Hi Cyril! Am Montag, den 25.04.2011, 09:58 -0400 schrieb Cyril Arnaud: > Hi, > I am currently wondering which office suite I should recommend to my > customers : Symphony or LibreOffice. > As far as I can tell there is no difference between the two in terms of > performance.
Mmh, in terms of speed we should be a bit better ... there is a lot of Java stuff built around the OOo core - but if working with Symphony is more efficient for the tasks of your customers, that's not an issue. > But in term of interface and usability it's a different story. > > After using Symphony for few days, I found that the interface being more > inviting, you are more likely to "play" with the settings and thus > discovering more efficient ways to work. Yes, the UX team there was quite active - and we also had some discussion on the OOo user experience list with them, also reviewing their stuff. I can even say that one tiny thing in Symphony was based on my recommendation :-) > I spend a lot of time training and explaining to my customers where to > find which option in OpenOffice/LibreOffice. Mmmh, I think it would us to know what you are explaining to them (just a brief overview will already help...). Maybe this is already known stuff, but maybe we get some more insight. > So my dilemma is as follow : should I recommend using LibreOffice to > benefit from the rapidly evolving features, or should I recommend > Symphony for it's nice interface ? Well, if your customers primarily care about the interface, then chose what is more helpful for them. But - I'm sure you are very aware of that - there are other things that make LibO attractive: extensions, the support by the community, a more direct way to ask for improvements / resolving issues (here I mean real bugs that are more clear to the development), and of course we are future proof ;-) In my personal opinion, chose what is good for them now + n years in the future (n = the time in years the customers might revisit their decision). > Another way to ask the question is : Will LibreOffice's interface evolve > toward a Symphony' style in the near future (3.5, 3.6 ?) ? LibO will be improved, of course. But the community hasn't yet decided what direction to take ... that'll need a bit more time. So I think (my personal opinion), the next year there won't be drastic changes ... > Thanks, > > -Cyril Did that help? And a proposal: please consider to ask on the users or discuss list - there are some trainers and consultants as well, who might provide some more detailed feedback why they chose the Symphony / MS-Office / Insertnamehere product for their customers. Cheers, Christoph -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
