schlitt.info - php, photography and private stuff
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

:Author: 		Tobias Schlitt
:Date:			Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:29:46 +0100
:Revision: 		1
:Copyright:		CC by-nc-sa


===============================
M$ Office versus OpenOffice.org
===============================

:Description:
    Heise wrote: "Microsoft vergleicht MS Office mit OpenOffice", which is
    translated "Microsoft compares MS Office to OpenOffice".

Heise wrote: "`Microsoft vergleicht MS Office mit OpenOffice`__", which is
translated "Microsoft compares `MS Office`__ to `OpenOffice`__".

Ideed, they brought out a `leaflet`__ for their sales partners to give them
some pros for their product. I want to list up a few arguments/statements and
comment them:

Customer: *OpenOffice.org is free.*
M$: *OpenOffice.org is not free.*
- *Installation and deployment.*
Sorry, Microsoft, but it mostly offers the same installation features your
office offers. And beside that, every large company has it's own, customized
installation and deployment infrastructure established. So, why should OOo not
fit into that?

- *OpenOffice.org does not have an email client.*
  
  Pretty correct, but is that a disadvantage? IMHO an email client has nothing
  to do inside an offica package. On the other hand most companies have
  established email solutions and if they don't, there are tons of stable open
  source email clients out there.

Customer: *I only need basic features, so OpenOffice.org is good enough.*
M$: *But Business needs to...*

- *...exchange business transaction information externally with customers and vendors.*
  
  Can anyone explain to me, what exactly "business transaction information"
  are?  Ok, I guess they want to say "exchange documents". Where is the
  problem? OOo can read and write M$ Office documents. And if they did not
  realize it yet, most document exchange with external companies take place in
  Adobe PDF format, what OOo supports to export naturally since version 1.1.
  Isn't that a cost benefit if you do not have to buy an external PDF writer?

- *...ensure that their mission-critical information is adequatly protected from virus attacks.*
  
  Let me just think a moment... Wasn't their another office suite which opens a
  wide barn door for viruses in office macro languages...? Mhhh... maybe I
  missed something...

- *... create marketing material that portrays the business in a professional manner.*
  
  Creator information from the source PDF of the statement: *QuarkXPress(tm)
  4.11, Acrobat Distiller 4.05 for Macintosh.*

Customer: *OpenOffice.org is an open source alternative.*
M$: *OpenOffice.org does not have a dedicated development or support rteam.*

Correct. They do not have. But indeed their are companies which offer
proffessional support for OpenOffice.org. And even SUN (Star Office) brings
back every bug fix to the community. Beside that, M$ has (I guess) not more
than 1000 people working and supporting M$ Office, but OOo has about 10000
developers and a hughe support machinery (mailinglists, forums,...).

Ok, I admit, that M$ Office has still a huge variaty of features (who uses
them?) which OpenOffice.org does not have. I also admit, that it looks a bit
nicer and includes more programs (uuhhh... Outlook and Access are my
favorites! LOL!). But indeed, OpenOffice gets more and more a pretty good
alternativen and personally I use it for a long time now as my standard office
suite.

.. __: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/46057

.. __: http://office.microsoft.com/

.. __: http://wwww.openoffice.org

.. __: http://members.microsoft.com/partner/salesmarketing/opensource/discguides/OpenOffice.pdf


..
   Local Variables:
   mode: rst
   fill-column: 79
   End: 
   vim: et syn=rst tw=79


Trackbacks
==========


Comments
========