Legs.
A couple of weeks ago, I asked aloud about the possibility of
Microsoft's shifts in strategy to meet the demands of new challenges
to its hegemony in the world of PC software ("A New Culture At
Microsoft? Only Time Will Tell" -
http://www.cafeid.com/art-newms.shtml). A threat I didn't mention
looms on the horizon for Microsoft, however; and this one -- the
OpenOffice.org community's impending release of version 2 of its
office suite -- seems destined to strike at the heart of Redmond's
dominance in the business world, the captive audience of Office users
the world over who rely on Word, Excel and PowerPoint to make a
living. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is in beta testing, and it looks like a
formidable opponent indeed, and one that won't cost you a cent to
deploy throughout your business (a move we heartily recommend).
A recent BBC News article ("The assault on software giant Microsoft" -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/business/4508897.stm) takes a
look at the challenges facing Microsoft and leaves speculation about
Microsoft's possible responses to those challenges for the second of
two reports, due out this week. The Beeb mentions threats from the
GNU/Linux community, which continues to build a fantastic free
operating system to loosen Redmond's grip on the desktop. It states
that Microsoft's biggest worry should be the excellent Firefox browser
from the Mozilla Organization, a free and worthy alternative to IE
(Bill Gates dismisses it as "...just another browser"). It mentions
Apple's excellence in innovation, especially with regard to multimedia
and even mentions Skype, the Luxembourg-based group that stands poised
to dominate (in a peace, love and understanding kind of way, it
appears) Voice-over-IP (VoIP).
The article gives short shrift to OpenOffice.org, however; and we find
that surprising. You can safely bet that the suite is on Microsoft's
radar, though. As for responses, there's little that Microsoft can do
about this one, short of taking its file formats and going home or
insisting that its $400 office suite is now "part of the OS". That
doesn't exactly square with what I hope will be the adoption of a new
culture of genuine competition at Microsoft, so it will be interesting
to see how Gates & Co. meet this particular challenge.
Does OpenOffice.org Have What It Takes?
OpenOffice.org grew out of Sun Microsystems' (one of Microsoft's most
bitter rivals) purchase of StarOffice in 1999 and subsequent release
of much of that code to the Open Source Software community (the other
of the bitter rivals). The first release of OpenOffice.org in 2002
lacked polish and had some glaring shortcomings, but it was good
enough for such an ambitious project to warrant a good deal of
positive press and, more importantly, interest and excitement from the
wider Open Source community of developers.
As a result, the most recent release of an OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta
version shows a remarkable amount of progress and the 2.0 release
promises to open up another full-on assault on Redmond in Microsoft's
ongoing war against free software.
OpenOffice.org consists of six major components, all worthy
counterparts to the components of MS Office: Writer, Calc, Impress,
Draw, Base and Math. Writer is an excellent replacement for Word that
lacks few features the behemoth word-processing package has. Writer
opens Word and WordPerfect documents and has the ability to export PDF
and HTML files directly. We find the PDF export feature invaluable
here at Cafe ID (http://www.cafeid.com) where we keep our Users Manual
in OpenOffice.org format.
Those tasked with maintaining that kind of technical documentation
intended for more than one medium will rejoice in the fact that the
OpenOffice.org open file format can be unzipped to directly reveal its
constituent XML and binary parts, opening up the possibility of
creating and using a wide-variety of third-party tools to work with
the same data. The Navigator panel makes working with long documents
a breeze, and the Stylist panel makes applying font and page styles
work similarly to the way Cascading Style Sheets work, allowing you to
change the size of all your chapter headings with one small change,
for example.
Calc opens Excel files flawlessly and now features the ability to
create much larger spreadsheets than did the 1.1 release of
OpenOffice.org. It also adheres very closely to the Excel model for
formulas, unlike Lotus 123 and other competitors. The Impress program
is analogous to PowerPoint, and both it and Draw, OpenOffice.org's
vector graphics editor, can output Flash (.swf) files (offering
similar capability to Macromedia's Breeze and CorelDRAW, respectively).
The newest component of OpenOffice.org is Base, a database program
meant to be an answer to Access. Base includes an SQL engine called
HSQL which also stores information in XML files, and it can also
access most popular databases (including the ever-popular MySQL)
directly and any industry-standard database through the ODBC and JDBC
drivers. Math is a full-featured mathematical equation editor that
can produce output for the other components.
The open file format and cross-platform code base (OpenOffice.org runs
on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and BSD) make OpenOffice.org even
more appealing in environments where a variety of platforms are in
use. The Native Language Confederation is working hard at getting
OpenOffice.org localized in dozens of languages, and
internationalization is built-in to the components, including support
for bidirectional text, vertical text, and so on.
The biggest advantage OpenOffice.org enjoys over Office, of course, is
that the former is free for the downloading while the latter will cost
you. A lot. OpenOffice.org is released under the LGPL and the SISSL,
two Open Source licenses that ensure that OpenOffice.org will always
be free.
Free doesn't mean unsupported. The review mentioned above praised the
OpenOffice.org for its ad-hoc support network. There is a rapidly
growing body of online documentation, a wide variety of free community
support and even commercial support available through Sun and others.
Third-party books abound.
The United Kingdom-based PC Pro Magazine
(http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/64884/openoffice-112.html) endorsed
OpenOffice.org in December, 2004 "over and above Microsoft Office 2003
for both home and office use." And that was version 1.1.4, the most
recent version considered stable while 2.0 is in the latter stages of
beta testing. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is expected to be released sometime
later this month or next.
What's the Catch?
There are a few "gotchas" for those making the effort to switch over
from Office to OpenOffice.org. For example, while Writer can be
programmed using macros, Word macros won't work. Functions may be
located in slightly different places. Where Word has a Table menu,
for example, Writer's excellent table-manipulation functions are
located in a dialog that appears contextually when you insert or
access a table. Writer lacks a grammar checker; but it has been my
experience that Word's is scarcely useful. Impress is said to suffer
from a lack of supplied templates, though the community will no doubt
step forward to fill gaps such as this. Also, because the suite is
based at least in part on Java, its performance isn't quite on par
with that of native software, though it isn't bad at all.
There are other minor differences, annoyances and omissions; but for
users who are more comfortable making the switch from such familiar
tools as Microsoft Office to something new, there simply isn't much
negative to say about OpenOffice.org, particularly about the upcoming
2.0 version.
The best thing is that it won't cost you a cent to figure out whether
you like OpenOffice.org better than, or at least as well as MS Office.
It's a free download, and while it's a large download (over 100MB -
a few minutes even on a broadband connection) it installs easily and
cleanly. It does require Sun's Java, which is also a free download,
available at the Java website (http://java.sun.com) and 128MB of RAM
on your machine.
We urge you to give OpenOffice.org a spin. We're confident you'll be
as impressed as we are, and it's one less reason to depend on
Microsoft for the smooth and cost-efficient functioning of your
business. We still don't think that's a good idea.
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About the Author
Trevor Bauknight is a web designer and writer with over 15 years of experience on the Internet. He specializes in the creation and maintenance of business and personal identity online and can be reached at trevor@tryid.com. Stop by http://www.cafeid.com for a free tryout of the revolutionary SiteBuildingSystem and check out our Flash-based website and IMAP e-mail hosting solutions, complete with live support.
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Trevor Bauknight
trevor@tryid.com
http://www.cafeid.com "Your Online IDentity Experts"