Information always outlives technology
I don't know how to say this loud enough... I honestly wish that every person in the world would read this, but that will unfortunately not be the case... But you're here and I thank you for that.
Reading this article over on Digg gives a good picture of how some (primarily 15-30 year old I guess) tech people look at using either MS Office or Star-/OpenOffice. But it appears that there is an important element that people do not understand, so let me make it quite clear:
Every single time you click the floppy-disc-icon in MS Office,
you're locking yourself in!
This is apparently not as obvious as one would think, considering the comments on the article. It annoys me so much, when I read comments such as:
As long as I continue getting the Office suite for free through my school, I'm sticking with MS Office. As much of a benefit as OpenOffice is for people without the funds or means to get Microsoft Office, and as much of a cool project the whole thing is, I've found OpenOffice to be more difficult, less pretty, and oddly enough, more of a computer hog (memory and processor...although I haven't really done any strict testing so that could be due to other things).
Well, coheedcollapse, why do you think you're getting it for free? Every time you click save, you're locking yourself into using MS to open that document again! So, 5 years from now when you have a job and want to look at the paper you wrote at your school, guess what! You have to go and buy a copy of MS Office to open it! And you probably will, because "that's the program you're used to". Think about it - you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that one coming...
I agree that Star-/OpenOffice isn't as good as MS Office in many areas (the other way around in others), but that is such a small price to pay to be sure that you can open your documents in the future!
You would never do that with your pictures, right? You wouldn't start saving all your images in some obscure format. You use open standards. You use a standard so you know that in 10 years when you want to look back at your vacation photos from then, you know that it will be supported by newer editors or you can just download some simple viewer. This is obvious to you - why is it not the case with documents?
So, I can't convince all of you to switch to OpenOffice, but please... Save your stuff in an open format! If you have no choice, at least go and get a plugin so you can save in ODF format... It absolutely does not make any sense to do anything else... After all, information always outlives technology.
Edit: Here's Suns MS Office plug-in, so you can work with ODF documents in MS Office.
Reading this article over on Digg gives a good picture of how some (primarily 15-30 year old I guess) tech people look at using either MS Office or Star-/OpenOffice. But it appears that there is an important element that people do not understand, so let me make it quite clear:
you're locking yourself in!
This is apparently not as obvious as one would think, considering the comments on the article. It annoys me so much, when I read comments such as:
As long as I continue getting the Office suite for free through my school, I'm sticking with MS Office. As much of a benefit as OpenOffice is for people without the funds or means to get Microsoft Office, and as much of a cool project the whole thing is, I've found OpenOffice to be more difficult, less pretty, and oddly enough, more of a computer hog (memory and processor...although I haven't really done any strict testing so that could be due to other things).
Well, coheedcollapse, why do you think you're getting it for free? Every time you click save, you're locking yourself into using MS to open that document again! So, 5 years from now when you have a job and want to look at the paper you wrote at your school, guess what! You have to go and buy a copy of MS Office to open it! And you probably will, because "that's the program you're used to". Think about it - you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that one coming...
I agree that Star-/OpenOffice isn't as good as MS Office in many areas (the other way around in others), but that is such a small price to pay to be sure that you can open your documents in the future!
You would never do that with your pictures, right? You wouldn't start saving all your images in some obscure format. You use open standards. You use a standard so you know that in 10 years when you want to look back at your vacation photos from then, you know that it will be supported by newer editors or you can just download some simple viewer. This is obvious to you - why is it not the case with documents?
So, I can't convince all of you to switch to OpenOffice, but please... Save your stuff in an open format! If you have no choice, at least go and get a plugin so you can save in ODF format... It absolutely does not make any sense to do anything else... After all, information always outlives technology.
Edit: Here's Suns MS Office plug-in, so you can work with ODF documents in MS Office.
Coheedcollapse from Digg here:
Haha, didn't expect to be quoted in a blog. As far as Microsoft goes I really would like to debate the fact that I'm locked in for life. I dual-boot Linux and Vista, know my way around both, have all the programs that I absolutely need on both (at least until you include games and Photoshop), and have the ability to, at any time, remove Vista from my system and continue with my life. I choose to use Vista (and Openoffice to get back on the subject) because I can get it for free within my school. I'm not locked into anything because at any given moment I can uninstall Microsoft Office and be on my way.
Also, on a final note, you can easily open .doc files in OpenOffice. I know this because I wrote, saved, transfered, and printed .doc files that I created in OpenOffice during the two years of school in which I didn't feel like downloading MS Office. If I really get worried about keeping one of my reports around, I'll save my work in multiple formats that I'm sure will be around.
To clarify, I'm not bashing OpenOffice at all, I think it's a great step in the right direction and have a lot of experience in the program because it was my main suite for quite a while (and still is when I use Linux), but I disagree with the "locked in" comment.
Indsendt af Kyle 2007-08-20, 05:58:17 #
Hi Kyle.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for leaving your comment! I didn't expect to hear from you either - perhaps the internet isn't as big a place as I thought :)
I would like to say four things.
1) But you ARE locked in for life
Sorry to jump up and disagree with you in the first paragraph, but you ARE locked in for life. You are partially correct in saying that you are able to work with .doc documents because it depends on the complexity of the .doc document. This is because...
2) The reverse engineering is not complete in OOo (and it never will be)
I experienced this first hand. When working on my thesis on a university computer, it automatically saved it as .doc on my network drive (we only have MS Office installed). When I came home and opened it in OpenOffice, I had lost all my styles. This meant that I had also lost the automatic updating of my table of contents. I had to manually fix all the styles again which was very annoying and time consuming.
The OOo reverse engineering team have done a great job, but reverse engineering will by definition always be a game of catch-up unless MS suddenly stops expanding their format.
You are correct if you're not using any of the "advanced" features - this works fine at the moment. And although MS are focused on backwards compatibility you cannot be sure that the document format will not change. It could be that you open a .doc document in MS Office 2010, save it and it will have converted the file to a format which is not readable by OOo. This is being locked in.
3) You're not the average user
You're obviously technically skilled and there will always be ways of getting things done. This is an option for you, but for the average user these "tricks" will probably be far too complex. I have no doubt that if my mother wants to read this years Christmas letter (which she saved as .doc) 10 years from now, she will probably go and buy MS Office if it is not available on her computer at that time - she has no way of knowing any other options.
And that is exactly the problem - she will have to go and spend money to access content that she has created and owns! If she had used OOo (or to be correct: ODF) she would have kept ownership and know that she is able to open the document at any time in the future without having to purchase anything.
4) Duplicate documents
Lastly, you mention that you sometimes save your work in both formats, just to be sure. This shouldn't be necessary. You should not have to duplicate the content that you yourself have created - you should just be able to click "Save" and not have to worry about ever accessing that content again. If you use ODF, this is the case.
I hope you're satisfied with my response. My biggest annoyance of blogging is that one often comes out shallow - I hope I have clarified my thoughts fairly well on the subject. Looking forward to your reply!
/L
Indsendt af Lars Ottesen Henriksen 2007-08-20, 08:56:27 #
You make a good argument - your second point especially. I forget that not all users are as advanced as my friends and I when it comes to computers and getting around things like that. I'm on my way out the door to Chicago and I didn't want to leave your blog without commenting back.
Good luck!
- Kyle
Indsendt af Kyle 2007-08-29, 03:56:45 #