On 11/15/05, Robin Laing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > How many really would like either pop-up ad's in the middle of their > work or banners all the time. Not me. It would lead me to dump the > software so quick. Heck, how many people love 30 sec skip buttons on > their PVR's? > > This list is discussing how many seconds are lost while converting > from the ODF file format to the binary image in memory as lost time > yet there is serious discussion about advertisements on the desktop? >
It could be something like Opera's banner ads - (ads that they just took off like last month). They were small enough and out of the way, that most Opera users didn't mind. They could also be relevence-based (like Google ads) which would mean they were like text-ads. The time lost using ODF wasn't measured in seconds, but in minutes. Up to 17 minutes, IIRC. The ads would likely be small enough that the load-time would be measured in seconds, if not parts of a second. And, again, if you read the article, at this time, MS is only discussing do this to Works and similar programs, not Office. At least not yet. So the time people lose letting the ads load, probably won't matter, because it seems targeted at home users and students, not businesses (since Works isn't targeted at businesses). People don't measure their "productivity level" at home in dollars and cents. The reason it matters is because many end users see OOo as a free replacement for MS Office. They see MS Works as a cheap replacement for MS Office. If Works becomes free, then they'd be directly competing with us. We may have more features, but they have an advertising budget, and a globally recognized name. I know OOo is known around the world, but more people know the name "Microsoft" than "OpenOffice.org" - especially since a large number of people get the name wrong anyway "Open Office" "Openoffice" etc.. -- - Chad Smith http://www.gimpshop.net/ Because everyone loves free software!
