On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 07:16, kip martin wrote: > ian (or someone) said: > >OOo's price trumps M$...And in my own experience M$ Office > >doesn't even have any features that would lead me to choose it > >over OOo, even if it cost the same1 > > thats the best arguement for OOo ive seen and in fact, believe its what > will inevitably push it into the mainstream. > > i run a team of writers.im the user that is being marketed to. im the > perfect example of the end user. i was not involved in development, > requirements gathering, and this forum is th first place i found to give my > feedback .ill be experimenting with .odf and .rtf and in a few weeks ill > begin xml studies. we have framemaker, word, (and excel which does come in > handy with our use case docs), and a couple weeks ago, i started messing > with OOo. some conversion glitches have been found in taking .doc stuff and > using OOo to work with those manuals. but manuals built within OOo and > saved as .doc seem to work with the other departments who occasionally get > their hands on thses docs. our customers see a .doc format and thats all > that matters to them. .pdf requires some thinking (thats what we use on our > internal web), but again, the price makes it worth checking out. > > also--about the 'technically better products dont necessarily succeed' > supposition i made, i have not been convinced. technically inferior > products with huge marketing departments generally win against companies > with great products supported by inferior marketing efforts. Taylor Guitars > beats Collings every year. Bose wins in the home A/V entertainment market > against Vandersteen or NHT. Cannondale wins over Gary Fischer. MS wins over > CPM, Mac, linux and BSD desktops. and Britanny Spears wins against Shaun > Colvin. > > Marketing often trumps excellence. before you cite anomalies that spoil my > generalizations, i still believe OVER ALL, this is the case. and i do > understand that no one wins the marketplace forever--thats why im here. > some upstart comes along and beats the big dogs. MS was once one of those > little dogs. as was iPod, Toyota, and Fox.
But marketing that isn't supported by excellence and is downright shoddy, tends to get jumped on rather brutally. MS Windows-based malware is the antidote to MS marketing I find, and all Microsoft's posturing does is just get irritating to the ordinary citizen. A sustained run of bad practice does that to companies with previous good reputations - consider how badly IBM fluffed up the IBM PC-jr, then with their PS/2 licensing restrictions, almost completely blew themselves out of the water. The important thing here is that Microsoft is on the back foot, and off-balance. And the job of OpenOffice.org isn't to bash Microsoft either, it's to be the best it can be. > > id MUCH prefer to see an open standards product win the battle. so ill do > what i can to help. and that includes criticism as much as praise. > > kip Wesley Parish -- Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish ----- Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui? You ask, what is the most important thing? Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
