“If ‘GoogleOffice’ ever materializes, it won’t be going head-to-head with Microsoft Office. Instead, expect some new MSN services in the pipeline to emerge as Redmond’s secret weapons.” On a related note, Sun’s StarOffice 8 is now available as a free download for teachers and students.
Can someone provide me a link to what StarOffice provides over OpenOffice. I must know.
1.) Improved Spellcheck & Thesaurus
2.) More Clipart
3.) Templates
4.) More document filters
5.) More fonts
6.) Congig tools for distributed environments
7.) Training & Support
Thats all I know of the top of my head…I’d say there are a lot more though.
doesn’t version 8 also adds support for micros?
As I understand it SO8 implements MS Office compatible macros. I believe it had a macro facility before but the new one allows you to bring over your existing macros with little or no need for re-writing.
Thanks.
Yep macro’s too…missed that one. Anything else I missed?
It is unlikely that Google will want to make it’s own Office program, what is likely however is that they will implement office tools using AJAX. The point being that you would not be able to replace the likes of StarOffice and MS Office with Web applications just yet. But you could supplement them with a take anywhere workspace that Google and Sun seem to be so good at.
The point being that you would not be able to replace the likes of StarOffice and MS Office with Web applications just yet.
That won’t last for long, and Sun/Google would be the ones to pull it off with a great deal of polish. One company already has a web-based office suite, though I can’t remember the name (Textmaker?).
Right now, some of the live web editors are between Wordpad and OOo in functionality. If you skip cross-browser compatability, CSS and DHTML compliance, you can do impressive apps in Mozilla/Firefox’s XUL right now, like the Amazon Browser here;
http://www.faser.net/mab/screenshots.cfm
So, yes, there is only one web-based suite of standard ‘office’ programs right now, though there are no technical limitations to creating more of those web office apps…only effort and interest.
Yes, that’s my guess as well. In the future AJAX integrated as part of the JAVA stack with some adds, and web office applications based on that. The user is gravitating towards web based everything, blogs, pictures, PIMs, WIKIs, it’s only a matter of time before office apps are web based. Programs like MS Office are too big, too complicated and unnecessary for most users . . . in the old days they were fine, but today it’s all about the web and sharing.
The driving force is one simple fact. Most people can use their browser and email, but can’t keep their computer running. Yahoo! Flickr style apps is the way forward.
IMHO, Google gets a front row seat at the JAVA/AJAX technology table at Sun in exchange for buying Sun Opteron boxes, maybe even with Solaris installed.
very good news.
I have used star office 7 students edition
it serves my purpose very well, I use mainly the basic stuff & it works great.
downloading V8 looking forward to it
I don’t suppose you could tell me if the StarOffice spreadsheet is improved over the OpenOffice.org one? I need to make full page graphs that look neat(er than the OO.o ones) and I need to apply formulas to several cells where the cells they get their value from increments every time. Can StarOffice 8 do that any better than OpenOffice?
Emergency! MS Squad 51: 3,000 developers, code 42 – application clone. Extinguish competitive innovation fire immediately.
I think name OpenOffice sounds classier than Staroffice, why not OpenOffice Plus
It’s not that far fetched for a AJAX front end to openoffice that runs on a huge google webfarm and stores all its data on to googles servers.
That might actually be interesting. It would pretty much potentially eliminate the need for anyone to install/buy an office product for home if they have broadband.
Where would you documents be stored? remotely on a server somewhere in the world? what if you Internet connection goes down and you need some important documents? Or better yet the remote server gets hacked and your information gets propagated over the internet.
> Where would you documents be stored? remotely on a server somewhere in the world?
I’d guess Save As… would be used to determine the location.
> what if you Internet connection goes down and you need some important documents?
If you saved locally, you’d have a local copy.
If your local machine blows up, you better have a backup!
> Or better yet the remote server gets hacked and your information gets propagated over the internet.
It’s a good thing local machines never ‘get hacked’ or randomly corrupt data.
I’d guess Save As… would be used to determine the location.
Thats assuming they don’t go with the NC model.
It’s a good thing local machines never ‘get hacked’ or randomly corrupt data.
At least i am in control of securing my own important data.
Why assume that they would go with an NC model when no one uses NCs? Why model their offering on a failure? Of course we also can’t assume that they would provide the option of storage to a drive of your choice either somewhere in the world, like an internet drive, or at some known location, such as a local drive or NAS. Can NCs save files to only one drive, or just to one [at an unknown] location?
Are NCs unable to use sftp to move your files to where you want to work on them? (I don’t have one, so I’m just asking).
If your network connection goes down, through no fault of your own since you are the hardware and software maintainer and we’ll grant that it’s a cause that is external to your sphere of influence, would you be unable to edit or print your documents at the library, an internet cafe, a friend’s house, Starbuck’s on a laptop (with a portable printer)?
Of course if any of these options are possible or workable, which are not both the same thing, then it would be up to you to choose to use them or not, eh? Any idea what you would pick, if any?
Personally, i think a internet connection going down is a lot more likely than a local machine blowing up. Also, saving locally is not useful if you can’t read/edit the document with a local software. And if you can work on it with a local software, the net-based thing does not really serve any purpose, IMHO.
Personally, i think a internet connection going down is a lot more likely than a local machine blowing up. Also, saving locally is not useful if you can’t read/edit the document with a local software. And if you can work on it with a local software, the net-based thing does not really serve any purpose, IMHO.
Well, if the net connection goes down…it always comes back up.
If your local machine goes down, it’s sometimes toast. (I backup, you backup, most other people … don’t!)
That said, if it is possible to save in 2 locations, that would be ideal. Save to flash and save to net.
In general, I trust local networks — properly managed — for data storage over a single PC. This is not much different (assuming it is properly managed…not that it must be).
Star Office/Open office/MS office is too slow and too much of bloat even for the desktop, leave alone the web.
Oh dont be a fool, it shows how little you know about programming methods to even consider taking something like OpenOffice.org into a web application. It is just pointless to even attempt something like that.
I just downloaded StarOffice 8 and I’m no student?
then you are not honoring liecence agreement
delete the setup file & download openoffice
And next time Sun decides to do something like this, real students like myself will have to jump through hoops to prove who we are. If I were you I wouldn’t boast about what you did.
I think the point is that Google wouldn’t need to port OOo to run on a web server, they just need to port the opendocument file format parsers into a script, and implement an AJAX front end for rich editing. Then you’d have all the features of OOo as a web service, and full file-compatibility, but with a minimal amount of porting.
Nobody’s suggesting rewriting the local backend of OOo to run in XUL or the like.
However, the ability to edit OOo files stored as atttachments in gmail is very tempting.
At least for spreadsheets. Already we know Google wants to be THE resource for information consumption. All sorts of information, at any time, any format, any subject. That explains their acquisitions of blooger, keyhole, and their literary project. Now, the next step would be to allow you to consume AND process the data in various formats, like a spread sheet.
Lets say you have a spreadsheet with city names in the rows, and months and year in the column headers. You type “total precipitation” in B2 (B1 would have Aug, 2002 heading, A2 would have New York City row heading). You hit enter, and GSpreadsheet searches the vast repository of info in the Googleverse, and enters the total precip for NYC during August of 2002. No complex functions or formulas, just a simple natural language query. In a way, every cell in the spreadsheet could be viewed as one single searchbox.
Another thing that would be useful, and would tie in with the literary project, would be something that would be like an AutoResearcher. You fire up GWord, and you start your paper on the African slave trade. You get to your second paragraph, which is on the topic of the trade’s origin. You need some scholarly work to cite. So you use the Autoreach feature. Google uses the topic of your paragraph to search its library or books and jounrals to find a relevant passage. You find one you like, highlight the text, and press select. The quote is now entered, properly formatted, cited, with a reference in an automatically generated bibliography.
So you see, there is a lot that Google could do with an office suite.
Thinkfree – http://www.thinkfree.com does provide a nice cross-platform Java office suite.
Make no mistake, this is competing with Microsoft Office and any suggestion to the contrary is just plain denial.
What Mary Jo Foley is describing is a scenario where Microsoft is pulled into Google’s networking model over the internet – online Outlook (Kahuna isn’t an Ajax app), online Exchange, online Office, online…..well that’s about it. Once Microsoft is sucked into this world their revenue stream goes up the river. Also, because the technology they use is Microsoft only it simply won’t have the reach to cover an area the size of the internet. You need people implementing the open standards that support your business (even if they’re in direct competition!) and the revenue they bring in. All of that flies out of the window once you leave the confines of the client.
Can anyone seriously see Microsoft hosting Exchange, Sharepoint, Office etc. for everyone for practically no revenue? Google’s revenue to support this comes from elsewhere as does everyone elses’, and their activity is merely a supporting act to drive more growth and revenue.
If Google, with Sun’s help, are clever about this and create a service where people can mass convert Microsoft Office files (with the right support network) to Open Document, perhaps as part of when they create a Google account, this puts Microsoft Office in a very dangerous position. Something like this would be infinitely more preferable for businesses than using a totally new office suite by themselves that they’re not sure about and the avalanche is much more likely to happen.
Imagine it. You could use Open Office, Star Office, KOffice, whatever, as a rich client to provide the full feature set. This can all be synchronised with an online Google account, or somewhere else, for complete availability. When you’re away from your desk, or you just want to tinker with your documents, you can simply use online Ajax based office. Your documents, everywhere, anywhere you want them. Microsoft has been promising something like that for years and their bloated, over-complex and crappy client vision has simply not come close to delivering. Because of Open Document, even if Sun, Google or anyone else can’t fill the gaps someone else can while at the same time significantly lengthening Google, Sun’s and everybody else’s reach.
Microsoft can’t do this – period. Why? Microsoft, organisationally, instituationally, through and through, are set up to be a large, proprietary software company that shifts boxes. That’s the basis for their incredibly easy revenue and profit margins. If they have to move their core cash cows to a really service oriented world then they’re in an awful lot of trouble. Additionally, Microsoft’s software is simply not up to the job for services on this scale. Anybody who has been part of, or has seen, the disaster that is MSN will testify to that. Would anyone care to bet on MSN over Google’s services, the brand awareness that they have or the shear technical and networking prowess Google can bring to bear? I certainly wouldn’t.
The only threat to Google is the fact that the vast majority of their users access Google’s services through Internet Explorer. As this is controlled by Microsoft and runs on Windows, and they control the technology and development direction, the only hope for Microsoft is if they can integrate their search into IE and Windows and supplant HTML and the web standards Google relies on IE to implement. The battle for Google is now to get people away from Microsoft technology and to knock away that pillars the support that lock-in. The first one is Microsoft Office.
Thom,
Can you & the other OS news posters just quit using this phrase on every news you post ?
Usually the related note is not very relevent.
What’s the point of this one ? Geez, on a related note my a** itches.
I think Thom is using the phrase “on a related note” properly in this case, he was talking about office suites and last time I checked StarOffice is an office suite.
The author wanted to know what Microsoft does better then anyone else: look at support. Hardware Support & Customer support it beats out basically everyone.
Hardware wise it beats Linux hands down… Noboddy can deny that….
Customer wise, if you call up microsoft with a dumb question (like how to play a DVD on Xbox; funny story about that..) the support reps won’t be like “OMFG n00b!!! gline!!!!” as seen in most linux IRC channels…
So i’d pretty much say Microsoft wins in that area…
>Hardware wise it beats Linux hands down… Noboddy can deny that….
BZzzt. What hole did you craw out of. Linux supports 10000x more hardware devices than Windows right “out of the box”.
And please tell us what hardware support does Microsoft write? Answer, None. All the hardware vendors do it for them and they mooch off of them. They deserve no credit for hardware support since they put very little effort themselves into it at all.
>Customer wise, if you call up microsoft with a dumb
>question
Um.. Microsoft does not do customer support much at all, they tell you to call the person you bought Windows from. Another fantastic technique they do…pawn off their own support problems down to DELL, and HP, and Gateway etc…brilliant move on their part…Sure they do offer a $35/PER CALL support, but who wants to shell out $35/call just to talk to a front line tech who will tell you to reinstall/reboot/etc.
Sooo…they do no hardware support themselves, and they do not provide any customer support themsleves and here you are saying they are the second coming of the diety in these 2 areas.
Man…put down the Kool-Aid.
After seeing the the free star office for students,
I got depressed b/c it’s not working in debian based
distributions (the installer is heavily depends on
the rpm command).
I got the error :
ExecuteCommand Error: java.io.IOException: java.io.IOException: /bin/rpm: not found
Disappointing but not expected.