[ubuntu-uk] OT: OOo bashing was Word 2002 under Wine?

[William Anderson]

Rob Beard wrote:
> Sean Miller wrote:
>> I concur... Openoffice is bloatware of the highest order.
>>
>> If I could be bothered to get an older version of Office working on
>> wine I would - but I don't use office suites enough to do so.
>>
>> It's a shame, really, that Sun decided to go down the bloated route,
>> because the early versions of Openoffice were really quite pleasant to
>> use; I dread to click on a ".doc" attachment in an e-mail because I
>> know the machine will whirr and click for ages before I actually get
>> to see it.
>>
>> Sean
>  
> I'd have to disagree on this one.  I've just opened a spreadsheet (one 
> of my invoices) in OpenOffice.  I'm running my notebook in low power 
> mode (1GHz) to save battery and it took 5 seconds from a cold start.  
> I'd hardly say that is ages.  There are tweaks that you can do to 
> OpenOffice to speed it up such as altering the memory usage [1].

You really shouldn't have to tweak a productivity app in such a way to
make it usable, IMHO.  Granted it took 12 seconds for Word to open up on
my Mac when I tried it there, but at least I know I'll enjoy using it :)

> Now compare that to Office 2007 on one of my clients notebooks running 
> Vista, it takes a good 30 or so seconds to start up.
> 
> Not to mention, when did this become an OpenOffice bashing Mac loving 
> mailing list?

Did it?  My main computer is a MacBook Pro, my media server is a Mac
mini, so I usually speak to my own personal experiences.  However, all
my servers[1] run Ubuntu Server LTS, and in the past I've run a gamut of
desktop OSes including all versions of Windows (bar Me) and most recent
versions of Ubuntu.  In all cases, I've rarely enjoyed using OOo, and I
shared Sean's dread when opening documents that wanted to use OOo due to
the grindage and carnage that would ensue.

Note that I'm not saying everyone should use MS Office over OOo, just
that I have a personal preference, and I think that everyone should try
and use the best tool for the job within the bounds of their preferences.

> I have got a Mac myself (albeit older iMac G3) and I have used Macs for 
> many years (going back to the old 68k Macs on System 6) but I find 
> sometimes doing things on a Mac can be just as annoying as doing stuff 
> on Windows (or in some cases as doing things on Linux).  I guess really 

Odd, I rarely find using my Macs annoying.  I've spent more years
cursing at Windows than I ever have at OS X or [insert Linux distro here].

> it's what you're used to.  For instance I'm used to a lot of keyboard 
> shortcuts and generally the shortcuts are the same on Windows and Ubuntu 
> (for most applications), now going to a Mac I find that rather than 
> using CTRL I have to use the Option key.  Not a big thing really but I 
> do find it annoying sometimes.  I dare say it can be annoying for a Mac 
> user to go to a Windows or Linux box and find that some things aren't 
> Mac like.

Indeed.

> With regards too William's comment about OpenOffice not being a native 
> app.  As far as I'm aware OpenOffice 3.1 IS a native app for OS X on 
> Intel CPUs, and there is also NeoOffice (which IIRC is a native build of 
> OpenOffice on both OS X Intel and OS X PPC).

Sorry, my "natively" comment was referring to the UI, which has always
seemed to me to be more interested in appearing the same across all
platforms (which never works) than appearing attractive and highly
usable on each platform so that it plays to each's strengths.  Just a
pet hate.

> With regards to MS Office 2008 being prettier than OpenOffice, remember 
> this, the cheapest version of Office 2008 is the Home & Student version 

Yup, that's the version I have.

> which is about £70 (doing a quick google check), and how much is 

Yeah, I got the 3-user edition from amazon for a shade under 80 quid.
And for me, that was money well spent.  YMMV, naturally.

> OpenOffice? - FREE!

Free to obtain, certainly, but the cost of someone's time to figure out
the differences or possible shortcomings of OOo against MS Office could
be expensive.

> There is nothing stopping anyone picking up the code for OpenOffice and 
> contributing to make it look better and work better and it's not as if 

This is another attitude within the FLOSS community that irks me :)  Not
everyone is a coder!

> you get it shoved down your throat like you do with Office 2007 on a new 
> machine (I've lost count of the amount of Windows PCs I've seen with 
> Office 2007 trial preinstalled which can only be used about 20 times 
> before it disables itself and turns into a bloated Office viewer).

"Shoved down your throat", right.  See, this is what I'm talking about.
 Not your comment, but the practice of shoving things down people's
throats when they didn't ask for them, such as recommending OOo when the
OP wanted help with MS Office.

Apologies to Mike if his comments were well-intentioned, which I have no
doubt they were, but comments like "why aren't you using $FOO" when the
question was "can someone help me with $BAR" just drive me nuts sometimes.

> Don't get me started on the install sizes [2] (about 1.7GB for a full 
> install of Office 2007 and about 400MB for OpenOffice.org)

2008 is about a gig here.  I agree that for something you'd use to
create a spreadsheet or type up a letter, that's insane.  For reference,
iWork '09 is 650 meg.

> Now I'll be the first to admit that OpenOffice isn't perfect but it is 
> enough for most people and works pretty well (apart from a couple of 
> niggly bugs, but you can report bugs and track them online) and compared 
> to the cost of Office 2007, you won't see me switching in a hurry.

Then at least you've saved 70-odd quid :)

-n

[1] 4 here at home, 1 at my parents, and various bits and bobs out in
colo and virtual server land.