Brace yourself for a rare event: The VAR Guy is about to eat crow. Last fall, he dumped Microsoft Office for an open source suite. Now, he’s making the leap back into Microsoft’s arms. What went wrong with our resident blogger’s open source experiment? Here’s the scoop.
Rewind to October. The VAR Guy suffered from a nasty Microsoft Office bug on Mac OS X. The bug slowed down his Mac Book Pro, froze applications and made the system unusable. He was fed up with Bill Gates and Company. So he sought alternatives and prepared to Delete Microsoft Office Forever!
OpenOffice, that sweet open source suite, seemed like a logical choice. The VAR Guy already runs OpenOffice on his Ubuntu Linux PC from Dell — and he loves the suite. But OpenOffice isn’t very mature on Mac OS X. (Here’s a look at the development schedule.)
So he went looking elsewhere for options. NeoOffice — another flavor of OpenOffice for the Mac OS X — was a promising option. So The VAR Guy tried it … and liked it.
Losing Faith
Still, he gradually found shortcomings with the NeoOffice suite. For starters, NeoOffice just didn’t feel fully polished. Sure, it’s better than a basic package like Microsoft Works but it felt less polished than Microsoft Office. Second, The VAR Guy kept having brain freezes when he tried to work in revision mode. He just couldn’t figure it out.
Now, the final and most annoying problem: NeoOffice doesn’t have an email/calendaring system. So, The VAR Guy had to look for additional software. He tried the Thunderbird open source email client. And he moved to Google’s online Calendar to maintain his schedule. But leaping back and forth between email (the default pipeline for scheduling meetings) and an online calendar (the place for managing a meeting schedule) became a pain after a few weeks.
So now you know about The VAR Guy’s pain. And the answer to that suffering — a Microsoft Office CD — was sitting on a bookshelf a few feet from his desk. He finally gave into temptation and reinstalled Office 2004 for the Mac earlier today.
You know what? The VAR Guy has to admit: It’s a pretty darn good software suite. Now if only Microsoft would get around to fixing Vista… …
And a closing note to you open source fans out there: NeoOffice is a nice choice if you simply need a productivity suite. But once you throw in email and calendaring, all bets are off.
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Foolish move. You should have stuck with NeoOffice a little longer and learned the user interface.
I disagree with Jim. I am also on a Mac and using the Office programs works well. Easy to integrate with all those slow to move PC users - it’s not perfect, but it does the job.
OpenOffice, “it’s not perfect, but it does the job”
But isn’t it great that we HAVE a choice…
Competition is good. We all end up benefiting.
Sharing all the good ideas for everyone to use sounds good to me. Like integrating office program with email. Simple idea and effective.
Enjoy your proprietary office program.
“And a closing note to you open source fans out there: NeoOffice is a nice choice if you simply need a productivity suite. But once you throw in email and calendaring, all bets are off.”
I don’t know, I don’t use a Mac
But using Thunderbird is great. You could have tried a Thunderbird add-on to access Google Calendar on Thunderbird. Also, there is a Mac OS X build of Evolution, the defacto groupware on Linux. I wished you searched for other possibilities…
Chris, Thanks for the suggestion. The VAR Guy has a business to build right now so he’ll be on Microsoft Office the next few weeks. But maybe by February he will explore the Thunderbird add-on for Google Calendar along with Mac OS X build of Evolution. Thanks for the timely, important tips for The VAR Guy and his readers.
There were other options such as Evolution on MAC…
So VAR picked the closest thing that he had on the shelf. In a general sense this is a solution that costs several hundred dollars–extremely impractical on a large scale. So what and who cares. He could have bought another ->entire computer system<- for how he chose to solve the problem. Grabbing a $500 office package is not an option for most people. A foolish choice indeed.
Buzz: Yes, Microsoft Office comes with a cost. But in this case, it’s the $150 package for small businesses, students and home users — not the $500 cost you stated. Yes, The VAR Guy blogs away from a home office at an undisclosed location.
Well… I’m going to side a bit with the VAR guy. Why? The VAR Guy was focused on getting the job done and a choice was made. I mean, the VAR Guy tried an alternative to MS Office, and then went back. There’s nothing wrong about that.
With that said, I’ve learned some things with regards to dealing with MS Office vs. open (OpenOffice) products. People usually get disenchanted with MS stuff when things go really bad… and they usually do… so no surprise. It gets frustrating the 3rd time your .pst file gets corrupted due to no fault of your own. You lose data, you lose patience and lose some valuable time. There doesn’t appear to be a fix, but you ARE in a boat with a lot of other castaways… and misery loves company!!
However, if/when a similar occurence happens with the “open” product, often times there is a “solution”… but sometimes the solution is complicated and sometimes you just can’t figure it out. And THAT, is even more frustrating than being in the same boat with the castaways trapped in the sea of MS.
Open products are by nature more flexible and infinitely more fixable… but sometimes people prefer a sympathetic (normal) life boat over patching holes (and the resulting learning curve) in the ocean liner.
Get the Lightning plugin for Firebird. It’s an integrated calender / meeting tracker plugin that can interface with Exchange calender.
VAR Guy, I am surprised you are not disgusted by the machinery being built into Microsoft products for improving their access to what should be your personal and private affairs while more easily covering their tracks (remember we are not talking about open source). Closed source products should be avoided for a number of reasons. Each new iteration is worse than the last because of the possibilities that open up with improved processing power on PC’s. Additionally, migrating away becomes tougher with each “upgrade.” Identity theft and loss of strategic information are only a real issue on closed platforms like Windows and Vista, made worse when you use even more closed software like MS Office [at least this is the case for those that take care when online].
Not everyone runs a serious business, however, so ymmv.
Chris Cox, you make some good points, but there is value in patience. Imagine if you always reverted to the beginning of Kindergarten when you failed something. A little persevering can go a long way, as once things are learned once (and there are usually a few small such bumps in a noob’s life) they stop becoming issues. Imagine if when you were thirsty you cried and ran back to momma each and every time. On the other hand, when you learn where the fridge is and what to do when you get there, it becomes very empowering and automatic (no thought effort required thereafter). We have a pretty big brain. Surely besides video games it is capable of holding something else.
I think the biggest difference between users of Windows and users of Linux is that users of Linux continue to grow and become more and more computer savvy as long as they are willing to advance. This doesn’t mean you memorize all sorts of useless stuff, but rather whatever comfortable amount fits your lifestyle. Windows users have many artificial ceilings because of all the hush hush surrounding Microsoft’s closed source products. Some of these ceilings can get very inconvenient and have no way around them. It’s only a matter of time before you outgrow Windows in some important capacity. Adapting to these Windows limitations psychologically means growing to believe that you can never master computers or do anything that really stands out (like remastering a very cool Linux LiveCD/DVD with your favorite games and settings all set up to show off to your friends or associates).
And the best of all in Linux’ favor is that you don’t have to worry about what you learned in the past becoming obsolete after a round of just-about-forced upgrades. All is not rosy for Linux users as new things do appear to come too fast sometimes, but it’s nice to know that once you reach the third grade and start cruising just a bit, you will not be forced to learn any more than you want to learn while still having access to the latest and greatest with a few mouse clicks once you are ready. [Some distros are getting quite good at realizing this somewhat ideal smooth transitioning.]
And of course, Linux and open source does improve at a faster rate than Microsoft’s products. It’s a matter of time before Linux will generally be considered to be ahead in virtually all categories (for noobs and for more advanced users). At that time, I wonder how many will be able to safely and easily migrate to Advanced Cool Linux the part of their lives that will be stuck inside Vista somewhere.
Linux is not perfect by any means, but it’s getting there
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic - Upgrade package…
yes indeed……