John,
There seem to me to be few articles that actually compare the two, so if
you do some analysis yourself, you will quickly be a (world) leader in
that area. If you do write something, I'd look forward to reading it.
Check with several libraries in your area (e.g. public and university) and
see what kind of article databases are available. They may have full
article text included. However, the articles you are looking for are not
necessarily going to be in "tech" magazines, especially if you are looking
for reviews which cover how the tools are used in real life.
I'll send citations offlist for the articles I happened to find and keep.
-Lars
PS. MS seems to tend not to publicize actual functionality and technical
specifications, but rather focuses on vauge claims so that makes things a
bit harder. If you can get a die-hard MS fan to show you where to look,
you may be able to find some actual technical specifications. It's a
different way of thinking.
BTW what do you mean "standard" MS Office? The file formats are different
and have varying levels of incompatibility in order to drive new sales.
So, the file formats are one big difference. OOo has the advantage in
supporting OpenDocument, which is an open, XML-based format. Also, the
menus are changed around in MSO enough to cause annoyance to people that
use the program only occasionally. (e.g. nurses, library directors,
timber industry managers and real-estate brokers)
Regarding the latest versions of OOo and MSO, there is an extreme form of
vendor lock-in coming in then next version of MSO which is absent in OOo.
See:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39199804,00.htm
For similar technical reasons, OOo becomes more robust because it is not
dependent on the server. So if your server goes down or your network goes
down, you can still work with your document in OOo.
I would speculate that the vendor lock-in (via Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM) technology) in MSO 12 could be easily abused to silence,
suppress, monitor or censor whistle-blowers and dissident groups,
individuals, political parties or publications. If you look at the claims
of what MS claims the technology does, then it the lack of abuse would be
simply a matter of goodwill on the part of the people with access to the
DRM server.
OOo is probably lined up for better compliance with HIPAA and other
privacy regulations, especially for the DRM'd versions of MSO. The
encryption is better. Also, OOo is not dependent on server to which third
parties have access. (2000 SP3, XP SP1, and 2003 all grant admin level
access to a third party) You may also be interested in investigating if
either program stores unique tracking numbers ( under whatever
name, "global unique identifier" ) or if either program uses escrow keys
to allow circumvention of encryption.
Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Software patents harm all Net-based business, write your MEP:
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6/owa/p_meps2.repartition?ilg=EN
On Wed, 25 May 2005, John William Werner wrote:
Hello-
I am going to be writing a White Paper about Openoffice and how it compares
to the standard Microsoft Office for my professional writing class. Does
anyone know of any good sites/articles/research that compares the two? Any
ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks again,
John Werner
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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