As a small business I have a major impediment to standardising on OOo, and that is all my clients use MSOffice and we need to share files.
The round trip between MSOffice and OOo just isn't good enough for me to use OOo and them use MSOffice. I did for a spell use OOo, and then load the file into Word to fix any minor errors before sending to the client. But when that file came back for me to work on again, it was obviously now in Word and I just didn't have the time to do a round trip into OOo and back again, and the same pronlem applies with Calc and Excel. So inspite of considering OOo to be a better product, I have found my self trapped in a MSOffice world. However, for small businesses who do not need to share files the way that I do, then OOo seems an ideal option. Graham On 20/09/06, Ross Bernheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Derek, In small businesses there are as many if not more impediments to adopting alternatives such as Open Office. I work in a small company. When I started, there were two of us, the owner and myself. His is a MS Windows, MS Office, Publisher, etc. user. I am primarily a Mac user and to some extent Linux user. The owner got an IBM laptop with XP Home. He got an IBM desktop with XP Home for the part time receptionist/ office person. I used an old Mac from home initially with Word Perfect for the Mac. When I outgrew the old Mac, I got an eMac for work as it was the only one that would fit under the riser for the workbench where it was to be located and it was the least expensive. Boss offered to get MS Office for it and I said no. I put Open Office on it and have been very happy with it. As we expanded and added a full time office person and another production person, MS continued to dominate. I did get the office person and other production person to put OOo on their machines and they use it some of the time. Particularly when MS Word won't print and OOo does. Boss still won't deal with other than MS Office. On the back end, I did get him to go for a Samba server running on Linux. Took an old $30 PII 266 machine and added a 160GB drive and Debian Linux for an inexpensive and reliable file server. We have added 2 machines that are MS Windows XP based because we need to run software that only works under Windows. These have been EDA software and PLM software. The EDA machine also has Office on it since that is what the people who use it are used to. The PLM server is running on a machine that is in my area and also runs an instance of the PLM client software. I have OOo on it instead of Office. So far the only problem is that the PLM software expects MS Office so I cannot import Excel files into the PLM database without it. It means that I have to convert the file to a text file and import that way. A minor annoyance but not a showstopper as I do not need to import too many files that way. The interesting thing is that the office admin person tried OOo at home and found that it was easier to just use MS Word to trade files with the people in college classes she is taking. The production person uses OOo and not MS Word at home. It will be a long hard ongoing effort to unseat MS Windows or any of the MS Office components from their dominant position. I have a number of computers at home and all have OOo not MS Office on them. So I am a 'success story' but many others are not there yet. Certainly small businesses are a good place to put forth the effort to make them aware of the advantages of OOo. Expecting a high percentage of them to either use or switch to OOo is unrealistic at this point. Working towards having a greater awareness of OOo and higher adoption rates is very realistic. Ross Bernheim On Sep 19, 2006, at 17:13, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I think some of the greatest opportunities for software alternatives > like Open Office and Linux exist in small business, where the > entrepreneurial spirits are highest and budgets are lowest. Workers > there are more likely to make an extra effort to learn new things and > challenge the status quo for their own sakes. > > Derek Wilson --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
