OpenOffice

OpenOffice 3.0 now opens Microsoft Office 2007 files

Microsoft Subnet — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:39:41 -0400

Sun on Monday unveiled OpenOffice 3.0, the personal productivity suite that's targeted as the open source alternative to Microsoft Office. On Wednesday, the OpenOffice.org site had a notice that read: "our website is struggling to cope with the unprecedented demand for the new release 3.0 of OpenOffice.org.

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Subscription MS Office suite has a name and a low price

Microsoft Subnet — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:46:49 -0400

The Office suite formerly known as Albany now has an official name, "Equipt" and a new low price, an annual subscription fee of $69.99 per year. Equipt is geared for the home/student and includes Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live OneCare, Office Live Workspaces, Windows Live Mail, Live Messenger and Live Photo. A story from IDG News Service reports that Microsoft plans to begin selling it in the U.S. on July 15 through Circuit City, with other outlets to follow.

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More great tools you can carry with you!

Ron Barrett — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:28:52 -0400

You may or may not remember my post on May 6: Three great IT tools you can carry with you. In that post I spoke about tools that admins can carry on a USB thumb drive, some kind of flash drive or a portable hard drive. The great thing about my blog is that there is no shortage of things to help us make a Better Windows World. Therefore, here are a few more great portable tools for admins to help make your world a Better Windows World -- nope, not going to stop using it. I'm taking the Snapple approach (I guess working there for five years rubbed off). Like their commercials, it may be annoying, but you will definitely not forget us. OK! So, in no particular order, here are some great portable tools:

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What platform(s)?

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:10:26 -0400

Windows only, or Linux too?

Exchange client?

Mon, 19 May 2008 09:46:59 -0400

No Exchange email client? No contest.

OOo not the problem

Wed, 14 May 2008 10:31:57 -0400

OpenOffice is not the problem. the problem is, as always, Microsoft proprietary and secret code. Try the test the other way; can MS Office 2007 open OOo documents? No!

Asus Eee Update

Craig Mathias — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 07:50:26 -0400

I've been using the Asus Eee PC for a few weeks now, and I have to say my overall impression is very favorable indeed. It's very portable (small and light), has reasonable battery life, a very fast boot time (and fast shutdown as well - ever needed to head to the airport while Microsoft wasted your time shutting down XP by installing updates?), and overall easy manageability. Now, of course, this is LINUX, and you'd better be comfortable using the command line (terminal window) interface from time to time.

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Albany: MS Office goes SaaS

Microsoft Subnet — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:31:24 -0400

Aha -- Microsoft has begun revealing details about its low-cost Office suite geared to do combat with Google Docs and OpenOffice.org. The key idea here is that this software will be sold as a subscription -- a new plan for Microsoft -- and will include desktop components that integrate closely with Microsoft's already free cloud components.

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Office 2007 vs. OpenOffice Comparison - Only A Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

Mitchell Ashley — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:49:08 -0500

I came across a blog post by capslock assassin comparing Office 2007 and OpenOffice. CA's methodology, as the writer described, came down to five reasons why Office 2007 is better than OpenOffice; user interface, help system, speed of common tasks, templates provided, and innovation.

In a nutshell, it was a pretty light treatment of the topic. Most of what was highlighted as strengths in Office 2007 were due to the new Ribbon menu feature. The ribbon menu won the day in the user interface, speed of common tasks, and innovation categories.

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Burning Office 2007 ... Questions

James Gaskin — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:30:49 -0500

If you're considering paying the bucks for Office 2007, read this Top 10 article before you make the plunge. And put more in the budget if you want at least half of the features Microsoft advertises.

During dinner last night, a friend in the support business detailed his frustration at helping a client navigate through Office 2007. "He said he had trouble printing. How hard is it to print, I thought, then I sat down to help. I couldn't find the *&%$#@#*( print menu. Why in &^%@$ did Microsoft hide the print menu?"

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RE: IBM ties OpenOffice suite to real-time communications platform

Plan-B-for-OpenOffice — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:54:54 -0400

Mmmh, "based on OpenOffice.org 1.2" does not sound right. Officially, Open Office had versions 1.0.X, 1.1.X and 2.0.X, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3

RE: IBM piles on Microsoft's open document defeat

Microsoft Subnet — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:13:48 -0400

This is no surprise, given how big a critic IBM has been to Microsoft OOXML. Still, IBM has got clout and could help push OpenOffice to become the next office document de facto standard out from underneath Microsoft. The story says: "IBM Monday seized on last week’s rejection by the ISO of the Microsoft and Ecma International Office Open XML format and said it would throw its development weight behind OpenOffice.org, the most prominent set of open source applications based on the Open Document Format."

Dallas ITEC Show Roundup

James Gaskin — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:59:48 -0400

Finally, an ITEC show I could walk to from my house, if I wanted to walk from a suburb across half of Dallas to the downtown Convention Center. At least I avoided being frisked at the airport. The Dallas ITEC stop is one of the biggest of the year (a little home town pride, thank you). Coming only two weeks after the Houston ITEC show, I had a chance to visit with several exhibitors who cover Texas top to bottom. One of the people I interviewed on video in Houston Jennifer Wright of Wright Business Technologies (she comes on after Phil McKinzey), helped out on the How to Fix IT Panel of experts with a reseller viewpoint. Two topics dominated the questions during the panel: backup and e-mail. Both dominated the session in Houston, as well. In Dallas, we upped the ante by having the tech person for a law firm ask about backing up and archiving e-mail.

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Comparing OpenOffice and Microsoft Office

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 17:07:46 -0400

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Microsoft Office rival is a virus target

Microsoft Subnet — Thu, 24 May 2007 13:49:57 -0400

Malware developers have created a proof-of-concept virus, called BadBunny, that makes use of OpenOffice macros. (OpenOffice is an open source rival to Microsoft Office.) Read more.

This isn't the first proof-of-concept virus to attack macros in open-source Office alternatives, but it is more sophisticated than previous versions. A similar bit of malware was written for StarOffice aabout a year ago, dubbed StarDust. That virus attempted to download a picture of a porn star.

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Yes, an Office-less Office

James Gaskin — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:08:58 -0400

The new Microsoft Subnet area, as expected, leans strongly toward all things Microsoft. However, explaining why Microsoft products have value can be done with at least some level of civility. One needn't proclaim "some formerly relevant weekly glossies have been touting the open source office productivity applications as the second coming...Are they crazy?" just because one feels Microsoft Office is worth hundreds of dollars more than the price of OpenOffice 2.2 (free). In this case, my comments about Open Source make Network World such a weekly glossy. Saying, "And open source donkeys fall in line, proclaiming it as gospel," just degrades to inconsiderate name calling for no reason. I don't consider myself a donkey, but I do consider myself a fan of Open Source Software. After an automatic Windows update clobbered my video drivers last year, I reinstalled Windows XP but not Microsoft Office. I've since written hundreds of documents and

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Employees VS Hosted Applications

James Gaskin — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:25:58 -0500

Last time we talked about Google Apps and how you can get a decent office productivity suite delivered to your browser for $50 per person per year. That's less than what small businesses pay for Microsoft Office, but certainly more than you pay for OpenOffice 2.0 (you pay nothing). But this disturbing report from the Society for Information Management points out another reason to investigate hosted applications for your business: you may have a hard time hiring enough technical people in the next few year to manage your own applications. Realistically, small businesses will have an easier time, because you will hire technical people who are at the beginning of their careers and are therefore unable to get jobs with the big companies. But after a couple of years working for you, these techs will have the experience and training they need to jump to bigger companies and bigger paychecks. This is a fact of life for small and medium businesses with every kind of employee, not just technology. That said, growing businesses that plan ahead can consider the number of technical employees needed to support technical products before buying said products. For instance, growing businesses reach a point where they feel the need for Microsoft Exchange to run their e-mail, group calendar, and shared task lists. You can buy a Microsoft Exchange Server yourself and hire people to run it, or contract a hosted Exchange service (or equivalent) for a few dollars per month per user. You have less initial investment and no hiring worries.

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Google Unloads on Microsoft

James Gaskin — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:49:30 -0500

Now Google set a price on their version of an "office productivity suite" that includes nearly unlimited offsite storage: $50 per user per year according to this story. I think there's a problem with Google's approach. It hurts me to say this, because Google people are the smartest people in the world, (just Google them if you don't believe me) but they're fighting the wrong fight. No one believes their online applications beat Microsoft Office computer-bound applications on features, and that's fine. But large corporations pay not much more than $50 per year per employee for their Microsoft Office suites already, depending on how steep their discounts from Microsoft are. Even if they're really paying $100 per user per year, Microsoft can drop the price based on some new volume licensing deal any time they want. That leaves Google with oodles of egg on their corporate face. The Fortune 5000 isn't, I believe, the best market for Google Apps. Google can't compete on features and any price advantage today may disappear tomorrow. But smaller companies, the ones who really will save money getting an office suite for $50 per user per year, are once again ignored. Too bad, because there are millions of under-served small business users who can benefit from Google Apps.

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How Much App?

James Gaskin — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:23:48 -0500

Google made another announcement about tying in their Docs & Spreadsheets online applications with Google Apps for Your Domain (story). Since Google detractors claim the applications are too weak to be useful, let me revisit the question of how much application horsepower most people need. I say "not much." During speeches, I ask how many in the audience have created a text document with multiple columns, or headers and footers, in the last month. About 10 to 15 percent of the people raise their hands every time. A few more will join in if I extend the time period back six months, but I never see 20 percent of the attendees raise their hands. Either you regularly create complex documents, or you don't. The same goes for spreadsheets. Most people use spreadsheets casually, with a few rows and a few column sums and a few arithmetical calculations. Real spreadsheet fans, again less than

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Protecting systems from Word's zero-day vulnerabilities

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:53:49 -0500

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