Submitted by George Ou compares Microsoft Office 2007 to OpenOffice 2.2 in memory and CPU usage using the OOXML and ODF file formats. The conclusion according to Ou: “We can see that the OpenOffice.org ODF XML parser (while vastly improved) is still about 5 times slower than Microsoft’s OOXML parser. OpenOffice.org also seems to consume nearly 4 times the amount of RAM to hold the same data. While OpenOffice.org continues to have fewer features than Microsoft Office, it continues to consume far more resources than Microsoft.”
O.O. is still more similar to MS Works than MS Office
That’s probably the best comparison I’ve heard for OO.
Works is good enough for 95% of the people if only it could read MS formats and luckily you can with OO you can.
As long as you don’t mind having to reformat parts of it to get the document to look the same.
Which is also what you have to do if you have several people using different versions of the same MS Word program.
So, what’s the difference?
While I would use OpenOffice on occasion on my linux boxes, I vastly preferred Abiword. It had a nicer interface and used far, far less resources. I think the developers maybe need to take a step back and do the hard and boring work of cleaning OO out and then looking into more features.
Abiword kept crashing when I last used it.
Imo it’s not really meant to replace OO. They’re both for different tasks.
What I like about OO is the very good copy&paste between its different parts.
What I dislike is the startup time of approx. 10s on my “ancient” 3000+ 🙁
Oh, and when I enter an equation the box always pops up in the wrong place so that I cannot see what I’m typing but it still moves the text around in an annoying way.
I would like to see a comparison of Koffice and OO.
Could be interesting to see if the cleaner code base gives Koffice a speed advantage…
fyi,
I just set OO to use java 1.6 on my ubuntu box yesterday… It cut the load speed down to about 4 seconds on my work machine. Can’t remember how fast the proc is, but it’s an old P4 with 1G RAM running Ubuntu. Before switching to jdk1.6, it took about 20 seconds to load.
I think the developers maybe need to take a step back and do the hard and boring work of cleaning OO out and then looking into more features.
I wish them luck, and I acknowledge Sun’s invaluable contribution to the free software community, but OpenOffice seems to be a dead end. It’s not a free software project, it’s a proprietary application suite that happens to be free software. It doesn’t have the DNA of the community baked into it, and that’s why it doesn’t operate like a free software application.
I hear you on Abiword, but the GNOME project seems to have abandoned its GNOME Office efforts. This, too, seems like a dead end.
I recently re-evaluated KOffice at version 1.6, and I was very impressed. The roadmap for version 2.0 looks great as well. It’s snappy, attractive, and it works well overall. The major sticking point is no attempt at MS format compatibility. But it was the first office suite to support ODF, and with a reliable ODF<=>OOXML converter, it could reshape the competitive landscape for free software office suites, especially if it’s available on Windows. This one is free software through-and-through, and it shows.
“OpenOffice seems to be a dead end. It’s not a free software project, it’s a proprietary application suite that happens to be free software. It doesn’t have the DNA of the community baked into it, and that’s why it doesn’t operate like a free software application.”
Would you have said the same about Mozilla in 1999/2000 ?
If so, you should give OO more time to fit into the community. And for anyone that replies with “it’s had years already”, give it more…
Edited 2007-04-30 13:05
Would you have said the same about Mozilla in 1999/2000 ?
That’s a good question. In previous posts I’ve described Firefox and OpenOffice as the two applications on the typical free software desktop that seem out of place, and it’s because of their pedigree. Firefox has the same piggish tendencies that OpenOffice has. So, yes, I would say the same thing.
Mozilla was pared down into Phoenix in essentially a one-man project. Since then, this codebase has become Mozilla’s primary focus. Although the barriers to entry for prospective Firefox developers are lower than those for OpenOffice, it’s still a pretty intimidating codebase. Firefox is a 35MB tarball of source code. Epiphany is 4.4MB. Firefox admittedly has more features, but does that justify the difference? I tried to get similar data for Konqueror, but KDE is so highly integrated that it resists such naive methods. That’s also why developing Konqueror/KHTML is most likely the easiest of all.
you should give OO more time to fit into the community. And for anyone that replies with “it’s had years already”, give it more…
I don’t think that time is a solution. Given enough time, we will have a viable office suite from an independent codebase, and OpenOffice will still be a pig.
As an engineer, in various contexts, I’ve come across an underlying truth: simple is fast. There are many ways to achieve simplicity in software development, even in the development of seemingly complex applications. Free software excels at this, and proprietary software does not. That’s why I’ve been a supporter of free software since before it was trendy. I figured that as requirements get more complex, free software would shine. And here we are today.
Edited 2007-04-30 14:32
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,16376,1660763,00.ht…
I love OO.org for a few reasons.
1)It’s open source software so anybody can contribute and fix things.
2)I’m not locked in with a corporate file format.
3)I don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to try and keep it.
So, you can say everything you want about RAM usage (which is not the best), the start up time (a little slow), and even other things that YOU or someone else might not like about OO.org, but for me, it’s worth it.
Knowing some of the issues, if you are technically inclined, maybe you or someone else could offer a true fix to it instead of always complaining about it.
Those are nice but not practical reasons, I want to use free software for its quality and OO.o is lacking of it in some standars I have, is sad that that even Lotus Smart Suite 9.5 (I use it) a 7 years ald suite still have more features and less resourses eater than this 800 pounds Gorilla.
Improve the performance, it is embarazing to use it and to show it to other users.
Edited 2007-04-29 22:52
http://www.mozilla.com/
Please install Firefox…it includes a spell-checker. Thanks.
Yet here you are complaining about complainers. Maybe you or someone else could offer a true education campaign about the merits of OO rather than complaining about people who are pointing out the very real problems with it?
What’s wrong with comparing the two products? Isn’t the whole point of journalists and journalism to REPORT on things?
I once heard a pretty good response to this typical fan-boy response to criticism.
Advising critics that “If they don’t like it, perhaps they can fix it themselves” is similar to someone returning bad food at a restaurant only to have the chef advise them to stop complaining and do it themselves.
OSS is (or should be) designed for average users. It is not acceptable to shrug of valid complaints, and even discourage others from finding faults, just because you like the software. QA bug reports are what makes software better, and you are simply burying your head in the sand.
The points you made are all valid ones, and are good reasons for using OO, but it’s still a resource pig and that needs to be addressed.
Edited 2007-04-30 04:22
This is not a good analogy. It would be more the equivalent of you getting a free lunch and you complain to the chef that it doesn’t taste like Burger King, then he has the right to tell you to make it yourself, if you don’t like it. People think that open source runs by the same rules as closed source, where demands can be made to the developers. These developers usually do this on their own time, if its a company like sun, with their own money. Demanding anything from them will only get you the canned response of ‘do it yourself’. Imo, it is the proper one. They know that there are issues with speed, it is already being addressed, the issue is that they don’t have the resources that a company like MS who has something at stake has. The OO.o team has no incentive to listen to complaints, when its a basically a non profit organization that is basically providing charitable service.
The real problem is with OO.o’s advertising. If they’d been upfront and said, “yes it’s buggy and slow, uses a lot of RAM and has some serious compatibility issues with MS files, yet on the whole it basically works” then sure you might not be able to complain. However when they try to claim it’s a lot better than it actually is, then yes I think you have a right to complain.
Be honest in your advertising and you’ll have far far less disgruntled users. You’ll also have less users, but that’s a price you have to pay.
I see this a lot in OS. A project claims that their new software is the greatest thing since sliced bread, a user points out that actually it isn’t anywhere near as good as they claim, and user gets told to STFU and fix it themselves.
Be honest in your marketing? Since when has technology marketing been to a level of honesty that resolves all concerns about a product?
To make an analogy, since when has Cigarette marketing been honest about the additives put into to cigarettes that make you a complete addict?
The Surgeon General comment is a joke.
Software claiming to make your work day more productive are subjective, at best.
To be truly honest to your potential market is to commit business suicide.
Varying degrees of honesty within a product, combined with backend business dealings have created this cluster f***.
Fight Fire with Fire.
If you’re going to lie about the quality and features of your open source software, you have no right to get pissy when your users call you on it. That’s what I’m getting at. Open Source is supposed to be an Open process with Open communication between users and developers. If you cannot handle someone calling you out on the quality of your code you shouldn’t be releasing out in the open.
The problem I was trying to highlight is more that users should not be discouraged from finding bugs, as if we do not, the software will stagnate and bugs will never be identified and resolved.
Also, these applications are often held high as being better than their rivals. If that is the case then they must be able to withstand objective criticism.
Personally, I avoid office apps like the plague. The only reason I really ever need to use anything other then outlook is to read specs people send me in .doc. I don’t know why they can’t send them to me in .pdf, but that is a whole other story.
That being said, I would much rather use office over OO.o. The reasons you listed are things I hear all time, and are quite honestly, BS.
While this is true in theory, in practice the OO.o code is so monstrous that it is SUNs hired employees, and a handful of people who have dedicated a portion of their life to learning the codebase that ever actually touch the thing. I have no proof, but I would be willing to bet that MS has exponentially more people working on office then the people who actually touch OO.o
Like I stated before, I hate having to run office software when I don’t ever use it, but even I have heard about how MS is adopting an open XML format for office.
This is the one and only valid point. OO.o is free, and Good Enough for the majority of people.
If we were talking 2x faster, you would have a point. “Hey, its free, so STFU”. But dude, 5x slower? 4x more ram? That is redicules, and it does significantly less, with an office 97 interface.
Maybe opensource zealots should quit saying that OO.o is as good (I actually hear BETTER) then office.
Forgive me if I sound bitter, but now that linux is usable by anyone with half a brain, it seems like OSS zealots are comming out of the woodwork, and telling me about how much the software I use sucks, without the slightest understanding of the reasons I use what I use in the first place.
“even I have heard about how MS is adopting an open XML format for office”
… but are you aware that Microsoft’s bluster about OOXML being “open” is actually a ruse?
You simply cannot create fully “open standard” documents using Office 2007. As soon as you put any sort of complexity or detail into your Office 2007 document, then your document necessarily contains parts of its information in non-open Microsoft-proprietary formats, by Microsoft’s own admissions.
Edited 2007-04-30 05:09
2)I’m not locked in with a corporate file format.
In fact, you are locked in with a corporate file format when you have to exchange files with people using that format, it’s not about you using a specific piece of software.
I can understand what you’re saying (since you pretty much have to use what the >>corporate<< side of the equation is), but that’s a failing of corporate management not looking at the long term.
Since there are several LEGAL alternative software suites that natively use ODF, but only 1 LEGAL software to use .doc or ooxml.
Last time I checked, only MS software can legally (as in, not getting bombarded with FUD about alternative software not being “blessed” by the “official” company) use the .doc and ooxml formats; whereas more than 3 competing products already use odf format for file storage. Not to mention, odf being already an international standard and not some too-much-hyped dream cast (unlike some other {cough}MS{cough} NIH-syndrome format).
You missed the post earlier about other office suites already supporting or going to support OpenXML. Oops?
{You missed the post earlier about other office suites already supporting or going to support OpenXML.}
You missed the point that OOXML is not the full story when it comes to “default file format of Office 2007”? Oops.
There are many Microsoft proprietary (read Windows-only) sub-formats that are referenced in but not specified by OOXML. Microsoft’s “promise not to sue” does not extend to those sub-formats. If another application fully implements OOXML, then Office 2007 will be fullay able to read files created by that application, but that application will not necessarily be able to read files generated in Office 2007.
While it’s a nice thing to have access to the source, who actually has time to delve into the gigantic amount of source code of open office to contribute anything? It’s just not a practical argument unless you are being paid full time to hack the sources or simply know them inside out.
http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/46 talks about Propylon its quite an interesting listen.
The reality is large contribution have come from Red Hat and Novell.
Whats clear is although large changes are not practical for the individual, side project exist the Apple port being the most known, but its been ported to Arm.
Thats without the less interesting advatantages of it being Open source like it being *relatively* trivial to get it working on other platforms and *keeping* it working. Or even something as nasty as Office Genuine Advantage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Genuine_Advantage
Agreed, the problem is the sheer size of OO code: who can manage 8 millions lines of code (2x the amount of KDE3 or the linux kernel+drivers) ?
Notice that your reasons for preferring OO.org are not at all functional reasons.
I’ve worked with Office 2007 a bit, and it really is impressive. It is a good product.
OOO was already slow/bloated enough before they added java to the mix.
Open Office should be rewritten to use one toolkit (GTK) and one runtime (c/c++) only.
I completely disagree with that. Being a NeoOffice user I’m rather a big fan of not using it under X11
.
Since when does GTK+ only run under X11? I use it under Windows all the time, and as far as I know, GTK+ has been ported to OS X as well.
(I use OS X, but no longer use OOo. MS Office 2004 and Google Docs do everything I need).
Gtk2 has not been ported to OS X. Someone was working on it as a graduate project and has since quit, at least it looked like he had about 4 months ago. What’s there isn’t usable, especially not for something as complex as OO.o.
Gtk2 runs under X11 on OS X. Which has the myriad of issues that every other program running under that same .app has at the same time (this sentence is meant to make as much sense as X11 apps do on OS X right now).
IF OpenOffice will be rewritten with another toolkit, it won’t be GTK, but XUL.
There was a discussion about this and XUL was the prefered toolkit, but they decided to not rewrite OO, because that would take like 3 years.
That would be a COMPLETE disaster. XUL is cool because it is simple enough that anyone can fix/mod the ui with little to no programming knowledge. But it is a monster when it comes to performance/responsivness. I click on IE7, and it is on my screen in about half a second, I click on FF and it is on my screen in about 3.5. And my IE has way more plugins installed then my FF! This is on a new machine, on my girlfriends 8 year old celeron, ie is on the screen in about 20 seconds, FF pushes a minute. The culpret is XUL
{I click on IE7, and it is on my screen in about half a second, I click on FF and it is on my screen in about 3.5.}
Much of IE is pre-loaded when you started Windows.
… Firefox needs ~30 seconds to start on my 10 y/o P2/366/256MB laptop. (Running FC6/i386 with IceWM)
While I do agree that Firefox could use a diet, Ihave to disagree about IE.
Measuring IE startup time (and memory usage) is as useless as doing the same with KDE’s konqueror. Both are highly integrated into the DE and mostly pre-loaded by the OS (or DE in KDE’s case).
Try replacing Windows’ shell= in the registry with cmd.exe and restart IE. IE’s startup times will increase considerably.
BTW, at least on my Laptop, there’s little, or no performance (and memory usage) difference between Epiphany and Firefox.
– Gilboa
You get what you pay for: that’s an adage that works in just about all fields. One has to be worth $99; the other just has to be.
I think you mean $299.
The features just work more reliably and are in general less obnoxious…
From what I’ve seen Word has come down in quality consistently since 2000 (so, XP, 2003, and 2007).
** I don’t have a lot of experience with 2007.
MS Office is obnoxious? Now I’ve heard it all.
Little blue things popping up to recommend things you’ve seen and told it no on dozens of times before.
Automatic changes where the undo command is the reasonable way to interact with the program (it does two actions for the price of one, so you hit undo to get rid of the one you didn’t want).
Expanding menus.
All of these are options you can change.
If I wanted to dig through the expanding menus, sure I could probably eventually figure it out.
I’ll prefer the program that’s free, does what I need, and defaults to a behavior I can live with.
Digging? Probably? Eventually? Get a grip. I’ll assume you’re a “power user” if you visit this site. Maybe that’s my mistake.
Even if Microsoft gave it away, and fixed these apparently problems with it, I’d bet you’d still find an excuse to complain about it.
It’s one menu, one option box. Sheesh, how hard is it to please some people?
You’re telling me you don’t think Word has an overabundance of commands that has stretched beyond the ability of their interfacing?
I.E. Menu’s weren’t meant to house hundreds of commands.
The tabbed toolbar they have now seems much better btw. But I’ve not given it much real use so I can’t say it’s great.
You’re right though. Regardless of what they do I’d complain. The question is whether or not my complaints are critical issues, or if they’re just improvements I’d like to see. In Word they’re critical issues.
I complain about OO.o a lot too (usually while using it). It just happens to be the only WYSIWYG word processor I can stand to use right now.
I wouldn’t call myself a “power user.” I’m really more of a “programmer.” I’m actually quite horrible with graphical user interfaces, I have a tendency to just not notice options when they’re presented that way. And no, I’m not all about text interfaces.
This is why things like expanding menus really drive me nuts. When I click the expand button all of the spatial knowledge I had about the menu is lost and I have to re-read it again to find my place. Big menus should just be avoided in the first place.
Toolbars with more than about 8 items bother me too. Once again, because I’m just not going to become good with that many items. And if I need really fast access I’ll probably lookup the shortcut (which I can see from the menu, but for some reason it’s not good enough to make tooltips on a toolbar in any toolkit).
You disagreeing with the defaults and the way the menus are organized are “critical issues”? Now you’re just complaining for the sake of complaining. All you’ve brought up is parts of the UI you disagree with…
Could it be possible that some people prefer the OO.o UI? Why is that so hard to believe?
Different strokes for different folks…that’s still allowed, isn’t it?
“Could it be possible that some people prefer the OO.o UI? Why is that so hard to believe?
Different strokes for different folks…that’s still allowed, isn’t it?”
It’s possible, but I’d guess that those that claim to prefer OO.o UI would still claim as much were MS Office and OO.o to swap their UIs. And I’d say that if OO.o or any OSS suite had Office 2007’s UI, those same people would hail that UI as a triumph of OSS. I think that you know deep down that there is truth in what I say.
I disagree. I think to infer such intentions to people you have never met is misguided.
One could say the same thing about you, after all. We know from your posting history that you are a pro-MS poster through and through…one could theorize that if MSO and OO.o swapped their UIs, you’d still say that MSO’s was better than OO.o’s.
I find this particularly amusing since OO.o’s UI is now closer to the old MSO’s than Office 2007’s is to the latter. Personally, I prefer the “classic” MSO UI to OO.o, but the difference between the two is relatively minor. I don’t really like the Office 2007 UI.
Ultimately it’s irrelevant. They are all good UIs, and none will make you write any better. Some of the best books ever written were made with typewriters, for cryin’ out loud! I think we are grossly overestimating the importance of a word processor’s UI here.
I am currently writing a novel on OO.o, and I don’t feel that it is hampering my work in any way. In fact, I don’t see any real difference between using it and Office 2003 (which I use at work every day).
One thing I *do* know is that OO.o offers much more value for the dollar. That I think we can all agree on, even die-hard MS supporters.
One thing I *do* know is that OO.o offers much more value for the dollar. That I think we can all agree on, even die-hard MS supporters.
I disagree. Have you used Office 2007? The dollar value when i compare is also about how productive I am with a software. It is not just 500$ i spend once but on day to day how much time i save.
Office 2007 has made me way more productive specially word 2007 and outlook.
So no i don’t think OO has a better dollar value. OO is just cheap initially. In long term usuage MS Office will save you more money in your business (or work).
Ofcourse if you earn 10$ an hour then probably OO is right for you.
I’m sorry, but that’s marketing talk. I really don’t believe that the new Office 2007 UI is going to make people more productive, especially if they’re used to the older UI.
You’re entitled to your opinion. I think OO, being free, has a better dollar value. I don’t think it hampers productivity one bit. Unless you show me actual independent studies that prove the contrary, I’ll keep on believing that one can be just as productive with OO.o than MSO (once the user is familiar with the UI).
Ah, I was wondering just when you’d throw in a cheap shot. Good ol’ CrazyDude0…when rational arguments fail, try to insult your oppponent. “If you don’t like MS Office, that’s because you are poor and/or a cheapskate”…yes, that’s the kind of reasoning that elevates the discussion.
Edited 2007-04-30 16:39
Now you’re trying to subtly insult me? Nice.
Go f–k yourself, dickhead. You can try to be a lot more subtle with your insults, but that doesn’t make you any better than me or anyone else. It just makes you more slimy because you try to pretend.
Hmm….where in that post did I insult you?
I had put a little jab at you (not an insult, really, except if you’re over-sensitive), but I edited it out because I felt that was uncalled for. Perhaps you’d like to do the same for your post…just sayin’.
Jeez, settle down there son. We wouldn’t want you to bust a vein or anything…meanwhile I’m still waiting for you to provide *any* criticism of CrazyDude0 for his own attacks…
Edited 2007-04-30 16:56
I’m not your friend, so any “jabbing” is an insult. Like I said, you try to be subtle, but that doesn’t mean anything except you’re trying to be sneaky with your insults.
Why don’t you settle down? What, that doesn’t make any sense? Neither does you telling me to settle down.
I don’t *need* to provide any criticism of CrazyDude0. His insults and logical fallacies are very blatant and obvious for anyone. You on the otherhand are very subtle.
I’m not the one calling you “dickhead”, so I don’t need to settle down. Perhaps you’d like to review the terms and conditions of posting on this site. Right now you do come off as a bit unhinged, but if you don’t mind people getting that impression of you, that’s your prerogative.
Who cares what you or some other anonymous people on here “think” of me because of a few comments? I was calling you out, that was my goal. I did, whether you or anyone else agrees with it.
Good day, I’m done here.
Numerous and poorly sorted options is no relief from bad design. If you decide to make the settings work for you rather than learning to work with the settings (like the compulsive “undo random automatic change” habit mentioned elsewhere), as soon as you sit down to use Word at work or school or someone else’s system, you won’t even know what you’re looking at. The sheer number of bizarre split-hair settings available is probably the biggest reason I dread fixing people’s Microsoft systems — problems become almost indistinguishable from preferences.
Yet, millions don’t have these problems.
The only thing obnoxious about MS Office is the price tag.
For $600 that thing better have the ability to be installed on every machine you own and also get the next two versions installed free.
Talk about a racket.
The price is ridiculous, I agree.
The price is more on the order of $400.
The thing with Office is that when it was introduced, Word Processors by themselves used to cost $800. Microsoft can’t lower consumer prices and then raise them easily without having everyone up in arms about anti-trust, so they probably don’t take it lightly to ever lower their prices on anything.
For what it’s worth, if you’ve got the needs of a student, you can usually get the Student+Teacher Edition for $150. At my University, Pro’s available for $80. Office is generally used for businesses, so MSFT tries to charge what people are willing to pay.
I think it’d be far better if they had a “home edition” and a “business pro” edition, whereby the only significant difference is price, justified by the business value.
I know a lot of people would argue against the apparent value, but at least it would make a good step towards charging a reasonable price for home users.
Office
======
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Office-2007-Ultimate-PC/dp/B000HE…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Office-2007-Professional-PC/dp/B0…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Office-2007-Standard-PC/dp/B000HC…
Ultimate = £487.48; $974.22
Professional = £375.48; $750.3968
Standard = £286.48; $572.53
Vista
=====
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Vista-Ultimate-PC/dp/B000…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Vista-Home-Premium/dp/B00…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Vista-Home-Basic/dp/B000K…
Home = £163.48 ; $326.7148
Professional = £186.48 ; $372.68
Ultimate = £310.98 ; $621.49
Obviously you can make some savings by going for a reinstalled version of the OS with additional advertising programs; save upto 50% on a licensed crippled OEM version; Save upto 33% if your already on the Microsoft tredmill. Thats for the OS.
For The Office package you can save you can save 33% if you are already on the Microsoft Treadmill. I will note that there is a crippled version called the “Home and Student Edition” which is available for £86 ; $171.87 but only contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote!? and is not comparable to a full office suite life Openoffice.
It should be noted that you can make a saving of about 20% on a bundle on full package on the high end products.
These products are already discounted at amazon between 10% and 25%
In perspective
==============
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sun-Microsystems-StarOffice-PC-Linux/dp/B00…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ability-Software-Office-Professional-Editio…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ability-Software-Office-Basics-Edition/dp/B…
StarOffice 8 = £54.50
Ability Office Professional = £37.99
Ability Office Basics Edition = £25.99
These are obviously cheaper. The world now has a billion computers. More programmers; extending an existing product; etc etc. The Monopolistic Products being the exception.
A world perspective
===================
From Micro Mart 12-18 2007 Prices for Vista Home Basic(Weekly Journal)
New York £108.72 ; $217.27
Hong Kong £113.27 ; $226.37
Tokyo £116.96 ; $233.74
London £161 ; $321.75
Paris £186.63 ; $372.98
Frankfurt £186,63 ; $372.98
Brussles £191.38 ; $382.47
Rome £200.20; $400.09
I assume like the UK these products can be had discounted.
Final Thoughts
==============
Having looked at the different versions. I never want to see a complaint about the number of Distributions ever. Looking throught the different versions of Microsoft offices for both OS and Office its a skill in itself to know which versions are too crippled for you.
Microsoft is expensive. At least for the majority of people. I hear on here and other places how they got it for free or discounted here, or bought a cheap crippled version from their University. It doesn’t happen around where *I* live, and I know isn’t available to vast majority of people.
Fo an individual Microsoft is so expensive its only worth having if you are prepared to break the license; or someone else is paying for it. The costs are monopolistic criminal. I’m ashamed that EU is so soft with this Monopolistic product.
I can buy 2 computers running Linux+OpenOffice *3 times* faster than my current one for the price of moving to Microsoft products. Talking about speed is a nonsense. When OpenOffice of fast enough on my current computer.
The reality of OpenOffice and Linux is they are more than good enough, but now available to the vast majority because of a verity of reasons. although the main ones being Microsoft being the Standard; Format Lock-in; Familiarity. Overcoming those is not practice for most people.
…But don’t lie to me that Microsoft products are good value.
Edited 2007-04-30 09:23
It’s probably $400 depending on the version and the sales that day. And the student edition is probably good enough for 85% of the US households and small businesses. But you can’t base your price on a product as it was 20 years ago.
Even for it’s monopoly and flawed licensing totalitarian licensing, MS Office is still hard to beat. The day I was forced to use that pathetic excuse for a word processor known as Wordperfect 5 (with the blue background and ALT-Shift-F19 hotkeys) I realized, then, how precious MS Word was to me. Curerently, Open Office is what I use at home, but I still harbor no ill-will towards Office. That is one product line that, I believe, Microsoft got right.
The Office suite of today could be a lot worse.
OK, Open Office consumes (or seems to) resources than an office suite that costs several hundred (I’m very suspicious of anyone who tries to accurately measure memory usage), and the parser is a bit slower but that’s not the question that interests me.
Considering that Open Office is free, can I get work done with it?
“Considering that Open Office is free, can I get work done with it?”
Yes.
It really does depend on what you’re trying to do. Many will tell you it worked great, until they needed it to do X, which it couldn’t, so they went back to MS Office.
Depends on what you’re doing. If you work with large documents, OO is probably not for you and you’ll be better off finding something better.
But that something is probably not Word.
LaTeX > Word > OO Writer.
That’s my current position on the popular thesis/paper writing software anyway.
MS office is not worth the money MS charges for it, and it does not support ODF. OpenOffice is obviously the superior choice, but it should not require Java.
OpenOffice is obviously the superior choice
Seriously, what planet are you from?
OpenOffice is free, supports ODF, and will get the job done for the vast majority of people. MS office is shockingly expensive, allows Vendor lock-in, and has security issues. OpenOffice is the superior choice.
Every piece of software has, or has the potential of having security issues. It doesn’t matter if its open/closed source from Microsoft/Apple/Anyone. Give me a break.
There’s a (random Google search) security bulletin for you.
http://www.openoffice.org/security/bulletin-20060629.html
EDIT: Fixed spelling mistake. Add link to a random OOo Security Bulletin.
Edited 2007-04-30 01:21
“Every piece of software has, or has the potential of having security issues. It doesn’t matter if its open/closed source from Microsoft/Apple/Anyone. Give me a break.”
MS has a horrendous security record, they cannot be trusted. When you are using Microsoft Word 2007 and it crashes, just remember it is a feature not a bug:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleB…
OpenOffice is free, supports ODF, and will get the job done for the vast majority of people. MS office is shockingly expensive, allows Vendor lock-in, and has security issues. OpenOffice is the superior choice.
MS Office support OOXML and will get all the job done the best for all the people. It does not have vendor lock-in as OOXML is a standard.
Yes it is expensive as BMW is expensive but Kia is not.
MS office is superior.
PS: Yes if you are a cheapo or your time has no value then use OO but lying and saying OO is superior is as dumb as it can get.
{MS Office support OOXML and will get all the job done the best for all the people. It does not have vendor lock-in as OOXML is a standard. }
No, it is not. Microsoft is trying to submit it as a standard, but it is not one yet.
Microsoft have made a “promise not to sue” if others implement OOXML standard, but when you look into that promise Microsoft themselves say that this promise does not extend to things that are “merely referenced” by OOXML.
When you look at things that are “merely referenced” by OOXML, you find that almost any document you create with Office 2007 will in fact contain MS proprietary pieces in formats that are “merely referenced” by OOXML, and that as a result you will not have any data portability, and you will still have vendor lock-in.
If you save your documents in Office 2007 default format, then you will still require a Windows platform and Office 2007 to be able to read your own data.
Microsoft does not support cross-platform operations nor does it support data portability or application portability.
When will people finally realise this?
When you look at things that are “merely referenced” by OOXML, you find that almost any document you create with Office 2007 will in fact contain MS proprietary pieces in formats that are “merely referenced” by OOXML, and that as a result you will not have any data portability, and you will still have vendor lock-in.
This is an outright lie. Care to provide a proof?
f you save your documents in Office 2007 default format, then you will still require a Windows platform and Office 2007 to be able to read your own data.
Again this is a lie. Why would i need windows to read an office file? I can even today read my word documents on Linux.
Microsoft does not support cross-platform operations nor does it support data portability or application portability.
Last I checked office applications worked fine on OSX. What exactly do you mean?
Edited 2007-04-30 04:04
This is an outright lie. Care to provide a proof?
It most certainly is not a lie. All you need is a picture in your document … OOXML says it should be Microsoft bitmap or Microsft WMF. Both are “merely referenced” by OOXML. All you need is a footer … you will find that OOXML “merely references” behaviour from Word95 or somesuch. All you need is a VBA macro. All of these, and more, are “merely referenced” by OOXML.
Read the issues raised by Kenya, labelled as [KE13], Ecma’s response.
“The Ecma Office Open XML specification makes normative references to several technologies which are not described by existing International Standards, nor have they been developed by an Approved RS Originator Organization (ARO) as defined in Appendix N7 of the JTC1 Directives. Examples include:
RTF — a proprietary document format from Microsoft
MHTML — a proposed standard, but not yet approved in IETF
“earlier versions of WordProcessingML” — a proprietary format of Microsoft used in Office 2003
Bitmap, EMF, and WMF — proprietary image formats of Microsoft
Requirements to emulate the behavior of legacy word processor applications, such as Word 95, or WordPerfect 5.
For none of the above specifications RER’s and access to the actual RSs have been provided together with the ISO/IEC DIS 29500. In addition the ‘Licensing conditions that Microsoft offers for Office Open XML’ (see JTC001-N-8455-3) explicitly exclude all items merely referenced from the licensing commitment.
To clarify, “Microsoft Necessary Claims” are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft controlled atents that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not merely referenced in such Specification.
Normative references to an application’s behavior, absent any fixed, written expression of that behavior in the form of a publicly available specification cannot be permissible.
In other cases, references are made to specifications without indicating versions or publication dates. For example, for the “sqlType” attribute in Section 3.10.1.3 of the SpreadsheetML reference, the specification merely says, “The following are data types supported by ODBC. For a more information, see the ODBC specification.” Without more information it is impossible to identify the exact specification referenced or what IP terms are available with it.”
Again this is a lie.
No, it is not. You really should be more careful in making false accusations.
“Last I checked office applications worked fine on OSX. What exactly do you mean? “
There are many components that can be included in MS Office documents that will not work if that document is opened with a copy of Office on OSX. Just as an example, VBA macros will not work. This is actually a blessing for OSX people, because they don’t get infected by Office-file-borne viruses or other malware.
Also, please note that the ability to open an MS Office document using Office for OSX does not mean you have escaped sole-source vendor lock-in.
Edited 2007-04-30 04:27
“The Ecma Office Open XML specification makes normative references to several technologies which are not described by existing International Standards, nor have they been developed by an Approved RS Originator Organization (ARO) as defined in Appendix N7 of the JTC1 Directives.”
For those of you wondering what a “normative reference” means, look here for a definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative#Standards
In standards terminology, “normative” means “considered to be a prescriptive part of the standard”.
“For none of the above specifications RER’s and access to the actual RSs have been provided together with the ISO/IEC DIS 29500. In addition the ‘Licensing conditions that Microsoft offers for Office Open XML’ (see JTC001-N-8455-3) explicitly exclude all items merely referenced from the licensing commitment.”
Oh dear.
Do OSNews readers realise that “not described by existing International Standards, nor have they been developed by an Approved RS Originator Organization (ARO) as defined in Appendix N7 of the JTC1 Directives” means that due to these non-licensed normative references the OOXML proposal cannot be accepted as an ISO standard as it satnds?
You’re spreading the FUD quite thick.
OOXML is indeed an ECMA standard.
And it is cross-platform. The next version of Mac Office supports it, as does Gnumeric, future OO.o (via Netscape provided code), and likely future iWork (Apple is one of the backers of OOXML).
And OpenOfficeDeveloper.org has Java code samples to manipulate OOXML files without requiring any MS software.
{You’re spreading the FUD quite thick.}
Not at all. Here is what I claimed:
“Microsoft have made a “promise not to sue” if others implement OOXML standard, but when you look into that promise Microsoft themselves say that this promise does not extend to things that are “merely referenced” by OOXML.”
Here is the backup to that claim, in Microsoft’s own words:
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx#ETG
“Q: Why doesn’t the OSP apply to things that are merely referenced in the specification?
A: It is a common practice that technology licenses focus on the specifics of what is detailed in the specification(s) and exclude what are frequently called “enabling technologies.” ”
Then I said this:
“When you look at things that are “merely referenced” by OOXML, you find that almost any document you create with Office 2007 will in fact contain MS proprietary pieces in formats that are “merely referenced” by OOXML, and that as a result you will not have any data portability, and you will still have vendor lock-in. ”
Here is the backup: http://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_current_work/Ecma%2…
(section 5.2.13)
“For none of the above specifications RER’s and access to the actual RSs have been provided together with the
ISO/IEC DIS 29500. In addition the ‘Licensing conditions that Microsoft offers for Office Open XML’ (see JTC001-N-8455-3) explicitly exclude all items merely referenced from the licensing commitment.
“To clarify, “Microsoft Necessary Claims” are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft controlled patents that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not merely referenced in such Specification.“
Normative references to an application’s behavior, absent any fixed, written expression of that behavior in the form of a publicly available specification cannot be permissible.”
“Normative” is defined as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative#Standards
“In standards terminology, “normative” means “considered to be a prescriptive part of the standard”.
{ OOXML is indeed an ECMA standard.}
ECMA is Microsoft’s lapdog in this. This means nothing. OOXML is not an ISO standard.
{And it is cross-platform. The next version of Mac Office supports it, as does Gnumeric, future OO.o (via Netscape provided code), and likely future iWork (Apple is one of the backers of OOXML). }
That does not make my following statement incorrect:
“If you save your documents in Office 2007 default format, then you will still require a Windows platform and Office 2007 to be able to read your own data. Microsoft does not support cross-platform operations nor does it support data portability or application portability. ”
There is a difference between “OOXML-compliant document” and “document saved in Office 2007 default format”. The latter has many more extra, add-on bits that are not specified in the OOXML specification, but are formatted in Microsoft-proprietary formats that are (to quote Microsoft) “merely referenced” by OOXML.
Office 2007 will be able to open OOXML files created by Mac Office, Gnumeric, future OO.o, and likely future iWork.
However, Mac Office, Gnumeric, future OO.o, and likely future iWork will not necessarily be able to fully open files created by Office 2007.
Ergo, Office 2007 is not at all cross-platform.
So, as a conclusion, my original statement:
“Microsoft does not support cross-platform operations nor does it support data portability or application portability.”
… is fully able to be backed up by references, as I have done here.
So, can you backup your allegation in any way?
Why are you supporting a corporate monopoly interest against the best interests of the people who might use Office software?
Edited 2007-04-30 11:41
Your attempt at stemming FUD (which the previous comment wasn’t) is laughable.
An open standard is able to be implemented over multi platforms by the very fact that it is open.
(MS) Office Open XML might claim to be open but it is not. By not donating their rights of IP and royalties to the standards body (which ECMA is not either), Microsoft still maintain the ability to restrict implementations of the format. If they want us to think it’s a freely implementable standard, they should do so.
The next version of Office (mac) is a Microsoft product, so it would be stupid if it didn’t understand OOXML. Gnumeric doesnt fully support it yet.
As for Netscape(?) providing code to OO.o, you probably meant Novell, who aren’t providing code as such, but are rather adapting Microsoft’s funded ODF< – >OOXML translator into Mono for Novell’s version of the suite.
Which should take all of two hours work since it’s already written in .Net and using XSLT.
As for providing Java code. BFD. It’s an XML format, it takes very few lines of code to construct a DOM from XML,
So from your comment: that’s 2 apps from Microsoft* that’ll fully support it, 1 open-source app, and 1 possible more from Apple. That’s great support for such a loved format!
He didn’t say it’s an “open standard.” The parent claimed it is not a standard at all, he countered that it is an ECMA standard, which it is.
She said it was “cross platform”.
I said it wasn’t, and why. That is all.
She/he never said “open” though. You used “open”. And it is cross-platform, whether you like it or not. Closed stuff or half-open stuff *can* be cross-platform.
{She/he never said “open” though. You used “open”. And it is cross-platform, whether you like it or not. Closed stuff or half-open stuff *can* be cross-platform.}
Absolutely correct. Closed stuff or half-open stuff *can* indeed be cross-platform.
All that is required is conformance to an open standard for formats/data interchange/communication protocols. Then any vendor can write their own (open OR closed) application for any target platform to create/generate/use/modify that data.
The problem here is that Microsoft consistently do the exact opposite. Microsoft consistently avoids open standards. Where there is a suitable open standard for data interchange, or open protocol for communication, Microsoft will consistently choose something else instead, more often than not their own closed proprietary way. What is more, Microsoft will often make it as difficult as they can for their end users to be able to choose to use the open standard alternative instead.
OOXML instead of ODF is just one example. WMF instead of CGM or SVG is another, XAML instead of XUL or UIML is another. Windows forms instead of Xforms is another. WMA instead of ogg vorbis or even MP3 is another. And so on, and so on.
What does it matter and why is it important, you ask?
This site might give some insight:
http://www.anyofficesuite.org/
Microsoft’s perennial attempts to lock all computer users in to having to use Windows platforms, and to straightjacket developers into writing applications that are constrained to be run exclusively on Windows platforms, is as pervasive as it is glaringly transparent.
Edited 2007-05-01 02:53
Doesn’t have to use an open standard either. Cross platform is cross platform, proprietary or not.
I know you don’t like it, but that’s your problem.
{Doesn’t have to use an open standard either. Cross platform is cross platform, proprietary or not.}
My position is not that Office has to have a true cross-platform capability. My position is only that it does not have such a capability.
Although Office 2007 will be able to fully open and manipulate OOXML-compliant files generated by other applications on other platforms, the reverse is not the case. Once you generate a file and save it using the default save format of Office 2007, you are then locked in to a Windows platform for that file.
There are many Microsoft-proprietary, Windows-only components of the Office 2007 format that are “merely referenced” by the OOXML specification, and hence not covered by Microsoft’s “covenant not to sue”.
Edited 2007-05-01 07:25
It doesn’t matter what your position is. It is cross-platform by definition. Even if it’s not a definition you agree with. The end.
Edited 2007-05-01 15:01
“It does not have vendor lock-in as OOXML is a standard.”
Why OOXML will ultimately fail:
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1480
“Yes it is expensive as BMW is expensive but Kia is not.”
BMW makes quality products, MS does not.
“MS office is superior.”
It is your money, waste it, if that is what you want to use.
“Yes if you are a cheapo or your time has no value then use OO but lying and saying OO is superior is as dumb as it can get.”
When you compare price, ODF support(the real open format), EULA, security, quality, and ability to run on multiple platforms, OpenOffice is obviously the superior choice.
BMW makes quality products, MS does not.
I think the whole office 2007 suite is far better quality than OO or any other office product. Honestly have you ever used Office 2007?
Outlook alone is one of the best mail client that increases productivity by many folds.
As for other products, visual studio is one of the kick-ass IDE MS has built. Similarly windbg is one of the best debugging platform avaiable (next to softice).
MS compilers do far better optimizations than gcc and MS has the best documentation and driver model.
“I think the whole office 2007 suite is far better quality than OO or any other office product.”
As I have said before, when you compare price, ODF support(the real open format), EULA, security, quality, and ability to run on multiple platforms, OpenOffice is obviously the superior choice.
“Outlook alone is one of the best mail client that increases productivity by many folds.”
Thunderbird is excellent software!
“visual studio is one of the kick-ass IDE MS has built. Similarly windbg is one of the best debugging platform avaiable (next to softice).”
“MS compilers do far better optimizations than gcc and MS has the best documentation and driver model.”
Vendor lock-in! The release of Vista will be increasing the need for cross-platform software.
I think CrazyDude0 gets MS discount coupons every time he posts on OSNews…that someone would go and say that MS makes better compilers than gcc in a discussion about MSO/OO.o speaks volumes.
“I think CrazyDude0 gets MS discount coupons every time he posts on OSNews”
He will probably need them, considering what MS charges for their software.
I think you get paid by Richard Stallman to advocate open source.
Really? Cool! I’ll be calling him to tell him I want my money! I hope he doesn’t mind that I produce closed-source software for a living, or that I sometimes say that closed-source alternatives are better than open-source ones…I guess as long as his understanding of my posts is as incomplete and biased as yours, I’m rich!
Honestly, sappyvcv, I’m a bit hurt that you compare my level-headed, rational interventions with CrazyDude0’s one-sided (and sometimes offensive) trolling. Seriously, have you ever seen CrazyDude0 ever say even one thing positive about Linux/Open Source? A *single* thing?
Of course, if you *really* insist on defending those who give MS supporters a bad name, there’s really nothing I can do to stop you. Personally, I don’t really think that CrazyDude0 is an astroturfer (unlike some others here), because he’s so over-the-top in his support for MS that he loses all pretenses at being objective (which is something you need to project for sucessful shilling).
Who said I’m defending him?
I was simply making a point that you apparently missed. Of course I don’t think you’re paid by anyone.
I’m not going to argue who is more pro/anti-MS/opensource. That would be ridiculously pointless.
My point simply is that you should keep away from attacking HIM and attack his argument instead. If his arguments are so far, why do you keep insisting on attacking him anyway?
I was poking fun at him (can you imagine if MS paid its shills in *coupons*?!). I was expecting to be modded down for it, too, and indeed I was. That should have been the end of it…
You are right, though. I shouldn’t even bother making fun of him. But to go claim that MSO is somehow superior than OO.o because MS makes better compilers than GCC was just too over-the-top to let pass without a little jab. That said, next time you should just mod me down for being off-topic.
I do take exception that I “insist on attacking him”…that implies that I repeatedly attack him or make fun of him, which is simply not true.
“Really? Cool! I’ll be calling him to tell him I want my money! I hope he doesn’t mind that I produce closed-source software for a living, or that I sometimes say that closed-source alternatives are better than open-source ones…I guess as long as his understanding of my posts is as incomplete and biased as yours, I’m rich!
Honestly, sappyvcv, I’m a bit hurt that you compare my level-headed, rational interventions with CrazyDude0’s one-sided (and sometimes offensive) trolling. Seriously, have you ever seen CrazyDude0 ever say even one thing positive about Linux/Open Source? A *single* thing?
Of course, if you *really* insist on defending those who give MS supporters a bad name, there’s really nothing I can do to stop you. Personally, I don’t really think that CrazyDude0 is an astroturfer (unlike some others here), because he’s so over-the-top in his support for MS that he loses all pretenses at being objective (which is something you need to project for sucessful shilling).”
—————-
You do realize that by your own words you fit the definition of “successful shilling”, don’t you?
:p
Edited 2007-04-30 18:05
No, I don’t. For that I would have to present a company’s point of view as if it was my own.
Projecting an air of objectivity is part of shilling, but that’s not the only thing that defines it…
“No, I don’t. For that I would have to present a company’s point of view as if it was my own.
Projecting an air of objectivity is part of shilling, but that’s not the only thing that defines it…”
Seems to me that “projecting an air of objectivity” while bashing a particular company could be just a slightly more subtle form of shilling. Rather than praise a particular company, you just bash its competitor instead.
Anyway, my point wasn’t that you are shilling. I seriously doubt anyone is getting paid by anyone to propagandize here. My point was that many here could be argued to be and accused to be “shilling”, even the most constant accusers.
Don’t confuse advocacy with shilling.
Maybe, maybe not. It’s impossible to tell. If I was MS, I would seriously consider it, though I have to say that sites like Slashdot or Digg would probably offer a best return on my investment.
Do you really think Open-source companies have enough money to spend on this type of guerilla marketing? I don’t.
Anyway, I don’t accuse people of being shills…I may sometimes evoke my suspicions that they are, but like a game of Clue you don’t accuse until you have proof. I have none, so I’ll keep limiting myself to being suspicious.
wrong post.
Edited 2007-04-30 16:33
‘shockingly expensive’
— Really? You buy it once and you can use it for years. Plus you know that if a client ever sends you anything you can actually read it. Not many clients want to be told by me that in order for me to read what they send they must install OO.org, learn how to use it, and re-write everything.
The money I make from my clients means that the cost of office is not expensive, it’s very cheap – pocket change even. It would be expensive if I were to use oo.org, because I would have very few clients: this means less money.
Edited 2007-04-30 14:34
“Not many clients want to be told by me that in order for me to read what they send they must install OO.org, learn how to use it, and re-write everything.”
That is vendor lock-in, MS tries to force people to use their office software, just to read documents. OpenOffice can read Microsoft Word documents, and save your work in Microsoft Word format. You should try OpenOffice before you buy another copy of MS office, and pay the preposterous prices they charge for it.
http://why.openoffice.org/
That is vendor lock-in
So what. Many people like knowing that they can go to a single source for support.
“So what. Many people like knowing that they can go to a single source for support.”
You think vendor lock-in is good? It seems MS does not have enough faith in the quality of their products, to support a real open standard like ODF. Are they afraid that customers will not continue to pay their unreasonable prices, if they don’t lock them in with closed and phony “open” formats?
Edited 2007-05-02 01:10
The only real reason you give is that it does not support ODF. Considering there are free plugins out there that add ODF support to Office (being developed by Sun, the primary developer of OpenOffice.org to boot), do you have any other reasons to give for why OpenOffice.org is “vastly superior”?
{The only real reason you give is that it does not support ODF.}
That is a real reason. It is in fact a showstopper issue.
If Microsoft Office and Windows supported open standards (not just ODF, but things like SVG, web standards in general, ogg, standards compliant java … not MS “extended and incompatible” java, etc, etc) then I could use Windows and Office. In fact, if Microsft products fully supported open standards and allowed competition, paradoxically there would be no contest because they would be the best products.
Since Windows and Office do not support open standards, and in fact avoid any open standards (such as ODF) in an thinly veiled attempt to lock customers in to the Windows platform, then paradoxically I cannot use a Windows or Office solution at all.
Having a feeble half-capable plugin, not even offered in the default install, and not able to be set as the default open/save format, is simply just not acceptable. I need a solution that will allow me to ensure a 100% open-standards-compliant output, with no Microsoft-only extensions to formats, so that I can be guaranteed that in the future I will not necessarily need a Windows/MSOffice platform in order to be able to fully read my own data.
Edited 2007-04-30 02:25
You do realize that MSFT ceased supplying MSJVM with Windows XP after the release of SP1, correct?
They direct customers to Sun for Java runtime: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/java/
{You do realize that MSFT ceased supplying MSJVM with Windows XP after the release of SP1, correct?}
You do realize that MSFT were forced to stop supplying MSJVM after losing a court case, and this was because Microsoft had put Windows-only extensions into MSJVM that ruined the intended cross-platform compatibility of Java? Sun were able to stop Microsoft from supplying MSJVM, Microsoft’s embrace-and-extend version of Java, because Microsoft’s spoliation of cross-platform interoperability violated the agreement under which Sun’s Java was licensed to MSFT.
Of all the versions of Java produced by any vendor, AFAIK only in Microsoft’s version was it possible to write an application that was not cross-platform.
No kidding – I think the point, which you obviously refuse to concede, is that your rant was somewhat tainted by the fact that you were using “present” tense terms about something that hasn’t been the case for the past few years relative to Java…
Just like he refuses to concede the point about OSA, which isn’t relevant to his argument and hasn’t been for the past few years.
Gotta love when people use out-dated arguments…
{No kidding – I think the point, which you obviously refuse to concede, is that your rant was somewhat tainted by the fact that you were using “present” tense terms about something that hasn’t been the case for the past few years relative to Java…}
What MS did with Java is a perfect example of “embrace and extend”. They took a language which was designed for cross-platform application, and tried to subvert it to make it Windows-only.
That didn’t work, the courts stopped it. So Microsoft abandonned the embrace-and-extend “Plan A”, and went with “Plan B” which is to ignore the standard and to introduce a competing Microsoft product which is Windows-only … in the case of Java this was .NET.
.NET is current … so we are now well into the Plan B stage.
Microsoft’s intent is still the same … kill any sort of open standard or cross-platform capability, and try to make everything Windows-only.
That is exceedingly unhealthy, and without doubt it is a practice that goes directly against the best interests of almost everyone on the planet (other than Microsofties).
“do you have any other reasons to give for why OpenOffice.org is “vastly superior”?
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17798&comment_id=235410
http://www.lanarchitect.net/Examples/200264-l.sxc
http://www.lanarchitect.net/Examples/200264-l.zip
Original report:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=120
Do yourself the test and read that report
Sorry guys, but OO is dead slow. It’s sluggish, both during startup, and usage. Period. There’s not much good something being ‘open’ as some of you so succinctly put it, if it’s really poor in usage. OO really should be started afresh imho, remember all those Microsoft haters who kept on bashing Microsoft about ‘bloated code’? Why don’t you bash OO? If you’re going to paint, paint both sides of the canvas with the same brush please.
KOffice is simply too unstable imho (at least it was the last time I used it, about a year ago, if it’s better now, please correct me), Abiword is nice, but only for word stuff.
OO does have very positive stuff, open document formats, robust and reliable (evening opening files that MS Office refuses to open). It’s a behomoth that needs a good spring clean out I suspect.
Dave
{Why don’t you bash OO? If you’re going to paint, paint both sides of the canvas with the same brush please. }
OK. OO is a bit slower to start on the same hardware as MS Office, but if you enable the quickstart options for OO (just the same as Windows itself embeds “quickstart” elements of Office in the core of Windows itself) then there is less difference.
On the other hand, Office 2007 lacks a number of essential, mission critical features … which are open standards support, cross-platform interoperability and lack of single-vendor lock-in, and so it is therefore next to useless.
Fair enough?
{KOffice is simply too unstable imho (at least it was the last time I used it, about a year ago, if it’s better now, please correct me)}
KOffice is not up to par yet. Try it again when KOffice 2.0 and KDE4 come out, towards the end of this year. It should be up to scratch then, and there may even be a Windows version available.
http://dot.kde.org/1177773146/
Edited 2007-04-29 23:43
“On the other hand, Office 2007 lacks a number of essential, mission critical features … which are open standards support, cross-platform interoperability and lack of single-vendor lock-in”
Those are by far and away not “mission critical” features. Ask any software developer what the number 1 mission critical feature any software should have, and the answer will always be the same: Performance. Which as these numbers show is absolutely abysmal in OO.
To put an even finer point on it, most “mission critical” software requiring true mission critical speed are usually NOT the things you mentioned…adding cross platform/standards/etc adds lots of unneeded code, and thus slows the software down. For truly mission critical software, having one point of contact (so called lock-in) is actually a good thing…when things go wrong, it’s better to call in the specialists who are experts in the program.
Etc.
“Those are by far and away not “mission critical” features. Ask any software developer what the number 1 mission critical feature any software should have, and the answer will always be the same: Performance. Which as these numbers show is absolutely abysmal in OO. ”
Too bad MS didnt think of this for vista..
oh and btw, i think you will find it to be impossibly hard to convince people that the speed of not supporting opening your files is more important than actually opening the files..
oh and btw, linux booted with openoffice, even if openoffice uses 4 times as much ram as MSoffice(which we by far does not know, MS could easily hide the real usage of resources), linux+openoffice would still consume less ram than a plain vista booted.
It really depends on the kind of software you are writting. But I would say it’s more important that it is reliable, stable, secure even before talking about speed.
{Those are by far and away not “mission critical” features.}
They are for me. If I am offered a closed obscure solution available only from a single vendor and capable of running only on a single platform, then I simply cannot use it. Open standards and cross-platform portability of data and applications are far and away the most important features for inclusion in my products.
They are for me.
Clearly, that isn’t the case for the rest of the industry; otherwise, the market share for OO and Office would be reversed.
/just the same as Windows itself embeds “quickstart” elements of Office in the core of Windows itself/
Please provide a specific example of this. Thanks.
I think you’re flinging excrement here. Office does not autoload stuff. The reason office apps start so quickly is that Microsoft hires engineers who measure things and improve the areas of code that affect speed the most. Clearly there isn’t enough money or talent in the OOo developer pool to do this for OO. Or their code base simply does not permit this.
The key to loading fast on Windows is to carefully arrange your code so that the pages you need at load time are all together in the code file. Office improves its startup speed by delay-loading as much as possible. It doesn’t need to load code for dialogs or rarely-used features until after the screen is displaying. Some of this is a bit of a lie because Office makes efforts to get its UI up quickly before the code behind it is fully up, but people take a little time to start interacting with an application so there’s enough time to load up the stuff that hasn’t been read yet. Also, using COM allows you to defer loading dlls until they’re really needed.
Netscape folks complained about bundling as well when they say that their stuff wasn’t loading as fast as IE. There was a bit of this since IE shared pages with Explorer, but a serious problem with Netscape on Windows was that all of their component DLLs were based at the same (default) address. Every time a dll would be loaded, it had to be rebased which increased the memory costs of having multiple Netscapes open and the load time because all the pages need to be read for a rebased dll to be fixed up.
It’s little things like this that make all the difference for performance. Rather than complaining about the evils of Microsoft, start measuring your own damn code’s performance and doing some testing. If the OS is letting you down in any particular speed test, then find another way to do it or rewrite as much of the necessary functionaliy as you can in a more performant way.
{ Office does not autoload stuff. }
Err, according to Microsoft itself:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826318
What does the Osa.exe file do?
The Osa.exe file does the following: • Initializes automation.
• Initializes some of the common fonts installed by Office.
• Handles certain commands (New Office Document, Open Office Document, Help, and Screen Saver) on the All Programs menu (click Start).
• Displays Microsoft Outlook notifications when the Office Assistant is available.
What are the advantages of running the Osa.exe file?
The Osa.exe file initializes the shared code that is used by the Office programs. When you use the Osa.exe file to initialize shared code, the Office programs start faster. If the Office programs, instead of Osa.exe, initialize the shared code, the programs take longer to start.
To run the Osa.exe file when you start Microsoft Windows, follow these steps: 1. Quit all Windows programs.
2. Right-click Start, and then click Explore.
3. In Microsoft Windows Explorer, open the following folder:
C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice11
4. Right-click and drag the Osa.exe file to the following folder:
C:Documents and SettingsusernameStart MenuProgramsStartup
5. Click Create Shortcut Here.
Note that you have to go through all those steps to turn it on. OSA.exe is not running on my Vista machine right now and in fact no office app is running besides OneNote’s quick launch (something that’s pretty useful on a TabletPC). OnenoteM takes 232K of memory and loads only one or two non-global dlls, so it likely does not take up much private load time. Probably on the order of 20-30 ms.
Like I said before… Office does NOT preload. Apparently you can make it preload through a non-default means, but you have to go out of your way to do this. It gets fast loads because there are people in Office whose entire job is to take performance traces and jigger things around to make them faster.
{Note that you have to go through all those steps to turn it on. OSA.exe is not running on my Vista machine right now .}
{Like I said before… Office does NOT preload.}
This depends on the Office version. Osa.exe was installed to run on Windows startup for versions of Office up to Office XP. Office 2003 onwards do not enable it by default.
So you are partly correct. Office does NOT preload … now. It used to. In particular, when OpenOffice 1.0 was notably slow, Office XP and earlier versions that it was often compared against were in fact being preloaded by default.
To be honest, the average user couldn’t care less about ‘open standards support’. 5% of the world’s computer population understands what we mean by open standards, and wants it. The rest doesn’t care. Majority rules I’m afraid. I want open standards as well, and I don’t want vendor lock in, but it isn’t going to happen, at least for a very very long time. Since the VAST majority of people either use Windows or OS X, and MS Office runs on both of them, that pretty much covers the cross platform angle that you’ve mentioned. Again, the average person just doesn’t care.
Dave
{Since the VAST majority of people either use Windows or OS X, and MS Office runs on both of them, that pretty much covers the cross platform angle that you’ve mentioned.}
Actually, no it doesn’t.
Documents originated on Mac OSX have a fair chance of being usable in Office 2007 for Windows, but the reverse is not the case.
{Again, the average person just doesn’t care.}
Maybe, maybe not. Quite a few governments care about not requiring their constituents to have a particular vendor’s product in order to read government electronic documents, and even in the US there are already four states who are moving towards a policy of mandating open and cross-platform-capable standards for office documents for government purposes.
There are a growing number of “document archive” type organisations showing strong interest in escaping from the unacceptable sole-source vendor situation as well.
There is a fair bit of evidence of growing support … a groundswell if you will … for open standards for document formats to allow multiple vendors to provide applications.
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=odf-adop…
http://www.spreadopendocument.org/
http://friendsofopendocument.com/
http://www.anyofficesuite.org/
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/applications
http://www.odfalliance.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_Format_Alliance
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/applications
http://www.oidi.org/tiki-index.php
http://opendocumentfoundation.us/
The average person will use whatever works. Whatever is used at work, whatever is online, whatever the government or other organisation sends to him or her. It is not yet a lost cause to escape the document format lock-in.
If you’re having instability problems, I’d suggest you run memtest86, because I can assure you that the instability might have been an issue around 2-3 years ago, but as long as you’re not using insane optimisations (-O3 and other pointness crap), it is as stable as any other office suite.
As for the OO bloat; it isn’t Java, the amount of code which is used in terms of Java is almost non-existant. The problem is the fact that the office has an abstraction layer which allows easy portability; it provides greater flexibility for developers, but the net result, unfortunately, is a price paid in terms of performance.
Then again, if you are going to compare, it should be this; are you happy paying for Microsoft Office 2007 Pro NZ$950 including GST above free for the extra speed and lower memory usage – thats ultimately what it comes down to in this discussion (which is what the article covered).
The article covered the performance and memory usage; and what the author is plaining stating is this; he is happy to hand over NZ$950 for the sake of saving a few megs and having his files save a few seconds faster – I don’t know about you, but he must be getting paid alot per hour to justify the price vs. time spent waiting/loss of productivity using OpenOffice.org over using Microsoft Office 2007 Professional.
Isn’t that bad from another point of view, though? It seems like if you’re gonna necessitate loading the Java VM into memory, it’d better be used to an extent that makes it worthwhile. If the Java code is almost non-existent, might it have been better to stick to C/C++ or whatever?
Re: portability, I can’t help but note that the official Mac version uses X11. Is this a sign of not enough abstraction, or simply not enough manpower? (Maybe both?)
From what I understand the use of Java is in the database module for the wizard IIRC. Its a decision that was made by Sun – I don’t understand the logic behind it. A sad attempt to justify the use of java on the desktop via stealth?
Not enough man power; the fact is, you need to port the abstraction components to Quartz as well as a number of other components; its alot of work, and ultimately for those involved, most don’t use Mac’s. Most of the developers are either using Windows, Linux or Solaris.
What does it say? it actually says more about the fact that there is no Mac opensource developer community who are willing to knuckle down and port it to MacOS X natively – and that is the one thing I noticed when I was using a Mac – everyone is out to make a buck with very few programmers in the Mac world willing to write software and make it freely available, and sometimes with the source.
One word: NeoOffice. It is Mac native. And it is Java. And it runs great, so who cares?
Edited 2007-04-30 09:55 UTC
It is native Java Mac. It is not native Mac.
Native Mac is Cocoa. Compliant Mac is Carbon. Native Java Mac is a completely different beast.
When Leopard is released, it will be even more clear that native in Leopard means Cocoa.
+1
Is it just me or hasn’t anybody else noticed that for the price of MS Office you get a computer upgrade that will make Open Office fly faster than MS Office?
(And please read the comments on the page – they highlight some interesting points about the author’s choices and methodology…)
mmm you do forget to mention that a few seconds here, and there, all add up. I’m sure he’s saving more than $950 per annum by what he gains in speed etc. One word:
productivity
OO isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong. But it is slow, it is a behemoth, and it does need a major re-writing, preferably from the ground up. It’s majorly bloated code. The installer is, well, let’s just say archaic. Slow. Excel compatibility is average to good from my experience, powerpoint is disgusting to poor on average, Access compatibility is non existent. On Word it is quite good, offering probably in the high 90 percent compatibility. I know that this isn’t the OO developer’s fault, it’s those bastards at Microsoft obfuscating their code and making the open source developers life as much a hell as possible.
I’m trying to be open minded here and critical of OO where it needs to be done, so that it can improve. If you praise something that’s bad, because you like it, it’ll never get better. I want OO to get better.
Dave
{I’m trying to be open minded here and critical of OO where it needs to be done, so that it can improve. If you praise something that’s bad, because you like it, it’ll never get better. I want OO to get better.}
OKay, I’ll take you at your word.
{OO isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong. But it is slow, it is a behemoth, and it does need a major re-writing, preferably from the ground up. It’s majorly bloated code. The installer is, well, let’s just say archaic. Slow. Excel compatibility is average to good from my experience, powerpoint is disgusting to poor on average, Access compatibility is non existent. On Word it is quite good, offering probably in the high 90 percent compatibility. I know that this isn’t the OO developer’s fault, it’s those bastards at Microsoft obfuscating their code and making the open source developers life as much a hell as possible.}
I’m sorry, but all this makes it very hard to take you at your word. Are you sure you are talking about OpenOffice 2.2 (subject of this thread)? Most of this unwarranted rant sounds more like OpenOffice 1.0 or something.
Try this for a more neutral, and recent, view of someone who previously thought OpenOffice was slow:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17798&comment_id=236043
It installs just like any other application on Windows.
I don’t disagree with fair criticism when it is warranted, but I’m afraid your post just reads like an horrendously-out-of-date and misplaced rant at best, and pure FUD at worst.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/loginMembersOnly/1,2894…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Base
Edited 2007-05-01 13:26
I’m sorry, but all this makes it very hard to take you at your word. Are you sure you are talking about OpenOffice 2.2 (subject of this thread)? Most of this unwarranted rant sounds more like OpenOffice 1.0 or something.
2.2 is slow and bloated, as well. Why do you find that so hard to believe?
These two GTK programs are great. Actually so great, that on a fresh boot on my Ubuntu, Gnumeric starts in like 3 seconds. It makes beautiful illustrations btw. And I like the total simplicity of Abiword. On the contrary Writer has never failed in confusing me with all its menus and options for this and that.
Also I think that you shouldn’t compare OO with Office just relatively. I mean sure, it uses much more RAM, but how much compared to the host computer’s performance? I think it uses ~80 MB, which is okay if you have 512, which most people have these days. I do get a lot of swapping on my machine, anyways, which is quite annoying, but that’s because I run other programs at the same time.
OO starts up way too slow? Yeah, but you usually only start it once and shut it down when you’re finished.
In terms of features, I think OO and Office seem quite equal. Besides, Office just had a major new revision, which we’re yet to see from OO.
Really, I think the future of office programs has much more simplicity. Like Abiword and even Wordpad. Way too often I see people using Word for something they could have done in Wordpad. Also the whole idea of bundling Office programs is getting out of hand. It’s great to be able to copy/paste, but really it’s a sick feature to embed spreadsheets in Word or Writer instead of just embedding some vector snap-shot.
Edited 2007-04-29 23:43
Argh, I feel the exact opposite way. MS Office 2007 is the best thing to happen to office UI since KOffice had that contest.
Way too often I see people using Word for something they could have done in Wordpad.
And way too often I see people using Word for things they should be accomplishing in a program like Photoshop, PageMaker or Scribus, except those programs all have steep learning curves.
There’s nothing I hate more than being limited by a small selection of functionality in my Word processor; as sad as it is I’d rather have a confusing interface and RAM bloat than be limited in what I do by the likes of AbiWord. A lot of times I’ll even resort to a page-layout program over a word processor because it’s just easier that way.
From what I’ve seen, MSO2007 provides from the best combination of functionality and UI out there today. (And I promise you, I am NOT a Microsoft fanboy. Just a fan of good UI and flexibile functionality.)
Does that mean OSS can’t do as well or better? Hell no. But the bar has just been raised.
Edited 2007-04-30 10:06 UTC
I have to agree. And disagree. While I think it’s great to be able to do anything with just one program in theory, I think it’s hard to do in practice. It may sound good, but I don’t think that people are doing stuff in Word, they could have accomplished in any of those programs, you mention. What you mentioned was a bunch of really professional tools. What Word does is embed spreadsheets, presentations and simple drawings, which everybody can do by opening another application suitable for such… like excel, powerpoint or paint. Then afterwards, they could just export the illustration to word.
Working with for instance spreadsheets is horrible. Usually you have some source data, that you might wanna change, so you have to delete it and re-insert it in your document, anyways. And moving it around is heavy for the machine, and alignment and wrapping usually f–ks up.
If Joe Average says: “I wanna make a drawing in my document”, then he’ll just have to use the drawing program. Microsoft just taught people this stupid idea that all their desired features should be built-in. Instead people should learn to think for themselves and use different applications for different needs.
Yes, embedding spreadsheets is a pain, but that’s what tables are for. And Word 2007 has some very nice table functionality.
Isn’t large potions of Open Office written in Java and Python?
Java, in general, performs somewhat slower than native C/C++ and has a large memory footprint because of it’s virtual machine runtime. Python is interpreted and very slow. One of the fastest interpreted languages (Euphoria) is 15-30x faster than Python at several benchmarks.
So frankly I don’t see much issue here. It seems Open Office is written fairly efficiently (gaining more optimizations) but suffers from inefficiencies of the languages being used.
only a couple of wizard use java
I’m not able to found it but a guy have analyzed oo and found many problem about design.
He proposed a couple of solution to get a faster boot, reduce memory footprint…
The work needed was about 2 month…
If somebody found this articles, please post the link here….
A nice office tool and free I tried is Koffice. Next years, it will work on windows.
Koffice is very complete, stable and fast.
http://www.koffice.org/
word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, tool to create database, flowcharting program, vector drawing, layer drawing tool, project management tool…
Another great tool nobody talk but include with many computer (hp), (law gouvernment use it too)
it’s word perfect office.
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1152105038419
Fast, small memory footprint. I found it more pleasant to use than ms office.
> only a couple of wizard use java
So OO Base is just a wizzard?
A Wizard with a Zimmerframe 😉
No…very little of it uses Java or Python. The vast majority is C++.
I’m suprised to see that so many people are pushing OOo just becuase its free. So what?! What matters (for any product) is what its like to use *after* you get it.
OOo is an incredible resource hog. I havn’t seen it get any faster here in WinXP (2.6 GHz Celeron, 512 MB RAM) with any 2.x release.
On the other hand I refuse to even try Office 2007. Its built assuming the user has a faster computer. OOo at least pretends to be able to run on slower computers than mine, which it does.
There’s a lot of ways to attack OOo (speed is one of them). And Office 2007 (new UI being one of them, not covered here) Don’t let “free” vs “non-free” get in the way!
I think that’s a real issue. If Office is $300 to you and you don’t see yourself using it for $300 worth of work then why pay for it?
Now, that’s not very much use at all. But there’s also the case where $300 is actually a lot of money to you (people who aren’t businesses apparently use computers too, I know it’s surprising).
If price is what’s stopping you it may not be something you can just forget about: You may just not have the money. Especially for something like this (some people can actually live with the word processing functionality of wordpad, because all they do is write letters and short reports).
Yes and no. You are missing the Free as in Speech aspect. What are you going to do when Microsoft stops supporting your version of Office? Furthermore, there are other solutions available besides MS Office and OO.o, as others have mentioned.
I am not going to down any developer for how she wants to license their software, but I have the freedom not to use it if it limits me. Free as in speech is more what I care about and it does limit my decisions when it comes to picking my software solutions. I think you most just don’t Get It. To assist you, I give you the Free Software Foundation philosophy.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
could it be that the footprint of the program have some relation to the way the file formats are buildt?
iirc, ODF is very structured, while ooxml is more like a memory dump translated to xml.
from what i recall, its been theorized that this is how the binary based file formats of ms office have been done. basically dumping the memory structure of the document being worked on into a file.
I tried opening OO writer and like someone mentioned earlier, it took 11-12 secs. The first time. After that, it took 2 secs. Even the other compnoents now start in about 2 secs. So I have to assume that if we pre-loaded part of the program like Office does, then it would load just as quickly. But the nice thing is, I don’t often use OO, so when I am not using it, it isnt using resources, unlike Office. So lets rethink this whole argument about which uses more resources. Its easy to say Office doesnt use as much because we can’t tell how much its preloading.
Office is not preloaded when your computer starts.
An objective review with real quantitative benchmarks! Tables and graphs of data! Short and to the point!
I wish there was more of this stuff out there!
Yeah it has tables and graphs, but it doesn’t mention at all how he got that data or his reasoning behind his interpretations of said data. The only thing that comes close to a section on methodology is a list of software.
I question how he got his numbers on memory usage. They look suspiciously like he’s using the VSS instead the RSS. Even the RSS isn’t accurate in most cases.
You should tell him that, he might just listen
OK, I really would like to have OOo lean and clean but lets be a bit realistic, the developers have little to gain on optimizing it for a specific architecture, clearly their intent is to have a very portable/reliable suite and there is a price to pay for it.
Also, for most users it already has more than enough features, what is also happening on a large part of the FOSS stack.
Besides, processors still gets faster, memory cheaper and hard disks bigger and for a lot of people is a lot more wise to spend U$ 300 on these components (or even on a new and faster computer) than on the MS software.
It is becoming harder every day for Microsoft to convince informed people with regular needs to pay for their software but, as we know, Dell, HP and other “resellers” also make a profit from MS products. Go figure out why we don’t see a better support from them …
But things are changing, lets see what the wheel of fortune bring to us this year …
“It is becoming harder every day for Microsoft to convince informed people with regular needs to pay for their software but, as we know, Dell, HP and other “resellers” also make a profit from MS products. Go figure out why we don’t see a better support from them … ”
The number of ‘informed’ people isn’t that large compared to the total user base though – and thats the reason OO isn’t seeing support from Dell, HP and the like. I imagine once linux takes off with a big name company (not just offering it like Dell is going to – but actual getting some good sales) – something will be done to bring OO up to office’s level
I like OO. It mostly works for me on Linux as a Word replacement. The real problem I have with it is that it really doesn’t blend well in a Microsoft Word centered environment. At work I tried to use it but OO would shift around images and table layout just enough that I couldn’t use it. At home I used it for school work but I ran into the same problems with headers and footers. Just not exact enough importing. The funny thing is I went back to using Word on Windows more since after opening file in Word I realized I like the way it had a built in grammar checker and I didn’t have to worry if images would move around when Word users got my files. I feel like I really did give it my best shot using it but it was costing me too much time having to proof files in Word to fix layout issues. It is pretty good for free though. If the Word import was flawless I would probably go back to using OO.
{At work I tried to use it but OO would shift around images and table layout just enough that I couldn’t use it. At home I used it for school work but I ran into the same problems with headers and footers. Just not exact enough importing.}
MS Offcie does not support data portability nor long-term data archiving.
MS Office is not compatible with OpenOffice, and in fact MS Office is not even compatible with different versions of itself.
Paradoxically, this is the exact reason why you should avoid using MSOffice and its lock-in formats. It is not really a valid reason for avoiding OpenOffice, it really is actually a reason for avoiding MS Office.
Edited 2007-04-30 02:35
It is not really a valid reason for avoiding OpenOffice, it really is actually a reason for avoiding MS Office.
In an ideal world this might be possible but I must accept Word files from my peers at work and the school also wants a Word file back for papers. I still use OO for my own projects on Linux. I’m sure this will change eventually but it takes more time trying to juggle the two applications. You know how it is, when you are busy you go for what works to get it done.
everyone complains about the “old [file] versions not working.” Yes it is true to an extent, but as far as “long-term data archiving” – I’m looking at the copy of excel 2003 I have on my PC, and it offers the ability to open every version of excel files back to 2.1, and even the ability to open dBaseII files (anyone remember that program?).
It is stupid that they always have to change the file format, but you can always open older stuff.
OO is so good because is so… free.
If somebody measuring software quality using only it’s price… He is… not very intelligent person.
> > OO is so good because is so… free.
> If somebody measuring software quality using only
> it’s price… He is… not very intelligent person.
If somebody doesn’t know that free has other meanings than the absence of a price tag… He is … not a very educated person.
Edited 2007-04-30 07:40
and I am very happy with OO. I never heard about the other one though, so, I will not try to make a comparison.
🙂
star office 4.0 is also portable (it worked on Windows, Linux) and consumes far less resources than openoffice. i tried once installing it and i was shocked. start up in no time, fast user interface. i know, it had less features, but how much less?
I though open office was based on the star office source. The difference between the two had to do with the advanced ability to handle word documents. I’m guessing that star office has a preloader and that’s why you are seeing such a speed increase, the also might have optimized it quite a bit. I also think it doesn’t use the java based database app.
it didn’t have preloader. it didn’t have database, but if i remember, openoffice was splited sometime ago, so it shouldn’t be a reason.
i think there have to be an error in openoffice, because staroffice 5.2 started on my duron 600 as long as openoffice 2.0 on my sempron 2800+.
“i think there have to be an error in openoffice, because staroffice 5.2 started on my duron 600 as long as openoffice 2.0 on my sempron 2800+.”
Some people, other than the hugely biased George Ou, have in fact trialled OpenOffice 2.0.4 and Microsoft Office on the same machine, and found that OpenOffice starts slightly faster if anything.
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/71233/
That is really a pointless test given the fact compared two office applications with two different formats (a compressed file vs a single xml) without referencing to the original file (probably from Excel 97). The test will only make sense if both use the same format. Afterall, ODF plugins is already available for Microsoft Office from SUN.
Another problem is the use of 200 MB file of spreadsheet log. In real world, that is completely unrealistic so it is not surprising it takes longer for both Calc 2.2 and Excel 2003 to open because they are not designed for handle these size of data. Does it make sense to use another tool for these tasks like a database?
everyone mentions openoffice being slow to load but they forget two things.
1: MSOffice is preloaded as Windows starts
2: OpenOffice can do the same with oooqs on linux… apt-get install oooqs
What confuses me, is that MSOffice loads far quicker on Linux using Wine, than it does natively in Windows.
Edited 2007-04-30 08:34
Please prove your statement:
1: MSOffice is preloaded as Windows starts
As I know, neither office 2003, neither 2007 preloads anything. That is also true with previous versions probably but i cannot check that right now.
So if you try to spread lies at least try make up some “proof”…
Office preloads a base when it’s installed on Win2k/XP and presumably Vista.
If you don’t bother to read the Registries that is your problem.
Once again – no proof. I always keep track on whats starting on my system and I have never seen an Office preloader yet…
Can you provide details: what is the process name?
{Once again – no proof. I always keep track on whats starting on my system and I have never seen an Office preloader yet…
Can you provide details: what is the process name?}
There is a fair amount of MS Office functionality built right in the the core of Windows, but if you want a reference for a specific-to-Office preloader, then the name of that is “Office Startup Assistant”.
Program name is osa.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826318
Edited 2007-04-30 23:31
Did you read the article? You have to specifically add it to the startup list for it to start before Office itself. Otherwise all it does is load when you load your first Office app, then makes loading of the OTHER office apps quicker while its running. When you reboot, you lose that again.
{Did you read the article? You have to specifically add it to the startup list for it to start before Office itself.}
That is only the case for Office 2003 and later. For earlier versions of Office, osa.exe was installed to run on Windows startup by default.
And so you have just confirmed it: you are spreading lies because your info is 4 years old… Oh well…
{And so you have just confirmed it: you are spreading lies because your info is 4 years old… Oh well…}
Excuse me?
What did I post about osa.exe that was in any way inaccurate?
I modded you down for your unwarranted insult.
Here is the question I answered:
Can you provide details: what is the process name?
And here was my answer:
There is a fair amount of MS Office functionality built right in the the core of Windows, but if you want a reference for a specific-to-Office preloader, then the name of that is “Office Startup Assistant”.
Program name is osa.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826318
Where is the lie?
Edited 2007-05-01 10:38
First of all, OSA doesn’t start up with Windows anymore and hasn’t in almost 5 years.
Second, you’ve provided no proof that “MS Office functionality [is] built right in the core of Windows”.
Third, OSA.exe is only a preloader in the sense that it works like Mozilla plans for XUL runner to work — for apps using the same framework to share all the code it can through a common “runtime”.
What point exactly were you trying to make? I thought it was that Office starts up faster because of a “preloader”, which hasn’t been true in almost 5 years. So again, what was your point?
Only thing that pisses me off with OO is dowing data merging. They have a very poor implementation of data merging compared to MS Office.
That aside I find OO fine for Prit based work.
I love OO.org for a few reasons.
1)It’s open source software so anybody can contribute and fix things.
Too bad they don’t seem to do it. It is a mess.
2)I’m not locked in with a corporate file format.
Well, doesn’t it have to support Word, or else it is irrelevant? What use is it’s own format, that all three people use?
3)I don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to try and keep it.
Well, cheap is cheap.
That is totally expected from not OO but from anything running on linux; performance felt like somewhere between XP and vista.
But what about Sun StarOffice on Sun Solaris x86, that felt to me like 2x windows XP + Office 2003/2007 performance.
Solaris always feels fastest OS around, if we don’t compete it with OSX startup which cannot be beaten.
Everyone knows that MS Office is probably the best office software around. But, there are some questions:
1. Would it be so quick and low memory if designed to support multiple platforms, apart from Windows and Mac ?
2. Is the performance equaly good on Mac ?
3. What is the percent of users that need MS Office features missing in OO ?
If I was using Windows OS, I would be running OO, too, because I don’t write very complex documents. Mostly technical specifications with pictures, and spreadsheets with cost structure. If I payed for MS Office, it would be waste of money, because OO is good enough for what I do. I think that there are many users like me out there.
Edited 2007-04-30 15:23
OOo is based on Star Office but is way slower. Star Office just flies on Solaris 10. I loved the speed Star Office worked on Solaris.
Remember the topic?:
Microsoft Office 2007 (which is after HOW many versions? Well over 10!)
Compared to:
OpenOffice.org 2.2 (VERSION two-point-two!)
YES, there is bloat. YES, there are bugs. YES, it COULD be better.
BUT, it WILL be better. We have a LONG way to go till OO.o 10+ is available, and while it does have the luxury of being a straight-forward target it is also breaking new ground for open and free software. If we all did less complaining and more bug-reporting, there would be less to complain about. I’ll gladly spare a few hundred Megs if that means it will work.
It’s also important to point out the fact that Microsoft is the author of BOTH the (new and BUGGY) operating system AND the office suite.
It’s deceptive to point out a person who doesn’t get the “inside joke”.
Edited 2007-04-30 19:04
OO.o is based on Star Office, which has been around since 1994. So I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make wrt “age” of the suites. Saying “OO.o is bloated because it’s young” is misleading and doesn’t help your cause in any case.
Edited 2007-04-30 19:23
Version numbers mean nothing. The vendor is free to use whatever version number they like and it doesn’t reflect on the age, maturity or quality of the product.
It’s like saying the Linux kernel is only at 2.6, while NT is at 5. So Linux is gonna be slower and more bloated than NT. I’m sure you can come up with your own examples.
How much does MS Office cost ?
Use the $ to buy better PC or upgrade RAM, it will make the whole PC/Laptop run faster , and not only 1 software.
This is my own opinion.
Sorry man… It looks like word, can do most of the stuff… But when she had to send a document composed on Ubuntu/OOO to a colleague. Well, the font metrics were all messed up and spacing was wrong. This was not even a really complicated document.
Given that you can not tell other people what to use, well, it has to just work, and it does not work adequately, since everyone else uses MSO.
Word actually starts faster on Ubuntu with Code Weavers CX office 6.0 than OOO. Go figure.
Your problem is not common one. I think that there is something wrong with the font your wife has chosen. My advice might sound strange, but the common Windows TT fonts work very well when imported to OO. You can use spadmin to import them.
There are different fonts found in Linux distributions, some are good, some not. Some are not UNICODE, some have problems with subscripts and superscripts, and some are just ok.
For various reasons, but primary because of combination of internal C++ problems and desire for language interoperability and portability OO.o suite is based around own component object model called UNO. Those not familiar with meaning of component object model, it is in essence methodology of writing modular software where all modules extend specified programming design or, popularly called, a contract..
In software world this is quite common practice when interoperability is needed. COM, corba, EJB are all different specifications for various component modules. One thing for which component modules are not known is speed and memory consumption. They are never solution for writing something that is just small and fast. In OO.o even GUI is frontend plug-in towards internal document handling engine and can be disabled.
Large parts of OO.o’s core is used in all OO.o’s apps. In essence, because of this design, Writer and Calc share quite a lot of code. This can be seen. Just start Writer and measure time of starting Calc. It will start far faster. “Large” memory consumption is also part of this design. For example if one kills Calc while Writer is running, memory used by Calc will not be freed. Majority of memory is used by this massive document engine and for most of time suit apps are just different aspects of largely same code.
But all of this is good thing. It is good because without it OO.o would not exists.
Yes it is slow. Yes it probably can be made somewhat faster. But office suits are one of largest types of apps out there, and for non-trivial documents memory consumption will not matter. It’s like Opera and Firefox. Yes Opera needs 3-5 times less memory just to start. But once 50 tabs are open difference between Opera and Firefox will be something like 200 vs. 230 Mb. Yes Opera needs less but more like 15% less. And same applies to OO.o.
OO.o does not need 1GB of ram to start and use. It is more like 100 Mb. By today standards and price that is trivial amount. It is not optimized for speed. But it is office app, not system software like kernel, dhcp server or database. Even on 5 years old computer one just can’t type faster than OO.o can process. Speed and memory consumption, as long as they not interfere usability, are not something that matters for this kind of app.
It is decent suit, although I prefer MS Office. Calc and Excel are on par, but outside big langunages (Spanish, Englis etc.) territories MS Word comes with much better language support. However I don’t like word processors in general. For page layout InDesign is way to go. Typewriter emulators are for ignorant or uneducated or both.
In many cases, LaTeX+Kile is far ahead from MS-Word / OOo.
In few cases, it’s possible to use OOo when needed…without giving 300$ 😉
regards,
glyj
I decided not to take either George Ou’s or Lemur2’s word for any of this. I’ve got Office 2007 on my machine and I downloaded OO.o 2.2.0.
I have 1.5 GB of RAM and I’m running Vista Final on a Core Duo laptop.
After the first startup after install, OO.o writer launched in about 4 seconds and Office Word launched in about 2-3 seconds. It’s almost exactly the same amount of time. A minor annoyance was the soffice put in its autostarter service by default, which I don’t like. I disabled it before testing.
Memory usage was 9.5 MB for Word and 12.5 MB for soffice.exe. All of the program memory was likely in the disk cache when I launched both of them because I gave them both a few launches to see that the time was indeed the same. I feel like this is fair since Vista would put the application in the disk cache on boot through SuperFetch if you truly do use it every day, regardless of whether it’s Word or OO.o.
It looks like the OO.o folks have improved the bootup time to be roughly comparable to WinWord on recent hardware. I take back any negative comments about the performance engineers of OO.o.
Edited 2007-05-01 06:59
{I decided not to take either George Ou’s or Lemur2’s word for any of this. I’ve got Office 2007 on my machine and I downloaded OO.o 2.2.0.}
Good for you. Kudos.
MS Office used to have the quick startup function loaded in the memory , however, it does not shows in the system tray.
To really compare the two software, find the process in the task manager with name similar to osa.exe , terminate it before doing testing.
IMHO, OOo is still slow at the startup compared to MSO but have been improving. The slowness will be significant in low spec PCs.
This has been one of the hurdle for OOo to penetrate in Enterprise/Commercial market. It is because Office Suite is a standard package in a commercial institution , and once implemented , the hardware upgrading cost will be costly .
I myself as an MIS coordinator in a company , planning to implement OOo since 2 years ago, found some difficulty.
1. Chart module lack of function(chart2 is on the way!)
This is very important because most of our managerial level staff use this feature to make report.
2. Total upgrading cost (too many 128Mb PC >.< )
However, for every new PC purchase, I will ask my staff preload OOo to make sure they can open ODF files.
To promote OOo, please use ODF , save as ODF and send to friends . Try not to save as PDF , instead, if your friend cannot open , introduce them OOo.
I hope that all retail PC sellers , install OOo default for all customer along with the “P&C” of MSO