Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

The biggest problem with OpenOffice, other than the fact that most corporates won't adopt something they're not familiar with or that will require additional training/resources (one of the mentions was that Nokia's happy about this because it allows them a full business suite to compete with RIM) is the fact that it's always been rediculously bloated for what it is. I mean, it's on par with MS office in terms of foot print and memory usage on desktops, and quite frankly, an open source app SHOULD be able to be much smaller and more efficient than that for the functionality that's being provided... but my guess is this is just more about MS being afraid of loosing ground to Google/et al than anything else. After all I hear rumours of Chrome OS knocking at MS's holy grail...

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

The problem for openoffice from my stand point is marketing. Until this minute I did not know that OpenOffice could read and save MSOffice documents and that OpenOffice was free and can install onto a Windows OS PC.

I went to the website briefly and a couple others and read about it.

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

No, it is because the do not want to know. The costs of moving the whole industry to OpenOffice and hiring Linux gurus to babysit it are just too high.

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

This enphasises what I was saying.

fms - OpenOffice does not require linux.
see here -http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs_30.html

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

It's certainly cheaper to use the same windows XP and office 2000 forever!

I don't think moving to OpenOffice requires that much retraining. The only problem is that when you open some Office files there are some things such as tables or figures or animations that get messed up. It's just this small "backwards compatibility" problem that turns people down...

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

Why do you hope that this has nothing to do with Maemo.
Its an additional choice. And having such a big company and more importantly a big office productivity app on Maemo will only make Maemo more important in the market. Do you not want that ? Or do you want Maemo to have apps like iFart only ?

And if you do not want MS Office on your tablet, I am sure you will be free not to install it.

Exactly my sentiment ... I too wish that Softmaker makes a port of their Office apps for Maemo. I used Softmaker's Textmaker for the Zaurus , as well as for Linux and Windows PC's and have had better experience and better format support (for Word at least) on Textmaker than on OO.

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

What Linux gurus? Installing OpenOffice in Windows is as easy as installing Office in Windows. Surely the same IT professionals can handle that? If not they might want to find a new profession if they can't handle clicking .exe files?

Now if you had a valid complaint about OpenOffice (such as how it handles things different, such as formatting, or people may have to relearn some features or where to find features) that would be more valid. But then again with the recent Office 2007 interface change OpenOffice has more in common with previous Office versions interface wise than Office 2007. There are valid reasons why OpenOffice isn't as fully functional as Office (though depending on the type of business and what features they use they could be saving money if they never used those features and instead went with OpenOffice).

Edit:

Exactly. I welcome choice and alternatives when it comes to software. I hope somebody else works on OpenOffice or other competitors (Abiword, etc..) as well.

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

It's cheaper for them to subscribe to the de facto standard than to try something new that may reduce some licensing fees, pay a bit of migration\training fees and are still exposed to some 'unknowns' in the future. Potential compatibility, support & longevity issues.

Unfortunately OO.o isn't a direct 1:1 MSOffice replacement.

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

Oh I know that. Which is why I say that it's not a perfect replacement, it's dependent on what you need to do. But say if you write papers, your not going need MSOffice, OpenOffice does the job perfectly (I've written all my papers with OpenOffice actually). Likewise with OO's spreadsheet program, if your an accountant your not going use that over Excel. Again for the same reason a professional photographer wouldn't use GIMP or Paint.net over Photoshop. But not every user that wants to do some basic image editting needs Photoshop.

Though I don't understand your statement. "May reduce some licensing fee". How would it only be may? As well as pay for migration and training fees? Migration is free, it's just an installation (something they're usually doing anyway. And depending on how IT has set it up, it could be as simple as replacing MSOffice with OpenOffice in an image). As for training, if they were upgrading to MSOffice 2007 they were retraining their employees anyway due to the interface changes thanks to the ribbon.

Re: Microsoft, Nokia plan mobile Office deal
 

Actually, it's easier. And easier to maintain too. :)

The following information is very effective among corporate venues, and employees of traditional corps should present them more often:

http://www.openoffice.org/product/studies.html

While I didn't change our entire corporation, I was able to get my team (all life-long Windows users) to watch a screencast about OOo and then read the stories at the link above with great success: they all stopped using MS Office.

Tim