* It is ugly
This is a very subjective call, so not worth consideration outside a "UX
needs
improvement in some areas"
UX can make or break a product, just ask Steve Jobs and therefore IS worth
consideration. Someone even brought up this point on the first conference
call (sorry I cannot recall your name but you were correct)
* It is slow
Define slow, I have 3.2.1 on clients machines and is grease lightning fast,
certainly faster than opening up all 4 of MS applications at the same time.
this is "subjective" as not everyone has the same machine as you or tour
clients, I was merely summerizing the responses form my own personal polling
of why people use M$ office over OO. performance is an issue, this is
known. compared to MS, it is comparable, but they are the team on the field
right now...
* It is clunky
Define "clunky" in specific terms
clunky and refined are in fact subjective terms, but once again Steve Jobs
and his buddies over at Apple understand this.
I wil try though:
windows95: clunky
OS X: not so much
terminal:clunk
gnome: not so much
another example of clunky, I can insert page numbers by clicking 1 button in
MSO,
OO, not so much.
* It has issues with MS doc and docx files (yes I know MS formats in
an insane way and does not follow standards)
Not as many issues as MSO has with ODF, and LibO/OOo is standards compliant
yes but the world uses MSO so that point is moot if were are trying to get
them to use LO/OO..... and the average user or business IT person usually
does not even know what "standards compliant" even means. All they care
about is their employment agency only accepts a resume in word format
When someone using OO/LO tries to save in a docx format and gets this:
[image: LibreOffice 3.png]
hosted link of pic in case the pic does not come through:
http://imm.io/1NCo
they will not use LO/OO in the future.
As a professional writer, I cannot use OOo because my clients only accept M$
word docs, they don't care about standards, they care about what they can
use to get their business done and most of them use MSO. And since we are
trying to take their M$ world away form them, we have to play their game for
now.
unrefined
Subjective again define
if you want people to use your product, you must take subjective ideas into
account. look what refinement did for the iPhone
As someone who has worked in corporate IT in the U.S., and now in
ecommence for a major U.S. corporation,
This is the problem, :) I'll get to this further on.
not sure what you mean, is it a problem I work there or is corp America the
problem (in either case I agree, nonetheless I am not sure your point)
here are my recommendations:
* LO needs to match every single MS Office function, and then provide
what MS Office is missing
It does that already, Forms and PDF functionality just an example.
not 100%, saving in MS format is huge,also there is no reliable grammar
check (yes people in the U.S. use it) the review system is not as refined as
MSO
and as previously discussed in this list, there is no bibliography/reference
manager, included in MSO 2007 and 2010, important for academia
* The interface needs to become refined (think iphone refinement),
maybe even adding the dreaded ribbon or option to switch between the
two types)
I agree with this, except for the ribbon. Iwould suggest that LibO/OOo
still
has greater market share than MSO2007/2010 ouside of Educational
institutions
I agree the ribbon is ugly (more subjectivity, sorry) and menus are better,
but if we are trying to capture market from business users who just got used
to the ribbon, it should be an option to have.
* MS Office filters and converters need to be perfected
"Perfect" is non achievable and a moving target
no but compatible should mean "compatible" and agian we are trying to take
market form them, this is not a technical wish it is a marketing wish.
* Investigate a revision control system like such as Sharepoint or
Google
docs
This I agree with, I'd like to see a function in the installer of a
business
version that gives the option of calling up an install of O3 spaces
Not sure why this, OOo is available in many more languages than MS and I'm
pretty sure LibO will be there soon as well, spell check works well as far
as
I can see, grammar checkers are bad voodoo and are more often wrong than
right, however they can serve a purpose. If you study document production
work flows by someone who is a professional at the game, not an IT person
who
rarely has any idea about producing richly formatted documents, you will
find
that grammar checkers are more often than not used as suggesters of
alternatives which a writer either ignores or adapts to suit their own
style.
yes i agree, but there are a few functions in the MSO gram. checker that are
very good, but lacking in LO/OO. this is a sticking point for some,
especially students.
As for formatting tools, Stylist kicks the arse of any similar tool in any
version of MSO, once you have climbed the learning curve and unlearnt the
really bad habits that using MSO has created. The only change I would make
is
having stylist docked and open by default and on file>new a "select or
create
template" dialogue opens
the magic word you used is learning curve, business does not like to
retrain, because that means money. A major point of using OO/LO is cost.
matching what they know will make LO adaptability that much easier
We could institute some kind of feedback program such as the test
pilot model that Mozilla uses
with Firefox 4. We can also look at how MS destroyed Word perfect in
market share to dominate the World Office suite business market.
Read Clayton Christensen, MSO was cheaper and good enough and easy to get.
LibO/OOo is in fact in that same position right now. The tipping point is
coming, some would argue that in Europe it is already there and given MS
recent marketing, it seems they may agree .
Agreed, but if TDF can hit 30% in the States, imagine the worldwide affect
it would have for FOSS and M$ stockholders.
Then LO needs to innovate new features and stabilize its current
feature set, this is how Firefox, and later Chrome won the browser
wars (in my opinion at least)
A browser is an entirely different beast, the only thing they share is the
fact they are software. It's like comparing going to the movies to driving
a
truck. Forget that, they are tools to specific audience
stop comparing apples and oranges when I am talking about fruit. it is the
idea and motivation behind the idea I was referring to, not the actual
product.
moz is trying to make their product better by gathering feedback from people
who are using their product in that very instance (if you have used the
pilot extension you know what I mean)
The biggest barrier to adoption in business is the advocates themselves,
I am sorry to say it is not as I have been screaming about OO since
ver.1.0, yet many corps are still using MSO 2003 to this day.
the barrier is what will be the most cost affective transition, does corp A
switch to OO and ODF knowing their documents will not be compatible or do
they stick with a product they have literally used for over a decade (and
some place it is the same version for over a decade)
Problem with OSS projects is we go after geeks, or the IT department,
yes and since the average user just wants their product to work and does not
care about standards, they will use what they know. My brother for example
will not upgrade to MSO 2007 because he knows 2003. OO? all he knows is it
is different than what he is used to and does not have the time to relearn
software; the menus are completely different and so is half the
workflow...an example of the average user.
I tell you what, we must be doing something right.
well when you only have 20% of the market by giving the product away and
the 700$ suite has 60%, you need to do better.
Android is a good model to look at, it is killing the iPhone and is open
source, but they got the UI right, and, to take a quote form apple, it just
works. This is what LO needs to do, work, for the avg. user for the CEO, for
the IT guy
and for the record, I am not a MS fanboy (as I write this on an ubuntu 10.10
system in minefield4 prebeta8).
The real longterm goal is to get the business world to adopt Oasis file
formats. once that happens, OO will win more market
FOSS forever!
ciao
-fe
--
E-mail to marketing+help@libreoffice.org for instructions on how to unsubscribe
List archives are available at http://www.libreoffice.org/lists/marketing/
All messages you send to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted