[plug] Oxymoron: Microsoft, innovation

[Mark J Gaynor]

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 15/06/2006 at 10:47 AM Jason Posavec wrote:

>Are all the Pluggers in positions of influence encouraging their 
>companies to use ODF  where possible? And when told that Microsoft 
>Office doesn't support this format, are they then explaining that OOo 
>has all the functionality of MO, but without the productivity-robbing 
>bells and whistles?

You have to make the distinction between functionality and compatibility.
It may be functionally the same but compatibility, no. (Star Office is
supposed to be more compatible. I can't comment on that as I have not
used Star Office since Sun came into the picture.) To me, these need
to share top billing. Hind sight is a wonderful thing. I wander if Bill
Gates
had his time over again, knowing what he does now, would he have done
things differently?

I support your line of thought, however, if you want OOo to be taken up
by the 'enterprise set' it has to first emulate the product it is replacing
exactly, not nearly but exactly. That is out of the box too. It does not
matter that OOo has a superior file type or what ever, the reality is
people look at it from where they are now.

If you open a MS document, OOo should by default ask if you wish to
keep your original format and if by chance the user does not understand
what a file format is, OOo should save the document back to the original
format anyway. Instead of making things harder we need to acknowledge
that the majority of workers in an office have little more than the basic
knowledge to get the job done. The instruction book on the software is
locked away in the IT office for the guru read

I have lost count of the times people have just asked to show how to
do a particular task and write down the steps verbatim. They are not
always interested in what funky things might be done, they have a
job to do with a deadline and that is what drives the learning curve.

I wanted to import some CSV text data into a spreadsheet with OOo,
a simple task you may think. Well,I could not find anything that would 
allow me to do this simple task. I could import XML and some others
but not CSV. Deadline was looming so the only choice was to dump
OOo and finish the job with the MS Office suite. Would that not say
to you that OOo cannot do a simple thing like import CSV data like
Microsoft can!

Another example of open source missing the point or re inventing the
wheel is Gimp. Highly rated by those who use it, but come from
only using Adobe Photoshop in all its glory, because the company
can afford the real deal and all the plugins. The transition to Gimp
is far from easy, as they put everything in different places to where
you expect them, if you can find them at all. Instead of the work
flowing smoothy, you have to stop and hunt for that elusive tool or
setting that is so obvious in the other application.

Don't get me wrong, the same con be said for Gimp users
transitioning to Photoshop, but remember there are more people
that understand and/or use Photoshop than Gimp, Photoshop is
the industry standard, as is Microsoft Office.

The point that I'm trying to make is if there is an accepted model
the world sees things in, to get people to accept the new better
program to work with, the new model must follow closely to what
is generally accepted as being the norm or standard.

Where MS has it over anything that follows is it usability
research with users. If you don't get the idiot factor right, the
product take up will be very slow, if at all. They spend millions
on the R&D that the Open Source community can only wish
for. That being said, those Open Source apps that are making 
inroads have got the use ability/idiot factor right, so it is not an
impossibility.

I support Open Source where ever, when ever I can, and it 
is my first choice, the reality is use ability that produces
productivity. The  model that needs to be adopted is the
one most are already comfortable with, like it or not.



My 2 cents worth.

Mark
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