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Woohoo! Looks like we're getting Star Office

M

Mitzi

Diamond Member
I work for a UK local authority and it looks like than rather renew the MS Office site license we'll all (i.e. over 10,000 employees) will be moving over to Star Office instead. Apparently they have some people in today going though the details and I can imagine that theres going to be lots of bumps which need ironing out along the way but at this early stage it looks promising....

If only I had a part to play in the decision making process about which way to go for the desktop operating systems 😀
 
Star and open offices are great and can do just about everything that the M$ versions can. I work for a school and we seriously contemplated the switch but were unable without a suitable replacement for access or for publisher. Otherwise we would have switched. The only other problems we ran into during testing is certain formatting done in microsoft didnt transfer over esp. power point transitions. We woulda saved so much money though...
 
Originally posted by: Turkey22
Star and open offices are great and can do just about everything that the M$ versions can. I work for a school and we seriously contemplated the switch but were unable without a suitable replacement for access or for publisher. Otherwise we would have switched. The only other problems we ran into during testing is certain formatting done in microsoft didnt transfer over esp. power point transitions. We woulda saved so much money though...
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Yeah, that is my only issue with Star Office!. Maybe some one knows of a good alternative to access?
 
I believe the greatest issue here at the moment is sourcing an alternative Email/PIM client to replace Outlook 2003, it'll be interesting what they dig up...
 
Originally posted by: Mitzi
I work for a UK local authority and it looks like than rather renew the MS Office site license we'll all (i.e. over 10,000 employees) will be moving over to Star Office instead. Apparently they have some people in today going though the details and I can imagine that theres going to be lots of bumps which need ironing out along the way but at this early stage it looks promising....

If only I had a part to play in the decision making process about which way to go for the desktop operating systems 😀
Click to expand...

Have fun with that... I for one will keep using MS Office. What's that old phrase... "Find something that works and stick with it." If you honestly believe OpenOffice or Star Office is on the same level with MS Office 2003, you are kidding yourself.
 
Have fun with that... I for one will keep using MS Office. What's that old phrase... "Find something that works and stick with it." If you honestly believe OpenOffice or Star Office is on the same level with MS Office 2003, you are kidding yourself.
Click to expand...

Let's see, Office 2003 = ~£350. OpenOffice = Free. Hardly a fair comparison?
 
Originally posted by: daniel1113
Have fun with that... I for one will keep using MS Office. What's that old phrase... "Find something that works and stick with it." If you honestly believe OpenOffice or Star Office is on the same level with MS Office 2003, you are kidding yourself.
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I just work in the development department, I have nothing to do the the decision making process.

I'm glad because for years Microsoft are/were pushing harsher and harsher license agreements and pulling all sorts of sh!t on their corporate customers who could do little except bend over and take it. At last suitable alternatives are available which loosen the grip hold Microsoft has. Sure, it may be a turbulent couple of months for the people involved in making the change but the long term gains for everyone are worth the hassle...heck the competition to Microsoft may force them to re-evaluate how they treat their customers and may make them eventually realise that MS needs its customers, not the other way around.

And FWIW, I do believe Star Office and Open Office are on the same level as MS Office 99% of the time, is it really worth paying the huge price premium for that extra 1% functionality? I believe not.

 
Originally posted by: Mitzi
Originally posted by: daniel1113
Have fun with that... I for one will keep using MS Office. What's that old phrase... "Find something that works and stick with it." If you honestly believe OpenOffice or Star Office is on the same level with MS Office 2003, you are kidding yourself.
Click to expand...

I just work in the development department, I have nothing to do the the decision making process.

I'm glad because for years Microsoft are/were pushing harsher and harsher license agreements and pulling all sorts of sh!t on their corporate customers who could do little except bend over and take it. At last suitable alternatives are available which loosen the grip hold Microsoft has. Sure, it may be a turbulent couple of months for the people involved in making the change but the long term gains for everyone are worth the hassle...heck the competition to Microsoft may force them to re-evaluate how they treat their customers and may make them eventually realise that MS needs its customers, not the other way around.

And FWIW, I do believe Star Office and Open Office are on the same level as MS Office 99% of the time, is it really worth paying the huge price premium for that extra 1% functionality? I believe not.
Click to expand...

I am the head of the IT department for my company, and I don't understand how the license agreements have become any "harsher". Microsoft doesn't lose the majority of its money from the average home user that downloads a copy of Office 2003 for their home computer. They lose money from the corporate users that install multiple copies of programs, or illegal software, on their company computers. They have every right to protect their software from situations like this. If you are an honest business that pays for your licences, the process is extremely simple. So, I'm not quite so sure why you want to "loosen the grip hold Microsoft has."

StarOffice, and other MS Office alternatives, are great if you don't want to pay $350 or more. However, they are nowhere close to MS Office in terms of features, integration, and support.
 
Originally posted by: daniel1113
Originally posted by: Mitzi
I work for a UK local authority and it looks like than rather renew the MS Office site license we'll all (i.e. over 10,000 employees) will be moving over to Star Office instead. Apparently they have some people in today going though the details and I can imagine that theres going to be lots of bumps which need ironing out along the way but at this early stage it looks promising....

If only I had a part to play in the decision making process about which way to go for the desktop operating systems 😀
Click to expand...

Have fun with that... I for one will keep using MS Office. What's that old phrase... "Find something that works and stick with it." If you honestly believe OpenOffice or Star Office is on the same level with MS Office 2003, you are kidding yourself.
Click to expand...

"Sticking with it" can cost hundreds (or thousands or millions for a large company) of dollars or more. So sticking with it isn't always the best route. A BMW works, and I'd stick with it just fine 😀, but if it costs a crapload of money, then you have to consider that as well.
 
You get support from Microsoft for Office? What's the phone number because our company doesn't.
 
Support is like, $1000USD for 5 calls last I knew of.

The funny thing is, StarOffice/OpenOffice work for 95% of what your average person does: printing up letters (form, or otherwise), working with spreadsheets, etc., etc.. Will it load an excel spreadsheet and convert all the macros? Probably not. Can the same thing be done in SO/OO as excel? Most likely.
 
We never looked at a mail client since we use web based mail or a client that hooks into the web based mail (groupwise). But you could always use netscapes mail prog which is of course free. I've found client mail progs though tend to open yourself up to viruses with inexperienced users more than web based ones do.

The entire reason we were looking at open office was because of the increasing costs and "harsher" policies. We want to be able to continue ghosting machines in all of our buildings instead of handloading software individually (this includes having a specific cd for a specific machine). MS is charging us more now to do this.
 
Originally posted by: daniel1113I am the head of the IT department for my company
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Good for you.

....Microsoft doesn't lose the majority of its money from the average home user that downloads a copy of Office 2003 for their home computer. They lose money from the corporate users that install multiple copies of programs, or illegal software, on their company computers. They have every right to protect their software from situations like this.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you though I fail to see what that has to do within the context of this thread. Situtations like what exactly?? What are you implying?

If you are an honest business that pays for your licences, the process is extremely simple. So, I'm not quite so sure why you want to "loosen the grip hold Microsoft has."
Click to expand...

I work for a local government authority...they ain't in the business of pirating software. When your business has 15,000 employees you'll see that the cost saving associated with moving away from Office will start to become a little more attractive.

StarOffice, and other MS Office alternatives, are great if you don't want to pay $350 or more. However, they are nowhere close to MS Office in terms of features, integration, and support.
Click to expand...

When you are buying a huge number of licenses I'm sure that the support agreement provided by the vendor will be ample 🙂


 
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