IBM's already making a difference: publicity about new office suites

Here's the article, on CNet.

"After years of watching Microsoft rake in billions of dollars from its desktop software franchise, its competitors are pouncing.

IBM on Tuesday announced the release of Lotus Symphony, a suite of free desktop applications based on the OpenOffice.org open-source product...." and so on.

Now, this article is about seven years too late since Sun had StarOffice out there a while ago. But Sun didn't....really....go gangbusters marketing StarOffice. There were the tshirts and bus ads, yes, a year or so ago, but not much else that I saw.

Let's hope the publicity, and recognition of OpenOffice.org and its variants, continues!

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Comments

[Scott B]

What is interesting is the hefty RAM requirement for this suite. When it was first released the minimum requirements we listed as 1GB of RAM. It has since been reduced to 512MB. However, that is still quite a bit higher that OOo's 128MB minimum requirement. I'll stick with OpenOffice.org, thank you very much.

Also, on another note, I'm surprised I couldn't find any refer on your blog to Google offering StarOffice for free as part of their Google Pack.

[JZA]

I agree, Sun is not a company that had scaled on markeitng their products. Is so odd since they are just a few steps away from apple which has the best marketing ever. They haven't got that they are doing software for the general people.

[Solveig Haugland]

Hi JZA,

I used to fantasize about Apple buying Sun. THEN we'd see some killer marketing (and insane fans waiting in line to download the latest StarOffice ;> ).

Solveig

[Solveig Haugland]

Hi Scott,

RAM requirements are kind of like listing your weight or body type on dating sites...some peopel are honest, some people fudge a little bit. One would have to see them operating side by side, I think.

I'm surprised, myself, that I didn't mention the Google pack on my blog....perhaps in passing reference embedded deep inside or in an article since I have a memory of writing a little about it. ;> I'll remedy that.