So let me get this straight. Crap is better when it's free? OpenOffice is god awful in a way that Microsoft Office merely aspires to. Free doesn't make it not crap.

Also, what's Sun's model here. Give the stuff away, spend tons on advertising and make it up on volume? Ask any number of now MIA dotcoms how that kind of model worked out.

It's payback for when Microsoft sent billboard trucks through the Sun parking lot when Windows 2000 shipped.

This clever move will surely return Sun Microsystems to profitability!

[quote]So let me get this straight. Crap is better when it's free? OpenOffice is god awful in a way that Microsoft Office merely aspires to. Free doesn't make it not crap.[/quote]

I don't understand why you think openoffice is crap? I have used it daily for the last three years with only minor issues. Never once has it corrupted a file on me, unlike MS Office. Yes, it sometimes can be a little flaky and I used to have issues with the spellchecking (non-Webster pleaze) which was solved two versions ago.

It's free. It's being developed by people who seem to care that users don't want to be crushed by millions of options and bloat. It works so much better 'out of the box' than Office. It prints PDF's. It opens loads of file formats (apart from Microsoft Publisher - grr). It doesn't have to support ancient platforms/formats and recently did an Apple and switched to using the Open Document format for documents.

All good. What's not to like? I like my tool. You like yours. Lets leave it at that.

Almenos en los blogs de Microsoft no se lo han tomado demasiado bien. http://blogs.msdn.com/sandyk/archive/2006/02/24/538832.aspx

Sounds like Sun is getting awfully desperate.

Sun used to fly airplanes around the Microsoft streaming ads about 64-bit Solaris being cheaper than Windows or something like that. Seems like they just have an ad budget lined up to play in the Microsoft ware.

As a Sun stockholder it pisses me off to see good money wasted when the company is in the tank over all.

Sun is so completely out of ideas that once again the only "point" they can make is a swipe at Microsoft. That kind of advertising hasn't worked for them in the past, or in countless conference keynotes, why would it work now?

Open Office isn't Microsoft Office. The money you save by not buying MS Office however can be spent on making you machine faster overall. I use NeoOffice on my Mac and love it.

Re: this being an unsuccessful campaign

Would it be worth pointing out that not only are we talking about it, but plenty of other people on various blogs and tech sites. That's better than most ad campaigns can manage.

OpenOffice was a valid competitor to MS Office up to version 2003. However, MS Office 2007 just blows it away completely in terms of features as well as just looks. Only problem I've had so far is finding some old menu items from previous versions and there are a few printing bugs for the .docx format. Other than that it is pretty damn good!

Some creative advertising by OpenOffice.org in Redmond, the capital of Microsoft Office. via thenewmarketing...

Milovoo: Great point. It is pretty obvious Sun didn't devise these ads to strike fear in the heart of Microsoft. It is easy to say though the very little amount Sun has put into this ad campaign in terms of corporate marketing dollars has reached much farther than these buses! Everytime you put that bug in someone's ear it forms better branding. Great move for anyone looking from a marketing standpoint.

OpenOffice is a very solid program...especially for something that is free. Can't argue that fact. As great as Office? Probably not. But get real, for 90% of the daily computer users I know, there is not one single features MS Office has that OpenOffice does not? Don't hate on OpenOffice, no reason to. Just be glad there are competitors to Microsoft. More competition means more innovation and better prices. Someday you might even be able to purchase MS Office for a decent price. Until then, I'll stick with OpenOffice and my donations.

For all those saying the OpenOffice guys are hitting below the belt or just being rude, you obviously don't know or remember that Microsoft has done exactly this type of thing in the past. Go to a Novell conference and see Microsoft ad-ridden vehicles driving around the conference.

Tit for tat. Think it's foul play? Then call MS on it as well.

getting bugs for free or pay for it? well...

anyway, I like the commercial and yes one should be happy that there are competitors in the field! This isn't a desperate move btw, but actually a really smart one..

cu

<i>"A Microsoft developer returns fire in his blog."</i>

The coward disabled comments on his blog.

...says the anonymous commenter. ;-)

As someone that works for a nonprofit and uses OpenOffice.org I can vouch for it being useful.

I used Microsoft Office exclusively for ten years. However I have been using OpenOffice.org exclusively for the last two years.

Anyone who claims that OpenOffice.org is crap either:

1. works for Microsoft and is running scared
2. has been getting fat from sales of Microsoft Office
3. hasn't used OpenOffice.org in recent times

While it is true that OpenOffice.org doesn't quite have every feature of Microsoft Office, for 90%+ of users OpenOffice.org is the perfect solution for their office suite needs.

MS Office does have more features then OO, the thing is that most of those features are not going to get used or greatly needed by most people, OO is good because it has the features that people need and use often, it also has many features that Office does not (and many of those i find very useful)

features that never get used are bloat, Office has far more of these features then OO, factor that in with price and OO becomes much better for the majority of people

heres another ad that hit me when i saw the price of MS Off.

thinking of an mp3 player that can hold your entire collection?
need a new SLR?
maybe a new computer..
want free gas for a month?
may be you wanted to give more for Katrina relief..

openoffice might help you, think open, think smart..

Frank Daley:

Totally agree. Though I've only been using OO for about 9 months, I did use MS Office for about 10 years. For most people, including myself, it is a perfectly fine solution.

Office 2007? MORE features? So it'll be bigger fatter bloatware than it is now. There's got to be a cap to these 'features'. It's an OFFICE suite. Not a 3D animation package.

Nice campaign. :)

ttp://berk.web-log.nl/photos/objecten/the_future_is_open.jpg

Open Office is good product. As said, it has not of the many never used features MS Office has. For me it is perfect

Rob

I have been using OO for about 5 months - I needed a word processor and spreadsheet. I did not pay 200-500 for MS Office - I benefitted by also acquiring a presentation package, paint like application, and database front end application (which allows me to attach any database to the front end), all for free. OO is good, MS Office is good - MS Office has bloat, so does OO, meaning I do not use all the features. OO has features that MS does not have that I benefit from.(PDF). OO also performs some functions better that MS, saving a text file as csv or fixed length file - much better than MS.

What puzzels me about this campaign - OO is free - by using OO - have I gone out an purchased any Sun products? No, I have not. So what does Sun want to get out of this? In fact I do not even know what other products Sun sells other than HW, Solaris & Sun Office (which I did not purchase because OO was $70 cheaper than Sun Office)

I selected OO because it was 200-400 cheaper than MS Office - and I kept hearing the new version of MS Office was coming - and coming - almost here - almost here... I am not so sure I need all the new features of MS Office -- In fact 100% sure - how many features do I use 10-20%.

Again, What does Sun get by advertising a free product?

Did you make a $20 donataion to get your software that saved you 200-400 dollars? That is what they are hoping for.

If I have the option of spending $200-400 on a new computer or spending the dough on M$FT Office, guess where the money would go?? Of course it would go for the computer, and at this point in time, YOU CAN get a computer really cheaply. Just because the OO program is free DOESN'T make it crap--that is just the cult member's party line and you have to remember M$FT writes their paycheck.

I have found lots to love in free programs like Gimp for Windows, Audacity, Celestia and many many others. It just scares the pants of of Redmond that people love creating good software so much they would do it for free.

OK. I want to make sure that I understand this correctly.
In order for me to do "typewriter" (which is what 90% of the users of "word processing software" are doing) I should spend money or not spend money.

For those times when I need to create something other than a "typewritten" document I should use typesetting or graphics software. I understand that there are several of those types of programs available that are suited for the novice to use with out resorting to the "professional" products having more features and capabilities than I will ever use for my one or two "real" projects.
The novice products are available (as ever) from the shareware/freeware community (remember Paperback software or the Jim Button group?) for little or nothing that work quite well.
As an aside - there is an internet graphics expert of some renown that still uses Photoshop 3 as their graphics application. The point being that the creativity and ability is in the user and not the software.

Sun was selling its hardware for too much money for years and years. Now they are beaten en forced to ask normal prices they start teasing Microsoft, while its office suite is without any doubts one of the best software that exists. SUN: shame on you!

In some ways OO is inferior to a ten-year-old copy of Office 97 in that it _still_ can't search and replace across paragraphs and finding paragraph marks, tabs etcetera is still a royal pain in the backside involving regexps. Would it have been too much bother for the geniuses responsible to allow search/replace of "^P" and "^T" as in Word?

We/ve been migrating our clients in the Healthcare and Manufacturing sectors over to OpenOffice for the past two years, with very few complaints from anyone but the so called "power users" They want every freaking button and doodad and widget they can lay their little sweaty hands on... but eventually they come around.

Thanks for posting this...

Cheers,

Karl A. Shalek
www.fastercats.com

Strangely, one of our&amp;nbsp;most popular&amp;nbsp;posts ever&amp;nbsp;was this story from Wade on Sun taking a...

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