Google's Android is Eating Apple's Lunch

[kennyc]

That also exposes a flaw in your reasoning. 5 years? that's an infinity of time, 10 years? unthinkable. You must plan for change and transition. And it's irrelevant if you are talking commercial or open source the same planned obsolesce and incompatible upgrades happen.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

OpenOffice also perfectly highlights one of the reasons businesses still shy away from open source software, the political/religious arguments that end up with the open source community spending too much time fighting each other. Like any real-world rebellion or insurgency, it eventually fractures into smaller groups who care more about fighting each other than the establishment they were originally trying to bring down.
Do I choose OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice.org? Which will give me the best support? Which is more likely to still be a viable project in 5 years time? 10?
Of course I might have chosen StarOffice in order to get the hopefully better support that Oracle offered, but StarOffice and its successor are dead now as a result of this infighting.

Why do you need to choose?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by kennyc

That also exposes a flaw in your reasoning. 5 years? that's an infinity of time, 10 years? unthinkable.

Seriously?
I'm sitting at a business laptop running Windows XP (2001) and Office 2003.
I'm not alone.
Business are very reluctant to upgrade, and only do so when absolutely forced to. Every upgrade costs money, both directly and through the need for retraining/increased support, and each upgrade adds a chance of breaking existing software and practices.
Anyone making a decision to rollout enterprise-wide software who isn't making a calculation about what support will be available in 5 years time is an idiot.
Choosing software for thousands of people to use is not the same as choosing software for yourself to use, and the cost of switching is much higher.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Why do you need to choose?

Do they both behave exactly the same?
Do they both have exactly the same menu options? Available fonts/styles?
Do they both produce exactly the same output files? Read the same input files?
If I'm choosing something to roll-out across an entire business, I want to have training material that everyone can use. I want to have files that everyone can open, view and edit in exactly the same way.
I don't want my helpdesk wasting time because person A has OpenOffice and person B has LibreOffice and they behave every so slightly differently.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Seriously?
..
Anyone making a decision to rollout enterprise-wide software who isn't making a calculation about what support will be available in 5 years time is an idiot.

Yes seriously, whoever is not planning on technological change happening in shorter time frames than 10 years as you stated, even 5 years is an idiot.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yes seriously, whoever is not planning on technological change happening in shorter time frames than 10 years as you stated, even 5 years is an idiot.

Of course change will happen.
That doesn't mean you don't still need support for the software you are using?
Just because something new is available doesn't suddenly mean everything old stops working.
Office 2003 still works just fine, and has IMHO a much better UI than later versions anyway.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Of course change will happen.
That doesn't mean you don't still need support for the software you are using?
Just because something new is available doesn't suddenly mean everything old stops working.
Office 2003 still works just fine, and has IMHO a much better UI than later versions anyway.

and now the goal-post shifting....

If open office works fine, why worry about upgrading. Support is still there and generally better in the open source community than in the commercial community.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Do they both behave exactly the same?
Do they both have exactly the same menu options? Available fonts/styles?
Do they both produce exactly the same output files? Read the same input files?
If I'm choosing something to roll-out across an entire business, I want to have training material that everyone can use. I want to have files that everyone can open, view and edit in exactly the same way.
I don't want my helpdesk wasting time because person A has OpenOffice and person B has LibreOffice and they behave every so slightly differently.

I was implying "Why do you need to choose, when you can have both?"

If there are differences between the two now or in the future, using both makes most sense. One has better menu options, while the other can open more file formats? Just use both. Train people for both. Tell them that files for one activity are to be opened with OpenOffice and files for another activity are to be opened with LibreOffice. If the best option changes with the next software update, you don't have to choose between using the lesser option or training everyone to use the other program, because they are already trained in both.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

I was implying "Why do you need to choose, when you can have both?"

Train people for both. Tell them that files for one activity are to be opened with OpenOffice and files for another activity are to be opened with LibreOffice.

I once had a user complain bitterly that a spreadsheet wouldn't open, demanding that I come down at once and sort it out because he was a busy man, and that I should check things more carefully before distributing them and wasting people's time.

I went down immediately to help.

He had been trying to open the spreadsheet in Microsoft Word.

Training users is tricky. Supplying multiple tools to do the same job just makes things worse.

Graham

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Graham

I once had a user complain bitterly that a spreadsheet wouldn't open, demanding that I come down at once and sort it out because he was a busy man, and that I should check things more carefully before distributing them and wasting people's time.

I went down immediately to help.

He had been trying to open the spreadsheet in Microsoft Word.

Training users is tricky. Supplying multiple tools to do the same job just makes things worse.

Graham

Employers should stop hiring idiots.

[5thWiggle]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Employers should stop hiring idiots.

Someone that inept at using a computer is usually the one running the company.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Graham

I once had a user complain bitterly that a spreadsheet wouldn't open, demanding that I come down at once and sort it out because he was a busy man, and that I should check things more carefully before distributing them and wasting people's time.

I went down immediately to help.

He had been trying to open the spreadsheet in Microsoft Word.

Training users is tricky. Supplying multiple tools to do the same job just makes things worse.

Graham

:snicker

I've seen that sort of thing happen more often than not.

[cjr72]

Originally Posted by Graham

I once had a user complain bitterly that a spreadsheet wouldn't open, demanding that I come down at once and sort it out because he was a busy man, and that I should check things more carefully before distributing them and wasting people's time.

I went down immediately to help.

He had been trying to open the spreadsheet in Microsoft Word.

Training users is tricky. Supplying multiple tools to do the same job just makes things worse.

Graham

A user told me that a PDF was missing on his computer. I asked him to show me where he thought he had saved it. He opened Microsoft Word > File > Open...

[kennyc]

And since this thread has veered off in this direction I'll take this opportunity to say -- this is exactly why Apple limits its options to few and simple and attempts to control things -- in order to limit need to train users etc. If there is only one way, one app to do something, it simplifies support across the board.

[fjtorres]

The corporate IT market runs in 10 year cycles. But only because they *can't* run in 20 year cycles. There is a reason why MS is still supporting XP after 10 years and will still be supporting Win7 past 2020.
As a rule, corporations use PCs as long as they still run (or the support contract does). For most companies, those are capital investments and part of overhead instead of profit-generators. Why do you think there is so much corporate whining over the Win8 GUI? They don't mind changes to the plumbing or incremental changes to the APIs but the GUI is what users see and any time they see "GUI changes" their beancounter minds see "retraining costs!" regardless of whether or not those GUI changes might result in more productivity or lower support costs.

You have to live in (and fight with) a corporate IT environment to appreciate how different it is from a true personal computing environment. After all, it's *their* computers and software, not yours...