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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
bysuso ( 153703 ) * writes:
See, this is something that open source accomplishes that stupid fucking arrogant businesses will never get. When something is obsolete or no longer needed, it gets ditched or replaced by something better. Don't keep it around because someone thinks that they have the right to continue being in business even though their shit is a decade out of date. Its a hard and cold life for the developer whose project gets ditched (And sometimes I feel bad for them), but in the end, the user wins big and things evolve
byBillly Gates ( 198444 ) writes:
I find jus tthe opposite true.
Business users love obsolete software because its cheaper and what is the ROI for upgrading. Not to mention a larger IT staff is needed to support upgrades.
W2k and Office 2k live on and will continue to live for years to come.
Most users do not want to upgrade their computers as long as they work.
Open source evolves too quickly for users to be comfortable with. Until businesses ditch their proprietary obsolete software open source will never see the light of day.
bypoetmatt ( 793785 ) writes:
uh? Lots of companies are not stupid about proprietary crap being obsolete. They are moving away by the droves, and such publication is deliberately hidden from the media due to Microsoft essentially owning the media (you'd be surprised).
Once licensing is done for, for many products, you'll see lots of people switching. Examples of this software are things like Office 2K7. If there's a version released after that, everyone will swap to openoffice as they've already been planning/preparing at an enterprise l
byjlechem ( 613317 ) writes:
I don't know about OO.org (sorry but it just doesn't compete with MS Office) but a lot of places are still running office 2000/2003 simply because it works well for them.
bypoetmatt ( 793785 ) writes:
Uh, OO certainly does compete with MS office not to mention it's basically compatible now (can convert from and to ODF/OOXML) I use OO for everything and nobody in our office realizes because guess what? Our enterprise even wanted to swap sans that they had already purchased and are using the 07 purchased licenses. That migration cost in a business is calculated and not worth it as that's hardly a true pressing issue. Formatting and other issues don't really exist anymore.
There is an easy argument for OO/2K7 vs 03 though: storage space. 2K3 documents take up an astronomically larger amount of space vs the alternatives. We're talking 2MB files down to 50k ish. This might not sound like much to you, but for an entire company that archives everything that translates to real cash costs.
2K8? 2K9? Not even on the radar for enterprise. Trust me, beyond all you see, MS is hurting on the computer front. They have other business and make lots of money, but they don't have quite the traction people think.
If you want to see where this stuff is going for future, watch what Lotus and Google wave are doing, because those are the kind of features enterprise wants: realtime collaborative editing. Google's version will be purchased by a lot of enterprises most likely, just like how they open source their search engine and lots of sites (such as government sites) use it.
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byEvanED ( 569694 ) writes:
(can convert from and to ODF/OOXML)
Maybe for Word that's true, but between PowerPoint and OO Presenter my experience is that the PPTX import filter on OpenOffice is just trash. (See samples [wisc.edu]; unfortunately I forget what version of OpenOffice produced them.)
OO certainly does compete with MS office
I would say the following: OO Writer is pretty good, and OO Calc is pretty good. I have some issues with some things, but they're either about relatively minor features (like how Writer's track changes feature kind o
bydieth ( 951868 ) writes:
Power Point was beginning of the stagnation of businesses.
We used to have full page reports with details, explanations, and facts.
Now we have effects, bullet points, and animated graphs.
If you are using PowerPoint, this is why you're business is failing.
byEvanED ( 569694 ) writes:
We used to have full page reports with details, explanations, and facts.
I didn't realize that installing PowerPoint prevented you from creating those.
If you are using PowerPoint in dumbass ways, this is why you're business is failing.
FTFY. Just because a tool can easily be used in dumbass ways (or even usually is!) doesn't mean it's a bad tool. (How many people here would say that because most BitTorrent use is pirating stuff and illegal, that BitTorrent is a bad tool?)
byClosedSource ( 238333 ) writes:
You should take a look as some early Mac TV ads. They were all about the little team that was able to create PowerPoint-like printed material without having to use expensive outside services.
A lot of BS material is created by management, but it goes all the way back to the first Pointy-Haired-Primate (PHP) who used rocks for bullet points.
● current threshold.
byozmanjusri ( 601766 ) writes:
(See samples [wisc.edu]; unfortunately I forget what version of OpenOffice produced them.)
Typical MS Marketing slight of hand.
Pretend an issue which has been long solved is still a problem. Ignore all advances in the past half a decade, misleading, deceptive and unethical.
byEvanED ( 569694 ) writes:
Typical MS Marketing slight of hand.
You're representative of the worst parts of the open source community; arrogant, accusative without any evidence, and your refusal to acknowledge verifiable problems does it a disservice. Believe me, the best thing people like you can do to further the cause of open source and free software is to shut the fuck up.
Now that that's out of the way, I can address your "points".
Ignore all advances in the past half a decade
"Half a decade"? OOXML support was added to OpenOffice
byozmanjusri ( 601766 ) writes:
The origin PPTX file is in that directory as well; give it a shot.
1[tinypic.com]
2[tinypic.com]
byEvanED ( 569694 ) writes:
Note that you apparently converted them to PPT before opening them in OpenOffice (note the .ppt, and not .pptx, in the title bar). This is, I think, what the OOXML import filter for earlier versions of PowerPoint (which you are clearly using) does. It also means that what you're saying isn't very relevant, because you're using the PPT import filter in Impress, not the PPTX one (which is the one I'm saying is pretty crappy).
This is fine if you want something to distribute for informational purposes, and you
bypoetmatt ( 793785 ) writes:
as a humorous aside: "lol you got owned". I'm not saying you're a MS shill, but maybe you should try not to be so skeptical of open source improvements. Typically the millisecond someone voices about something being incompatible the first thing people do is find a way to implement it successfully and make it compatible. That's the flexibility advantage of open source.
I can't think of a program or a general perspective on programming of which that doesn't apply in general. Especially considering forks of co
byEvanED ( 569694 ) writes:
as a humorous aside: "lol you got owned"
You referring to your sibling post [slashdot.org]?
You might want to read my rebuttal to that before you draw many conclusions. The author of that post was being deceptive (deliberately or not) in ways that actually matter. (In particular, he wasn't exercising the PPTX import "feature" of OpenOffice at all; he evidently converted the PPTX file to PPT via other means and opened that. The import abilities of the older format actually works well, but I made no statements to the contrary
byEvanED ( 569694 ) writes:
For OO to have one version that is imperfect and then the next one (or even a patch a week later) fixes the problem and then nobody bothers to check and just writes off the software can be either viewed as misleading, misunderstanding, or ignorant.
Finally, I just "pretty well confirmed"* (to a higher standard that Dick Cheney's "pretty well confirmed") that the version I tested this with in this discussions (i.e. the screenshots I say is 3.1.0 is the exact same version (and not just the same version number,
bypoetmatt ( 793785 ) writes:
That was about the worst wording you can attempt for what you just tried to imply. Oh, and I was referring to you, not to me. You got a reply to your other comment where someone used 3.1 to run the example documents that were provided and were showing screenshot results. Or did you fail to notice that?
I'm sure glad that you confirmed something noone else can verify or even recognize. I'm not about to mark you a freak or foe, but I don't see a lot of healthy discussion coming out of here.
byEvanED ( 569694 ) writes:
That was about the worst wording you can attempt for what you just tried to imply. Oh, and I was referring to you, not to me. You got a reply to your other comment where someone used 3.1 to run the example documents that were provided and were showing screenshot results. Or did you fail to notice that?
Read my comment again, because you apparently failed the first time.
The other poster did not open (with OpenOffice) the example document that was provided; he converted the document that was provided with an e
byjotaeleemeese ( 303437 ) writes:
... then MS is lost...
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