Re: [libreoffice-marketing] SoftMaker Office

Hi :)
Hopefully it's the range of different products that have a large overlap for most of the 
functionality people genuinely use.  

Each Suite has a niche market and allows people to switch fairly easily between different Suites.  
For example a document created in Google-docs using Odt format should be easy to modify in LO.  The 
problems arise when sharing with MSO or between people using different versions of MSO.  

Google docs is excellent if you need to collaborate through The Cloud but where i'm working at the 
moment they are all on one site and that has amazingly bad internet connection.  Very low 
bandwidth.  Not quite as bad as the worst Wireless or Dial-up but still pretty awful.  So, Cloud 
would seem to be a bad choice for the company where i am at the moment.  I think a lot of people 
are likely to be in similar position for a long time so although The Cloud is brilliant for many 
it's not really suitable for everyone.  

It's great to have the option to use either using the same format with hardly any troubles with 
compatibility.  MSO never really delivers that despite it's promises and despite the 
mainstream-public's perception.  

Regards from
Tom :)  



--- On Wed, 22/8/12, Ian Lynch <ianrlynch@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Ian Lynch <ianrlynch@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] SoftMaker Office
To: "Jay Lozier" <jslozier@gmail.com>
Cc: marketing@global.libreoffice.org
Date: Wednesday, 22 August, 2012, 11:28

On 21 August 2012 16:31, Jay Lozier <jslozier@gmail.com> wrote:

> The real question is whether SO (or LO) is adequate MSO replacement for most
> users. My experience is for most users the answer is yes; most users only
> use a part of the available features. Then the issue is whether a
> proprietary, commercial package (SO) is better than LO. Technically, I
> believe LO is better and I do not find most commercial software support all
> that good (I have not checked SO's support). But others may have different
> opinions and comfort levels between proprietary and FOSS software.
>
> IMHO, the real marketing issue for most users is that MS has convinced them
> that there is only office suite that can be used.

I think that is weakening. However it seems unclear whether AOO/LO are
the main reason. There is some evidence that Google Docs is becoming
the most influential as work migrates to the web - hence MS and 365
Office. You rightly point out that for most people the features in MSO
are complete overkill but that could be said of most desktop office
suites. We are using GoogleDocs more and more because we need to share
documents with many other people around the world and that feature is
more valuable than obscure features. We use LO/AOO in specific cases
eg to provide a pdf to publish a book but for most day to day things
Google Docs integrated with hangouts and gmail etc is much the best
solution. So I see the biggest challenge for all desktop office suites
as a gradually eroding user base as more and more people migrate to
the web for their productivity tools. Of course this is going to take
years and there might always be a specialist desktop market but then
development takes years so it is not going to be easy to change track.

> --
> Jay Lozier
> jslozier@gmail.com
>
>
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-- 
Ian

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