brief mention of LO in an article about Office 365 vs. Google Apps

users
#1

http://www.zdnet.com/is-office-365-worth-spending-3x-more-than-on-google-apps-7000027225/

Is Office 365 worth spending 3x more than on Google Apps?

Summary: Office 365 is three times the cost of Google Apps. It's worth it -- but probably not for the reason you expect...

By Matt Baxter-Reynolds

:quote:

Continuum

Office's competition has always been products that have tried to emulate Office's enormous bulk -- think LibreOffice in particular. Google Docs doesn't try to do that at all. It's a very minimal product.

We know that Office is enormous. There is nothing that the entire product suite can't do. People often complain about it's labyrinthine complexity. Another way to look at that is that Microsoft has actually done a skilled job in masking that complexity. There's enough in there to drive even the most ardent power user crazy.

:unquote:

Here is my question - are we trying to emulate MSO's "enormous bulk" [of options]? I hope it is not though of as the bulk of hard drive space needed to install MSO vs. LO.

I know that LO will not spend money on the server costs for a "cloud" based version of LO hosted by LO, but it was an interesting read that may be reflected into the development of LO for Android devices.

#2

Hi :slight_smile:
I doubt it. I think LO aims to stay reasonably streamlined. On the
other hand if you need seriously tiny then go with AbiWord&Gnumeric.
If you want a Cloud-based solution then Google-docs.

MS Office tries to be all things and do everything all in 'one'
program. You might have to add extra programs that weren't included
in the bundle or shop around for a different bundle and there is often
confusion about prices and which programs are or aren't bundled.
However, even after adding different programs into the mix and all
that it is still seen as a single solution that just does everything.

The LibreOffice way is to engage with the wider OpenSource ethos to
have much smaller programs that each fit their own niche well and
co-operate well with each other. That way you can choose to use
unusual combinations for unusual use-cases or just choose the standard
combinations that most people go with.

So for us it makes a lot of sense to use Libreoffice on most machines
and AbiWord&Gunmeric on extremely low spec ones and maybe using
google-docs when we are on the move. Most of us probably use
Thunderbird but some probably use Evolution and i know some use Claws
and Zimbra. However none of us need to know what anyone else is using
as they all use the same standards so files and such can be shared
between them all fairly seemlessly.

Why have 1 big bloated sluggish mess rather than fast, elegant and
secure programs??
Regards from
Tom

#3

That is why I mentioned the article. I do not like to read anything about LO that seems to state it is a "bloated" package. Yes, we will do a large number of options that MSO does, but we are not dipping into the options that 95% to 99% of the users of MSO never use or even know about. That is the bloat. One "early" upgrade of MSO advertised "over 1,000" new options added. How many of those options were really needed/wanted/used by the targeted market? That is where the bloat comes from.

I am glad we are not being "pushed" into running a cloud based version of LO. Be nice to have one available for business users to host for their workers, but I for one do not want to see the bill for server resources if TDF placed one online. I will wait for the LO for Android for the tablet and use thumb-drives and other physical media for the laptop work off my home/office wifi network.

#4

I am not sure the writer knows what they are talking about. One can describe office suites, whether local or cloud, as light, medium, and heavy. The light ones (Abiword) try to cover the major functionality required by users for modest documents but deliberately omit features many features. Light applications are often best suited for home and very small office users. Medium have more features but try to avoid having the very rare features that only a very few users will ever need or use. I think LO and AOO strive to be here, relatively feature rich without the many of the very rarely used features. Medium applications try to hit the sweet of excellent performance with a fairly rich feature set. Medium applications can be used by a large majority of users. Heavy applications have all the features included even if this sometimes hurts overall usability and performance. MS Office is best known heavy office suite.

Also, some zdnet.com writers tend to shill for MS and will not admit that users are in the best position to judge their needs and often a non-MS solution is the overall best solution.

Jay

#5

That is why I mentioned the article. I do not like to read anything about LO that seems to state it is a "bloated" package. Yes, we will do a large number of options that MSO does, but we are not dipping into the options that 95% to 99% of the users of MSO never use or even know about. That is the bloat. One "early" upgrade of MSO advertised "over 1,000" new options added. How many of those options were really needed/wanted/used by the targeted market? That is where the bloat comes from.

I am glad we are not being "pushed" into running a cloud based version of LO. Be nice to have one available for business users to host for their workers, but I for one do not want to see the bill for server resources if TDF placed one online. I will wait for the LO for Android for the tablet and use thumb-drives and other physical media for the laptop work off my home/office wifi network.

Also to remember is that 75% of the world population have no internet access, so cloud base apps are no use. Many connected areas also do not have enough "connection" for cloud based apps.
To consider, is that 81% of internet access in China is via mobile devices and it could be expected that when the 75% above obtain internet access it will be predominantly by mobile device and with less than adequate cloud capabilities.
http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/01/16/chinas-internet-population-numbered-618m-end-2013-81-connecting-via-mobile/#!zsn3K
Steve

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
That makes a lot of sense but i suspect there is yet more complexity.

Single purpose apps, such as Gnumeric, don't have to worry about
potential conflicts with coding for functionality that has nothing to
do with the single purpose of the specialist app. So Gnumeric has
tons of functionality and people say it is more sophisticated than
Excel or Calc yet it remains extremely light and fast.

Also there is a mis-quote of the article. The actual quote is
"Office's competition has always been products that have tried to
emulate Office's enormous bulk". It is NOT saying that LibreOffice is
bloated.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

I sure did not like the "bloated" idea that looks to be read or implied to LibreOffice. "Bloated", to me means it takes up a proportionally large amount of drive space. 1 to 2 GBs worth at least. Also "bloated" means that it is "bloated" with too many options that are not used by most of its market.

I do not think LO will ever be "bloated" in either definition. Yes, our developers will increase the "internal" options and others will develop options that are added on through the Extension Manager. I think the idea of an extension-based add on of options is a great idea. That way the users can pick and choose which ones are wanted and not be told you are required to have all these options that you will never use.

I do not think LO will ever be a "one package of every user" type of office suite that MSO tries to be. Yes, LO can do a lot of things that MSO can do, but do we really want to do everything they can do? NO, since that would be a waste of our developers' effort. Plus it would make improving LO a much more difficult task. MSO takes 1 to 3 years to come out with their next version. Mostly that is due to having to fix all the issues that a "bloated" package has every time you try to "improve" it. MSO 2010 and its "ribbon" menu system hampered my efforts to make a document quickly on a system that needed some documents made up and displayed. I did not have access to my laptop at that time.

So, I agree the writer might not have known much about LO except it is a competitor to MSO. At least having "competitor" status is a good thing, but the idea that LO is as "Bloated" as MSO is not.