OpenOffice.org

昇陽已經與微軟達成協議, 不對StarOffice提出侵犯專利權的主張, OpenOffice.org可沒那麼好命, 聽說, 微軟隨時可能採取行動, 對使用者提出侵權的告訴。

aaa今年四月初, 這兩家公司以16億美元達成和解, 在未來的十年內, 不再互控侵權, 也不互控其客戶侵權。不過, 根據9月中呈繳給美國證券交易委員會的資料, 和解的效力不及於OpenOffice.org及其用戶, 而且昇陽還有義務提供法律協助, 讓微軟起訴包括昇陽公司在內OpenOffice.org的用戶。

法律應該要遵守, 不過法律也是人訂的, 為人服務, 隨時可以修改, 甚至可以透過法院的審判程序, 宣告特定法律無效。

深度使用Excel的客戶, 已經觸及微軟Office的極限, 希望有更多的功能, OpenOffice.org 1.1.1確實令他們失望。除此之外, 經過客製之後, OpenOffice.org 1.1.1都能符合使用者的期望。

Almost every person who tested Office 2003 expressed appreciation for Office's Task Pane—an interface feature that lets users carry out operations related to the document at hand, such as using the thesaurus while working on a Word document. Testers also said they valued Task Pane as an interface to Office's help system, which they found to be effective.

As for OpenOffice.org, most testers said they liked being able to launch any of the suite's document types from the application they were using. Testers also said they appreciated having all their OpenOffice.org application instances available from the Window tool bar menu item. The Window item in Office's apps, in contrast, shows only open instances of like applications.

The testers who worked with Office 2003 said there were few differences between Word 2003 and earlier versions of the Microsoft word processor. In a comment echoed by many of our testers, Rick Miller, an engineer at FN Manufacturing, said, "Most tasks I perform are the same or similar [whether in Word 97 or 2000 or in Word 2003]."

That's not to say that there weren't issues: One tester, for example, complained that a key combination had changed and that Microsoft's context-sensitive smart-tags feature got in the way during testing. By and large, however, users were agreed that their familiarity with Word would minimize the time required to get up to speed with Office 2003.

However, the testers who worked with OpenOffice.org said the suite's word processor application, Writer, seemed familiar as well.

FN Manufacturing Validation Engineer Doug Shaffer said that Writer's "layout and command locations are similar to Microsoft Word's" and that it was "very easy to perform the standard basic tasks in Writer."

Browning's Sanzone, who tested OpenOffice.org in addition to Office 2003, said that documents took longer to open in Writer than they did in Word. This can be attributed to the fact that Writer must carry out an import operation when it opens documents saved in Microsoft's Word format. For short documents, there's no noticeable difference, but for large files with complex formatting, Writer can take as much as 10 seconds longer than Word to open the same document.

In general, though, of the OpenOffice.org applications we evaluated, Writer presented the fewest file-format-compatibility problems.

Several testers said they were impressed with the ability of Writer to save documents as PDF files, a feature they believe would save money as well as time because PDF export for Word requires a Microsoft add-in that must be purchased separately.

Another Writer feature that stood out for testers was the application's word-complete function, similar to the auto-complete function of many Web browsers. Writer attempts to complete words being typed based on words previously typed in a particular document. Deborah Hordych, a buyer at FN Manufacturing, liked this feature but said that users would have to be careful that Writer was suggesting an appropriate word.

With a Belgian parent company, FN Manufacturing users were, not surprisingly, interested in Word 2003's translation capabilities. Using a document he created, Kevin Patten, a controller in FN Manufacturing's finance department, was able to use Word to effectively translate specific phrases from English to French, something Patten said he does frequently during his daily work routine.

"Extras like the translation feature are a really nice touch because they cut down on the amount of time I have to spend on a document," said Patten. "Every minute I save on something like this is a minute I can spend working on something else."

Suite considerations

OpenOffice.Org 1.1.1

Pros

No licensing costs As a free-software project, OpenOffice.org has no licensing.

Good integration among suite applications eValuation testers said, for example, that they appreciated being able to create new spreadsheet documents from within the word processor application.

Variety of export options OpenOffice.org ships with PDF export capabilities, as well as support for saving presentations in Flash format.

Cons

File-format compatibility issues Although OpenOffice.org does a good job of handling Microsoft Office file formats, small formatting inconsistencies will require reworking of complex documents.

Lack of traditional support Office suites typically do not require much vendor support, but the fact that OpenOffice.org is an open-source project means software support must come from the community, generally spread out across various Web sites and newsgroups.

Interface differences OpenOffice.org is similar to Microsoft Office in its design, but users will need some time to grow accustomed to differences between the two.

Office 2003

Pros

Familiarity Most knowledge workers use some version of Microsoft Office already, and an upgrade to a new version of Office presents the flattest learning curve.

File-format compatibility Microsoft Office file formats are de facto standards, and no rival suite handles these proprietary formats as well as Office does.

Advanced features Office 2003 has more features and capabilities than competing suites. Although many users do not require or use much of this functionality, advanced users, particularly of spreadsheets, often find it vital.

Cons

High licensing costs Microsoft Office licenses are priced at a few hundred dollars each—a cost that can be difficult to justify when your users require only basic productivity suite functionality.

Advanced features require latest versions Some of the most compelling features added to the last two versions of Office—such as extensible smart tags, document protection and Smart Document creation—are not backward-compatible with earlier versions of the suite.

eVAL testers were split between those who use spreadsheets very little or for fairly simple tasks and those who are accustomed to using Excel 97/2000 as an analysis tool.

The latter group includes some of FN Manufacturing's finance and engineering personnel. They leverage Excel's statistics capabilities, among others, and appreciated the improvements made to the Pivot Table feature in Excel 2003. OpenOffice.org's Calc offers a similar feature, called DataPilot, but testers had trouble locating it because of the differences in the way Calc and Excel are organized.

Our advanced testers also were interested in Excel's Watch Window feature, something Microsoft added to the application in Office XP. A Watch Window is a separate, small window that remains "on top" and enables users to monitor a selected set of cells. Calc does not have a similar feature, but this wouldn't likely be a deal breaker for FN Manufacturing users because the versions of Excel they currently use don't offer this functionality.

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Among the more casual spreadsheet testers, the differences between the spreadsheet applications were less jarring. Romuald Dufour, an IT manager at Fabrique Nationale, said of Excel 2003: "There was not much difference between Office 2000, OpenOffice.org and Office 2003 for my use."

Melinda Vause, who works in finance at FN Manufacturing, said Calc felt "similar to Excel, and it would be easy to learn the slight differences."

Most of the Excel spreadsheets we used during testing were not heavily formatted, but we did experience compatibility issues between Excel and Calc. For the most part, these problems related to charts.

OpenOffice.org tester Vause noted that "graph names were converted to row numbers in some cases, and some formatting was dropped."

The severity of these issues differed from document to document, and the significance differed from tester to tester.

FN Manufacturing bookkeeper Suzan Widener reported that the Excel-formatted spreadsheet she used during the eVal was compatible with Calc. However, Joan Curfman, who tested Office 2003 during the eVal but who had been part of an earlier OpenOffice.org test group, estimated it would take weeks to convert FN Manufacturing spreadsheets from Office 97 and 2000 to OpenOffice.org.

eVAL testers said they use the PowerPoint presentation app less than any other Office application. However, a move to either PowerPoint 2003 or OpenOffice.org's Impress would require significant training because PowerPoint 2003 is the Office application that's changed the most since its 97/2000 incarnations and Impress is the OpenOffice.org application that differs most from Office in its design. Shaffer said of Impress: "Its icons and commands are not very similar to PowerPoint."

FN Manufacturing produces its fair share of complex presentations, and it was with one such presentation that we experienced several compatibility problems between PowerPoint and Impress.

The FN Manufacturing presentation we were testing made heavy use of embedded Word and Excel objects, a result of the heavy collaboration among the groups that produced the document (a common scenario in many organizations). The upshot was that the small formatting snafus testers encountered in Writer and Calc tended to collect in the test presentation. FN Manufacturing would definitely have to rework this presentation—and likely others it has already produced—if it moved to OpenOffice.org.

What's more, Impress and PowerPoint handled transition animations differently, and certain Impress capabilities, such as three-dimensional text in presentations, did not carry across to PowerPoint.

However, Philippe Nemery, an IT manager at FN's parent company in Belgium, said he's used Impress for some time now and has come to prefer the way that the application is organized.

OpenOffice.org

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