[H-GEN] OpenOffice being pushed in the sub-$1000 PC market

[Robert Brockway]

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On Wed, 10 Sep 2003, Andrew Duncan wrote:

> Also, in composition openoffice is lacking.  When MSoffice is only $250,
> why bother with openoffice at all?

Depends on your needs.  I use OpenOffice from time to time, and always
save in the native format.  In my personal life I have no need to pass
MS-Word docs to anyone so I rarely use the compatability mode (which I
agree needs work due to the obfuscation of the standard employed by MS).

I've never had a native format doc have a problem (not would I expect it
to).  The problem is (of course) that OO is behind the 8-ball while MS has
a monopoly on the "office apps" and obfuscates their formats.  This is of
course news to no one.  I avoid propriatory formats for reasons well
explained on this list and others (hint: I want to be able to read my docs
in the future without having to panic about getting a contemporary version
of the application in question).

Propriatory formats are dangerous.  I consider them unacceptable for long
term storage.

These are some of the reasons I bother with OO.

A lot of the dominance of MS-Word is considered to come from the fact that
it is a defacto standard for document exchange.  I think it is a terrible
format for this role.  IMHO, if it lost this role it would eventually lose
much of its monopoly.  I'm increasingly seeing businesses send documents
as pdf.

In the end I keep most stuff as text, but where I need/want to use
something else OO has served me well.

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org, zzbrock at uqconnect.net
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah

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