Comments on: Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice.org in UK education

By: Rechtsanwalt Stuttgart

Rechtsanwalt Stuttgart — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:38:40 +0000

We have extremely positive experience with OpenOffice 3.0 by our lawyers in office – it has great support of MS-DOC format (read\write) and build-in possibility to generate PDF out of OpenWriter.

For small and middle size companies it’s a way to go.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:20:38 +0000

An interesting read.
Many organisations are now looking for alternatives that are smaller, easier to license and provide consistency/compatibility for existing and emerging document standards.
However, one of the largest issues surrounding a migration to an alternative suite is the time taken to retrain users to become familiar.
May I suggest taking a look at Kingsoft Office 2009. It provides 100% compatibility but is designed specially for situations such as this.
It is new and solves many of the problems outlined here. http://www.kingsoftresearch.com

By: Alec McAllister

Alec McAllister — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:42:14 +0000

My university has had OpenOffice on the standard Windows desktop, used by all our 30,000+ students, for 2 or 3 years. It is alongside MS Office, as an alternative, rather than a replacement. Students and staff seem quite happy to switch between the two suites, using whichever is best for particular activities. There are compatibility issues, but they aren’t unmanageable, and there is little need for training: OO is fairly straightforward. An extra advantage is that we can use OO as a work-around for undesirable “features” in MS Office.

By: Gary Sims

Gary Sims — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:08:02 +0000

When I was at university all the major banks tried to give me an account. The account I signed up for then I have today (some 20 years later) so I guess their strategy worked…

I guess Microsoft do the same thing in education… Shame that OOo can’t make in roads now, in 5 years it could change the office suite landscape when students become employees and decision makers!!!

Gary

By: Oron Joffe

Oron Joffe — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:19:00 +0000

Very interesting indeed. As I see it, the problem is that a large organisation, such as my university, must retain complete compatibility with external contacts, so at least some users need to have MS Office. Installing Open Office for other users would then create a slew of compatibility and training issues within the organisation, which is too horrible to contemplate. Web-based software doesn't actually address this either, so any change is going to have to come from the home market. If and when enough people use Open Office (or other non MS package) at home, corporations (particular Education & public sector) will follow.

By: Paul Morriss

Paul Morriss — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:28:09 +0000

This is very interesting. Some of your conclusions I might have guessed, but it’s good to have them confirmed. I work for a charity which has a sister organisation in the US. They get office licenses donated by MS employees, so for us it’s effectively free and there’s no incentive to consider anything else.

I think overall although the bleeding edge of technology is changing all the time, the rest of the world has much more momentum, and the Office ship is a slow one to turn.