Stuart Crawford, a long-time IT consultant who is fluent in all things Microsoft, claims OpenOffice isn’t ready for business. The VAR Guy agrees with many of Crawford’s points — but our resident blogger sees a bigger problem with OpenOffice that Crawford failed to mention.
First, Crawford offers up an everyday situation where OpenOffice failed and Microsoft Office (particularly PowerPoint) saved the day. Alas, The VAR Guy has had similar experiences with OpenOffice and ultimately made the move back to Microsoft Office.
But does that mean OpenOffice isn’t ready for business?
Here, both The VAR Guy and Crawford need to concede a few points:
- Major companies — from Novell to Sun Microsystems — have successfully migrated thousands of internal desktops to OpenOffice. You can bet IBM is sorting out a similar move.
- Ubuntu, the fastest growing Linux distribution, comes with OpenOffice and the operating system/office suite combo likely runs on about 10 million desktops — including millions of business desktops. Skeptical? Check out the WorksWithU 1000, which tracks global Ubuntu deployments.
- Still doubtful of OpenOffice? Check out this list of major business and government deployments.
OpenOffice’s Real Problem
Fact is, OpenOffice is good enough for the vast majority of businesses seeking a productivity suite. The bigger problem facing OpenOffice involves bloggers who grew up deploying and troubleshooting Microsoft Office.
Remember: When you know how to fix something (like Microsoft Office) you’re inclined to stick with it rather than learn something new (like OpenOffice). Think of it another way: Mac folks find Windows difficult to troubleshoot and vice versa.
Still, the times they are a changing. The Web 2.0 generation is growing up on Google Apps. And the open source generation prefers OpenOffice.
Millions of Microsoft loyalists insist that OpenOffice isn’t ready for prime time. But daily OpenOffice users know better.
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The need to justify using Microsoft Office will only increase as the absurdity of vendor lock-in, among other factors, continues to sink in. If there are any CEO’s who base their company’s purchasing decisions on the opinions of bloggers then they too will need reconsider the luxury of Microsoft Office as the economy sinks to new lows. The only ones left will be those who really need some of the features exclusively offered by Office. I don’t think those specialists will be enough to justify continued development once everyone else jumps the Microsoft ship. Besides, it’s not Open Office that’s giving Microsoft Office a run for its money, it’s Microsoft’s business model.
Crawford didn’t specify the circumstances that made it fail, in my testing with OpenOffice.org-3.0 (released in Oct 2008) it works just fine.
And I’ve had situations where Word refused to open .doc files and Writer saved the day by being able to open them.
While I agree that MS Office is in some ways ahead of OOo, and careful planning and testing should be done if you’re thinking about replacing Office in a corporate environment, from Mr Crawfords general statements I can only conclude that he’s really anti-opensource, has made his mind up and has no inclination to change it.
For me thats subsequent publishing regarding Open Office in business is the clear sign that MS Office erosion in business begins. It’s time for Microsoft. War-huh is good. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
I’ve personally seen people use Word as a file manager, use Excel for making lists, and then adding up columns of figures with a calculator. They could do pretty much the same with any office suite. And for a hell of a lot less.
It is slowly creeping out that the number one app in every field is not really needed by the vast majority, so eventually people will find the right solution for them.
Open Office may not be the same feature for feature as Office, but who cares. If it does what you need, you save some money,. If not, you lose nothing.
I’ve been working for many years in large worldwide, marketleading corporations and my experience is that relatively few are in need of functionality missing in OpenOffice. Large numbers of MS Office’ users have limited knowledge and uses MS Office only as a typewriter.
Few actually produces anything with Excel and Powerpoint – the major usage is to read anybody elses work. My estimate is that less than 20% needs MSoffice. I’ve been using both Excel and Powerpoint on a rather sophisticated level.
The challenge is perception and Microsoft’s hard work in locking network facilities to MS Office. Large Corporations would be far better off with centralised businessreporting and highly standardised document management systems with high quality templates.
One of the challenges that actually DO exist regarding OpenOffice is that Sun is a stray cat with no direction whatsoever. They really need to get into the ballgame one way or another. GO-OO is really only a circumvention that compensates for the stephchildish treatment from SUN. (This is not a OpenOffice problem – it also affects Java and MySQL.)
Another issue with OpenOffice becomes extremely visible when used with a modern desktop environment such as KDE 4.2: Then geriatric appearance. Appearance is not that critical – but it’s a part of the GUI quality and has a impact on efficiency. It’s probably more significant in terms of perception. Potential users gets the impression that OpenOffice is outdated and awkward because it APPEARS to be outdated.
By comparison MS Office (and Vista) APPEARS modern and efficient while actually much of the impression is based upon staffage/makeup.
Reading Crawford’s piece was ridiculous. Was this a paid advert by Microsoft?
His starting point was that he was screwed because he couldn’t find licensing info (not necessary for Open Source)
As an IT consultant he couldn’t get Impress working? Hardly a great advert for this guy’s skills. I’ve used it successfully many times – maybe I should offer him my advice as a consultant.
A consultant should look at ALL the options available for a client, This guy will give you only the best system that Microsoft can provide. That’s hardly in his client’s best interest.
Great discussion here. I read Stuart’s entry and was a bit put off by it. It inspired my response here – http://tinyurl.com/ooos3
Regarding Jacobs comment above that MS Office and Vista “appears” to be modern – I believe that a lot of the user “complaints” for both Vista and MS Office are because of the radical changes in the user interface.
Cheers – David
I can’t believe you’re giving stuart’s blog entry the dignity of a mention, much less a link. For those who didn’t read it, let me sum it up:
***************************
1. OpenOffice’s Powerpoint module (which I can’t be bothered to remember or look up the name of) didn’t have a Presentation Mode for our presentation. Or at least, we couldn’t figure out how to use it.
2. Therefore, ALL FOSS IS BAD. DON’T USE IT. DON’T LOOK AT IT. FLEE FROM IT. IT WILL EAT YOUR KIDS AND MAKE YOUR WIFE A COMMUNIST!
3. By the way, I’m a microsoft consultant. Call me if you need help with your microsoft solutions.
*************************
Seriously, his post is the most pathetic knee-jerk FUD I’ve ever seen against OpenOffice and open source in general.
It’s only a matter of time. Every day I meet someone else who has discovered Open Office and finds it does what they want. It’s just a case of this reaching critical mass.
Local authorities and other public services are adopting ODF and Open Office as their standard and that can only help spread more widespread use.
Alan @7: Let’s not turn this into a personal attack on Stuart. He is a skilled IT professional. He helps a lot of people in this industry. And The VAR Guy tried to point out the bigger issue: Thousands of Microsoft consultants are used to trouble-shooting Office, so it’s natural for them to be less inclined to support/recommend OpenOffice.
The continued growth of OpenOffice will involve next-generation IT consultants who grow up deploying Linux and OpenOffice and related back-end services.
In my own document creation, Open Office on Ubuntu has been able to do anything that I need to do. Interoperability is the only question, and once or twice a year, I get a document by email that I cannot read properly because it came with VBA scripting that does not work. The VBA support in OO is not adequate. I deal with this by simply telling the sender that I cannot read his document because of the VBA and that I don’t have M$ Office. The senders – surprisingly enough – have always been considerate and completely understanding.
I have found that the VBA support in Gnome’s Gnumeric is a bit better than OO Calc – so for spreadsheets, this has not been a problem.
In my mind however, the real winner in office productivity has been Inkscape.
-Ron
Thanks VARGUY…
To echo my point exactly I posted something on my Business Blog at http://calgary.itsuccessmentor.com and no business owners who read my blog care about MS Office vs. OpenOffice. My point is that they either just see this as a useless tech debate or are actually more concerned about their business and not so much about the software.
I will always stand behind Microsoft, they are an awesome partner, trusted business relationship and have served me well in my career.
It is not that I am against other solutions or platforms, I run a MAC (Vista Only) because we practice what we preach on the solutions that we recommend to our client base. I am not going to confuse them or sleep comfortable at night knowing that I don’t have a trusted partner like Microsoft, Cisco, SonicWALL, Citrix or whoever standing behind me.
That is what this debate gets down to. We don’t sell clone systems, sure they are perhaps more robust then the DELL systems or ones from HP, but who has your back when it fails, and it will.
The same can be said about software.
Thanks VARGUY so standing up for me…my clients love the fact that I recommend solutions that don’t need me to support them daily and that they have a name like Microsoft behind them.
Cheers everyone…great debate with honest feedback…I love it.
Stuart Crawford
Calgary, AB
http://blog.itsuccessmentor.com
Ever try to do a mail-merge in OpenOffice?? This is a SEVERE deficiency. (I hope the recent add-on has helped.) It is truly a breeze in MS Office. Also, it is really disconcerting how the line of type in OpenOffice jumps up and down as I type, and how the display gets mangled sometimes with extra underlines and weird stuff that tends to go away by scrolling the page up or down a bit. (This is not a platform or version issue, it has existed in ALL versions of OOffice I have used – windows, linux, 1.x to 3.x) For these reasons alone, many (if not most) businesses will say thanks, but no thanks.
Oh, and text box handling is NOT fun in OOffice.
And the person typing this is a STRONG Linux/FOSS advocate/user. Seriously, though, a lot of the Open Source community has an inferiority complex that would be better served by solving the deficiencies in its (open source communities’) software, rather than trying to fight FUD by screaming, “But I AM valid, I really REALLY AM!!”
Dulwithe, The Dark Shadow!
Dulwithe,
I have to use page up and then page down keys to clear up the display problem–which will occur quite often.
Interesting problem you describe on the line of type and display mangling in the document editor. I see the exact same symptoms on my corporate install of Microsoft Office Word 2003.
Open Office has worked extremely well for me over the years, with the latest versions being the most stable and solid. A few minor issues here and there, but mostly because I needed to learn something–for which answers were very easy to find.
zman,
Interesting that you had the same issue with MS Office. What OS are you using??
I remember reading once that the cause was due to the graphics rendering, and that OO can’t use the rendering that MS Office does (because of proprietary issues, of course). Hence, even in Windows, OO has the same issues.
First I heard tell of the MS Office same issue.
- D.
In one comment Mr Crawford seems to be dissing OpenSource in general and its Office and server software in particular.
The glorious irony of it all is that his blog site, according to Netcraft, runs on Linux,Apache and PHP.
He also seems fond of Twitter (Ruby on Rails, Apache, Linux) and Facebook (at least PHP, which probably implies Apache and Linux).
@Dulwithe
As a matter of fact, I have used both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office to mail merge huge letter drops (over 9000). I can tell you, conclusively, that OpenOffice handles mail merges FAR better than Microsoft Office.
HAVE YOU EVER tried to get Microsoft office to mail merge a 7 page letter drop with each 7 pages being stapled together? You *cannot* do this in Microsoft Office without the use of some VBA scripting fu. In OpenOffice on the other hand, it was a simple tick box.
Further to my last comment, even though OpenOffice provided crucial functionality that MS Office did not, the real killer for us was raw speed. OpenOffice cut through our mail merges in approximately a 20th of the time that Microsoft Office did. A job that used to take us three weeks was suddenly cut down to a few days.
How long does it take to install and update MS Office? Hours? Days? How many reboots?
…Open Office comes standard on most mainstream Linux distributions–ready to go with the 20 minute installation and update of the entire system!
Now let us compare MS Office cost to Open Office cost. Hmmm… To match what you can do with Open Office, you will need Microsoft Office Professional(?) which costs ~$500! I can purchase a brand new laptop or a complete desktop system with a printer and monitor for that price and run Open Office. I have 6 Linux systems at home which are used by various members of my family, so would I need 6 copies of MS Office Pro at ~$3000 ? Oh yea, come to think of it, I will need to acquire and install Windows also $$.
It is silly how we compare features of the two like they are even comparable. If Open Office only did half of what MS Office could do it would be a great deal. Instead it does more, and does it better, and costs ->nothing<- to acquire and use!
Then we start complaining about how Open Office GUI looks? It sounds like some of us are just digging for reasons to keep making the same fiscally irresponsible choices that we have been making for the past 15 years. Truth be told that money is easy to spend when it is not your own
To be fair, zman, MS Office comes preinstalled on many PC’s. All you need to do is purchase an activation code after/during the 30 trial days. And since I doubt everyone in your family needs Access you could probably do with some cheaper licenses; here in Sweden I can buy a 3-users Home+Student license for 135EUR/176USD.
And, unless you build your own or activly search for FreeDOS/Linux computers, the Windows license is (unfortunately) part of the PC cost.
So, while we’re bashing MS, let’s make sure we stay with the facts and avoid using any over-zealous rethoric.
So I played a bit with OO’s mail merge.
I cannot manually add commas and spaces to adjust address layout as I need. And when I unchecked “this document shall contain a personal salutation”, the “NEXT” button could no longer be used (essentially, the mail merge froze – I could go back, but not forward).
Say what you like, but stuff like this is proof that OO is not ready for enterprise mainstream. I am glad that some of you have had good results with OO mailmerge, but for me, it has always been a disastrous waste of time.
D.
I was not bashing at all; only pointing out some facts and asking some pointed questions. It is easy to buy a PC without OS these days. If, on the other hand, the price has been subsidized by Microsoft tax on the units from the local box retailer then so be it. There is nothing currently that welds the OS to the PC–a complete changeover is only 20 minutes away. besides that, you can stay with Windows if you desire because Open Office installs on Windows.
If I am, as you suggest, purchasing MS Office without Access, then I would have that much less in my office suite–so from a comparison perspective now I am paying more for even less–no database engine. Again, this is not bashing…only the cold hard facts. With Open Office I get a database engine and I don’t have to deal with product authorization and restrictive EULAs, license audits, etc.
Choosing Microsoft Office is just that, a choice. There is nothing like being well informed before you make that decision. One important point about MS Office is that you don’t get to pick the OS–only Windows. Know what the alternatives are. Do what you choose with your money, or someone else’s if they trust you to make that decision for them.
I have been using OpenOffice for years, as a matter of fact, tha last version I have used of M$ Office was 2003, back then, and I have seen improvements in its features and functionality, there are still a few bugs, but I can tell you it is ready for prime time. Right now I am promoting a massive switch to Ubuntu in the company I work for, and hence a switch to OpenOffice, even though there are some people that are reluctant to do the change (specially Accounting People), it is because of the lack of knowledge, and our natural resistance to change. With the proper training, people will embrace it, and save a few hundreds
Iveen: Regarding your “massive switch to Ubuntu” please tell The VAR Guy more (thevarguy [at] ninelivesmediainc.com) or get in touch with his editor (joe [at] ninelivesmediainc.com).
The VAR Guy’s sister site — WorksWithU (www.WorksWithU.com) — covers Ubuntu 24×7.
@Dulwithe
It sounds like you’re using the wizard. I don’t use the wizard – I’ve never needed to. Also, I have found the wizard to be restrictive.
If you ever need to get a mail merge done with OpenOffice then I suggest you drop me an email at (sduff [at] townsshearing [dot] com [dot] au). I can take you through it. I think you’d be surprised at just how easy it is.
It seems that many people don’t ‘understand’ OpenOffice so they then assume that its broken – and I don’t mean you Dulwithe. Many people seem to believe that because OpenOffice doesn’t work exactly the same as MS Office then it is somehow inferior. I would beg to differ.
For corporates the biggest issue is not really “Office” at all but Outlook which just happens to come with Office, and more importantly the exchange service that it accesses. There is no decent alternative to Outlook for use in an exchange environment.
I agree with the authors opinion?
The software need services?Just free no good, if you have some bug,who can fix it,and you need pay some money, if the bug is important!
So I paid, nor the use of free,but the MS Office is expensive,so I need the cheap office software for my computer!
My Chinese friends tell me–you can try the Kingsoft Office,because there is a lot of people use the Kingsoft Office(Chinese version name:WPS) at Chinese,so I try it!
Very suprise!
I think the Kingsoft Office 20009 as same as MS Office 2003,It comprises of Writer, Spreadsheets and Presentation, all of which have a close resemblance to the familiar layout and functionality we are all use to.
So very easy for our,and the software company support the software service!Now I do not need to pay a expensive price for Microsoft, or Openoffice software problems filled with bewilderment, I can use the cheap and good service with Kingsoft Office!
just advice,everybody try it,the website: http://www.ksoffice.net/download