What Microsoft OS is best for business?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston libre and OpenOffice are effectively identical and both very awesome. They match MS Office in all core functionality. Only very specialty features demand MS Office.
The functionality may be there, but the formatting sure isn't. If you have a ton of files already made in MS Office, you should definitely test many of them with the alternatives to ensure recreation isn't required. Also, if you share files .doc .xls files with outside companies, test, test, test to make sure you don't have formatting problems on their side.
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Ahhh. I've had a small amount of experience with LibreOffice, but not enough to really know. Thanks!
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Using LibreOffice to read MS Office files is an unfair comparison. That's asking it to do more than we ask of MS Office. Apples to apples it is very nearly on par.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Using LibreOffice to read MS Office files is an unfair comparison. That's asking it to do more than we ask of MS Office. Apples to apples it is very nearly on par.
uhmm.. Perhaps it's unfair, not sure I agree. Even so, it's super important to understand. 90% or more of the files sent to him from outside will be MS Office based or PDFs, if you don't take that into consideration You're in for a major disappointment. Same goes with pre existing files.
Now if you're a brand new (or relatively new) company with little expectation to share files outside of your own users, Go for it!
Our sharing of files with outside sources is one of the major reasons we stuck with MS Office.
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Files from the outside "should" be PDF. And that doesn't have to do with MS Office or LibreOffice. The office formats are for collaboration, PDFs are for sharing. One is an editing format and the other is a publishing format for when something is finalized. Stuff received from the outside isn't normally something that you are concerned with for editing because of the nature of it coming from the outside. Some companies do this, but it is increasingly rare as end users start to be slightly computer literate and understand what to use for what. Ten years ago DOCs were common for this kind of thing, today I see PDFs 90% of the time which has made office alternatives very viable.
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LibreOffice / OpenOffice do pretty well with MS Office files these days. It's not 100%, but it is pretty good. If you are doing continuous back and forth collaboration with MS Office, that's different except then you can tell the MS Office side to use the OpenDoc format.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Files from the outside "should" be PDF. And that doesn't have to do with MS Office or LibreOffice. The office formats are for collaboration, PDFs are for sharing. One is an editing format and the other is a publishing format for when something is finalized.
According to who?
Do many companies actually use LibreOffice? I couldn't imagine not using Office at work. It's not like it's expensive. I could maybe live without Word, but definitely not Excel.
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@Carnival-Boy Yes, lots of companies actually use Libre and OpenOffice and for the SMB it is often the most expensive software that they have. It's not "that" expensive but enough that even extremely profitable companies with hundreds of employees freak out each and every time they re-up it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy Yes, lots of companies actually use Libre and OpenOffice and for the SMB it is often the most expensive software that they have. It's not "that" expensive but enough that even extremely profitable companies with hundreds of employees freak out each and every time they re-up it.
Exactly, what do you consider not expensive? Office Value License is the only thing that should be used in a 10+ user environment for management reasons alone. Office Pro Plus VL is $500+ with SA it's over $750 for three years. You could of course go with O365 Office Pro Plus for $12/user/month. If you're the type to always buy SA, then O365 Office Pro Plus is the best/cheapest way to go. If not, then buying at least a one time VL license is.
There are lower Office VL options, but I have no idea what the costs on them are.
At the above listed price, your at anywhere from 1/3 the cost of the PC to the same cost (someone just posted a Dell Optiplex for $500 the other day - damn a business class machine that cheap.. holy cow!)
SMBs only care about what they are putting out of pocket today, not over the life of the product/software/etc. If they did, they would realize Office is pretty cheap and they probably make a ton of money using it vs not using it.
But as Scott is about to mention, it's probably likely that many of those same business could get away with using a completely free product like LIbreOffice too. -
I agree that MS Office is often a good value. But how many SMBs consider $500 cheap? What else costs that much?
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A big difference in office suites is that at $500 you tend to worry about who should get a copy. With OpenOffice you just install for everyone.
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$500 / user is a lot if money. That is $50K for 100 users. That's likely bigger than the entire server room budget for that many people.
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It's certainly a concern now that H&B OEM licences are no longer available (see other thread). I used to just buy a licence with the PC and no-one cared about the cost. Simple and cheap.
I'm now torn between open licences or O365 being the way forward.
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What do OpenOffice users use for e-mail and calendering? Outlook is probably the killer app for us in terms of Office.
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What's your email back end? If it's Office 365, why not use OWA? Sure you can't any add-ons with it (that I know, who knows maybe you can), but if you don't use add-ons it's pretty close to the full outlook client.
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On-premise Exchange. To be honest, if you're on Office 365 I think it makes more sense to get Office with it. I believe it's only going to be an extra $90 a year on the new Business Premium plan.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
On-premise Exchange. To be honest, if you're on Office 365 I think it makes more sense to get Office with it. I believe it's only going to be an extra $90 a year on the new Business Premium plan.
Eh? The difference from E1 to E3 goes from $8 to $20 a month, or $144 more per user a year. This $144 is nearly the same price SMBs have been paying for a locally installed copy of H&B version for the last 4-6 years, and they only paid it once for the life of the PC. It's pretty obvious that MS has had a Major price shift in their SMB market pricing for this product for those who didn't care about SA.
Why would Office 365 encourage people more to purchase the locally installed version if they don't really need it?
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@Dashrender said:
Eh?
New plans are out in October which will effectively cut the cost of the Midsize business plan to $12.50 (now named Business Premium). This is what most SMBs will be getting. Yeah, it's still more than H&B, but that's no longer an option unless you're a tiny business. So the choice is $90 per year or LibreOffice. I'd take Office every time for that price.
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oh that's right I do recall someone posting here about that.
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@Dashrender part of the issue is that O365 pushes Pro Plus not the versions widely applicable to the SMB.
