What OpenOffice site crash means

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So, I should pay for free software so I don't pay Microsoft?

Even when the free software doesn't actually meet my
needs?

We've got four things that we use regularly that OO
doesn't support. In round numbers, it costs us
$1K/year to buy Windows and Office seat licenses.

Tell me why it makes sense to pay a programmer more
than this to support OO when it doesn't do what I need
done?

Those four things include:

1) Comments and change tracking; we send documents out
to clients, they comment on them inline and make
revisions. Open Office Writer's implementation of
this is less robust than Word's and is completely
incompatible. (At least it no longer strips OUT all
the tracking of comments and changes...)

2) Open Office Writer, when used with graphics heavy
documents, blows the formatting to hell and gone.
This is particularly nasty when you're sending out
Word documents with technical drawings, equations and
screen shots.

3) Two of our production worksheets take 15 minutes to
load in OO Calc, versus 10 seconds in Excel. They all
use drop down menus, which take 2 minutes to register
changes, versus instant with Excel.

4) Powerpoint slides open up horrifically in the Open
Office analog application. We still get some clients
who send us PowerPoint stacks, and still need at least
one copy of PowerPoint to read them. (We don't USE
the damned program for anything else...)

Posted by: Ad Astra   Posted on: 10/14/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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