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Hi, Paul,

On 11/3/13 1:53 PM, Paul wrote:
Hi Ken,

Before you can say any program *is* serious competition, you have to
determine which products, or product levels, you are going to
compare. Office is available in many forms, similar to the different
levels of comfort/convenience packages in automobiles.  LO comes in
just one flavor.  Kingsoft Office in 2 flavors.  Chocolate and
Vanilla.  OK, that's not quite right.   LOL
Ok, granted, but when someones says MS Office (like you did) I happen
to think primarily of Word and Excel. I'll even normally consider that
Powerpoint and Access are in there.

When I say MS Office, I'm always talking Pro, since I include having Access as part of the meaning of the phrase. We both made the same error of not being exactly clear about the contents of MS Office. It's like talking about a 2013 Prius. When it came out, there was only one model, and when you said Prius, everyone knew which car you meant. Now, I think there are 5 Prius models, so everyone needs to know which model you are discussing.

I don't consider OneNote (never
used it, no idea what it is),

I just looked at OneNote, it's like a massive sticky note on steroids. It looks like you can stick any kind of document, file, handwritten notes, audio files, all in the same sticky note. Look like it's part word processor, part spreadsheet, part just about anything you can think of. This looks like it could be a great thing if you're part of a team and in the brainstorming stage. Everyone can add their own thoughts, notes, files, audio clips, I have no idea what else. LO has nothing like this. In fact, I've never seen anything like it.

Outlook or Publisher to be part of that
package. That may be old fashioned of me, but I don't recall ever
having an MS Office version that came with Publisher. That was always
in one of the premium, too-expensive-to-even-consider packages.

Outlook and Publisher used to be available only as standalone packages. They weren't part of Office Professional 4.3 (Windows for Workgroups days), but it's part of Office Professional 2003.

And
I'd never even heard of SkyDrive till now.

Basically, I consider it MS's answer to Apple's iCloud. I don't know the specifics of either systems as I don't use either one. AFAIK, anyone can use SkyDrive, you don't have to have MSO of any flavor. Just an MS account for Windows Live, or whatever they call it now.

I'll grant you that a lot of people do use Outlook as part of the
package, and it is more than just an email client, but for me it's a
different application altogether, and not what I typically think of
when I think of an office suite.

At one time, I used Outlook 2007 as my email client. Simply installed only that program from my copy of Office Professional 2007. <G>

Everyone is free to consider the contents of Office however they want. But, if it's going to be part of a discussion, then people need to be specific about what they are talking about so there's no confusion.

So I finally see your real argument (the bugs and stuff, as I said,
being a red herring): No other office suite, LO included, can compete
against the full spectrum of software provided by the premium version
of MS Office. I have to agree with that.

In another post or two, I stipulated that LO and Office Home and Business were competitive. Now that I've read about OneNote, and have an inkling about it's potential, I have to take that statement back. I think LO lags behind just a bit.

That said, personally, I would still regard LO as serious competition
to MS Office.

LOL  But, which version of MS Office!  <G>

The mindset of "must use MS Office, because everybody
else uses it" is the greatest barrier to uptake of *anything* but
MSO, but I believe enough people are starting to shift out of that
mindset.

You won't get any argument about the mindset from me. None at all. And you certainly don't want to be replacing "I have to have MSO ???) with "I have to have LO".

But if you are truly going to avoid any mindset, you have to be willing to consider other office suite options. There's all the heritage that LO belongs to, and that includes Open Office, Lotus Symphony, and Oxygen Office, all of which I know little about. Maybe there's others, I don't know. Plus other office suites, such as Ashampoo, Alantis, Ssuite, Softmaker Office, Abiword, Crystal Office, SS Office (aka Ssuite I've mentioned), Papyrus, Kingsoft, and who knows how many others. I tried the word processor for SS Office a few weeks ago, I really liked the interface. But I didn't try to get serious with it as there's no Mac version.

I went on a search for MSO alternatives one time, can you tell?     LOL

If considering an alternative, the correct way to look for something is to sit down, take your time, and analyze what you are currently doing with MSO, any package. Then download and try out the alternatives, and pick the one that you feel comfortable with using, and does what you need and have anticipated you will need in the future.

So that aside, enough people will consider LO as an
alternative to MSO, because it does everything they need. Yes, there
are some people that need the advanced features of MSO, and yes even
more people need Outlook, but enough people don't need the advanced
features only available in the premium editions, and prefer a third
party email application anyway, so for them LO provides all they need
as an alternative to MSO, and it does that job well. That for me makes
it serious competition.

I'd say most people don't even need the database component. H E double hockey sticks, they don 't even know what a database is. And as Stefan Weigel posted, news://news.gmane.org:119/527696A4.1020109@bildungskreis.org, Base does not replace Access.

But that's a difference of opinion on what the statement means. And now
that I understand what you meant, my question is answered. Thank you.

You're welcome.

And you aren't competing against *just* MSO, you are competing with
every other office package out there.  Ford doesn't just compete with
Chevy, they compete with Honda, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Mini-Cooper,
ET. AL.
This is just confusing the issue. You *are* competing against *just*
MSO when the question is about a viable alternative to MSO. None of the
other packages are relevant to the discussion of "is LO a viable
alternative to MSO"

Not really. Everyone is competing against similar programs from other vendors. Let's say you only need a word processor and spreadsheet. If you sit down and analyze your needs, LO will be competing against everyone that has those two programs and are looking for an MS alternative, and they all (AFAIK) advertise Word compatibility. How compatible, I don't know. I'm using a writing program right now that has Word compatibility, but it's not a word processor.

And, it comes with a real, up to date manual, 530 pages long. Yes, it's a commercial program, but it's only $45 US.

What irritates me to almost no end is, people have a goal they want to meet with their computer(s), but rather than find the software that gets them to their goal, they change the goal to fit the software they've found and/or have. I look for the tools that get me to my goal, I don't change my goal to fit the tools I have.

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 24.0
Thunderbird 17.0.8
LibreOffice 4.1.2.3


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