[libreoffice-users] Re: CNET is claiming the best free MSO alternative is not LO

On 6/7/13 3:41 AM, Tom Davies wrote:

<snip>

> I too wouldn't touch Kingsoft with a barge pole.  I want to steer towards using formats that will be
> around and usable in a few years time.  I want to be able to open
> documents maybe 10-20 years from now without having to struggle against
> malware and without having to try to find long-dead versions of long
> dead software produced by a company that may not even exist by then.

You just hope the formats will be around 10-20 years from now.  There's 
no guaranteed the current ODT format will even be viable then.  Similar 
to the way desktop design interfaces are basically horrible on cell 
phones and tablets (IMO), all of it can change almost overnight with 
hardware changes.

I stopped installing LO on the free computers I occasionally rebuild. 
Why?  Because I guessed the odds were the recipients would be more 
familiar with the Office interface, or their friends that helped them 
would.  And my goal was to make it easy for them.

Plus, too many LO bugs that just pissed me off.   <sad smile>

> What i tend to find is that people use all sorts of rubbishy excuses for why they 'cant' move away 
> from certain software.  They moan and grumble
> about petty issues in an alternative they have been handed but then go
> and find some other alternative that they feel more in control of because they chose it.  Once they 
> have made the break away from that certain software they become more reasonable about looking at 
> other
> alternatives realistically.

You're pretty much right here, Tom.  It seems that while users will look 
at 5, 10, 15 different TV's, they don't do that with software or 
computer systems.  And that probably has a lot to do with the fact you 
can't find anything in the stores to look at.

I used to do this, got far, far away from that, now going back to 
looking for the computer "tools" that work for me.  At the moment, I'm 
trying the demo of a program for writing, and if things keep working out 
the way they seem to be, you won't see me using Writer, Word, or any 
other "standard" office suite word processor ever again.

> One of the commonest grumbles i hear about LO (at the moment) is that it
> uses the old interface and not the nice new ribbon-bar.  So, 'obviously' LO is old!  (Easy to see 
> how FUD develops, right?).  Kingsoft neatly
> deal with that and such grumblers can now be pointed towards that as an
> alternative.  Of course when i do that i will still be quite disparaging about the ribbon-bar 
> specifically and about proprietary software (and
> formats) in general but at least now i can sound like it's not "just sour grapes",
> just because LO hasn't got it.  Now i can be seen to be offering genuine choices rather than trying 
> to herd people in a direction they might not want to go.

I get tired of hearing this ribbon argument over and over again.  Some 
people like it.  Some people don't.  If you want to appeal to the most 
users on this aspect, give people a choice.  MS does, you can hide the 
thing.  I've not used Word regularly since 2003, so I can't say whether 
the menu interface that appears when you hide the ribbon is as 
functional as its predecessors.

<snip>

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.4
Firefox 20.0
Thunderbird 17.0.5
LibreOffice 4.0.1.2


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