Which leads to another interesting question. WORLDSTART has been using and recommending THINKFREE OFFICE, which is a modestly priced office program compatible with MICROSOFT OFFICE. ($49.95). Does anyone have any input as to the comparability of THINKFREE OFFICE with OPEN OFFICE?
> -----Original Message----- > From: Ian Lynch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, November 2, 2005 5:55 am > To: discuss@openoffice.org > Subject: Re: [discuss] Re: Re ZDNet article > > On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 10:18 +0000, Andrew Brown wrote: > > > This is a perfectly natural journalistic reaction to the > hype. There > > is a yawning gulf between the honesty of the engineers, who will > > freely admit that OOo is slow and bloated, and must be improved in > > those areas, and the fanboy / slashdot type rhetoric which assumes > > that anything open source must be superior to anything else. > > Or indeed the marketing drones that are the proprietary > software equivalents. > > > Journalists don't like being lied to. > > Unless it sells more news ;-) > > > When corporate PR people lie to them, this is at least > accompanied by > > attempted bribes. > > Oh come on, mostly its just telling journalists what they > want to hear in a way that will up their circulation. You > could of course class that as a bribe, or taking them out to > dinner to give them the juicy details. > In marketing, whether it is corporates or Slashdot, the > strategy is to play up the strengths, play down the > weaknesses and exaggerate anything that might give advantage. > In fact, the FLOSS community is generally not that good at > this because most are not trained in marketing, they largely > come from tech/engineering backgrounds. How many members of > the OOo marketing project have extensive experience/training > in commercial marketing or product sales? How many have a > background in technical IT? > > > When open source boosters > > lie to them, it it simply irritating. > > Depends on whether they are caught and how much is a grey > area and how much absolute. Snag is that without the > marketing traiing they might make bad decisions about where > to lie and where to exaggerate. > > > If I wrote about tech stuff more, I > > would be seriously rude about OOo, not becaseu it is a bad > programme, > > but because the gap between hype and delivery is so immense. > > Unlike any other product in the IT world? This discussion > would be better on the marketing list. All marketing is about > hype in just about any field. When was the last time you > heard a car manufacturer say our product might be great on > acceleration but its fuel economy sucks and its carbon > emissions damage the environment? > > -- > Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > ZMSL --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
