[ubuntu-uk] MS vs. OO

[Mary Mooney]

On 15 September 2010 10:00, Yorvyk <yorvik.ubunto at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2010 09:10:46 +0100
> Mark Harrison <Mark at ascentium.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> > From: Jacob Mansfield <cyberjacob at gmail.com>
>> > of corse you can do it in OO, why the f**k would you want to use M$
>>
>>
>> Couple of things:
>>
>> 1: I've not used MS Office for about 5 years now, however the one time I
>> needed to was in 2007 for a really complex mailmerge, which is one area
>> where MSO is still better than OOo :-(
>>
>> There are lots of areas where OOo is genuinely better, in terms of
>> functionality, as well as being free (in the cash sense). Actually, it's not
>> quite Free in the OpenSource sense, if you read the Sun licence carefully
>> :-)
>>
>>
>> 2: I'm not sure you CAN do this in OOo - ie, create a link in a spreadsheet
>> that then creates a pre-populated document in Writer. This wasn't a question
>> about mailmerge, but about how to achieve a particular task. To be fair, I
>> don't think that mailmerge in MSO is the right answer either, but given the
>> user in question feels that mailmerge is too complex, I'm guessing that
>> telling them that it needs about 20 lines of VBA macros probably isn't going
>> to work either :-)
>>
>>
>> 3: If you asked a question about OOo, and someone replied "MSO can do this,
>> why the f*** would you use OpenOffice instead", would you:
>>
>> A: Feel that the respondent had a good point, and you should go out and try
>> MS Office.
>>
>> B: Feel that the respondent was a jerk, and that you wanted to steer clear
>> of the kinds of things he was recommending.
>>
>>
>>
>> The reason I bring this up is that I had a meeting with the IT Director of a
>> FTSE 100 company a couple of years ago, and that one of the things that came
>> up was OpenOffice as a possible replacement for MSO.
>>
>> The reply I got was "This is like Linux. I'm fed up of Linux people. They
>> come in and want to have a religious conversation. I want to have a business
>> conversation."
>>
>
>>
>
>> This over-the-top, "why the f**** would you" stuff is actually DRIVING
>> PEOPLE AWAY FROM LINUX.
>>
>>
>> If I ran for Microsoft's Dirty Tricks Division, then I'd pay people to join
>> LUG lists and post nasty comments about MS to make people feel that the
>> Linux community were nutters :-)
>>
>>
>> So, thanks for harming the spread of Free software.
>>
>>
> Negative publicity is still publicity, panning somebody else’s product rarely works.  I’m (nearly :)  always very careful about the claims I make about what OOo can do.  It is not a drop in replacement for Office.
>
>
> --
> Steve Cook (Yorvyk)
>
> http://lubuntu.net
>
> --
> ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
>

I have used both MS and OO mailmerges.  The philosopy is about the
same, except that OO lets you create a database for your data.  I
think you can plonk an Excel sheet into an OO database so the problem
is solvable.

Mary
------
Mary Mooney DEUK
+44 (0) 7914 079 026

"A well-developed sense of humour is the pole that adds balance to
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