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Home > Archive > General Discussion > June 2004 > In several years to come, what sysyems to use etc
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In several years to come, what sysyems to use etc
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| Spides 2004-05-24, 6:00 am |
| The company I work for are working on a project and we want to look at new avenues in the next couple of years. Basically we are obviously looking to cut costs and possibly moving away from Microsoft Office etc. But with things like maybe Linux and their office suite I believe Microsoft Office documents are not compatible. Are anyone else looking at this sort of project and what are you looking to do…… | |
| prezbedard 2004-05-24, 1:54 pm |
| I'm not involved in any projects per say. What I can tell you is the Openoffice suite which runs on both Windows and linux is compatable with office files as of offfice xp not sure what ms has done with office 2003 though. | |
| ruscorp 2004-05-24, 2:26 pm |
| I don't think moving away from MS Office is such a hot idea. I've used OpenOffice and it lacks in a lot of areas.
People tend to think all Word Processors are created equally. They are not, all are different. | |
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| ppl are shortsighted... they look at upfront cost and think they are getting a bargain.
openoffice sucks, it sucked as staroffice and it sucks as oppenoffice. its reputation is built on the hype that is surrounding open source.
the thing that really matter in making system decision is the x-factor. Cost/function etc are only part of equation.
Openoffice is ok if you have a small operation where you can keep a tight lid on it, but in any company of decent size, you will find openoffice migration unwielding. The fact is, business ppl *ie, ppl that actually matter in your corporation* live with MS office, and you can try to convinve them to do regression analysis or compose presentation in openoffice and it will simply not fly. It is part of the institution, a set of tools they had learned all the way through their MBA.
Art professionals are much the same... you think they can't do it with photoshop on PC? or hell... gimp? good luck encrouching on their religion. | |
| azimuth40 2004-05-24, 5:32 pm |
| Staroffice sucks less because it has a frozen point of reference unlike openoffice. Can't give it the "doesn't suck" title however you do have one throat to strangle with Sun supporting Staroffice. That makes the suits happy. I toss my word 2003 files back and forth between the two. It is ok as long as word does not barf and put incomplete recover marks in the file. The way around that is always do a "save as" for the last step, so that you get a clean copy. Doing saves only does strange things, maybe on purpose. I have had the same thing happen in excel 2k3 files if you don't do a save as. For powerpoint just forget it. Do it in one or the other but don't mix.
Open office and Star office are really for new users. However it is really not worse than moving someone to/form Wordperfect or Lotus to MS office. Users are inflexable and it is like taking someone from an automatic transmission to a stick shift when they can't even spell clutch. | |
| prezbedard 2004-05-24, 7:51 pm |
| Well I do think openoffice is great alternative to handing out burned copies of ms office. Open Office will suit the home user just fine imo. I use both at home. | |
| Spides 2004-05-25, 6:22 am |
| Some good points above, we have a user base of 3,500 plus and I don't fancy a nightmare, our contract with Microsoft ends in 2005 so they are looking at possible alternatives but looking at Linux etc I believe there would be too much re-training involved.... | |
| MistyRing 2004-05-25, 8:45 am |
| This is big undertaking - do not underestimate it. Remember this; if you stick with MS no-one will care too much providing you show good reason why, but if you go with OpenOffice and it all goes tits up you'll forever be known has the guy who replaced working systems with a bag of shit.
If you decide to go for it be very sure you have everything covered. | |
| ruscorp 2004-05-25, 8:55 am |
| quote:
Originally posted by MistyRing
but if you go with OpenOffice and it all goes tits up you'll forever be known has the guy who replaced working systems with a bag of shit.
Indeed!
People always remember the bad things no matter how much good you have done... | |
| mikop 2004-05-25, 11:26 am |
| quote:
Originally posted by Spides
but looking at Linux etc I believe there would be too much re-training involved....
don't speculate. prove it either way, yes or no, but non of the "i think it would work" or "I 'known!/guess' it won't.
if there is enuff interest from the higher up, they would OK this project. then it would be.
1. train some of your IT staff to be able to support it. how do a business ppl use office, integration, etc etc and then have the IT staff be competent in its usage. document portability is only one issue with how to keep ppl productive with the new app.
2. set target, various criteria you need to meet to even move the project department wide. both subjective and objective benchmarks.
3. select test group
4. evaluate.
5. conclusion/report
no one pay you to guess, if there is not enough interest to go this far, then atleast provide some documentation as to why the current integration would not work in openoffice or some other things to back up your claim. look up documentation at openoffice, talk to ppl at your company who uses office regularly and ask how they use office, then try it on openoffice yourself. write the report. (this report will prolly get you the OK to move forward if your finding is good.)
anyway... ranting... don't guess, verify. | |
| rfmjb 2004-05-30, 11:32 pm |
| http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1571966,00.asp
This was an eweek.com study of deploying OpenOffice in a few different environments. It will give you tons of information on things to consider when you plan your own office suite deployment.
If you have users who need advanced options to work on spreadsheets, you may need to reconsider Microsoft Office for those users, for example, an accounting department would have a need for Microsoft's advanced features. | |
| Spides 2004-06-02, 4:49 am |
| Cheers for that rfmjb, that looks good mate, thanks again | |
| ccieToBe 2004-06-03, 1:41 am |
| I attempted to migrate a group of users over to Open Office about a year and a half ago, and it didn't go so well. 1/3 of the users didn't even notice the change, 1/3 asked me about it, and seemed indifferent, and 1/3 complained about it. All of these users use Word and Excel on a regular basis. In the end, I reverted everybody back to Office XP. A few months later we lost the Office XP licenses due to a spin off, and I was able to find a couple great deals on some Office 97 Pro licences. There were zero complaints about the switchover. The only comments I recall were about Office opening faster :-)
Larger companies would probably have trouble finding these types of deals. I cleaned out the stock of one vendor, and made a significant dent in another's. For smaller companies, using an older version of MS Office can save a lot of money.
IMO, the usability of Open Office is just as good as MS Office. I think the main issue is that they don't put every function in the same place, so someone used to MS Office has to relearn a few things. Open Office's performance is great under Windows and Linux. The OS X version is way to slow though, so I ended up breaking down and buying a copy of Office X for my iBook. |
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