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OpenOffice free software not obscure anymore.
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By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Mercury News
The OpenOffice.org project to develop a free alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suffered from an identity crisis. Unless you're a devotee of niche publications like Slashdot or eWeek, chances are you've never heard of it.
That obscurity ended Tuesday with a vague but attention-grabbing partnership between Google and Sun Microsystems, two Silicon Valley companies with an itch to undermine Microsoft's Borg-like dominance of your desktop computer.
The big brains at Google will join the Sun-backed OpenOffice project, with its 180,000 contributors. That, of course, fueled speculation that Google would one day distribute over the Internet word processing, spreadsheet and PowerPoint-like software. It makes sense, given Google's growing push into areas traditionally dominated by the computer's operating system, such as delivering e-mail or finding files or photos.
But for now, Google and Sun are infuriatingly mum on their future plans, which many expect will be a Web-based version of Office, say, GoogleOffice.
For those who can't wait for the big unveil, I downloaded and spent some time with OpenOffice (available at www.openoffice.org).
The software looked and behaved like rival Microsoft products -- if a little more sluggish and with a few annoying ticks. It reminded me of gooey brownies: tasty, but a little underdone.
I started making notes for this column in Microsoft Word, installed OpenOffice on my computer, and finished writing in the compatible program, dubbed ``Write.'' Write offered the same writing tools -- down to an annoying equivalent to Clippy, Microsoft's annoying desktop helper. It's a light bulb that flashes in the lower right corner of the screen, letting you know, for instance, that it's automatically converted a minus sign to a dash.
I was able to e-mail an initial draft of the column to my husband, who opened and read it (at least, he claimed he did) on his computer, running Microsoft's Windows XP.
I used OpenOffice to modify documents originally created in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint -- and shared those changes with other people using current versions of the Microsoft Office software.
But certain aspects of OpenOffice caused palpitations. When I attempted to save my column composed in Write, the software flashed a warning that I might lose aspects of the document's formatting or appearance. Others who have worked with the software say it can hiccup over complex PowerPoint presentations with intricate graphics and several fonts.
The allure of free is powerful. This is doubly true when the free, community-developed product is superior to the Microsoft offering. That's the case of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser, which is securer and more elegant than Internet Explorer.
But these OpenOffice glitches are enough to deter one analyst who shares research with clients from using it on reports, for fear of circulating a flawed document.
That's a major hurdle for Sun and Google to overcome.
And it's not the only one.
Microsoft has become the standard for this category of utilitarian computer programs known as ``productivity software.'' It accounted for 93.8 percent of all office software sold in stores this year, according to researcher the NPD Group. Even a company like Apple -- which has a certain marketing flair -- managed a comparatively minuscule 3.4 percent of retail sales.
Sun will need more than a savvy partnership with headline-grabbing Google to inflate its share of retail office software, which is at 1 1/100 of a percent, according to NPD.
Contact Dawn C. Chmielewski at dchmielewski@ mercurynews.com or (800) 643-1902.
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Interesting, SUN and Google going after MS' cash cow, aka MS Office.
I tend to agree this is a ripe market, I haven't used a new feature in office since, oh say office 97. However, we all pay hundred of dollars/PC just to crank out basic spread sheets and docuements.
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By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Mercury News
The OpenOffice.org project to develop a free alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suffered from an identity crisis. Unless you're a devotee of niche publications like Slashdot or eWeek, chances are you've never heard of it.
That obscurity ended Tuesday with a vague but attention-grabbing partnership between Google and Sun Microsystems, two Silicon Valley companies with an itch to undermine Microsoft's Borg-like dominance of your desktop computer.
The big brains at Google will join the Sun-backed OpenOffice project, with its 180,000 contributors. That, of course, fueled speculation that Google would one day distribute over the Internet word processing, spreadsheet and PowerPoint-like software. It makes sense, given Google's growing push into areas traditionally dominated by the computer's operating system, such as delivering e-mail or finding files or photos.
But for now, Google and Sun are infuriatingly mum on their future plans, which many expect will be a Web-based version of Office, say, GoogleOffice.
For those who can't wait for the big unveil, I downloaded and spent some time with OpenOffice (available at www.openoffice.org).
The software looked and behaved like rival Microsoft products -- if a little more sluggish and with a few annoying ticks. It reminded me of gooey brownies: tasty, but a little underdone.
I started making notes for this column in Microsoft Word, installed OpenOffice on my computer, and finished writing in the compatible program, dubbed ``Write.'' Write offered the same writing tools -- down to an annoying equivalent to Clippy, Microsoft's annoying desktop helper. It's a light bulb that flashes in the lower right corner of the screen, letting you know, for instance, that it's automatically converted a minus sign to a dash.
I was able to e-mail an initial draft of the column to my husband, who opened and read it (at least, he claimed he did) on his computer, running Microsoft's Windows XP.
I used OpenOffice to modify documents originally created in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint -- and shared those changes with other people using current versions of the Microsoft Office software.
But certain aspects of OpenOffice caused palpitations. When I attempted to save my column composed in Write, the software flashed a warning that I might lose aspects of the document's formatting or appearance. Others who have worked with the software say it can hiccup over complex PowerPoint presentations with intricate graphics and several fonts.
The allure of free is powerful. This is doubly true when the free, community-developed product is superior to the Microsoft offering. That's the case of Mozilla's Firefox Web browser, which is securer and more elegant than Internet Explorer.
But these OpenOffice glitches are enough to deter one analyst who shares research with clients from using it on reports, for fear of circulating a flawed document.
That's a major hurdle for Sun and Google to overcome.
And it's not the only one.
Microsoft has become the standard for this category of utilitarian computer programs known as ``productivity software.'' It accounted for 93.8 percent of all office software sold in stores this year, according to researcher the NPD Group. Even a company like Apple -- which has a certain marketing flair -- managed a comparatively minuscule 3.4 percent of retail sales.
Sun will need more than a savvy partnership with headline-grabbing Google to inflate its share of retail office software, which is at 1 1/100 of a percent, according to NPD.
Contact Dawn C. Chmielewski at dchmielewski@ mercurynews.com or (800) 643-1902.
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Interesting, SUN and Google going after MS' cash cow, aka MS Office.
I tend to agree this is a ripe market, I haven't used a new feature in office since, oh say office 97. However, we all pay hundred of dollars/PC just to crank out basic spread sheets and docuements.
rg than I can with MS Office.