I downloaded OpenOffice.
Tried it out.
Trashed it.
Am quite willing to pay $150 USD for Microsoft Office. In my house, that is only $30/computer.

Downloads are a worthless metric.

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... forced Microsoft into a defensive position that has required a US$300M ad campaign to counter the damage

Very interesting and thorough analysis of the current situation over there at M$, Mr. Martellaro. My only minor nitpick is that I don't think there was any external indicator that "required" M$ to spend all that money on advertising. From a PR standpoint, I think they absolutely had to have something to counter-balance the loss of mindshare. Although the "I'm a PC" thing was really too little, too late, and too much money pumped into what appears to be a directionless campaign.

But there is no doubt that M$ is hurting on all fronts. Products they're not making money on, a botched OS release, Firefox taking a big wet bite out of their marketshare, cloud computing, etc. And "I'm a PC" was the best they can come up with?!

Downloaded Open Office and tried it out. Hmmmm! Very similar to MS. Of course there are differences, that's to be expected, but it is very, very good. Free 433 page pdf manual (where is that MSWord manual). All it takes is to use it and become comfortable with it. My goodness opens MS documents, Saves as MS Documents. Loads a lot faster than MS...and it's FREE!

Trash it? I don't think so.

Grinning all the way to the bank!

I agree. Love or hate Microsoft, Office for the Mac is the best Office Suite for the Mac. Especially, in the Word processing front. At my University, I picked up a copy for $29.95. Despite the deserved criticism for leaving out Macros, Office 2008 has some nice improvements.

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davebarnes wrote:
I downloaded OpenOffice.
Tried it out.
Trashed it.
Am quite willing to pay $150 USD for Microsoft Office. In my house, that is only $30/computer.

Downloads are a worthless metric.

Quote

davebarnes wrote:
I downloaded OpenOffice.
Tried it out.
Trashed it.
Am quite willing to pay $150 USD for Microsoft Office. In my house, that is only $30/computer.

Downloads are a worthless metric.

In your house (and everyone else's, for that matter), that would be stealing. You're allowed to install the home addition on 3 computers.

and I really like it. I found Open Office to be a little lacking too, definitely still feels like an open source app. Mostly I used Word, I don't honestly know how Numbers stacks up to Excel, I think the last spreadsheet I made was about ten years ago in Appleworks, but that said, Pages is fantastic. If you aren't a heavy duty macro maestro, I recommend it.

And yes, it's glaringly apparent at this point that much of Microsoft's success hinged on a point in time when the majority of people didn't know any better. By and large there never was any innovation there. They truly have very little to fall back on in those terms--one day they'll be glad they can still make Office for other OSes.

First OpenOffice
A year ago I dumped M$Office and went to NeoOffice (a cousin of OpenOffice that runs natively on PPC). It worked great. So this week when I received my new MacBook I didn't even consider M$Office, I just loaded the newest OpenOffice. While I haven't done more than play for a few minutes it seems to work just fine and I'm $150 richer. Sure if I was still at a University where you could get M$Office for ~$30 I might not, but in the world I'm in that's just too much to spend for a word processor.

As far as the analyses above. This jibes with what I've been feeling for a couple of years; that M$ is deeply frightened. In the same way a football or baseball team can feel the momentum swinging away from them, M$ is still in the lead but they are seeing the market turn against them. They may still be up but they just can't seem to help making one screw-up after another. They know that after enough of those, you become a joke.

M$ sees what happened to GM. Once on top of the industry, they were crippled by unwillingness to adapt to changing markets. Now they are loosing money and frantically trying to catch up the Toyota, Honda, et.al., and unload thousands of monster SUVs that few people want. M$ is frantically trying to prevent that from happening to them. Personally I don' know if they can. In the late '90s Apple needed a serious pruning. Jobs and his predecessor cut lines, cut projects, cut manufacturing plants, cut, cut, cut. It hurt like hell but in the end they emerged as a lean, focused company with one goal; to win. Right now with the economy sliding down, it would be a good time for M$ to undergo a similar process, heck they can expect a year or two of bad sales anyway, might as well get all the pain over with at once.

What I see, however, is M$ going through the motions but not the substance. M$ saw how OS-X changed the user interface. They made huge changes to Windows with Vista. They did not understand that the changes to the Macintosh environment were pushed by the new UNIX code base. Aero came in but M$ did not do the underlying changes to the kernel code that Windows really needs so it was all about style, not substance. They still think they can tweak the appearance, fiddle around the edges, and fix the mess they are sliding into. It won't work.

Microsoft is the last company running clipper ships while the rest of the world has gone to steam. They are still building DC-6s while the rest of the world has gone to jets. I don't think true innovation is possible for them.

Quote

davebarnes wrote:
I downloaded OpenOffice.
Tried it out.
Trashed it.
Am quite willing to pay $150 USD for Microsoft Office. In my house, that is only $30/computer.

Downloads are a worthless metric.

Quote

Terrin wrote:
I agree. Love or hate Microsoft, Office for the Mac is the best Office Suite for the Mac. Especially, in the Word processing front. At my University, I picked up a copy for $29.95. Despite the deserved criticism for leaving out Macros, Office 2008 has some nice improvements.

Quote

davebarnes wrote:
I downloaded OpenOffice.
Tried it out.
Trashed it.
Am quite willing to pay $150 USD for Microsoft Office. In my house, that is only $30/computer.

Downloads are a worthless metric.

Keep in mind that, assuming you're using a Mac, Office is not the only option you have (unless your school offers it to you for $30, and then it's a no-brainer).

If you're willing to spend $150, why not pick up Apple's iWork software package for presentations, documents and databases ($79)? With the exception of perhaps Pages, Keynote and Numbers are great apps that are way better than MS Office. If you need a real word processor and bibliographic software (for academic writing), Mellel and Bookends come bundled together ($109, $89 for student). If you don't care about Bookends, Mellel is on sale right now for $35 ($29 student). Compared to Word and Endnote's functionality, ease of use and elegance, these Mac products put it to shame. By the way, future upgrade costs for Mellel are negligible when compared to MS Office's policy.

So, to sum up, there is no good reason for Mac users to still be tossing money to the Microsoft Machine (unless you're a student practically being paid to, but even then I'd reconsider). There are so many better products available to Mac users for such better prices that we never have to bother with MS Office again! Spend a few days learning these new products and you'll be glad you did.

I second what geoduck wrote about Mellel. I have used Mellel for years for technical writing. It is a full-function word processor that as an added bonus enables me to construct professional-looking mathematical formulas stacked over as many lines as needed without an external formula editor.

It was not geoduck, but another Guest who mentioned Mellel. Sorry.

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Guest wrote:
It was not geoduck, but another Guest who mentioned Mellel. Sorry.

np