At some place, some point in time, Steve Ballmer will have to acknowledge an awful truth. The cash cow known as MS Office is headed for the slaughterhouse. Ol' Bessy is going to be drawn, quartered, and diced, ground, sliced into various parts, most of which will never earn the same margins as the licensed versions.

So where does that leave MSFT shareholders? How does Ballmer plan to fill that huge hole in his cash flow statement?

I have to agree with Ed T. The cash cow of MS Office is sick and dying. Will Google Docs kill em? Sure going contribute is my guess. But I don't see web apps as the main problem for the sick cow. The problem is the price. When you can get better for free, without even the need of a serial number, activation, downloading and installing massive service packs, repeatedly, WGA for Office itself to contend with, and lastly, having MS Office constantly spy on the user.

OpenOffice.org Breaks Records Everywhere

http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?RSS&entryid=1369

Version 3 is out, and of course, its free.

think it will take the rest of the world a little time to realize what a strong position Microsoft is in in this space.

Google Apps are...nice enough. Not great but ok. Unless they totally change their DNA, Google will never offer PC client versions of Google Apps so it's 'hosted by Google of the highway.' For the first time since I can remember, Microsoft is in a position to say they offer greater choice than their competitors. Their customers will be able to run Office on the PC or Mac and/or Office on the Web. Most will probably pick both depending on the situation. In my mind this is a pretty clear indication that Microsoft's ambitiouis goals around PC software AND Web software is the right strategy. Those arguing for a Web-only world will find themselves marginalized, offering their customers fewer choices and ultimately less compelling experiences for users.

Ask any CIO or technology decision maker at a mid sized or larger company and they'll tell you that it will be a cold day in hell before they move to a totally Web-based platform for word processing and spreadsheets etc. But ask them if they'd like a choice of PC/Mac-based software AND Web-based versions and they'll smile. I'd like to see Google compete with that.

The difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google sees the web as a first class citizen and they work to make web browsers better so their applications get better. Microsoft sees the web as an extra that you use when you have to or on one of those crummy non-MS devices.

Microsofts route of having apps with web services will lead to the worst of both worlds, companies will still have to put their data on the web and they will also have a degraded experience when not on an Office licensed PC.

They are only taking this approach because they have to protect Windows and Office, if they didn't have that consideration do you really think a halfway house is the best solution?

Really? You're stunned and shocked? You really thought Microsoft was stupid enough to ignore this space?

Also, wrt to timing -- yes, Microsoft conveniently scheduled the event where they are talking about *all* the cloud-based computing events at the company to coincide with some recent wins by Google. Oh, and they scrambed to write 2 years worth of code just in time to demo it. Damn, they are good.

Calm down on the superlatives, Joe.

Joe, typically shoddy journalism.
1. office will have a free version on office live.
2. this is total game changer as the value add of using something non Office just went to zero.
3. Your lack of insights into correct predictions shows why you were a poor analysts and lack on journalist rigor on the base facts, well is self evident.

Maybe you should go code? oh yeah, you've never, ever, yes never worked at any IT vendor in any capacity.

I've done the numbers and the Internet bandwidth exceeds the Office licensing costs for any office with more than 10 users. That doesn't include the security or DRP issues or the fact that Google Apps is not as good as Office.

If you hate MS, your best option is OpenOffice, not that Google crap.

Hello Tristan,
In answer to your points I would say:
1. Thats very nice, but doesnt change the fact that just because MS can compete in the "being free" stakes, doesnt mean people will choose it.

2. The value add IS zero, if you are tied into other MS products, however many people are switching to alternatives and finding that they dont need to consider MS.

3. Youve missed the biggest problem of all - public perception of MS. Youre comment about Joes lack of insight is rich if you are trying to imply MS has insight. Do we need to list all of MS's "little errors?"

Tristan said "Maybe you should go code?" - are you implying this gives a user a greater insight into the future of computing? If thats the case then MS is lost, because Ive been "coding" for a long time, and I dont believe that MS's direction is what the future is going to be dominated by, and certainly by the level of distrust even a simple GOOGLE search can provide, you can see for yourself how much faith people have in the MS model.
However, for MS, the reality is much, much worse (IMO). The low tech knowledge user who was more likely to buy anything MS said or sold, has now changed. People are more savvy, and (rightly or wrongly) its become fashionable to knock Microsoft, they too have jumped on the bandwagon.

"At some place, some point in time, Steve Ballmer will have to acknowledge an awful truth. The cash cow known as MS Office is headed for the slaughterhouse."

We've been hearing that for a decade, usually by uninformed morons who use 2% of the product and therefore think everything else is a viable competitor.

Quote Paul "We've been hearing that for a decade, usually by uninformed morons who use 2% of the product and therefore think everything else is a viable competitor.

Ok, if I (and many others) believe that Open Office IS a viable contender to MS Office. Would you mind explaining what no other pro-MS poster has, and that is WHY IS IT NOT?

I would not kill MS Office just yet. Unless I am completly off base here, how can/will organizations that have no access to the internet (closed networks) use Google Apps?

As I say on my blog at dev.plutext.org, the only thing which is surprising about this announcement - especially given the earlier leaks by Balmer and others - is how long you'll have to wait before you can get your hands on this. I'd thought it possible Microsoft would deliver this in a service pack for Office 2007. That Office 14 might not arrive until 2010 means you'll need to be very patient if you are looking to Microsoft to deliver your collaboration solution.

There were no surprises re:

* Technology - Office Web uses Silverlight
* Delivery model - you need Sharepoint or Office Live Workspace to host the service
* Pricing - it is available as a hosted subscription service or through existing volume licensing agreements

I dont really care if its on my harddisk or via a web browser we all seemed to be missing a certain fact...

Microsoft Word has become unusable for the last 2 versions!!! Word does stuff on its own that boggles the mind and I moved to OpenOffice years ago. At least it almost does what I tell it too...

Please start making new versions simpler and less cluttered, charge more for less and people will line up in droves...

Washington D.C. did not "convert" to Google Apps. They added in Google Apps in addition to their existing Microsoft license (they havent cancelled their Microsoft license - yet).

They may or may not cancel their annual subscription to Microsoft and they may or may not convert fully to Google Apps.

"Asserting" they have converted is not analysis - it is called fiction.

Way to listen to Joe as usual. Please change this to "I hate Microsoft Watch".

Joe, please clarify your comments about "MANY" high profile companies that have change to Google craps. Seriously, name 1. W-DC INCORRECT. Don't believe everything you read. You should know better than anyone Joe as nobody should believe your crap.

No companies are converting to Google apps. NONE. Lots talk about it just because of the financial state of the economy. But all those people are fake journalist like yourself. Ask any CIO anywhere and they will tell you, there is no way for a corporation to run Google apps and any others. Especially how powerful Excel is. It literally runs most businesses. Please take just 1 complex spreadsheet and see how Google does. But hey if you just want to type into a cell or add up 2 cells I'll admit it, Google can do that. But then again so can Calc.

So all this is non-educated and non-substantiated jibberish coming out of Joe's typewritter. Please spare us all and be a true journalist for once.

The first couple of comments here (and a few others) are loudly going, "Just get rid of Office!"

I use Office. I have used Office for years. A couple of times, when I've upgraded my computer, I've tried other options. I've tried various open source programs. I've tried the programs that came pre-installed on my computer. I've tried Google Docs. And I went running back to Office every time.

There are a few things in Excel I don't like (its tendency to change things to dates if I don't set the cell format to text) but I've never seen a word processor better than Word or slide show tool better than PowerPoint.

It's a case of you get what you pay for. If you want absolute basic functionality, you can use Google Docs, and then struggle if your net connection goes down. Open Office is alright, but I would rather pay for my copy of MS Office and get a tool that does everything I want it to and is easy to use.

@Office User:
Firstly thankyou for being the only person to say that they have tried Open Office and found MS Office their prefered app.

Please, can you be the person that explains WHAT EXACTLY Ms office has that Open Office doesnt.

How about why Word is better. Ive been asking this question for weeks and nobody will give an answer.
Please Officer User, be known as the first person to answer that question.

@Goblin

It was a while ago that I last tried Open Office. The machines in the computer science department at university were all dual-boot Linux and Windows. Naturally, the Linux boot didn't have MS Office. They had Open Office instead. For the first term or so, I tried using Open Office. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I'd rather take the time to reboot in Windows and use MS Office for my document processing. But that was nearly four years ago, so remembering exactly what I didn't like about it is tough... and maybe it's improved since then, I don't know.

Word let's you do a huge amount of formatting incredibly easily. I was chair of a student society and it was my job to put together the weekly newsletter. I always did this in Word because I could use tables and columns, insert images, change formatting with the press of a single button. Even the guy who became chair after me continued using Word for the newsletters, despite being a Mac fan.

I used Office for writing up my masters project and used headings and subheadings to lay it out nicely (and using headings allows it to work out the contents page for you). I included neatly formatted tables and charts to show results of user feedback. And I handed in a very smart document.

There are probably other programs that would let me do all that, but Word makes it easy. It took me a few days to get used to the new format in the latest version of Office, but now I wouldn't go back. It's an incredbily user-friendly interface and the new layout exposes all the hundreds of options that are readily available.

"I always did this in Word because I could use tables and columns, insert images, change formatting with the press of a single button."

LOL - You remind me of the people that write letters in Excel and prepare presentations in Access and try to make spreadsheets in Wordpad with tabs. What really cracks me up is when people wrap an image in a word document to send it via email.

Next time you should look at DTP software, you will find it a lot easier and more suited for the job.

@billybob
I've just said I used Word because it was easy, and you're telling me I'd find something else easier?

Word was perfect for those newsletters. I made a template using a table that had fields in an appropriate layout so that I could have a headline, articles, a bulletin, "coming up this term", pictures and so on. I could change the size of those fields to fit the articles, merge them or split them if I had less/more sections that week.

I've had a few attempts at using Adobe design products. I can see why professional designers and publishers might prefer them. But for the amateur designer, throwing together a simple newletter, poster, or whatever, Word gives you all you need to get a smart and attractive layout... and it's easy! Word is a better word processor than any other word processing tool that I've tried because you can use it for this sort of thing. It's flexible. But I wouldn't suggest trying to lay up a magazine with it!

Writing letters in Excel... that's something to laugh at. Using Word to lay up a newsletter is using a very flexible program for one of the purposes it was designed for.

Word has terrible page layout capabilities. If you are doing DTP then a DTP program is normally the best tool for the job. A lot of people use Word for everything because it is very easy to get a pirated copy. There were/are other DTP programs if you prefer that, even ones designed for casual use.

All other things being equal MS Office it is better than Open Office. If the average person was forced to pay full price then Open Office would be the better choice. Maybe the S+S strategy is to force people to pay for their Office or have a reduced feature set. At the moment you can get the same service with Open Office + Google Docs for online storage/collaboration. Why would you pay the extra for features that even MS fans agree only 1% of users actually use?

I'm not going to deny that if you want to do a lot of complicated DTP, you're better off buying a specific DTP program. However, if you're doing a lot of document processing and will occasionally do some DTP, then you're probably better off using one program for everying, and Word can be that one program.

I've never had any problems with page layout. I've used it for informal document, official work documents, university assignments, membership cards, the newsletters and posters for society events. Never any layout issues.

On the other hand, I've never paid full price for Office. Even on my home computer, I've always managed to get Office cheaply through a deal with university or work. I can understand why people see the price label and run screaming. But if they're happy with a reduced feature set, then a free/cheap online version might be the way forward.

I use Office Live Workspace already and I'll be trying out this new online version when it becomes available.

I think there is a very small chance that online Office will be free AND good. It will either be free and be used to upsell to Office, or it will be good and require a standard Office license to access.

I cannot see them risking all the valuable Office revenue and making it free - the shareholders would freak out at even 5% loss in revenue. Their mantra is Software + Services, not Software as a Service.

Why wait, Google docs is free and good today. If you don't trust online docs then Open Office is very mature these days. Then you could spend the money saved on a decent DTP program!

I think all this talk of who thinks what word processor is better and easier is fun to read, but it kind of misses the point.

It seems that Microsoft will likely do whatever they can think of to reate a very easy to use, highly capable, and oh-so-compelling cloud-based Office tool set that makes all other alternatives, such as Google docs, pale in comparison. They may or may not succeed, but they must move forward with a do-or-die mindset.

Why? Because they are using Silverlight, and success in the cloud will propel Silverlight into the must-have category. In turn, this will then force Linux off the stage and out of the picture.

Remember, Microsoft does not behave like an ordinary predatory monopoly. In the markets in which it has a monopoly, it has (in the past, especially) kept prices low and NOT raised them. The speculation is that they do this because they fear competition would eat away their monopoly position, and the only way to maintain their monopoly is to keep prices low. And their current financial net worth shows that their actions to keep prices low has indeed paid off.

But Linux-based systems, which include FSF toolsets and middleware and a wide variety of other FOSS add-ons have been increasing in function and capabilities while at the same time remaining very low in acquisition costs. Which follows the Microsoft strategy, but even better than Microsoft. And this is why Microsoft fears Linux. It's the same reason that powerful dictators fear pockets of free-thinking people, even when those pockets are small and defenseless and powerless when compared to the dictatorship.

Since Microsoft cannot compete with Linux-based systems on price, they must do it in other ways:
1. Patent warfare to make Linux-based systems illegal, and
2. Compelling desktop technology lock-in, such as pushing their continued domination of word-processing formats as standards, and
3. Locking down the "open standards" cloud by including standards such as Silverlight that are strictly controlled by Microsoft.

They've done a pretty good (if not honorable, but hey, business is about legalized rape and pillage, isn't it???) job with #2, they're trying their best with #1, and now they realize they must also succeed at #3 since some form of cloud computing is an increasingly valuable part of the future.

Philospher, Yep I agree and perhaps Ive allowed the issue to wander, its simply that MS office is pushed by MS agents as some sort of flagship product for MS and nobody has previously answered my question.

@officeuser: Thanks for answering the question. Thank you for your honesty, and the fact that youve given the alternative a go. I am pleased that you found the best suited package for your needs, and although I would always suggest you try the latest version of open office and see if thats still applicable, the fact that youve justified your opinion of the MS product is good enough for me.
I could argue the points that you have made regarding Word/Office, but as I say, you seem comfortable and happy with it so there is no need.
Regards.

Re: "If you don't trust online docs then Open Office is very mature these days. Then you could spend the money saved on a decent DTP program!"

Like Scribus! And then, you'll still have all your money left and can do something really much more fun with it!

@Goblin who says :
"Philospher, Yep I agree and perhaps Ive allowed the issue to wander, its simply that MS office is pushed by MS agents as some sort of flagship product for MS and nobody has previously answered my question."
----------------------------------------------------
The question you asked has touched on a major nerve at Ballmer Central. After all, this is Microsoft's, major cash cow, so you would expect all these softie's to come out of the woodwork to defend it. A few maybe, are not, but most here will be.

So what does MS Office do that OpenOffice cannot do for free? That was the question, boiled down to its essence, wasn't it? The anwser is, almost nothing, except to save you a pile of money, and lots of spyware from MS. There is one thing, the lock-in-ware that Microsoft keeps adding into MS Office on every new version. The way the file formats are saved, in a way that Microsoft hopes nobody can backward crack it. I have asked this same question of Joe Willcox now several times, when he goes on about how great MS Office is, and hardly ever discusses OpenOffice as an alternative. I guess that is where the advertising money comes from. I have a couple of legit versions of MS Office, but have to say, I prefer OpenOffice. Its easier to install, and because its free, I can give it to others. Does more than I will ever need.

On a side note, Goblin, did you notice the last post from a certain commentator, that just had to use the "richness" word? Microsoft is so hung up on this word that anything they write always contains that word, or "rich" in it. Also, makes it easy to spot those that copy and paste from Microsoft, like Andre, and even Joe, at lot when he writes. But we know why MS is so fond of the words richness and rich. Its what they, MS, want to take away from your the user, your richness, your money.

Yo chips ahoy boy.. This page isn't log enough to tell you what MS Office can do over OpenOffice. For you to even question that makes you a putz. Hell for your lack of intelligence, there is always the free WordPad...

Here is the difference, MS Office offers everything that the moronic OpenOffice developers couldn't figure out how to copy. And thus that is why there are patent laws.. It always cracks me up when open source weenies talk about patents. Tell me one thing they have created on their own and not copied completely.. How about use all that so called army of free resources and create something no one else has. Hell, I could care less since it will still be inferior to MS or Apple.

But again that would take creativity, and that my friends is something the open source has none of...

@Goblin:
"I see that Richnest is Godlyness could (he says) write "pages" about the faults of OpenOffice, but somehow, could not even come up with one thing, but that would take creativity and innovation. Two other words that Microsoft is big on using, but is not known for employing. So tell us, why pay $500 full price for MS Office over the very good free OpenOffice. If someone can.

@Richnest is Godlyness. :

"MS Office offers everything that the moronic OpenOffice developers couldn't figure out how to copy"

such as?

@Richnest is Godlyness.

Yep, youve answered in the way every other MS agent would. YOU HAVE GIVEN NO EXAMPLES. NOT EVEN ONE.
oh well, at least office user was honest enough to say he hadnt used it in a while.

Re: "This page isn't log enough to tell you what MS Office can do over OpenOffice. For you to even question that makes you a putz."

Also, this page isn't long enough to tell you what a Gulfstream G550 can do over a cut-rate deal on an airline's coach fare. For you to even question that makes you a putz. People who go for cut-rate coach fares when a G550 is so much more capable, comfortable, and convenient are idiots, freetards, cheap bastards, complete morons, inept and stupid fools who can't earn their way out of a paper bag. You're worms, scum, the lowest form of useless life... Am I right??? Or are some things too expensive no matter what short-term benefits they might offer? Take one side or the other; you can't have it both ways.

Re: "Tell me one thing they have created on their own and not copied completely."

The late Admiral Grace Hopper once said, "Programmers don't actually invent anything new. They just rename the old stuff." But that aside:

1. Linux kernel. Interfaces and ideas were copied, but no code was copied at all, let alone completely.

2. Thousands of FSF tools. They are written from scratch, with command line interfaces based on existing tools (e.g. GNU tar is based on the old AT&T Unix tar) at the user interface level, but the code itself is not copied.

3. BSD Sockets. Microsoft copied this code into their Winsock, and NOT the other way around.

4. Berkeley DB, written by the original authors of NDB (so I guess that's copying if you consider copying one's own work as copying...), who went on to found Sleepycat Software, who are now part of Oracle.

5. GNU Emacs. A stellar gem written from scratch without copying much of anything at all, except for copying a burning passion to create. But copying the best of the human spirit is only illegal in brutal bloody dictatorships.

And I could go on and on and on. But you only wanted one example. So pick from among hundreds of millions of examples. Take your time.

Does Open Office include the ability to use macros and simple VB programs? (And please don't give me a hail of comments saying that VB isn't really programming; I have done programming in other languages)

Does Open Office's spreadsheet program have the huge range of built-in functions that can be combined to do just about any calculation you can imagine? (I've studied computability as well, so I know that you can theoretically build any computable function using those provided by Excel)

Since there are things I dislike about Excel, I might consider trying an alternative for spreadsheets, providing it can do those two things and has an easy UI.

Since I dont use open office for anything more than the average document and have no need of a spreedsheet, why not just download it and see for yourself?

http://www.openoffice.org/product/

Youve got nothing to loose, its free, it wont install any nasty spyware and for the sake of a few hours testing it, you could save yourself money!

@Goblin,
I hear you, and agree wholeheartedly.

In fact, I haven't yet created a document that I am willing to commit to a word processor for which OpenOffice.org isn't 100% acceptable. I have a small collection of documents of 100+ pages that I created from scratch in OOo and actively maintain. The careful design and use of style hierarchies makes the job a joy, and the 100% perfect one-step PDF export makes sharing them with Windows and Mac users a snap.

(I once had serious problems with OOo's rendering of an MS Word for Mac document. But then I found out that MS Word for Windows users had the same rendering problems. And so PDF export was the only way to see the properly-rendered document, even for Microsoft Word users. Hey, if .doc and .docx don't survive from Mac to Windows, then what kind of a standard is it???)

I haven't yet had a job in my 30 years of working that needs a spreadsheet, so I cannot comment on how suitable OO Calc is. Every once in a while, I have to update someone else's Excel spreadsheet, and OO Calc does a seamlessly correct job and leaves it intact and fully usable by Excel. But I am only entering some numbers and moving on; I am not designing it or creating charts from it.

A better open-source spreadsheet is Gnumeric. I have used it only a little bit, and it seems to work fine on those Excel spreadsheets also. But again, I have no need for it, and so like a box of artist paints to a blind man, OOo Calc and Gnumeric sit on my disk but are not really used.

I have started the tutorials for Scribus but haven't yet assembled a complete document using it. However, that would be my first choice for a document or newsletter that is outside the bounds of OOo Writer's capabilities. The Scribus web site links to some very fine examples of newsletters and other publications created using Scribus.

For printed letters (most recently, for example, formal recommendation letters for Eagle Scout candidates), I find that NOTHING touches LaTex. Compared to the polyester suit that is the output from Word, WordPerfect, WordPro, and OOo Writer, the $800 silk suit that is the output from LaTex is so much better; not glaringly better, nor snazzy and snappy, but understated and supremely elegant. No, it isn't for everyone. And so this is NOT a recommendation. But for the 0.0001% of us who actually care about properly correct typesetting, LaTex is the only way to go without spending a fortune on high-end professional tools or services.

@Office User :
"Does Open Office include the ability to use macros and simple VB programs?"
----------------------------------------------------
Visual Basic is a Microsoft Program, and a such who knows what one Microsoft program will play nice with a 3rd party program. Since like Goblin, I only an Office Suite for Word Processing, and very little spreadsheet functions, I cannot answer your question. I can say with certainty, that OpenOffice is vastly improved since the time (4 years) that you last took a look at it. I would just be curious what you are using the VB to do in Excel? I very much doubt that many people would ever want to do what you are doing with VB in MS Office. Sounds quite advanced, and few will have those abilities.

Also, a short search on google for "using visual basic in openoffice spreadsheet" gives you a wealth (richness, lol) of information on doing this. It would seem to be very possible to do what you are asking. As its not a function I would ever use, I see not point in researching it further. And, I doubt very few users, both corporate and consumer, will ever have want or need for this as well.

@Office User:

Yeah I did a google on VB with OO, however due to not having personal experience with VB or excel I did not want to recommend the links as I was not sure how accurate or useful they would be to you.

I hope everyone reading this notices that an Opensource user doesnt seek to promote opensource through fancy press releases or dubious facts. If we havent used something we are honest enough to say so, unlike others who will promote MS and say anything, just to get another sale. There is nothing for us Open source supporters to gain except for the satisfaction of knowing that someone else has joined the open source community and is reaping the benefits.

MS supporters may call us MS-haters/nerds/thickies etc and if promoting something which is free and open to all users makes us one of the above, then I am proud to be one. You can be too! Try out open source! The most valuable opinion is your own!

@chips b malroy
I had a summer job for a company that was moving several old inventory systems for different departments into one inventory system for the whole company. For whatever reasos, the people in charge of the project decided that the easiest (or possibly cheapest; summer students don't cost much) way of doing this was to export all the data from the old systems into Excel. Then I had the job of cleaning up the data in Excel so that it fit the format the new system needed. This involved at least 15000 records per old system.

In some of the old systems, there was no uniqueness check on a field that the new system needed to be unique. So I wrote a program to check that if two containers had the same sustance ID, they contained the same substance.

Then I had to split container size and units from one field into two. Units could be litres, grams, kilograms, unknown, and so on. There was no way I was going through 15000 records manually, so I wrote a program to separate the numbers from the letters and to flag up if someone had typed in an invalid entry.

There were various other little tasks that were made a whole lot easier by using VB.

The whole process also involved an add-in program that allowed Excel to display chemical structures. Because Microsoft products are so hugely used and they support their partners so much, there are plenty of add-in and supporting programs that are ready-made. If I'd done that in Open Office, I expect I'd have had to have written the add-in program myself.

@Philosopher
Thanks for your advice about Gunmeric, but I would want a whole suite, not individual products. In my opinion, the best thing about MS Office is that all the parts are designed to work together. It's incredibly easy to embed data from one program in the others. I can take an Excel chart and, with the press of a button, put it in a Word document. I can take data from a spreadsheet or an Access database (or SQL, or whatever) and set up a mail merge. The different Office programs are designed specifically to work together.

You can probably get the same amount of flexibility from using separate programs, but it won't be anything like as easy unless those programs were also designed as a group, intended to work together. So, no matter how good an idividual spreadsheet, word-processing or presentation program might be, I wouldn't want it unless it came with the other programs which would exceed their Office equivalents.

LaTeX? I can't argue there. If you want absolute precision in your type-setting, it's the way forward. But it's not as easy to use by several million miles. The programs that set out to make it easy to use LaTex (MiKTeX, TeXNiX Center, another one I thought was actually pretty good but can't remember the name of now) either aren't that easy to use, or turn end up being like just another word processor and take away all the benefits of using LaTeX. I have used LaTeX in the past. I may use it in the future. But it's not something I'd even consider for everyday documents.

@Office User:
Re: Your summer job.

I thought about this a bit, and realized that there are several paths to converting the data, depending on one's background and role:
* Summer student: Use Excel. It's overkill, but it does the job, it's everywhere, and that's what you were told to use anyway.
* Programmer: Use Perl. It's everywhere... really easily found or built EVERYWHERE, and can also do the job with speed and ease. But it requires more digging, and there won't be as much 3rd party help, so you'll need to be an experienced programmer to to the job in Perl. (And it's this attribute of Perl that has helped to keep me from needing any form of spreadsheet ever.)
* Office manager: Hire a cheap summer student. ;-)

Re: "the best thing about MS Office is that all the parts are designed to work together"

Yes, this is true. For desktop and general office use, Microsoft's OLE is really, really cool and easy.

But move them around the network and watch the links break. Check them into a source code control system and watch the links break.

To be fair, though, OpenOffice Writer really falls down on the job with respect to embedded drawings. The embedded drawing tools are poor, importing from OO Draw is clumsy, and importing from Inkscape's SVG is impossible. I've gotten along without this being a problem for the most part. But it is an issue.

And I do sorely miss the old days of tag-based text files as source to document processors. LaTeX is difficult to use but oh, the results!!! The old IBM BookMaster was easy and great in this regard. Ventura Publisher allowed both WYSIWYG and direct edit of the tags, but the document's native format was the tagged text file. As documents grow in size and longevity, Word/OOo type tools creak and groan and begin to come apart.

I find it curious that the rage for documenting Java code is not by creating a separate masterpiece document, but by embedding Javadoc tags directly in the comments of the code. With things like @param and @return and HTML code and pre tags and the like floating around, one of the most modern and widespread languages in use today is documented using the old-school tag-based strategy. Even WYSIWYG-like Javadoc editors are still storing the results in the tagged form, much like Ventura Publisher did.

@Office User :
Again, I believe it could be done, just from all the hits I got in google. Now you stated that the OpenOffice you used was 4 years old, and from my very limited googling, I would guess that OpenOffice has only had this for about 2 and a half years. My point being, is that you go on about how you need this function, and OO will not do it for you. And I say, most likely from what I see it does do it. There is no reason to use 4 year old software, OO version 3 just came out and its free.

Now if you want to use MS Office, and pay the price, or your employer pay the price, thats fine. More power and richness to Micro$oft. But I do think its unfair that you try to use this method to try and berate free software.

Why waste your time on Office User, he is just another MS employee trying to protect the bottom line of the cash cow MS Office. It obvious someone smart enough to program, but so stupid as then to compare it with 4 year old software, has an agenda.

A bit late, but first of all let me start by saying most of you seem to have a bit too much time on their hands, as I do right now. Feels good to get that off my chest :)

So, most of you seem to be missing the elephant in the room. The cautious observer will have noticed that Microsoft unveiled that they bridged end-to-end, at PDC 2008. At that's not to be taken lightly. Let's put MS's practices and reputation aside for a moment, and look at their current state of achievement (what has been publicized, MS is much more secretive than they would like anyone to suspect).

We'll come back to this. Let's look at office software portability now...

Google may offer web based office software but they are not on the desktop and mobile. It's actually a hack-job built on top of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, doing things they were not designed to do. Apps is indeed impressive, pushing beyond the possibility of that programming model to the very limit - THE LIMIT. Even HTML 5 does not promise a programming environment suitable for critical enterprise productivity software, or that would enable significant improvements to HTML/CSS based software. Also, it costs Google bandwidth and servers. Nice idea... painted in a corner, anyone?

The open source community has a few word processors, and presents a much bigger threat to Office on the desktop. But they are not available on the web. Far off are the days of web deployments of open source productivity software on massively scallable web farms with enterprise-level SLAs. Yes, the Open Cloud may be the future - THE FUTURE. Even then, bring up an open cloud tomorrow, and you are left with the small issue of porting open suites to the web. Will they do this using HTML 5 or perhaps SVG? Good question, buth either way it implies a long painful rewrite without code reuse. Or even using the same compiler.

MS Office is the most installed office suite with the largest base of users, and documents. Impressive considering the ridiculous price tag. And now it is available on Windows, Mobile, Mac, and it's been announced (and demoed) for the web. It also integrates across Outlook, SharePoint, SQL Server and the .Net framework. I have two amazing Excel spreadsheets here. One is a robin hood game, and one is a demonstration of a 3D engine (using Excel formulas, not VBA), both entirely programmed within Excel. I could create a document that includes real-time 3D and games by embeding such spreadsheets in a Word doc.

But that's not really the point. What is truly stunning is that it operates on MS technology from end to end. The OS, the programming languages, the .Net framework, the database, the browser, and chances are the user has an MS keyboard and mouse with office hotkeys. Both the desktop and web UIs are coded in XAML. And I suspect most of the code is C# and compilable both in .Net and Silverlight libraries. That is no small feat. MS invested tens of billions of dollars to get there. And getting there included many expensive failures.

So, the shortest path to a competing equivalent would seem to be something like... Google (web office, cloud, browser), Sun (Java platform, compilers, dev tools), Adobe (RIA design tools, flash), Oracle (database) and Apple (operating system) all merging together and scrambling to integrate their technologies. Very unlikely to succeed.

I will let you disagree with me that MS is lightyears ahead... but know that they also have 40 billions in cash. In case I'm wrong and you're right, to be sure I will end up right before they burn even a quarter of that cash.