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> My point being that other companies work by making a product that is good
> enough that people will want to buy it. Microsoft works by preventing
> anybody else making anything better.
LOL, have you seen the number of patents and lawsuits between Nokia and
Apple, or Ford and GM, or ... and ...? It's part of business, MS is not
unique in trying to prevent its competitors making anything better using all
means possible. You'd go out of business pretty quick if you didn't
(because your competitors are sure as hell going to use those methods on
you).
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scott wrote:
>> My point being that other companies work by making a product that is
>> good enough that people will want to buy it. Microsoft works by
>> preventing anybody else making anything better.
>
> LOL, have you seen the number of patents and lawsuits between Nokia and
> Apple, or Ford and GM, or ... and ...? It's part of business, MS is not
> unique in trying to prevent its competitors making anything better using
> all means possible. You'd go out of business pretty quick if you didn't
> (because your competitors are sure as hell going to use those methods on
> you).
Last time I checked, people buy Nokia phones because they're better
designed than the competition. That's how it's supposed to work.
Nobody buys MS because they like it. They buy MS because there's nothing
else on offer.
Still, there's nothing that anybody can do about it, so I guess we're
just stuck with them forever now.
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scott <sco### [at] scott com> wrote:
> > My point being that other companies work by making a product that is good
> > enough that people will want to buy it. Microsoft works by preventing
> > anybody else making anything better.
> LOL, have you seen the number of patents and lawsuits between Nokia and
> Apple, or Ford and GM, or ... and ...? It's part of business, MS is not
> unique in trying to prevent its competitors making anything better using all
> means possible.
Patent lawsuits are done to stop others from stealing your technology,
not to stop them from developing their own technology. (Of course this
doesn't mean that patent laws are never abused for this purpose.)
--
- Warp
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 02:01:38 -0400, Warp wrote:
> One shouldn't, though, forget the marketing tactics Microsoft used,
> and
> is still using, to enforce their products on people.
Oh, no, absolutely - there are many things they did once customers got
into the cycle to lock people in (something else they've done well is to
find the right price point so people will tolerate less than perfect
software; they may not love it, but they don't hate it enough to spend
the money to switch).
Jim
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Invisible wrote:
> Nobody buys MS because they like it. They buy MS because there's nothing
> else on offer.
Right. Because neither Apple nor Linux are significant. And we all know
there were no competing operating systems available when MS-DOS hit the scene.
The basic problem is that an OS is a natural monopoly, and it's also an
ecosystem for the software that runs on it. Nobody buys an OS for an OS's
sake. They buy it to run programs, and MS if nothing encourages programmers
to write programs for non-programmers. Apple is a hardware company, and
while they do good stuff, their economic model is more limiting due to that
control.
Linux is free. And it's still not good enough to get people to abandon
Microsoft's (or Apple's) stuff for desktop work. Even when the product runs
Linux and there are thousands of Linux servers, the companies are still
using MS and Apple on the desktop, because the Linux apps just aren't there
yet to support business users. And the Linux apps that *are* killer apps
are open, so they get ported to Apple and Microsoft anyway. :-)
In the places where Microsoft competes but haven't quite hit exactly the
right price/performance/reliability/etc ratio, there's all kinds of
competition. What are the most popular cell phones? WinCE-based phones? Name
two other popular gaming consoles that Microsoft doesn't make? Name some
free email services besides Hotmail? Some desktop conferencing besides MS's?
There's definitely a network effect going on, and Microsoft definitely
squashed a lot of competition by contracting to have their stuff on every
machine sold for a while, but it's the network effects and the availability
of the kind of business software that you and I don't really use that keeps
Microsoft rolling.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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On 13/05/2010 5:57 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Right. Because neither Apple nor Linux are significant. And we all know
> there were no competing operating systems available when MS-DOS hit the
> scene.
I remember PC-DOS and had a copy of GEM that ran on DR-DOS
I am a M$ user as all the companies I work for use Windows of one sort
or another. I’m also lazy and can’t be bothered to learn something new.
(Sorry Dr John)
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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>> One shouldn't, though, forget the marketing tactics Microsoft used,
>> and is still using, to enforce their products on people.
>
> Oh, no, absolutely - there are many things they did once customers got
> into the cycle to lock people in (something else they've done well is to
> find the right price point so people will tolerate less than perfect
> software; they may not love it, but they don't hate it enough to spend
> the money to switch).
Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS Office
or...
...uh, yeah, exactly. It's not that MS Office is good enough that nobody
will pay to switch. It's that there's nothing to switch *to*. Like I
say, MS carefully arranges it so that users have no alternatives. That
way they don't have to waste money on, say, making a product that people
want to use.
(Although there is hope. Give it another 5 years or so, maybe OpenOffice
will become good...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Nobody buys MS because they like it. They buy MS because there's
>> nothing else on offer.
>
> Right. Because neither Apple nor Linux are significant.
If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware. Last
time I checked, it's very pricey and available in only a handful of
configurations, which usually can't be upgraded in any way. (Not to
mention that there's only one possible supplier.)
> And we all know
> there were no competing operating systems available when MS-DOS hit the
> scene.
No, back then there *was*. Now there isn't really.
> The basic problem is that an OS is a natural monopoly, and it's also an
> ecosystem for the software that runs on it.
Granted.
There's no *technical* reason, however, why somebody can't go out and
implement an alternative office suite. (Apart perhaps from file
compatibilty.) Yet nobody has done this. So everybody has to buy MS
Office, because no alternative exists. That's just one example of what
I'm talking about.
(Heck, I hear even Apple make you use MS Office!)
> There's definitely a network effect going on, and Microsoft definitely
> squashed a lot of competition by contracting to have their stuff on
> every machine sold for a while, but it's the network effects and the
> availability of the kind of business software that you and I don't
> really use that keeps Microsoft rolling.
Maybe. Personally think it has far more to do with MS's careful plan to
remove all alternatives from the market. But anyway, we've had this
discussion before. Nobody is going to agree with me...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:23:45 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS Office
> or...
>
> ...uh, yeah, exactly. It's not that MS Office is good enough that nobody
> will pay to switch. It's that there's nothing to switch *to*.
Corel. OpenOffice. There are options for many people.
> Like I
> say, MS carefully arranges it so that users have no alternatives. That
> way they don't have to waste money on, say, making a product that people
> want to use.
>
> (Although there is hope. Give it another 5 years or so, maybe OpenOffice
> will become good...)
I use OpenOffice every day. It's good.
Jim
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:29:04 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
iTunes.
Jim
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS Office
> or...
> ...uh, yeah, exactly. It's not that MS Office is good enough that nobody
> will pay to switch. It's that there's nothing to switch *to*. Like I
> say, MS carefully arranges it so that users have no alternatives. That
> way they don't have to waste money on, say, making a product that people
> want to use.
Yeah, that's why this page only lists MS Office:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_suite
--
- Warp
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:29:04 +0200, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
The vast majority of computer users buy the hardware and OS in a combined
package anyway.
> Last time I checked, it's very pricey
Debatable, and even if we assume it is true, many people seem willing to
cough up the extra cash for what they consider a superior product.
> and available in only a handful of configurations, which usually can't
> be upgraded in any way.
The vast majority of computer users never upgrade their computers; they
buy new ones.
> There's no *technical* reason, however, why somebody can't go out and
> implement an alternative office suite. (Apart perhaps from file
> compatibilty.) Yet nobody has done this.
A long list of nobodies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_suite
--
FE
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>> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS Office
>> or...
>>
>> ...uh, yeah, exactly. It's not that MS Office is good enough that nobody
>> will pay to switch. It's that there's nothing to switch *to*.
>
> Corel. OpenOffice. There are options for many people.
Corel?
Don't forget StarOffice (or whatever the hell the minutely-altered
edition of OpenOffice is called).
>> (Although there is hope. Give it another 5 years or so, maybe OpenOffice
>> will become good...)
>
> I use OpenOffice every day. It's good.
It's OK, and it *is* useful for fixing documents that MS Word is too
stupid to open. But it's not nearly as effective is MS Office yet.
Still, 5 years ago it was awful. Maybe it just needs time...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
>
> iTunes.
Question: Are there any people on Earth who *voluntarily* use this??
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS Office
>> or...
>
>> ...uh, yeah, exactly.
>
> Yeah, that's why this page only lists MS Office:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_suite
I don't count free open-source barely-functional MS Office clones as
"alternatives".
The suggestion was that if you're willing to pay money, you can buy an
office suite that's better than MS Office. I've yet to see one.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:45:29 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS
>>> Office or...
>>>
>>> ...uh, yeah, exactly. It's not that MS Office is good enough that
>>> nobody will pay to switch. It's that there's nothing to switch *to*.
>>
>> Corel. OpenOffice. There are options for many people.
>
> Corel?
WordPerfect Office, from Corel.
> Don't forget StarOffice (or whatever the hell the minutely-altered
> edition of OpenOffice is called).
StarOffice predated OpenOffice; the two were co-developed for some time,
but are essentially different products now.
>>> (Although there is hope. Give it another 5 years or so, maybe
>>> OpenOffice will become good...)
>>
>> I use OpenOffice every day. It's good.
>
> It's OK, and it *is* useful for fixing documents that MS Word is too
> stupid to open. But it's not nearly as effective is MS Office yet.
> Still, 5 years ago it was awful. Maybe it just needs time...
If the last time you used it was 5 years ago, then you haven't looked at
the current versions. As I said, I use it *every* *single* *day* and it
*isn't* awful, it's quite good, and I find it provides all the
functionality that most end users need.
I wouldn't waste my time using *awful* software.
Oh, and I use it regularly to open MS Office docs (which I am often sent
by third parties) - both "traditional" files and OOXML files. No
compatibility problems that I've encountered.
Jim
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:48:24 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS
>>> Office or...
>>
>>> ...uh, yeah, exactly.
>>
>> Yeah, that's why this page only lists MS Office:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_suite
>
> I don't count free open-source barely-functional MS Office clones as
> "alternatives".
Because, of course, Corel's WordPerfect office is "barely functional".
> The suggestion was that if you're willing to pay money, you can buy an
> office suite that's better than MS Office. I've yet to see one.
You just apparently haven't looked hard enough.
Jim
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:45:58 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
>>
>> iTunes.
>
> Question: Are there any people on Earth who *voluntarily* use this??
Apparently there are.
Jim
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>> Don't forget StarOffice (or whatever the hell the minutely-altered
>> edition of OpenOffice is called).
>
> StarOffice predated OpenOffice; the two were co-developed for some time,
> but are essentially different products now.
Interesting. So does StarOffice do something that OpenOffice doesn't now?
>>> I use OpenOffice every day. It's good.
>> It's OK, and it *is* useful for fixing documents that MS Word is too
>> stupid to open. But it's not nearly as effective is MS Office yet.
>> Still, 5 years ago it was awful. Maybe it just needs time...
>
> If the last time you used it was 5 years ago, then you haven't looked at
> the current versions.
I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today it
isn't. It just isn't great either.
> As I said, I use it *every* *single* *day* and it
> *isn't* awful, it's quite good, and I find it provides all the
> functionality that most end users need.
I used it to write my CV.
All of them.
> Oh, and I use it regularly to open MS Office docs (which I am often sent
> by third parties) - both "traditional" files and OOXML files. No
> compatibility problems that I've encountered.
As I say, I sometimes use OO for fixing broken MSO documents. (MSO
itself is apparently too stupid to do this.)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> There's no *technical* reason, however, why somebody can't go out and
> implement an alternative office suite. (Apart perhaps from file
> compatibilty.) Yet nobody has done this.
Nobody has done this? You yourself have at least heard of OpenOffice,
which is actually quite popular on the free side of the world. There are
other alternatives (many of which are more lightweight), such as KOffice,
which seems to be rather solid. From the commercial side we have some big
names like Corel WordPerfect Office (I'm pretty sure even you have at least
heard of WordPerfect), among others. On the MacOS side we have iWork, which
is Apple's own office suite, which usually means it's pretty solid (Apple
tends to invest in quality and stability).
The problem is not that alternatives don't exist. The problem is that
MS has got itself into the lucky position of being the only known provider
of office suites to most people, and even when people get aware of
alternatives, these alternative will be always and forever be measured
against MS Office ("will it open .doc and excel files?"). Sadly, for an
office to have any chance of succeeding, it has to be able to hack support
for proprietary Microsoft file formats.
--
- Warp
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today it
> isn't. It just isn't great either.
Why are you comparing a software which costs Big Money against a software
which is completely *free*, and demand for them to be equal in quality and
features?
You know, some people don't *want* to waste money on an office suite when
there are free alternatives, and they may be too honest to use pirated
software.
--
- Warp
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I don't count free open-source barely-functional MS Office clones as
> "alternatives".
Yeah, you have tried them all and concluded that they are "barely
functional MS Office clones".
So, say, when was the last time you used KOffice or iWorks? How was the
experience?
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> There's no *technical* reason, however, why somebody can't go out and
>> implement an alternative office suite. (Apart perhaps from file
>> compatibilty.) Yet nobody has done this.
>
> Nobody has done this? You yourself have at least heard of OpenOffice,
> which is actually quite popular on the free side of the world. There are
> other alternatives (many of which are more lightweight), such as KOffice,
> which seems to be rather solid. From the commercial side we have some big
> names like Corel WordPerfect Office (I'm pretty sure even you have at least
> heard of WordPerfect), among others. On the MacOS side we have iWork, which
> is Apple's own office suite, which usually means it's pretty solid (Apple
> tends to invest in quality and stability).
I tried KOffice. It works, but it doesn't seem to *do* very much, and
it's infuriatingly fiddly to operate. (Especially the spreadsheet. In
fact, I've yet to find any spreadsheet that works as well as Excel -
which is worrying, considering that Excel wasn't work fantastically.)
I thought WordPerfect died about 20 years ago?
Similarly, the one time I was actually in an Apple shop, they told me
about all the Apple software they could potentially sell me, "buy Apple
don't have an office suite. You'll have to use MS Office". And I'm like
"OMG, WTF? Doesn't that defeat the entire point of the Mac existing??"
And he was like "yeah, Apple haven't invested in making an office suite
yet."
> The problem is not that alternatives don't exist. The problem is that
> MS has got itself into the lucky position of being the only known provider
> of office suites to most people, and even when people get aware of
> alternatives, these alternative will be always and forever be measured
> against MS Office ("will it open .doc and excel files?"). Sadly, for an
> office to have any chance of succeeding, it has to be able to hack support
> for proprietary Microsoft file formats.
I won't argue with that. I've seen people say "hey, can I borrow the MS
Office CD so I can put it on my home PC?" "Well, er no, that would be
illegal copying. You'll have to *buy* a copy. Or you could use
OpenOffice; it's completely free." "Hmm, OK. Are you _sure_ I can't just
illegally copy MS Office? Nobody will know..."
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS Office
> or...
Open Office, Corel, Quark, LaTeX et al, Google Docs, whatever Apple sells,
WordPerfect, etc etc etc.... Now, some of these may be out of business, but
that's not really to the point, because they *were* competition when they
were around, and they couldn't compete.
> MS carefully arranges it so that users have no alternatives.
No, it's because makign a full-featured office suite that people will want
to use is *hard* and *expensive*. Nobody *wants* to compete, because
Microsoft already has a product. Big consumer-grade software is a natural
monopoly.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
> >
> > iTunes.
> Question: Are there any people on Earth who *voluntarily* use this??
Apparently something like 50 million people do.
--
- Warp
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> The suggestion was that if you're willing to pay money, you can buy an
> office suite that's better than MS Office. I've yet to see one.
And somehow you think that's something that Microsoft is doing *wrong*?
You know they looked at something like 15 million users to figure out over
the course of five years what the "ribbon" should look like and how it
should be organized? This isn't something you put together for free over
the course of a couple years.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:52:11 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Don't forget StarOffice (or whatever the hell the minutely-altered
>>> edition of OpenOffice is called).
>>
>> StarOffice predated OpenOffice; the two were co-developed for some
>> time, but are essentially different products now.
>
> Interesting. So does StarOffice do something that OpenOffice doesn't
> now?
Probably not; openOffice is IME more advanced.
>>>> I use OpenOffice every day. It's good.
>>> It's OK, and it *is* useful for fixing documents that MS Word is too
>>> stupid to open. But it's not nearly as effective is MS Office yet.
>>> Still, 5 years ago it was awful. Maybe it just needs time...
>>
>> If the last time you used it was 5 years ago, then you haven't looked
>> at the current versions.
>
> I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today it
> isn't. It just isn't great either.
Well, I find it is actually pretty good - having used MS Office for
several years, I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (given
that it can import most MS Office documents that I've tried without any
issues at all, I'd say that's a pretty good way to tell how useful it is).
>> As I said, I use it *every* *single* *day* and it *isn't* awful, it's
>> quite good, and I find it provides all the functionality that most end
>> users need.
>
> I used it to write my CV.
>
> All of them.
And?
If your problems with it were "it's not Microsoft Office" (ie, the
interface was different), that's one thing. That's about learning to use
a new tool, not about the quality of the product.
>> Oh, and I use it regularly to open MS Office docs (which I am often
>> sent by third parties) - both "traditional" files and OOXML files. No
>> compatibility problems that I've encountered.
>
> As I say, I sometimes use OO for fixing broken MSO documents. (MSO
> itself is apparently too stupid to do this.)
Indeed, I remember you mentioning that before.
Jim
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> There's no *technical* reason, however, why somebody can't go out and
> implement an alternative office suite.
Yes, there is. It's called "money". And "time". And "research".
> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
And *that* is exactly the invention that made Microsoft rich, right after
Digital Research showed them how to do it. Write the OS that isn't bound to
a specific hardware configuration. Let everyone else pay the price to build
the hardware, while you pay only the price to design the software.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> There's no *technical* reason, however, why somebody can't go out and
> implement an alternative office suite.
Yes, there is. It's called "money". And "time". And "research".
> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
And *that* is exactly the invention that made Microsoft rich, right after
Digital Research showed them how to do it. Write the OS that isn't bound to
a specific hardware configuration. Let everyone else pay the price to build
the hardware, while you pay only the price to design the software.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:00:19 -0400, Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> >> If you want to use Apple software, you must buy Apple hardware.
>> >
>> > iTunes.
>
>> Question: Are there any people on Earth who *voluntarily* use this??
>
> Apparently something like 50 million people do.
Arguably, the usage of the software may not be voluntary, but because it
was included with their iPods, it's what they tend to use (as the default
application).
Myself, I can't use it, so I use gnupod instead (since iTunes doesn't run
on Linux, and Apple likes to believe Linux doesn't exist).
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (
Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get it to
talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart from Calc
into Word based on a database query.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:00:04 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I tried KOffice. It works, but it doesn't seem to *do* very much, and
> it's infuriatingly fiddly to operate. (Especially the spreadsheet. In
> fact, I've yet to find any spreadsheet that works as well as Excel -
> which is worrying, considering that Excel wasn't work fantastically.)
oocalc works very well, I find - I do a *lot* of data manipulation in my
job, and I find that oocalc works as well as MS Excel - certainly well
enough for the manipulations I do. The recent expansion of the number of
rows & columns really got rid of the last limitation I ran into (as I
often deal with fairly large data sets).
My only complaint, in fact, about OpenOffice is that the database really
isn't that useful - it's more of a front-end to bigger database engines
(from MySQL to things like Oracle), but doesn't seem to work with MS
Access databases (not that I need them that often, Jet is itself a pretty
poor database engine, but it's handy for dealing with mid-size datasets
where multiuser access isn't an important factor).
> I thought WordPerfect died about 20 years ago?
Um, no:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordperfect
WP Corp was bought by Novell and then sold to Corel a few years later.
It's still in heavy use in some industries (such as being the preferred
application of many people in the legal profession).
Jim
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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today it
>> isn't. It just isn't great either.
>
> Why are you comparing a software which costs Big Money against a software
> which is completely *free*, and demand for them to be equal in quality and
> features?
Because I've yet to see any commercial offerings to compare to.
Personally, I use OpenOffice at home. It's good enough for what I want
to do. But it's not fantastic - much as I'd like it to be some day...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Similarly, the one time I was actually in an Apple shop, they told me
> about all the Apple software they could potentially sell me, "buy Apple
> don't have an office suite. You'll have to use MS Office". And I'm like
> "OMG, WTF? Doesn't that defeat the entire point of the Mac existing??"
> And he was like "yeah, Apple haven't invested in making an office suite
> yet."
When did that happen? It either happened a decade ago, or the clerk was
really incompetent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWork (which, in fact, is
the successor to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleWorks which was first
developed in 1984).
> I won't argue with that. I've seen people say "hey, can I borrow the MS
> Office CD so I can put it on my home PC?" "Well, er no, that would be
> illegal copying. You'll have to *buy* a copy. Or you could use
> OpenOffice; it's completely free." "Hmm, OK. Are you _sure_ I can't just
> illegally copy MS Office? Nobody will know..."
Most people don't see anything wrong in copying commercial software.
Not even if their attitude is put into doubt from a moral and ethical
point of view.
What really grinds my gears with that kind of attitude is that it's
honest, paying customers who are paying for the software these people
are copying for free. These people may make up excuses in their minds
that they are just "stealing from a big rich company", when in fact what
they are doing is taking advantage of people who actually pay for the
software (and keep the "big rich company" alive).
I buy software (mostly games, as everything else is open source), and
part of that money I have earned and use to buy this software goes into
paying for the people who steal the software. They are abusing *my* hard
earned money. And that pisses me off.
--
- Warp
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>> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (
>
> Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get it
> to talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart from
> Calc into Word based on a database query.
I might be wrong here, but... MS Office provides MS Access, which is a
(low-powered) DB engine. IIRC, OpenOffice Calc isn't actually a DB
engine, it is *only* a front-end. You still need to find a DB from
somewhere, set it up and tell Calc how to talk to it.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 12:07:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (
>
> Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get it
> to talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart from
> Calc into Word based on a database query.
True, that's not something I've ever needed to use, but then again, I
probably wouldn't look to use a specific technology (COM) to accomplish
the task, largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
Jim
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> And *that* is exactly the invention that made Microsoft rich, right after
> Digital Research showed them how to do it. Write the OS that isn't bound to
> a specific hardware configuration.
Yeah, that's why Windows works only on PC's?
If you want an OS which is really not bound to a hardware configuration,
try Linux or NetBSD. (NetBSD's motto is "of course it runs NetBSD!")
--
- Warp
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>> I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today it
>> isn't. It just isn't great either.
>
> Well, I find it is actually pretty good - having used MS Office for
> several years, I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (given
> that it can import most MS Office documents that I've tried without any
> issues at all, I'd say that's a pretty good way to tell how useful it is).
For example, I asked Calc to draw a graph, and spent forever trying to
figure out how to add a secondary axis. As far as I can tell, they just
haven't got around to implementing that feature yet.
I will say this: The chart options layout is superior to Excel. Far more
logical grouping, options do what you'd actually expect them to do, etc.
>>> As I said, I use it *every* *single* *day* and it *isn't* awful, it's
>>> quite good, and I find it provides all the functionality that most end
>>> users need.
>> I used it to write my CV.
>>
>> All of them.
>
> And?
Writer works for simple tasks. Sometimes it's quite frustrating trying
to make it do what you want though. (I can't remember a specific example
right now.)
>> As I say, I sometimes use OO for fixing broken MSO documents. (MSO
>> itself is apparently too stupid to do this.)
>
> Indeed, I remember you mentioning that before.
Trouble is, it tended to chew up the formatting slightly. (I tried it
with files that weren't corrupted; same issue. It ate the company logo,
for example.) I imagine this is something they're probably working on
improving.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:13:30 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (
>>
>> Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get it
>> to talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart
>> from Calc into Word based on a database query.
>
> I might be wrong here, but... MS Office provides MS Access, which is a
> (low-powered) DB engine. IIRC, OpenOffice Calc isn't actually a DB
> engine, it is *only* a front-end. You still need to find a DB from
> somewhere, set it up and tell Calc how to talk to it.
You mean oobase, surely - oocalc is a spreadsheet.
But I do agree that oobase isn't the best piece of software - I've used
it quite a bit for accessing things like Oracle tables, and the setup
could be a lot smoother. Supports ODBC and JDBC, though, so that's
something.
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:00:04 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
>> I tried KOffice. It works, but it doesn't seem to *do* very much, and
>> it's infuriatingly fiddly to operate. (Especially the spreadsheet. In
>> fact, I've yet to find any spreadsheet that works as well as Excel -
>> which is worrying, considering that Excel wasn't work fantastically.)
>
> oocalc works very well, I find.
I tried the spreadsheet from KOffice, Gnumeric, and OO Calc. I didn't
really like any of them. Calc has improved a bit since then, but it's
still a bit irritating to operate.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
With the help pages! :-) COM is the substrate that connects things together.
(I think I posted a link recently of someone showing how to use VBScript to
talk to a DB and put it into Excel, make a chart, and use the clipboard to
paste it into a word doc.)
Does OpenOffice actually have any sort of scripting built in, or interfaces
that you can drive externally?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:17:22 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today
>>> it isn't. It just isn't great either.
>>
>> Well, I find it is actually pretty good - having used MS Office for
>> several years, I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (given
>> that it can import most MS Office documents that I've tried without any
>> issues at all, I'd say that's a pretty good way to tell how useful it
>> is).
>
> For example, I asked Calc to draw a graph, and spent forever trying to
> figure out how to add a secondary axis. As far as I can tell, they just
> haven't got around to implementing that feature yet.
What do you mean by a "secondary axis"?
> I will say this: The chart options layout is superior to Excel. Far more
> logical grouping, options do what you'd actually expect them to do, etc.
That's one of the nice things about OSS development - when you reach a
critical mass of developers and get a good group of people who look at
user needs, you end up with software that can meet the needs of more
users and provide more options.
>>>> As I said, I use it *every* *single* *day* and it *isn't* awful, it's
>>>> quite good, and I find it provides all the functionality that most
>>>> end users need.
>>> I used it to write my CV.
>>>
>>> All of them.
>>
>> And?
>
> Writer works for simple tasks. Sometimes it's quite frustrating trying
> to make it do what you want though. (I can't remember a specific example
> right now.)
There again, I don't have an issue with getting it to do what I want.
You may be running up against a learning curve (don't expect it to be
like MS Office, that's a starting point).
>>> As I say, I sometimes use OO for fixing broken MSO documents. (MSO
>>> itself is apparently too stupid to do this.)
>>
>> Indeed, I remember you mentioning that before.
>
> Trouble is, it tended to chew up the formatting slightly. (I tried it
> with files that weren't corrupted; same issue. It ate the company logo,
> for example.) I imagine this is something they're probably working on
> improving.
What version have you used? Have you opened bugs on these issues?
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> oocalc works very well, I find - I do a *lot* of data manipulation in my
> job, and I find that oocalc works as well as MS Excel
Interestingly enough, Microsoft beat 1-2-3 by noticing that *most* people
didn't use the spreadsheet for calculations. They used it as a list editor.
MS added a whole bunch of list-manipulation operations, while 1-2-3 added a
whole bunch of sophisticated math stuff, and Excel won.
(Yes, yes, flame on for MS killing -1-2-3 with anticompetitiveness. That
isn't the point I'm making, even if it's true.)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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Warp wrote:
> When did that happen?
Ah... 2005? Maybe? I'm not completely sure.
> It either happened a decade ago, or the clerk was
> really incompetent.
It was definitely after 2000.
> Most people don't see anything wrong in copying commercial software.
> Not even if their attitude is put into doubt from a moral and ethical
> point of view.
>
> What really grinds my gears with that kind of attitude is that it's
> honest, paying customers who are paying for the software these people
> are copying for free. These people may make up excuses in their minds
> that they are just "stealing from a big rich company", when in fact what
> they are doing is taking advantage of people who actually pay for the
> software (and keep the "big rich company" alive).
>
> I buy software (mostly games, as everything else is open source), and
> part of that money I have earned and use to buy this software goes into
> paying for the people who steal the software. They are abusing *my* hard
> earned money. And that pisses me off.
Yeah, I dislike illegally copying anything. Like, given the choice
between copying one of my dad's CDs or just buying one for myself, I'd
rather go buy myself one.
It still makes me slightly nervous that I have an illegal copy of
Borland TurboPascal 5.5 for DOS. I mean, as if Borland is going to
*care* any more...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 12:21:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
>
> With the help pages! :-) COM is the substrate that connects things
> together.
>
> (I think I posted a link recently of someone showing how to use VBScript
> to talk to a DB and put it into Excel, make a chart, and use the
> clipboard to paste it into a word doc.)
>
> Does OpenOffice actually have any sort of scripting built in, or
> interfaces that you can drive externally?
The go-oo implementation has a subset of VBA included in it (I understand
it's a fairly sizeable subset, but I've never needed to use it).
Jim
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:21:21 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:00:04 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>
>>> I tried KOffice. It works, but it doesn't seem to *do* very much, and
>>> it's infuriatingly fiddly to operate. (Especially the spreadsheet. In
>>> fact, I've yet to find any spreadsheet that works as well as Excel -
>>> which is worrying, considering that Excel wasn't work fantastically.)
>>
>> oocalc works very well, I find.
>
> I tried the spreadsheet from KOffice, Gnumeric, and OO Calc. I didn't
> really like any of them. Calc has improved a bit since then, but it's
> still a bit irritating to operate.
"irritating" how? In that "it's not Excel", or in that you couldn't
figure out the way to do specific things?
Jim
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>> I might be wrong here, but... MS Office provides MS Access, which is a
>> (low-powered) DB engine. IIRC, OpenOffice Calc isn't actually a DB
>> engine, it is *only* a front-end. You still need to find a DB from
>> somewhere, set it up and tell Calc how to talk to it.
>
> You mean oobase, surely - oocalc is a spreadsheet.
*facepalm*
Yes, of course... :-$
> But I do agree that oobase isn't the best piece of software - I've used
> it quite a bit for accessing things like Oracle tables, and the setup
> could be a lot smoother. Supports ODBC and JDBC, though, so that's
> something.
Oracle is a nice product, but if you just want to store your phonebook
or your CD collection, it's way way overkill. I will say one thing about
MS Access: It may be an utterly crap DB engine, but if all you want to
do is store and lookup a little bit of data, it's the most lightweight
thing I've seen. You get the DB engine and a nice front-end and a design
tool, all in one. It's not very *good*, but for small things it's
right-sized.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Thu, 13 May 2010 12:23:39 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> oocalc works very well, I find - I do a *lot* of data manipulation in
>> my job, and I find that oocalc works as well as MS Excel
>
> Interestingly enough, Microsoft beat 1-2-3 by noticing that *most*
> people didn't use the spreadsheet for calculations. They used it as a
> list editor. MS added a whole bunch of list-manipulation operations,
> while 1-2-3 added a whole bunch of sophisticated math stuff, and Excel
> won.
Yeah - that is interesting, but not surprising to me, either - 1-2-3 was
really geared towards usage as a number crunching tool (ala Visicalc),
but most users use it for list manipulation and other sorts of data
parsing (which is what I use it for, too). I do occasional math-related
stuff, but on balance, I'd say most of my use case is data manipulation
rather than calculation.
Jim
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> And *that* is exactly the invention that made Microsoft rich, right after
>> Digital Research showed them how to do it. Write the OS that isn't bound to
>> a specific hardware configuration.
>
> Yeah, that's why Windows works only on PC's?
You're missing my point. The point is that if you build hardware, there's a
cost in factories and parts and labor for each and every piece you sell. The
cost of selling an additional copy of Windows is (at this point) entirely
born by the people pre-installing it. MS doesn't even have to press CDs for
most of their sales.
The point is not that it works on lots of different processors. The point is
that Microsoft managed to turn hardware into a commodity, which lowers the
price of hardware, which means more people can buy hardware, which means MS
can sell more operating systems at the expense (in profits) of the hardware
manufacturers who are competing with each other.
Nobody competes with Apple's hardware. Lots of people compete with Dell,
Gateway, HP, etc.
> If you want an OS which is really not bound to a hardware configuration,
> try Linux or NetBSD. (NetBSD's motto is "of course it runs NetBSD!")
Hop in the way-back machine to when MS-DOS first came out. How many machines
running Z80's or 8080's were running CP/M compared to other operating
systems? How many 6502s were running AppleDOS vs something else? How many
TRS-80's could you run CP/M on? How many Vectors could you run TRS-DOS on?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
you literally shooting yourself in the foot.
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>> largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
>
> With the help pages! :-) COM is the substrate that connects things
> together.
>
> (I think I posted a link recently of someone showing how to use VBScript
> to talk to a DB and put it into Excel, make a chart, and use the
> clipboard to paste it into a word doc.)
That sounds like the kind of thing that might occasionally be useful to
do... but I also don't know where to start.
> Does OpenOffice actually have any sort of scripting built in, or
> interfaces that you can drive externally?
I'm guessing JavaScript? (Or maybe even Java, of course...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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