[ILUG] Star Office

[PJ Wall]

philb at vodafone.ie wrote:

>In my opinion, your main problems will not relate to technical limitations of 
>the software but user acceptance. For non power users, the transition should 
>be something akin to a transition from Office 2000 to Office 2003 but this 
>kind of change is easier since people buy into it more readily. 
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>-phil
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I totally agree with this.  I'm currently researching a fairly large 
organisation who migrated to Star Office from MS Office about 2 or 3 
years ago.  They are having big problems getting the staff to accept 
Star Office (even though everyone in the organisation recogonises the 
translation from MS Office 2000 to Star Office is no more painful than 
the transition from MS Office 2000 to MS Office 2003). 

The IT people in the organisation believe that because the staff were 
specifically told that Star Office was FREE they attributed no value to 
it.  "If its free it cant be as good as MS Office which is very 
expensive" was the common war cry from the staff.

I believe this is one of the biggest problems with a migration to Open 
Source software of any kind, and to be honest I cant really see any way 
around it.  Education and training will address usage and functionality 
issues, and the interoperability with MS Office issues can also be 
easily overcome as discussed by other posters.  Fundamentally I believe 
this to be an issue of perception.  Most people are not interested in 
issues around OSS and the OS movement.  They just want what they know 
and what they are used to and what they have their ECDL in.

PJ

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>>I was just wondering if anyone had any opinions on Star Office?  How is 
>>interoperability with MS Office, and how does functionality compare to 
>>MS Office?
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>>Also if anyone is using Star Office or knows of any companies or 
>>organisations using Star Office, I'd be interested to talk to them.
>>
>>PJ
>>-- 
>>Irish Linux Users' Group
>>http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug/
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