Re: [libreoffice-users] Do You Share ODF Documents With MS Office Users?

The costs for upgrading to newer version of MSO still has some people I 
know using MSO 2003, in business and home.  Then there are those who 
send out complex MSO 2010 .docx documents to people that cannot view 
them, even on their MSO 2007 versions.  I remind people that not 
everyone has the newest version of MSO, due to budgets, etc., so they 
need to either send out .doc files or .pdf files if those documents are 
not going to be edited by the receivers.  Using ODF could be the same 
problem for business and home users.

Tod H. and others are correct about the cost of software also includes 
the installation and the training involved.  Adding the filters to 
current version MSO so it can properly read/write ODF file would be a 
good, if their version of MSO does not already have the ODF ability.  
But, it will take a long time to get users to share ODF files with other 
as a standard option.

The problem I am facing for home users is that they are being told by 
others that you must use MSO if you have .doc files on your old 
computer, when you get a new computer.  I had one lady use OOo and use 
.doc as the default format.  Then she goat a laptop and her son 
convinced her that she had to buy a copy of MSO for her new laptop, 
instead of using LO as a replacement to OOo.  She was using OOo since it 
could read/write .doc files.  I got her to use it.  But since everyone 
told her that she now has to use MSO for her .doc files, she felt that 
she must buy it instead of the free software that she had been using for 
years.  It is the pressure to use MSO over any free alternatives that we 
need to go up against.

In the 3.6.0 announcement, there was a list of governments/groups that 
now use LO.  It really think that there needs to be a list of these 
governments, agencies, businesses, educational institutions, etc., etc., 
so they we can point to that list and say - these 
organizations/governments have switched to LO and/or FOSS for they needs 
so maybe you should look into doing so as well.  If we can show people 
that governments and big businesses have switched, then there is more 
evidence that switching to LO might not be a bad idea.


On 08/09/2012 02:55 AM, Gordon Burgess-Parker wrote:
> On 09/08/12 01:28, Anthony Easthope wrote:
> > When at home it is a case of using LO but when at work and school it is
> > a matter of using Mo as that is what everybody else uses.
> You have to consider WHY "everybody" uses it (and that's a bit of a 
> generalisation anyway...)
> In the dim distant past when the default Spreadsheet suite WASN'T 
> Excel but was Lotus 123, MS began giving away free unrestricted copies 
> of MS Office with their server software. That gave them a dominant 
> position in the market, even though many users considered that Excel 
> was inferior to Lotus (and even today there are those who still say 
> that) and that WordPerfect was superior to Word. It's like the 
> Betamax/VHS argument.
> Thus MS Office became the "norm" purely because no organisation is 
> going to look a freebie in the mouth are they, even if it isn't quite 
> up to scratch.
>
> Now, with the increasing use of LO, particularly by home users, what 
> are MS doing? Giving away freebies yet again. Most new computers come 
> with a trial version of Office 2010 - if you don't want to buy it, at 
> the end of the trial it converts to a crippled adware version of Excel 
> and Word. The User doesn't know any better and that does all that they 
> need so why bother looking for any alternative?
>
>
>
>
> > I remember being taught as a 5 year old to use MO 2003
>
> Really? Is that a typo? That would make you a maximum of 14 years old! 
> ;-)


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