The latest version of Portable OpenOffice.org, an edition of the open source office suite that fits on a USB stick, includes a number of updates such as full support for Windows 2000 and launchers for each OpenOffice.org application. Portable OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 includes all the applications included in OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 and takes up only 144MB of storage space, compared to the 300MB of disk space required by the full version of the office suite. But 144MB is still too big, considering that many USB sticks only store 256MB, according to Gary Barnett, a research director at analyst firm Ovum.
“But 144MB is still too big, considering that many USB sticks only store 256MB, according to Gary Barnett, a research director at analyst firm Ovum”
How is that too big? That leaves 112MB of space left.
Now try that with MS Office, then get back to me.
Yes, I still use MS Office, but why make this seem like it’s nothing. If Microsoft did it they would make it seem like finding the Holy Grail!
Now give credit were credit is due.
Oh and people……. You can get a USB 1GB drive for $50 now.
256 MB is the low end of USB pen drives these days. 144MB is a lot of space but what do you expect for a full featured office suite? It seems that most people are buying 512MB sticks or 1GB sticks today and prices continue to drop so I don’t think it will take long for 2GB and 4GB sticks to become more popular.
I’ll definitely give it a go. Not that I have any need for it but it’s too cool not to try.
Cool….BUT
Will it run on a PSP, or an Xbox 360? Can it be ported to a Waring blender, or a Mr. Coffee….?
(flamebait those with too much time on their hands.)
What a strange thing to say, 144Mb is to big?, OfficeXP came on two CD’s. If I gave someone a 256Mb memory stick with a full office suit on it for free,they would be gob smacked.
I wish OO.o could be more modular… at least in distribution… You can’t download a single distribution right now and simply apply a localized pack (I’m not talking about dictionaries… you can’t install them, not so easy for the joe user, but you can…), and in cases like this one, you have to wait for the localized version of yet another version of the suite (actually a very helpful one, but still “yet another” instead an add-on to the standard one…), if it’s actually released one day…
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About the required size… 144MiBs IS too much. I know you have some clipart art there and so one, but still too much for binaries and templates (ok, ok… and toolkit). People outside North America and Europe will appreciate very much as “just 50 dollars” may translate in 3 to 10 times the cost in other countries…
Also, I don’t want a single program occupying most of my portable drive’s space, I still want to carry my documents and my other programs.
Well they do have AbiWord…..it only 6.4MB.
Now is that too much?
Now point me to ANY major program that can run on a USB drive on any windows computer?
Like can:
MS Word? – no
AbiWord and OO.O? – yes
MS IE – no
Firefox – yes
MS Messenger – no
Gaim – yes
MS Outlook – no
Sunbird & Thunderbird – yes
MS (FTP) anything – no
Filezilla – yes
Now all that excluding OO.o is only 58.9MB!
The only thing close that Microsoft has is the PocketPC version and thats like 1/4 the features on these.
What a minute… Whe’re talking about OO.o problems… not the this other programs.
How said MS in first place? PocketPC WTF?!
What about modularity and localized versions problems in first place?
It’s not a holy war… I believe most of people here use OO.o… You don’t need to defend it. But it’s good to discuss what could improved in the software!
I went to download it, but it appears to only be available for Windows.
That’s because you’re expected to download a pendrive distro and install OO.o yourself
Unfortunately, my USB thumbdrive only stores 128 megs (yeah, I got it on sale at Fry’s :-P), so this is way too much for me. Fortunately, Portable Abiword[1] reads my ODF documents well enough in most cases, and does fit on my USB key. 🙂
[1] http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/portable_abiword/
What does the Portable OpenOffice lack that the full version has?
Put differently, why isn’t the REAL OpenOffice 144 MB? Why can’t I just install these portable versions on my computer?
I think they took out some of the extra stuff… like help files and whatnot. (I may be mistaken though) Ooh, they’ve also compressed the binaries with UPX ( http://upx.sourceforge.net/ ).
144MB is huge.
Applications are getting so large and not doing that much more that is useful.
What does OpenOffice do that warrents 144MB?
I remember going my word processing in 1990 in wordprefect on an IBM XT. Has text changed that much?
– Jesse McNelis
144MB is huge.
Applications are getting so large and not doing that much more that is useful.
What does OpenOffice do that warrents 144MB?
I remember going my word processing in 1990 in wordprefect on an IBM XT. Has text changed that much?
OpenOffice is not just a wordprocessor. It’s a whole office suite. Did your 1990 version of wordperfect have a spreadsheet, a vector drawing program, a presentation program, and a database? Did it open word files and other office files? I didn’t think so. Openoffice is there to replace MS Office, wordperfect cannot do that. If you want a small, standalone word processor then use Abiword.
On the other hand, even if you HAD all these things (my family mostly did: OfficeWriter 6.2, SuperCalc 5, Tandy Deskmate’s Draw and database programs) your computer probably only HAD 20 MB of space…
I suspect the difference is in the linking and the GUI and the attempt to put pictures and lots of formatting everywhere.
The Msword for windows 1.1a was just 2 diskettes, word 2.0 was 6 diskettes. Nothing usefull was added since.
What about the on-the-fly spell checker that underlines errors?? I’d say that was a pretty usefull addition.
Give me a break. I’m not a big fan of MS Office but Microsoft continued to add useful features until Word 97. There hasn’t been much innovation since then. Again, OpenOffice is an entire suite of office programs, Word by itself is not.
Ok look………you can not compare a system in 1990 to one now.
Now your going to tell me that you could run all this:
“On the other hand, even if you HAD all these things (my family mostly did: OfficeWriter 6.2, SuperCalc 5, Tandy Deskmate’s Draw and database programs) your computer probably only HAD 20 MB of space..”
on a 1.2MB floppy? (remember no portable harddrives) then take it to any..ANY DOS computer and run it with all your setting?
Now you can almost run your Office from ANY Windows not Linux or Mac) base system in the world with all YOUR settings.
I’m a field tech…..with this I now don’t have to carry my laptop around much (still do, but not much) and use the client system.
I don’t see any difference in a thumb drive, my car keys and my laptop. I’m going to protect them all (would you?)
I remember Wordperfect, Lotus 123 and dBASE. Do you?
None of them could run on 1, 2 or 3 floppies back then.
So as I said before……. NAME any major program that you can use on ANY Windows (well atlease Win2k & above) system with all the portable .apps with just about all your important files (business or other Docs) that you can have in your keychain?
I have a 512MB keydrive and have over 256MB left for docs.
Now only if they add Linux and Mac. We’ll have a R2D2 that can plug into just about and communicate with any system in the world!
Were you replying to me because if you were that made no sense whatsoever. How does anything you said pertain to what I said?
These programs are downloaded, unzipped and you can run them from your desktop without installing.
This means, you can yuse the programs without having the administrator rights to install programs on the computer.
This is just wonderful for having your own programs on your desktop!!!
so is it self contained in the same way as a .app on OSX?
I do not know the intricacies on Mac, because -it just works, never needed to go under the hood- but with Mac sometimes you can install as a user, sometimes you must do it as root.
Apparently, these portable apps let you just use, not install, comparable with the user install in Mac.
This portable OpenOffice is great as its now possible to save documents in Open Document format and not have to worry about being unable to open them somewhere else. Nice work.
Problem is, if I end up on a Mac (I do quite often) you are still screwed as not very many OS X users want to install the hideous Mac port of OpenOffice. Its not even truely an OS X port as it runs in X. Will this every be addressed?
Neooffice has openoffice 1.1.5 under the hood and acts as a real Mac app.