New
#1
lol
Customers Say Microsoft Office Offers Superior Value to OpenOffice
-
-
New #2
Ive had several people say to me who arent computer experts by any means that they dont really like openoffice and find the ribbon of ms office helpful.
-
New #3
I think in the even of a business....many of them will have enterprise contracts with Microsoft and this covers the OS as well as the office suite....so if you are already paying for it...you might as well use it.
Also, as a business...centralized management of these applications via Group Policy and such is a requirement. But for a home user, it's unnecessary and I think home use is where the majority of Open Office users are situated. I know for a fact that is true for my use of Open Office.
-
New #4
Having worked in an office that tried OpenOffice for a while to save costs and not upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007/2010, I can tell you that it was a failure because when you get right down to it for business, OpenOffice is very lacking. Additionally, the Ribbon interface is far more intuitive than the interface OpenOffice currently uses. This same office now uses Office 2010 as everyone, except the CIO (now former CIO) who loved OpenOffice hated having OpenOffice. There are certain spreadsheets that we have to work with for one of our clients who in OpenOffice, we wasted at least 10 to 15 extra minutes per spreadsheet, per day to make them look half way presentable with OpenOffice whereas with Microsoft Office, we just get our work done.
-
New #5
How can you say something that costs money has more value in it when compared to something that is free and accomplishes most of the same tasks?
I am a MS Office 2007 Pro user, but even I know that OpenOffice is the best free alternative, and with free, it makes it the best "Value" because it did not cost a cent to begin with.
-
New #6
Because free doesn't necessarily mean that it works well enough to make it worthwhile. In the case of a business, if files have to be converted and they don't convert well, it costs more in workers time to work around the issue than they likely pay for Microsoft Office. Therefore, while cheap, it doesn't offer enough value to to the business to justify it's use.
-
New #7
As nice as Open Office is, I do prefer the actual Office suite.
-
-
New #9
Even MS Office 2007 is far superior to Open Office.
Don't get me wrong, I use Open Office on Linux but I've also managed to install MS Office 2007 there using Wine. MS Office just tops them with the ribbon interface obviously. MS Office seems to have more options and I got used to it better. It also felt faster and less buggy compared to Open Office that crashes more for me. The portable version of Open Office crashes even worse than the non portable one.
The only weakness of MS Office is that its not free and like many Microsoft products nowadays, consumes more space and installs more things compared to its open source counterparts.
Customers Say Microsoft Office Offers Superior Value to OpenOffice
Posted: 12 Oct 2010
Source -A number of customers have dumped an open source productivity suite for Microsoft Office, citing superior value from the Redmond company’s solution.
Just as Windows has an open source alternative in the various distributions of Linux, so Microsoft Office is rivaled by OpenOffice.
And just as it is the case with Linux and additional open source offerings, the most applauded advantage over closed source software is related to the cost.
Open source is by definition free. However, Microsoft has been challenging this, noting that as far as companies are concerned cost does not stop with the acquisition.
In addition to the direct costs implied by a specific product, there is also an additional, indirect cost. Enterprise customers refer to is as Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and it includes expenditures such as support, and tech assistance.
Microsoft has highlighted a total of 15 customers which dumped the free OpenOffice for Microsoft Office citing multiple reasons such as cost advantages, better support, enhanced productivity, etc.
“After many years of listening to the supposed promise of free software and even trying it themselves, these organizations and individuals were brave enough to recognize a lack of cost savings on top of the constant headaches around managing OpenOffice.org,” revealed Microsoft’s Raymond Thomas.
“I’m sure that OpenOffice.org fanatics will respond with all sorts of criticisms and links to customers who’ve moved from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org."
“While this may seem like a valid counter-argument I urge you to consider that with an install base of over 750 million users it’s not difficult to find a few who want to investigate alternative solutions."
Customers Say Microsoft Office Offers Superior Value to OpenOffice - Softpedia
Quote
Related Discussions