Over the last couple of months I`ve seen this mentioned a few times. I presently use Openoffice (and rather like it) but recently, it seems to have been changed from being supplied by Oracle (Java) to Apache. Now alot of my Oracle office docs etc seen to crash when opened in Apache office, so I was thinking of changing to Libra.
Is this the way to go? and is it compatible with OO docs and MS office docs?
is there a better free office application?
Thanks in advance for your recommendations!
Ta!
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OO docs should be compatible with Libre. (but then again they should be compatible with the Apache version of Open office)
It costs nothing to try.
As for better?
You could try Lotus Symphony. Its quite nice I use it on the mac.
www-03.ibm.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home/
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Gosh Z, that's a blast from the past. I liked Lotus 1-2-3 more Excel, and the last Lotus suite I had had some good features - easy macro recording especially. Might have a look at that, especially if it does all the necessary conversion, xlsx and docx for example.
Back in 1987 I used 123, and when I went to Comet in '91 they used it - we had a painful conversion to Office which the parent company used.
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How did Lotus lose their once near total dominance of the spreadsheet market?
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>> How did Lotus lose their once near total dominance of the spreadsheet market?
>>
Because Microsoft bundled Office with commercial windows licence deals with businesses and possibly OEM ones for PC manufacturers making it ubiquitous.
Lowered margins made Lotus abandon the market - cf my comments on rent appropriation in the PC space and subsequent resistance in the phone market to Microsoft elsewhere in this forum.
Microsoft executed an excellent business strategy / model in the 1990s and early 2000s. Can't argue with it although the US anti-trust authorities tried.
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Actually Lotus did it to themselves, MS just gratefully picked up the pieces.
Lotus bought into the IBM hype and sunk everything they had into a completely new product for OS/2. The results were excellent, it's just a shame that almost nobody ever saw it, courtesy of IBM's suicidal OS/2 pricing.
With no spreadsheet offering for Windows bar the DOS version of 123 (which liked running under Windows in much the same way as Indiana Jones liked being chucked into a pit of vipers), MS stepped into the breach by porting a product from their Mac software line, Excel, to Windows.
Incidently, this pig's ear from Lotus is mirrored by an identical one from WordPerfect. Again, the OS/2 version was where the effort went. They at least shipped a Windows version, but it was a lashup of the venerable DOS product with some of the OS/2 GUI work hastily tacked on. It was about as usable and stable as that sounds too. Word was also a port from Microsoft's Mac product line.
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>> Actually Lotus did it to themselves, MS just gratefully picked up the pieces.
>>
I beg to differ, look at Microsoft's lost (but ultimately toothless) anti-trust judgement. However it matters little, commercial history is full of such examples - it happens, c'est la vie.
Now Microsoft has been out-flanked by Google and Apple - although it is still extremely profitable and will no-doubt continue to be so for the foreseeable future, but I'd be surprised to see any stellar growth from them henceforth.
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You can differ all you want, but trotting out that hoary old cobblers from the legendarily litiginous USA isn't going to change my opinion one bit. That antitrust suit was mainly driven by Netscape and the browser battle[1], Office was a johnny-come-lately to that party too.
Some of us were around, had a paw in desktop strategies and saw what really drove the decision making at the time.
Lotus dropped a clanger. They did attempt to sue IBM and MS for leading them to believe that OS/2 was the future, causing them to bet the farm on it (so their opinion on the subject reflected mine), but ISTR this ended up getting lost amongst all the recriminations between IBM and MS over their great falling out.
Roll on a few years and the shrill bleatings of the "M$" haters seems to have become fact.....
[1] Also amusing. Again, the real reason here was that Netscape shipped a load of bloated, unstable crud and moved to a pay model, just as MS shipped IE 4 for free. I recall remarking at the time that if you were asked to guess which was the product of the fusty software monolith and which that of the lightweight, go-ahead company, you'd be wrong. Where I was working at the time, we ripped many thousands of Netscape Communicator licenses out globally in favour of Exchange / Outlook / IE, purely 'cos it stunk so badly, refused to play nice on all but the most puissant machines and cost more.
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Not sure I wanted to change your opinion TeeCee - merely highlighting that it isn't the only interpretation of events in the 1990s, ancient history now of course.
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>> How did Lotus lose their once near total dominance of the spreadsheet market?
They thought offering apps their application in DOS mode was the future. Microsoft introduced Excel and when Lotus realized the mistake it was too late. Although, Surface table might be too late for Microsoft now - but that's a different question.
Regarding Office application, I wonder why these free software like Open Office etc. are not becoming more mainstream. I guess this is due to fact that it is just too easy for end users get a bootleg version of Office 2007. Corporate customers are unwilling to switch to free applications (probably because cost of Office license for them is minimal) and more they rely on a software more difficult it becomes to switch.
Another point is inter document compatibility. If you have to exchange document with other users who work in a different application, some formatting/functionality loss are very much probable.
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>> Regarding Office application, I wonder why these free software like Open Office etc. are not
>> becoming more mainstream.
They were worried that, being open source, there was no guarantee about future upgrades, continuity and consistency. They were, as it turns out, right.
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>> Gosh Z, that's a blast from the past.
Actually it's a different beast - Lotus Symphony is (was) a packaging/development of Open Office.
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correct. and a much nicer package for the home user.
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Just downloaded your recommendation Z! - will give it a whirl in the next day or so and see if I suit it! - cheers!
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While using Open Office 3.3 an offer came up to Download Apache OO 3.4.
I did. It is OK on what I have tried so far, running a presentation I made earlier, showing and printing out my documents.
It said there is not an update package yet, but the 3.4 install removed the previous one and placed an updated icon on the desktop.
It is a 140Mb download. Not sure where the source is. If it is the US, download it while they are asleep --- for best speed.
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Cheers! - I'm still playing with Z`s offering at the mo, not sure if I like it yet tho`, I`ve also downloaded Libre office as well, playing with that also, seems more familiar!
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Libra office - Zero
