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Thread ID: 103949	2009-10-11 22:00:00	Any OpenOffice.org Users out there?	Yorick (8120)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
819548	2009-11-24 23:46:00	Just as a brief aside, three cheers to Yorick - it's great to have a certified OOo guru around these parts :thumbs: Heh, 3 cheers for PC World for providing a platform for getting the message out. If I manage to help people out and introduce OOo to a wider audience in the process then it's all good. :)	Yorick (8120)
819549	2009-11-25 00:34:00	Heh, 3 cheers for PC World for providing a platform for getting the message out. If I manage to help people out and introduce OOo to a wider audience in the process then it's all good. :) Just read the complete thread. Up front, I'm the Marketing Contact for OpenOffice.org in NZ Just as well Open Office is free other wise its the biggest :spam post I have seen. One problem is many people dont like change, and while open office has its place, its not easy for some people to change habits. I find most of my clients that use open office only use it because its free. I have had MANY people and some businesses call and ask to install MS office simply because they dont like Open Office for various reasons.One being lack of easy to find help - people dont want to spend hours / days looking for help.	wainuitech (129)
819550	2009-11-25 00:49:00	Yes I think local paid support would be cool Again I'd like to echo the sentiments expressed by Erayd, and welcome Yorick to the forums, hopefully you'll stay a regular :) It's always great to see vendors getting involved in the online community in a non-spammy, supportive way! My 2c anyways Chill.	Chilling_Silence (9)
819551	2009-11-25 00:58:00	I have tried Open Office and thought it wasn't to my liking. I'm used to the layout and the look of MS Office. There will be some who find Open Office suitable for their requirements and there are those who have always used MS Office and will probably stick with what they know how to use.	convair (13650)
819552	2009-11-25 02:08:00	Kind of a moot point when you consider the change from Office 2003 -> Office 2007 with the Ribbon Interface. What matters is what is the easiest interface to become re-accustomed to ;)	Chilling_Silence (9)
819553	2009-11-25 03:16:00	Just read the complete thread . Just as well Open Office is free other wise its the biggest :spam post I have seen . :lol: I'm always careful to try not to cross the line . . . that's of course if I could find it . One problem is many people dont like change, and while open office has its place, its not easy for some people to change habits . Amen to that, usually the reason that people first think about change is because of the cost factor but the reason they go and stay with it is only when they find it performs a function that their present suite doesn't . That's usually when I come into the mix . I find most of my clients that use open office only use it because its free . :) From a marketing guys point of view I wish it WASN'T cost-free . As I pointed out earlier I think, Migrating away from OOo is also cost-free whereas organisations tend to think twice about doing away with something that has had a large establishment cost attached to it . I would prefer to have a situation where a support business charged an up front per seat cost for Enterprise users to limit that . One recurring frustration I have is small High street retailers put OOo on machines they sell for free . I sit down with them and tally up the time they put into the install, the first contact support, download bandwidth cost and so on and the absolute minimum they should be charging is around the $60 mark and in fact the figure should be closer to $120 . They usually say "I didn't know I could charge for it . " The News is of course that Yes you can charge for it, as much as you feel your market can stand . Wack it on with a 30 day basic support package or whatever . Start doing that and I believe we'd get even more traction . But I don't believe we make that as well known as we should . I have had MANY people and some businesses call and ask to install MS office simply because they dont like Open Office for various reasons . One being lack of easy to find help - The help is there but again, we don't do it as well as we should in terms of getting the word out, there's no doubt about that . From a project perspective we would love to have training partners scattered all about the country and then we could tell people about it on the main website . Unfortunately we don't have the marketing budget to support the partners like MS does . (and ups to them they do a good job on that front) . . . . people dont want to spend hours / days looking for help . if we could get people thinking "Type OOo Support" into google we'd be one step closer . http://support . openoffice . org is right at the top of the list . Problem is Telephone support is lacking, but of course the biggy, as I iterated earlier, is peer support and that only comes with market penetration .	Yorick (8120)
819554	2009-11-25 03:31:00	Yes I think local paid support would be coolI have broached that with some local businesses, but it's a chicken and egg situation. Not enough users to support a full time support desk, and no support means users stay away. Any business deciding to set something up would have to budget a first year loss at least. The problem for larger enterprises is, like dealing in any open source product, there is no exclusivity. All the manuals can be downloaded for free so they figure the barrier to entry for others into the market is low, of course it's not quite as simple as that, there is a considerable training cost to establish a good support structure. Again I'd like to echo the sentiments expressed by Erayd, and welcome Yorick to the forums, hopefully you'll stay a regular :) It's always great to see vendors getting involved in the online community in a non-spammy, supportive way! My 2c anyways Chill. Hey I get get to prattle on about my favourite obsession, can't be all bad! :D	Yorick (8120)
819555	2009-11-25 09:24:00	I'm always careful to try not to cross the line... that's of course if I could find it. Thats a worry , not being able to find the line, helps if its not moving all the time I spose :p :lol: I see Open Office its not immune to virus attacks either - shame as that would be a plus over MS Office.. just finished scanning a customers PC, had the Virut.56 virus - heres what it does: Virut spreads through every .exe, .dll and .scr and other critical files on a computer. It's polymorphic, which means it spreads faster than any antivirus can contain it. 99.99% of the time the only solution is a reformat and reinstall. Virut is so aggressive it even re-infects infected files with itself. It's a computer killer... Infected Open Office as well as just about every other program file in the PC. When it was scanning I saw open Office xxxxxxxxx ( file name) infected. So back on the Open Office, Can I assume its still open to attack from macro style viruses, or as I saw BASIC, I did look and found The OpenOffice.org macros are written in OpenOffice.org BASIC, a macro language that uses the same programming logic as Microsoft Visual Basic. However, some elements differ, as for example the calls to software commands and object names. So you would have to rewrite the macros. Macros written for MS Word for instance cannot be executed via OpenOffice.org; you'll need to re-write them. This has its benefits - it makes OOo documents less virus prone. ???????	wainuitech (129)
819556	2009-11-25 18:11:00	The symptom of the OOo exe being infected is more a flaw of the OS than the software which got infected mind you ;) Virus attacks from macros embedded into .doc files on the other hand, it's less susceptible than some of the paid alternatives are :D	Chilling_Silence (9)
819557	2009-11-25 19:25:00	The symptom of the OOo exe being infected is more a flaw of the OS than the software which got infected mind you ;) Virus attacks from macros embedded into .doc files on the other hand, it's less susceptible than some of the paid alternatives are :D I Know all that :thumbs: The only reason I even mentioned Open office and the infections, is the owner and prob a lot of other people are under a false sense of security. A friend of hers that uses Linux had told her it wasn't possible to have open office damaged by viruses. The friend uses Open office in Ubuntu, so they thought that open Office in windows would be safe as well. Now they know different.	wainuitech (129)
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