[Random-bits] David Pogue in NYT on OpenOffice.Org (which I'm using myself now).

[James Love]

Below is an article by David Pogue in the NYT on OpenOffice.Org, and what I 
think is a developing story -- are open source/free software programs about 
to take off in the client space, as they have already in the server space?

Here also is a bit of my personal experience.  We moved CPTech entirely to 
Linux for a few years, and about a year ago we switched back to Windows, 
partly due to frustration over some of the problems with Linux as a client 
OS (not supporting certain devices, for example, but also inadequate office 
productivity applications).    I used a number of mail clients in Windows, 
   after getting discouraged with what AOL had done to Netscape.  We tried 
earlier versions of StarOffice (5.2 was really terrible, and 6.0 beta was 
pretty buggy).   Then I moved my laptop to MS Office and Outlook express for 
a while.   However, in the past few weeks, I have found that version 1.0 of 
Mozilla is finally a decent browser and a very nice mail client, and I've 
migrated to the new open source/free browser mail client (including all my 
old Netscape and Outlook mail).   And I took a new look at OpenOffice.Org, 
the product reviewed below, and found it much better than earlier versions 
of StarOffice.  Plus, on top of everthing, we are asking OMB to remove 
federal barriers to the use of open source/free software applications in the 
client space.  I think we are finally beginning to see real promise for 
this.   The Mozilla and Open Office products work on several operating 
systems.  (OpenOffice now works on  Windows, and various flavors of Linux or 
Unix, and is being ported to MacOS X.   Mozilla now runs on a broader range 
of OSs, including Windows, MacOS, Linux, various Unix, and even BeOS.)

In our discussions with OMB, we keep focusing on the issue of using 
procurement leverage to get more disclosure of data formats and more data 
portibility.   David Pogue also mentions data formats as key.

   Jamie

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/20/technology/circuits/20STAT.html

STATE OF THE ART
The Office Software That Roared
By DAVID POGUE


MICROSOFT once ran a great ad for Office, its business-software cash cow. It 
went something like this: "Over 94 percent of the business world uses 
Microsoft Office. What are we doing wrong?"

It was true: the programs of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, 
Access, Outlook) seemed as permanent in our lives as the sun, the moon and 
Windows error messages. Its rivals -- I.B.M.'s Lotus suite and Corel's 
WordPerfect suite, for example -- were pretty much the same thing for pretty 
much the same price, and never posed much of a threat. The world waited for 
a contender that was so compelling, people might actually consider filing 
for Microsoft divorce.
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Now there is one. It's called OpenOffice, and it has a killer feature: it's 
free.

Like Microsoft Office, OpenOffice -- whose official name is OpenOffice.org 
1.0 -- comes with a word processor, a spreadsheet program and a slide-show 
program. It lacks an e-mail program and database, but does have a powerful 
graphics program and a Web-page editor. Amazingly, all this fits in
a 50-megabyte download from www
.openoffice.org. You have your choice of 27 languages and three operating 
systems: Windows, Linux or Solaris. (A Mac OS X version is in the works.)

How could such a sweet suite be free? OpenOffice is what's called an 
open-source project: a carefully orchestrated group effort by programmers 
all over the world, donating their time and talent to making a dent in the 
Microsoft monopoly.

That's not to imply that the software isn't polished, stable and fast; it 
is. Still, if the notion of global-community-as-software-company makes you 
uneasy (who gets the call for tech support?), you can also buy a boxed copy 
of the software from Sun, which started and coordinates the OpenOffice 
project. For $76 -- compared with $580 for the full Microsoft Office -- Sun's 
version, called StarOffice, offers a few goodies the free version lacks, 
including extra fonts and clip art, a printed user manual, a database 
program and, above all, a phone number for (fee-based) technical help. 
Corporations can buy StarOffice in large quantities for as little as $25 per 
copy.

The timing couldn't be more interesting. Already, there have been rumblings 
of discontent in the Microsoft Office congregation, thanks to new twists in 
Office XP that some find disturbing. For example, Office is now 
copy-protected, meaning that you can't use it until you've "activated" it 
(transmitted or phoned in your serial number to Microsoft) -- a feature that 
prevents its being installed on more than two computers.

That business about corporate discounts may be even more important. When 
you're the person in charge of installing a new Office version on 500 or 
5,000 PC's, the expense and disruption can be a major migraine. It's as if 
you're recommending heart transplants for everyone in your family at once.

Until now, when companies wanted to upgrade, Microsoft offered discounted 
upgrade kits. That will end on July 31. After that, Microsoft will offer 
Software Assurance, a program in which companies pay Microsoft an annual fee 
for the right to upgrade if Microsoft releases a new version of Office. That 
may be a money-saver for companies that religiously upgrade, but it's a 
pricey proposition for companies that skip Office generations -- especially 
because Microsoft may not, in fact, unveil any new versions at all during 
the three-year contract. (Companies may choose not to take part in this 
program, but then when a new Office version comes along, they'll have to buy 
all new copies instead of upgrade kits.)

Not surprisingly, a number of organizations aren't thrilled by the new plan. 
In short, the arrival of OpenOffice and StarOffice is perfectly timed.

So how is the software itself? Critics have accused Microsoft of pilfering 
ideas from its competitors, but wait till they get a load of OpenOffice. 
This suite couldn't resemble Microsoft Office more if you ran it through a 
photocopier. The menu commands, terminology and even keyboard shortcuts are 
nearly identical. It's all here: tables, columns, edit tracking, multiple 
simultaneous text selections, AutoCorrect, AutoFormat, squiggly lines 
beneath misspellings and so on.

This shameless mimicry is a calculated move, of course, designed to make it 
easy for people to switch from Microsoft to Open. You'll uncover what few 
differences exist in one afternoon of fumbling.

The big question is compatibility: If OpenOffice can't read and save 
standard Microsoft Office documents, it's dead in the water. No matter how 
little you paid, it's not much use if you can't exchange files with the 
other 94 percent.

In general, OpenOffice scores very well here. On simple documents -- a book 
chapter, a home-finance spreadsheet, your basic bullet-points slide show -- 
the translation is flawless. On complex documents, OpenOffice mangles minor 
formatting: a dashed line between two cells of a table becomes solid light 
gray, graphic objects on PowerPoint slides aren't quite the same colors, you 
lose the font formatting of editorial-comment balloons and so on. OpenOffice 
can't run macros written in Microsoft's programming language, either. (On 
the bright side, you're therefore safe from Word and Excel macro viruses.)

Your happiness with OpenOffice may boil down to your tolerance for these 
conversion issues. If most of the documents you work with are heavily 
formatted, you'll spend a few minutes per document tweaking line 
thicknesses, cell borders and so on. If not, you have nothing to lose. Your 
collaborators need never know what a cheapskate you are.

Meanwhile, OpenOffice improves on Microsoft in a number of areas. It's nice 
to have a proper Font menu (showing font names in their actual typefaces) at 
the top of the window, instead of on a toolbar that may not be open. It's 
also a pleasure to be able to open any kind of OpenOffice document (text, 
spreadsheet, presentation, drawing) from the File menu of any of its 
programs. If you have Sun's StarOffice, you can color-coordinate graphics to 
match the color scheme of a presentation you're making.

Both Word and OpenOffice Writer let you set up abbreviations that when typed 
expand into longer words or phrases. But only OpenOffice offers to complete 
frequently used long words automatically, which quickly becomes a huge 
timesaver. Both OpenOffice and StarOffice capitalize the first word after a 
period, but OpenOffice lets you create a list of words that should not be 
followed by a capitalized word, like abbreviations.

Even so, the OpenOffice squadron hasn't quite duplicated the polish of 
Microsoft Office. OpenOffice has no grammar checker (of course, some would 
consider that a bonus, not a liability). The word processor idiotically 
flags any phrase containing a dash -- like this -- as a spelling error, and it 
will do a word count only for a whole document, not for just a section of 
it. Most annoying of all, closing a document also quits the program you're 
in (unless other documents are still open).

Fortunately, the open-source nature of OpenOffice.org holds tantalizing 
promise for improved versions. Anyone is permitted, even encouraged, to 
submit bug reports, wish lists of features and other feedback via the Web 
site. As a new droplet in the tidal wave of the open-source movement, you 
may even experience the thrill of watching your tiny input have an effect on 
the next version.

Some people should download OpenOffice immediately. That includes anyone who 
doesn't have Microsoft Office but would like the ability to open and edit 
documents that other people send along. Conscientious objectors to the 
Microsoft monopoly should also rejoice, along with anyone who uses more than 
two PC's and doesn't feel like shelling out for a second or third copy of 
Microsoft Office.

For these people and anyone else who's minding the bottom line these days, 
take note: Every now and then, you get what you don't pay for.

-- 
------
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040