not going to change for anything. Thats why you see so many places still using DOS based programs and dot matrix printers. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'm sure star office is great for that college student that needs to save a little money for writing papers. However, in the buisness world, you go with what you know and what every one else is using.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< I'm sure star office is great for that college student that needs to save a little money for writing papers. However, in the buisness world, you go with what you know and what every one else is using. >>



The year I spent in college was the last time I spent money on an Office Suite (although I may purchase cds of Star Office or Open Office in the future). It was cheaper then. Now that I am in the business world I havent bought any of those products for my house. When I get a .doc I use antiword to convert it to a standard text file. Much easier that way. And yes, my next resume will be in .txt format

 

[shikhan]

<< Just because a product is "business standard" does NOT mean that it is superior to another product. For example, at work, the "standard" has become Outlook (which I find is the WORST piece of crap out there in regards to emails). I sometimes feel like opening up emails which contain viruses just to remind people how bad it is. >>



You do realize that one of the reasons why there are so many virii for Outlook is BECUASE its the standered. Any thing that is popular is going to be the focus of the viruses. Give it a freakin break. Stupid people are stupid, no matter what OS or program they use. Dont blame user mistakes on the program

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< Just because a product is "business standard" does NOT mean that it is superior to another product. For example, at work, the "standard" has become Outlook (which I find is the WORST piece of crap out there in regards to emails). I sometimes feel like opening up emails which contain viruses just to remind people how bad it is. >>



You do realize that one of the reasons why there are so many virii for Outlook is BECUASE its the standered. Any thing that is popular is going to be the focus of the viruses. Give it a freakin break. Stupid people are stupid, no matter what OS or program they use. Dont blame user mistakes on the program >>



e-mail explaining some "features" in outlook express

 

[KeyserSoze]

I didn't read the entire thread, but I'm gonna put in my two cents.

I'm all for trying these other programs. But are they compatible with other programs. I can't use Star Office at home, then come to school, and expect MS Word to recognize it right away. And I don't want save it as "text" or "RTF (Rich Text Format)" I don't have time to sit there and change it all around.

If someone told me that at least the Word Processor was compatible with Office 2000, or XP, then I would try it. I think most people might have the same feelings.


Just my Worthless $.02


EDIT: After searching for a few minutes, I came across this page Star Office, which states that this program IS in fact compatible with MS Office. Maybe I will check it out.


KeyserSoze

 

[JellyBaby]

really ought to give suites like Star Office a try. Should MS ever try to force subscription office pricing down our throats we know there are some really good alternatives out there.

 

[XeonTux]

I highly recommend the 6.0 (beta) over 5.2.

It is unfortunate that the MS Word .DOC format has become the standard. Not just because it was created by MS, but because it is not an open standard. There are no specifications on the .DOC format. The format changes from version to version of MS Office, and even MS Office has trouble opening some files from different versions.

Here is an intereting article by Richard Stallman on .DOC format in business including alternatives and what you can do about it

 

[SpecialEd]

<< The year I spent in college was the last time I spent money on an Office Suite (although I may purchase cds of Star Office or Open Office in the future). It was cheaper then. Now that I am in the business world I havent bought any of those products for my house. When I get a .doc I use antiword to convert it to a standard text file. Much easier that way. And yes, my next resume will be in .txt format >>




txt format is the ultimate compatible format


for home use, you can use anything you want. However, in an office, you comform to the standards that your buisness uses, which is MS office most of the time. I don't think my boss would like it if I emailed him a report in TXT format.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<<

<< The year I spent in college was the last time I spent money on an Office Suite (although I may purchase cds of Star Office or Open Office in the future). It was cheaper then. Now that I am in the business world I havent bought any of those products for my house. When I get a .doc I use antiword to convert it to a standard text file. Much easier that way. And yes, my next resume will be in .txt format >>




txt format is the ultimate compatible format
>>



I apply mostly to UNIX places so why chance them not being able to read it



<< for home use, you can use anything you want. However, in an office, you comform to the standards that your buisness uses, which is MS office most of the time. I don't think my boss would like it if I emailed him a report in TXT format. >>



.doc is nice for making customers think you actually put some work into how it looks. Its not as functional though. I have talked to customers that did not have a Windows machine. It makes things like reports and whatnot a little tougher unless they can use staroffice or another office suite. Im not one of the people that likes things to look good, as long as they work Im fine. .doc would not work for me as a customer. That would make extra work for me to convert it to a readable format. If .doc was an open standard I would endorse it though.

And as far as the RMS article linked, remember he is about as fanatical as you can get. Take his words with a grain of salt

 

[SexEPid]

Some people have different opinions, it's life, it's going to happen. Why argue when you can just go about using Star Office or Microsoft, it's whatever YOU perfer, not what anyone else perfers.

Pid

 

[wyvrn]

With as much as my office spends on MS products, you would think they would want to change to a free product. We spend 10x more on software licenses for each computer than we do on the hardware to run it. Star Office does read most .doc files, but sometimes the formatting can get screwed up, and I think that is why they are scared away from switching. But I think MS is digging its own grave, slowly. Their products are ridiculously expensive and their are open source products that are getting better and fast. MS dominance is not going to last forever, but it will take a grass roots campaign (already underway) to change it. Think about it, a lot of HS and college grads coming out are now using *Nix and open source products. They will be the new network admins and office people using software, so I am sure with their experience with alternate products that dumping office will eventually become easy.

 

[SpecialEd]

<< With as much as my office spends on MS products, you would think they would want to change to a free product. We spend 10x more on software licenses for each computer than we do on the hardware to run it. Star Office does read most .doc files, but sometimes the formatting can get screwed up, and I think that is why they are scared away from switching. But I think MS is digging its own grave, slowly. Their products are ridiculously expensive and their are open source products that are getting better and fast. MS dominance is not going to last forever, but it will take a grass roots campaign (already underway) to change it. Think about it, a lot of HS and college grads coming out are now using *Nix and open source products. They will be the new network admins and office people using software, so I am sure with their experience with alternate products that dumping office will eventually become easy. >>





The problem with switching products is the money a company loses trying to get their employees used to a new product. At my firm, the average engineer gets paid about 75 dollars an hour. If he or she is bumbling around for two hours trying to get used to a new software, that just cost the company 150 dollars. Multiply that by 30 Engineers, the company just lost 4,500 dollars in the span of two hours. That only has to happen for a few days before the company loses major production time. My company would rather spend 10,000 dollars for a new set of MS licenses than try and switch programs because, in the end, it would be actually cheaper to stick to Microsoft.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< Think about it, a lot of HS and college grads coming out are now using *Nix and open source products. They will be the new network admins and office people using software, so I am sure with their experience with alternate products that dumping office will eventually become easy.
>>



That is how UNIX got its big start.

 

[DSTA]

The problem with switching products is the money a company loses trying to get their employees used to a new product. At my firm, the average engineer gets paid about 75 dollars an hour. If he or she is bumbling around for two hours trying to get used to a new software, that just cost the company 150 dollars. Multiply that by 30 Engineers, the company just lost 4,500 dollars in the span of two hours. That only has to happen for a few days before the company loses major production time. My company would rather spend 10,000 dollars for a new set of MS licenses than try and switch programs because, in the end, it would be actually cheaper to stick to Microsoft.

I quote this in full because I absolutly agree with that. In an ideal world, every secretary would speak fluent TeX and could change printer toner by herself WITHOUT destroying the thing on every second attempt .

The problem (for which I don't have an easy solution BTW) is because of this "cost of switching" aspect, MS Office gets away with and incredible amount of bugs, inconsistencies and security risks.

For all those people sending around office documents, try hitting ctrl-z a few times next time you open a document someone sent you. It's amazing what you can learn about your clients/suppliers that way. If you're really curious, grab a hex editor.

Or try writing a semi complex (anything with some pics and a few changes in page layout really) 300 page document in Word. Doesn't work. Did not with Word 95, 97, 2000, doesn't with XP. Unblievable. Yet we continue to *work around* the software instead of *with it*, because a switch to something more usefull costs too much.

Another very annoying problem is the closedness of the file formats, eg. for people trying to put together something like a company knowledge base. Huge pain in the neck working with undocumented formats, not doable by any practical means. I really wish I could flick a switch and all of our company docs were XML.

I'm not even starting on the matter of Outlook. Just try to figure out how many man hours are wasted world wide every year because of viral outbreaks.

PS: try Star Office 6, people. It's not perfect (256 MBytes of RAM is a good idea for an average Win2K seat), but if it cost 200$ instead of 0 it would still be better value for money than the MS Office suite.

PS: all IMVHO, of course - but flame away as you wish.

 

[Zenmervolt]

<< No one has mentioned Lotus SmartSuite. Now that IBM owns it, it must be the best.

Go Big Blue >>

Heh, I have Lotus SmartSuite sharing space on my ThinkPad with Office XP, and I have to say that I prefer Lotus too. Lotus loads faster. Only problem is that my professors don't know anything but MS Office so anything that I have to turn in as a file is done in Office. Anything else is done in Lotus though. Of course, I'm heavily biased towards IBM. I still think that OS/2 should have been "the one". It was so much better in its day. Sure it took forever to boot, but you never had to shut it down. Had OS/2 on a 486 PS/2 and the only time I shut it down was when I had to move the computer.

ZV