[plug] MS Office and TCO

[Bradley Woodward]

On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, Leon Brooks wrote:
> The trouble begins when they start mimicing the spaghettified macro systems
> that typically grow up around Microsoft's "tightly integrated" Office
> systems, and the parade really starts when users, because these are the
> _only_ flexible tools made available to them, begin building "crystal
> palaces" of interlocked macros and documents. One day it all becomes too
> hard, or some vital system template gets destroyed by a dying app, or
> somebody upgrades or reinstalls a server over a weekend and on Monday
> morning nothing works any more...

Intergration is good, to a point.  Being able to cut and paste between any 
application running is very convienent.  Being able to imbed an Excel 
spreadsheet in a VISO drawing which is part of a Power point slide show, and 
then have it automatically email itself at the end is of less use, but 
somebody must want to do it, because I have about 15 meg worth of support 
DLLs to let me.

> Another TCO revelation arrives with the first macro virus.

Well yeah, exactly.  Last time a vbs virus tore through our company, I 
laughed when the accountant bemoned the cost of the clean up operation.

But all they did was spend a small fortune on anti virus software for 
Exchange.  Doesn't stop the viruses of course, but it does make everybody 
feel warm and cozy.  Me?  I make backups on floppy disk and put them in the 
desk drawer.

> Another one is sanity. It might be worth an extra salary for a young Python
> geek to keep a hundred office staff from smacking their heads against the
> monitor glass as MS-Office-induced mayhem hits critical mass.

I must be working for strange organisations then.  The last two have been MS 
places, and I can't remember one Office induced mayhem in 9 years.  The last 
company had around 300 users, and the current one about 50.  I've been using 
Office 2000 since an early beta, and it shapes up pretty well.  It does the 
job.  Spreadsheets calculate, Word documents do the funky formatting things 
and Outlook emails people.  What more do I need it to do?  I can't remember 
the last time it crashed.  Our NT 4 servers get rebooted about once a 3 
weeks/a month or whenever Technology Park decides to cut power to everybody, 
just for a laugh.  It hangs in very well.  The fun part is when you can show 
them how to get rid of two $5000 servers (that's $5000 each) and replace them 
with one box filled with software that costs exactly $0.00.  And if Sendmail 
could do forms, I think I'd have been able to do it too.

Look, I'm not saying it's a good thing.  I don't like Office, and very very 
soon here at home there will be exactly ZERO pieces of Microsoft software on 
my spiffy 20 gig hard disk.  But my company sells into a very consertative 
market (court rooms).  They're so stuck in their ways, a lot use WP 5.1 for 
DOS.  They use Microsoft for no technical or financial reasons at all.  I see 
us trying to break into new markets in the USA, and we run up against huge 
organisations, all controlled by central financial departments and procedures 
for purchace.  I'm sure lots of people on this mailing list are the same - 
they get told what to put on their computers, and have no say in it.  And all 
of the people in the suits are consertaive.  They don't like change.  How 
many times have you heard people say "You'll never get fired for buying IBM." 
 Change means retraining, it means unknown problems.  Upgrades to software 
have to happen in very small chunks, so the users don't get scared away.  
True!  

> Eh? SO writes MS-Office formats. Not only that, it writes them better than
> MS-Office, in the sense that more non-Office apps can read more of SO's
> "MS-Office" files than they can of the genuine article.

Unfortunatly, the arguement of using one piece of software to read and write 
file formats belonging to a different piece of software doesn't work well.  
I've tried this one too.  I even handed the department boss a copy of SO 5.1 
on CD and said try this, it's free, and can 100% do everything you'll ever 
need an office product to do.  Shrug - he uses Lotus products to do work with 
Lotus files, Microsoft products to work with MS products.  The idea of Word 
not being able to write Word documents as well as another word processor is 
just a little hard to take.

I like SO 5.2. I use it, enthuse to other people about it, give it to people 
who want a word processor to use...  But I'm under no illusions as to my 
chances of getting it through the door of my company.

> So how did Daddy Dearest start using MS-Office in the first place? I think
> his argument is specious in that it doesn't address the real issue.

Because somebody installed it on his computer and showed him how to.  Same 
reason I'd say 90% of people do.  To him there is no issue.  He wants to 
write letters to people and type reports.  For what he needs it for, he could 
use Write or even notepad.  No need for a 120 Meg office package at all.   He 
got office because that's what he knew.

I realise what I'm saying will never be accepted on a Linux support mailing 
list, but from where I sit in the bowels of a small organisation selling to a 
market that detests the word Change, the desktop is now and for the forseable 
future owned by Microsoft.

Whatever...  My #1 requirement for a desktop is making sure I can get a 
picture of Gillian Anderson on it.  Everything else is just icing.