Listen to the short segment below (less than 5 minutes!) for a recap of Sun in the news this week as Chhandomay Mandal and I review Amazon's new cloud storage offering based on MySQL open-source software, the 100 million download milestone OpenOffice.org hit this week, the announced availability of Sun investor proxy materials, and the new 3.0.10 maintenance release of VirtualBox.
Congratulations to OpenOffice which hit a milestone 100 million downloads this week since the launch of version 3.0!
The total download number is impressive because it only counts direct Internet downloads from the OpenOffice.org Web site and does not include installations included with various Linux distributions, copies distributed on CDs or other mirror sites.
Project developer Joost Andrae announced on October 28th that the one hundred millionth person had clicked on the "download OpenOffice.org" button since version 3.0 of the software was announced just over a year ago. The total number of downloads comes from both the 59.9+ million downloads of version 3.0 and the 40.2+ million downloads over version 3.1 (via The H).
Congratulations to the OpenOffice team for this milestone, which I am sure they will be celebrating at the annual OpenOffice conference next week in beautiful Oriveto, Italy.
I came across an article this week that took a look at a Danish hospital that reported having "no problems at all" when exchanging ODF-based documents with other hospitals that use Microsoft Office 2003.
The article struck me because it shows that it is possible for large entities to do business solely using OpenOffice.
The key for the hospital was to ensure that the free Sun ODF plugin was installed. After that, there have been no problems with exchanging documents including "large documents with indexes and footnotes," which are reportedly exchanged without problems. The hospital also pointed out that "there is no data loss and there are no significant formatting issues."
However, the real issue at hand is the number of doctors and nurses they were able to gain when they quit paying the licensing fees for Microsoft Office more than five years ago!
It's a good read and shows that OpenOffice, along with many other freely-available open-source products, can be successfully employed in a variety of operations -- including hospitals.
This week bloggers continued to sing the praises of OpenOffice.org:
OpenOffice.org
Opens Up for Business –
Worldlabel.com
Andrew Ziem says OpenOffice is “the best kept secret in
office suites” and outlines the easiest way for a business to roll out the
software change to its employees. He also provides a detailed rundown of the
many features that come with the suite, to help those who are evaluating
whether migrating to OpenOffice is right for their business.
Free
Computer Office Suite –
Making Do with the Not So New and Other Frugal Things I Do
Blogger MJ was tired of shelling out hundreds of dollars
for the Microsoft Office suite, so a year ago she downloaded OpenOffice and has absolutely no
complaints. MJ raves about the ability of OpenOffice to read and write
documents as MS Word documents and also likes that she can save Impress slides
as PDF files, so that they can be sent to other people without them having to
download OpenOffice.
Save Hundreds on Microsoft
Office with OpenOffice.org – Kinetic
Wealth
Karen Sielski hopes her blog post will help people save hundreds
of dollars ($399 at this writing) on their next office software package by
choosing OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. Karen says she especially
likes OpenOffice because it helps her “avoid paying hundreds of dollars for
buggy, hard to use software from Microsoft.”
OpenOffice
vs. Microsoft Office – Inland
Empire PC Help
Blogger Fred says that OpenOffice is the most viable
alternative for a user who is looking for an office suite, and is not required
to use Microsoft Office. He recognizes there are many free alternatives to
choose from, but maintains that OpenOffice is the best out there because “the
development is more steady and security is high.”
Hands
on: Writer's tools – Personal
Computer World
Tim Nott writes that the new release candidate of
OpenOffice is available and that it includes many enhancements, “not least of
which is the ability to open and save Microsoft Office 2007 files.”
Compute:
Microsoft Fights for its Life on the Desktop – ScrippsNews
James Derk writes that the overall quality of OpenOffice
is part of the appeal that is compelling consumers, businesses, and
universities looking to cut costs to make the switch from Microsoft. After
using OpenOffice applications for a few weeks James says “I don't think most
consumers will ever miss the brand-name Office product.”
Handshakes
amongst strangers: P2P and the production of disorder within informational
capitalism – The Next Layer
The blogger, a PhD candidate, writes about how invaluable OpenOffice has been in creating slide shows for workshop presentations. One of the blogger's favorite features is the ability to export slide shows in PDF format so that “basically any foreign computer you might land on at a public presentation will be able to display your show.”
To see new OpenOffice how-to articles that were published this past week, go to Reviews Interactive.
The economy is pushing more people to look for software solutions in open-source programs.
According to a Forrester Research survey of 2,200 IT Executives in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, and Germany, 46% of businesses have either already implemented open source software, or plan to begin using it this year.
The obvious cost savings is the main motivation behind the mass migration to open source, according to 56% of the respondents.
And while President Obama has shown an interest in implementing such solutions in the future, the U.K. is already enthusiastically embracing open standards.
Last month, Tom Watson, the Minister for Digital Engagement, said in a statement accompanying a report titled The 'Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: Government Action Plan,' that open source is "a great example of how people working together can come up with products to rival and sometimes beat those of giant corporations."
There is no doubt that open source encourages greater innovation while at the same time cutting costs.
And while I remain an enthusiastic proponent and use the OpenOffice suite on a regular basis, I also learned a new tidbit this week while searching for OpenOffice reviews. According to an IT professional, because OpenOffice is not as tightly integrated with my Windows Vista OS as MS Office, it is actually less susceptible to malware, virus, and other cyber attacks.
Another score for my favorite open-source program!
This blog copyright 2009 by Maijaliisa Burkert
