Freitag Juli 29, 2005

How Microsoft will try to get more money from Office users
"But likely to prove controversial is Microsoft intention to charge users an additional "premium" client access licenses (CAL) to use these higher-end versions of Office and Windows. Ballmer and other executives were light on specifics today, although in the Office market at least Microsoft seems to be going beyond its current high-end edition of Office Professional Edition, which is priced at $388.49 per copy.
...
"We will... introduce higher-value versions of existing products that really help us drive new growth and new value. We did that with the Professional edition of our Windows product, and it drove literally billions of dollars of revenue growth versus the home version," Ballmer said.
...
Microsoft's decision to introduce more SKUs and charge higher prices, though, will expose the company to more accusations from competitors that is gouging customers while IT budgets are tight. Sun Microsystems has been pushing StarOffice as a low-priced, subscription-based alternative to Office to help customers overcome the pricing issue."

The full article can be found here.
( Jul 29 2005, 12:21:39 PM CEST ) Permalink

Great recommendation!
"Corine has MS Works, but says it is not compatible with the more widely used Microsoft Word. She wants to know if there is a viable alternative that won't irritate her limited budget?

In the past I've suggested Open Office, at www.openoffice.org, as a reasonably compatible suite of programs that in many cases works as well as the hugely popular Microsoft product, though it is a little lean on extras.

There are converters available for MS Works, but users of Open Office do rave about its level of compatibility. Being free open-source software, it is a continuing development project based initially on the Sun Microsystems commercial product StarOffice."

The full article can be found here.
( Jul 29 2005, 12:08:08 PM CEST ) Permalink

"Sharing files between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office"
"Even if you're the most dedicated OpenOffice.org (OOo) user in the world, sooner or later you'll be asked to share files with someone using Microsoft Office. Some free software advocates refuse outright, or suggest outputting to HTML, PDF, or RTF formats, but these aren't always options -- especially if your boss is the one doing the asking. However, with a few preparations and a sense of what works and what doesn't, you can usually share files with Microsoft Office users with a minimum of headaches on both sides. Here's how."
The full article can be found here.
( Jul 29 2005, 12:07:02 PM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org at city of about 100,000
"Schall says there were no major issues with the migration to Linux on either the server or the desktop. The city never used Microsoft Latest News about Microsoft on the desktop and so is in the process of transitioning from WordPerfect to OpenOffice.

advertisement "For the most part, everybody is happy," says Schall, who adds that OpenOffice integrates smoothly with Microsoft Word and Excel documents.

A key benefit of using open source applications such as OpenOffice and the Firefox Latest News about Firefox Web browser is that they are platform independent, says Tig Kerkman, Kenosha's network administrator.

"So my users can download OpenOffice for free and use it at home on whatever hardware they have," he says."

The full article can be found here.
( Jul 29 2005, 11:58:24 AM CEST ) Permalink

Donnerstag Juli 28, 2005

Mozilla staff quadrupled
"Mozilla's Firefox has now been downloaded 75 million times, and Thunderbird, the open-source e-mail reader also from Mozilla, has reached its 10 millionth download. To mark the occasion, the Mozilla Foundation said it was expanding in several directions. The Mozilla staff itself has quadrupled during the past six months, to 40 employees, making this a good time for the Foundation."
The full article can be found here.
( Jul 28 2005, 08:02:42 AM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org at Australian community center
"With 65 user accounts and counting, The Hut's network now includes 10 Ubuntu workstations running GNOME, OpenOffice.org, Evolution, and Firefox, an application server, a gateway box, and a backup server. There is also a dual-boot workstation and two strictly Windows boxes that sit on the network but don't rely on the file server."
The full article can be found here.
( Jul 28 2005, 07:59:35 AM CEST ) Permalink

Xandros Business Desktop & StarOffice
"Over 1,000 businesses have taken up Xandros Inc's Enterprise Linux Challenge to try out its Business Desktop Linux operating system, according to the company, indicating strong potential demand for the new product. ... The product includes Sun Microsystems Inc's StarOffice, Xandros Anti-Virus and Xandros Firewall security features, and a bundle is available with the xDMS Xandros Desktop Management Server for mass deployment."
The full article can be found here.
( Jul 28 2005, 07:56:20 AM CEST ) Permalink

Dienstag Juli 26, 2005

"Why We Buy"
I'm currently reading "Why We Buy" by Paco Underhill. The book is about consumer behavior. A friend who works as a category manager at Unilever recommended the book to me. It's a great book! What books about consumer behavior can you recommend???
( Jul 26 2005, 07:37:43 AM CEST ) Permalink

"How Business Schools Lost Their Way"
I just read the HBR "How Business Schools Lost Their Way" in the German edition of the HBR magazine. Pretty interesting!!!

The German magazine also included and interview with Ernst Baumann, HR VP at BMW. He was asked questions regarding the importance of an MBA for leadership positions at BMW. According Ernst Baumann the existence of an MBA degree does not have any effect on promotions or salaries. It's the actual skills that matter. BMW seems to be especially keen on soft skills like the ability to work in teams, business ethics/conduct, communication, etc.

According to the article, BMW has made very good experiences with business schools where real managers teach instead of just academic professors. Their experiences with INSEAD however were pretty bad. INSEAD was used for leadership trainings, but the BMW managers could not take the INSEAD professors seriously because obviously the professors had no real experience and insights about the topics they were teaching about.
( Jul 26 2005, 07:28:31 AM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [3]

"Valuable Data Requires Open Formats"
"So I unzipped the OOo archive and checked the styles.xml file using xmlwf (checking to see if the XML was 'well-formed', which is step one of two on the road to correctness; the second hurdle is validity according to the schema). Sure enough, there was a duplicate element attribute at the line and column indicated in the cryptic OOo error message.

Edit it out, zip it back up, try again, and ... same error, different location. But after a couple of iterations the problem was fixed.

Sure, it was a pain, and sure, it should never have happened. But in an imperfect world, I'd much rather have my data in an accessible format that can be manipulated by many different tools than locked up in an undocumented, proprietary format."

The full article can be found here.
( Jul 26 2005, 06:57:40 AM CEST ) Permalink

Montag Juli 25, 2005

StarOffice Download Improvement
"By introducing the MCI/Akamai solution, Sun customers visiting the SDLC Web portal will now be able to more quickly and reliably download software supporting a broad range of Sun applications for enterprises, including its StarOffice Productivity suite, Solaris operating system and Java-based programs, some of which take up the storage capacity of an entire CD."
The full article can be found here.
( Jul 25 2005, 12:15:06 PM CEST ) Permalink

KDE Plugin in the Official OpenOffice.org Packages
"A year and a half after launching the KDE.OpenOffice.org Integration Project, the KDE plugin with the Native Widget Framework has become part of the official OpenOffice.org development packages. Developer snapshot m118 is the first of the towards-2.0 milestones that contains it."
The full announcement can be found here.
( Jul 25 2005, 12:09:12 PM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Pre-Release Review
"Admittedly, Openoffice still can't match the vast range and depth of features found in Microsoft Office, but as Microsoft itself often says, 80 per cent of Office users only use 20 per cent of its features.

With that in mind, there's no doubt version 2 is more than powerful enough for most home and business users and can certainly give Microsoft a run for its money, especially since it's free."

The full article can be found here.
( Jul 25 2005, 11:58:56 AM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

OpenOffice.org included in Computer-On-a-Stick
"FingerGear, the consumer brand of biometrics leader Bionopoly LLC, announced today the release of its groundbreaking Computer-On-a-Stick(TM) Flash Drive. The Computer-On-a-Stick is a bootable USB 2.0 Flash Drive that is the first flash device to feature a complete onboard Operating System. The device also features the OpenOffice Productivity Suite, along with many of the most commonly used desktop and Internet applications."
The full announcement can be found here.
( Jul 25 2005, 11:55:26 AM CEST ) Permalink

Freitag Juli 22, 2005

StarOffice at Banca Popolare di Milano
"Practical considerations often make it tough for corporations to consider enterprisewide Linux deployments. For instance, Banca Popolare di Milano is rolling out 4,500 SUSE Linux desktops with a Mozilla Web browser, a Web client for Lotus Notes, Sun's StarOffice suite and a Java-based custom suite of banking applications to its 500 branch offices."
(Found here.)
( Jul 22 2005, 01:10:49 PM CEST ) Permalink