Switching to OpenOffice.org Might Be a Lot Easier Than Upgrading to Microsoft Office 12 (Cheaper, Too)
Mark Shuttleworth (founder of the Ubuntu project, second space tourist), makes this point, posted by Justin here.
This might not be a direct quote but it's Justin's restatement of Mark's point.
"Office 12 has had substantial UI changes, since Microsoft is trying to distance themselves from the Open Office project. End result, users will require re-training. So which is easier? Re-train users in new Office 12? Or simply, start using Open Office which quite frankly looks just like MS Office today."
And (added February 18th) here's another blog along the same lines, Ted's Radio Blog, with a similar conclusion at the end.
This is exactly what I've thought for some time. Office 12 might have ribbon toolbars and be way high on the cool meter, but how long will it take for the users in your organization to be productive on it?
Here's the current Microsoft Word toolbar, and the toolbar for OpenOffice.org Writer. Right now, they're really similar. Click each to see a bigger image. See how long it takes to tell which is which.
MS Office 12 looks entirely different, and changes constantly as you move in the document. Click this image to see a larger version.
Switching from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org is very likely going to be a lot easier than upgrading to Office 12.
Cheaper, too.
OpenOffice.org is absolutely free. So far, $0. You'll need to train users on OpenOffice.org, but that's not going to be a huge cost. I'm not sure what others charge but my training for OpenOffice.org is $70 to $110 per student per day. There's also some time, variable by organization, spent converting documents.
When you switch to MS Office 12, though, you'll need to pay for the software. And train your users. And convert documents and deal with the formatting issues that result. Some people are still on MS Office 95, or 98--switching documents to MS Office 12 is not going to be trouble-free. So add that cost to your conversion to MS Office 12, too.
If you can pay for the upgrades to MS Office 12 for everyone who might ever possibly use the software, and train everyone in your organization, for $70 to $110 per user, well, then you might want to do that. If you can't, though, and I'm pretty sure most people can't, now is the time to start considering the easier and far less expensive approach: switching to OpenOffice.org.
If you are considering it, see this post on the process of migrating a group of users who might be resisting the process, and this post on top ten reasons to switch to OpenOffice.org (besides the one covered in this post).
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