There is no question about it: As far as David-and-Goliath scenarios go, the scrappy open-source office applications that have taken on mighty Microsoft Office could not have picked a seemingly more invincible foe. Bill Gates' silicon empire is just about as powerful and wealthy a corporate organization as has ever existed. Next to it, outfits like OpenOffice, StarOffice and Corel Office look like ragtag guerilla fighters and, frankly, kind of puny. But it is not necessarily wise to write off the skinny kid with the sling quite yet. Though Microsoft's Office applications hold a lead in the business market that would daunt General George S. Patton, open-source office applications are doing better in the SMB (small to mid-size business) markets than experts expected. "The bottom line is that, where the market is right now, I don't see huge traction for OpenOffice or StarOffice. But, that said, I think you will see pockets where those products make sense," Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox told NewsFactor.
Wooing Mom and Pop
And those pockets are in small and mid-size businesses -- those of 1,000 employees or less -- where paying top dollar for Microsoft's very expensive productivity suite does not make much sense. In conducting research for a new report, Wilcox found that open-source productivity suites did "surprisingly well" in the mid-size business market, with the OpenOffice suite alone claiming a share of about 6 percent. Furthermore, he found that some 19 percent of small businesses ran Linux on their desktop, and a whopping 26 percent ran Linux on their servers.
News source: NewsFactor
Wooing Mom and Pop
And those pockets are in small and mid-size businesses -- those of 1,000 employees or less -- where paying top dollar for Microsoft's very expensive productivity suite does not make much sense. In conducting research for a new report, Wilcox found that open-source productivity suites did "surprisingly well" in the mid-size business market, with the OpenOffice suite alone claiming a share of about 6 percent. Furthermore, he found that some 19 percent of small businesses ran Linux on their desktop, and a whopping 26 percent ran Linux on their servers.
News source: NewsFactor
Though I guess its the same story - just use what does the job for you. Large customers (in particularly education, like where I work) get quite honestly excellent prices from Microsoft, and trying to justify Linux is quite difficult - though it is rock solid reliable for our DNS & DHCP services and doesn't really have anything to 'prove' any more.
But small / medium businesses who have to pay top whack for MS products clearly can benefit from systems like Linux.
M$ up to their usual evil tricks, sabotaging open standards, extorting businesses, and driving small, well-intentioned developers out of business.
Im sure if they looked harder they would realise its more than that....
Basically the people that really need to be doing office work, have full versions, the rest of us have open office which we can write rough drafts and do simple work then we pass it onto the people with MS Office to get it cleaned up and presentable.
90% of the time, I try and hop onto one of the computers with MS Office, due to open office being slow, crashing randomly, and doing freaky rendings to existing documents(won't even begin to describe what it did to one of our old word perfect documents). Everytime there's an annoucement of a new version, I download it at a fever pitch, hoping it'll improve. And over the years, yes, its gotten better, but given a choice(with price not being the issue), I'd pick MS Office in a heartbeat.
We saved money, but we sure don't save any time. Time is money.
Oh, and exporting as a pdf kicks ass. Not sure if Office has that because I don't use it, but I've wowed a few people with that.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.