Real World IT

George Ou

MS Office 2007 versus Open Office 2.2 shootout

By George Ou | April 27, 2007, 3:00am PDT

Summary: After yesterday's blog about the relevance of feature bloat, I figured that I would follow up with some quantitative analysis on the performance characteristics to measure resource bloat. This isn't the first time I've measured Office CPU and memory consumption of Microsoft Office and Open Office. I have a whole series on it dating back [...]

After yesterday's blog about the relevance of feature bloat, I figured that I would follow up with some quantitative analysis on the performance characteristics to measure resource bloat. This isn't the first time I've measured Office CPU and memory consumption of Microsoft Office and Open Office. I have a whole series on it dating back to 2005. This time, I'm pitting Microsoft-backed OOXML (Office Open XML) versus the OASIS-backed ODF (OpenDocument) format with Microsoft Office 2007 and Open Office 2.2.

Before I start, I'm going to disclose the hardware, OS, and software I'm using to measure these two Office suites.

Hardware:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13
2 GB DDR2-800
ATI X800 PCI-Express Video Card
500 GB SATA-II hard drive housing the sample files

OS and software:

Windows Vista
Microsoft Sysinternals Process Explorer (resource measurement)
Microsoft Office 2007
OpenOffice.org 2.2

Baseline measurements for opening Application
Application	CPU time (milliseconds)			Memory	Number of I/O
Application	Kernel	User	Total	Peak KB	Read	Write	Other
MS Excel	234	328	562	24308	14	10	1422
OO.o Calc	625	593	1218	47788	364	12	13106
MS Word	171	390	562	31776	136	13	1957
OO.o Writer	343	687	1031	46700	365	8	13120
PowerPoint	250	343	593	27796	14	10	1403
Impress	484	843	1328	52804	921	16	14849
MS Access	484	531	1015	25836	12	9	967
OO.o Base	781	906	1687	49984	1708	176	22832

Office 2007 base memory consumption went up significantly compared to the Office 2003 I measured last year, but it's still significantly less than OpenOffice.org 2.2. Some of the OpenOffice.org applications, like Base, require Java to run, and the memory consumption spikes over 70 megabytes as soon as you start navigating in the interface. However, the difference between Microsoft and OpenOffice.org base resource consumption has gotten smaller. Next, we test the CPU and memory utilization of Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc when opening the same 16-sheet test file.

Opening large spreadsheet
Application	CPU time (milliseconds)			Memory	Number of I/O
Application	Kernel	User	Total	Peak KB	Read	Write	Other
XLS (MS)	265	2046	2312	115548	39	17	2376
XLSX (MS)	296	12406	12703	65548	687	19	1854
ODS (OO.o)	968	58875	59843	253680	899	22	15822

Comparison of OpenOffice.org versus Office 2007 resource consumption

From these results, we can see that the OpenOffice.org ODF XML parser (while vastly improved) is still about 5 times slower than Microsoft's OOXML parser. OpenOffice.org also seems to consume nearly 4 times the amount of RAM to hold the same data. While OpenOffice.org continues to have fewer features than Microsoft Office, it continues to consume far more resources than Microsoft.

Even though these results still show drastic differences in CPU and memory consumption between MS Office 2007 and OpenOffice.org 2.2, it's not as extreme as the results measured last year. It would appear that OpenOffice.org 2.2 has gotten significantly better than version 2.0, but it still has a lot to work on. The official OpenOffice.org performance-tuning wiki is tracking some of these improvements. I praise their recent efforts and hope they keep it up because it will only bring more competition to the table. So while I may still consider OpenOffice.org a resource pig, the pig has definitely lost some weight.

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

More from “Real World IT”

Office feature bloat is no skin off my nose

2.5 *terabyte* hot-swap storage -- for $730

Topics

OpenOffice, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Corp., OpenOffice.org, George Ou

Full Bio
Disclosure
Contact

Vendor HotSpot

The 360° Conversation around Cloud Computing

TECH VISUALIZER brings the social conversation to life... powered by Brocade

Learn More »

306

Comments

Add Your Opinion

Join the conversation!

Follow via:: RSS; Email Alert

Just In

RE: MS Office 2007 versus Open Office 2.2 shootout

Stuarte 26th Feb 2009

I have a 2GHz dual core processor and when I am printing a large Word 2007 document it turns into a processor hog. Trying to run any other applications at the same time is totally frustrating. I thought the system would download a big chunk of the document to the printer buffer and be idle while the printer printed that chunk of the document. This does not seem to be the case with MSWord 2007. When it is doing its thing it just wants to bog the processor down all the time. Can anyone tell me what the Frac is wrong?

View in thread

Please Select
Please Select

0 Votes

+ -

Agree but...

Wingsbr 27th Apr 2007

for people who can't afford a full office suite, Open Office is great. Though it may not be as great at allocating my computer resources, it does help me allocate a more important resource, my money. =) Nice report and it's good to see the differences.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

That is the point, with today's hardware, the average user will feel the

DonnieBoy 30th Apr 2007

difference, only in their wallet. Don't forget that Vista also uses a ton of resources, for not much kick.

Meanwhile, as MS adds more and more features, tries to improve every little aspect of performance, going head to head with OpenOffice, they miss that the real competition is going to be Google Apps. They are also competing on the paradigm of formating everything for 8.5x11 paper, as that paradigm is about to be thrown on the stack heap of history.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

where are the test files?

D T Schmitz 27th Apr 2007

George, put a link to the files.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

I agree...

bportlock 27th Apr 2007

... we don't want any of the "let's compare loading a binary MS Office sheet with a text OpenOffice sheet - my goodness look at the difference in load times" kind of stunt George pulled last year.

Oh - and a workbook containing nine sheets of 16,000 rows with one formula per row isn't any more "typical" this year than it was last year.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Typical for business use

jshaw4343 27th Apr 2007

A workbook of that size is very typical in large business setting - especially in an accounting or finance shop.

But OO is pefect for home or even SOHO use where it's unlikely you will ever come across files of that size.

0 Votes

+ -

This might interest you

bportlock 27th Apr 2007

From

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2005/10/25/the-rorschach-of-ooo-analysis/

"To ?prove? that OO.o is a pig, Ou offers up a sample file here for users to perform their own tests. So far, so good. But once you get the file down, you may notice something a little bit odd: the file is 3.6 MB?s in size. That?s larger than just about any spreadsheet I?ve seen, but then go one step further and unzip the file, and you?ll discover that the content.xml portion of his sample file explodes to 279.5 MB?s."

"My brother, as a backgrounder, is I-banking trained in his usage of Excel [1] and currently employed by a relatively well known hedge fund. The files he sent over were financial models of two public companies, and essentially reflect the financial well being of the institutions in question in spreadsheet form. One spreadsheet has 7 sheets and the other 12, and the sizes? 188.5 kb and 294 kb, respectively. ..... I asked him how often he dealt with huge Excel files of the size that Ou featured, and his response was that they were very much the exception to the rule - and his is the profession that conventional wisdom at least says are the true power users of the format."

0 Votes

+ -

I completely concur with his statements...

ju1ce 27th Apr 2007

As I work in the industry.. happy

It is by far a HUGE exception to the rule that someone has large excel documents that exceed a few megs.

I've worked with financial/accounting groups in Fortune 500 companies. :P

Again which is another reason I keep pinpointing Ou's flaw with a 200 meg file. It's completely unrealistic.. It's just being used to exaggerate a difference but when push comes to shove and a normal user uses a normal every day file.. They will hardly notice a second difference if that.

0 Votes

+ -

Then I guess my execel are not HUGE!

BroGnorik 27th Apr 2007

I have been using excel to keep track of all my accounting. Checking, Debit, Credit cards, house hold bills, mortgages, car payments, and anything else that I left out. My excel file is almost 100 megs. I think it is around 179megs.

When I go on trips I use Open Office to access this file. I do not care if it uses more, or if it is even slower. I use Excel on my desktop and Open Office on my laptop.

Having a HUGE excel file is nothing new to me. At work I constantly work with excel files that are around 3 to 4 hundred megs.

I am sure that the majority of the excel files out there are a megs or less, but there are plenty of Huge Excel files out there.

Now I know I can use accounting software to do everything I am doing. I have tried and I do not like the accounting software. They do NOT do everything I need it to do.

0 Votes

+ -

Again..

ju1ce 27th Apr 2007

Just because you do it, does not mean everyone else does. If we looked at the ratio of 100+ meg files vs everyone's standard.. Who want to bet you're in a minority in comparison to everyone else.

0 Votes

+ -

I am impressed

dragosani 27th Apr 2007

Now I know I can use accounting software to do everything I am doing. I have tried and I do not like the accounting software. They do NOT do everything I need it to do.

Seriously, I am impressed that you got a spreadsheet to do more than the limitations of any accounting software.

I would love to see all of the formulas and macros(?) that you had to create. That must have taken a lot of work.

I am not being sarcastic. That must have been a herculean undertaking.

0 Votes

+ -

That is the worst way to use excel..

ju1ce 27th Apr 2007

So I hope you were being sarcastic.. Everyone knows there is a threshhold with excel and scripts, excel in general when you open and close the same document constantly.. It eventually corrupts.

0 Votes

+ -

And there you have it

D T Schmitz 27th Apr 2007

Another day in George Ou's World.
Next topic--Linux slow boot times, probably.
Yeh definally. Yeh. (Marathon Man)

0 Votes

+ -

er ah (Rain Man)

D T Schmitz 27th Apr 2007

0 Votes

+ -

30MB is routine

jshaw4343 27th Apr 2007

I've worked in several accounting and financial shops and routinely see spreadsheets that exceed 30MB with 20-30 worksheets. But a 300MB spreadsheet is just idiotic. Although I know they exist - I've seen them - that just means the users are stretching the spreadsheet way beyond what it was intended for. We had to start forcing our forecasting folks to archive their data or use a database because they were trying to send these files via email.

0 Votes

+ -

Even 20-30 megs

ju1ce 27th Apr 2007

Isn't bad, and you wouldn't see a huge footprint like comparing it to a 200+ meg file like George continually compares it too.

And about forecasters.. I totally agree. I'm doing that sort of process now with our forecast people here. happy

0 Votes

+ -

One has to use a file of sufficient size ...

slwerner 27th Apr 2007

A lot has been made about the file formats used, and the size of the file used to conpare the load times, but, bear in mind that one has to use a file of sufficient size in order to be able to detect a difference that can be precieved by the human eye.

I don't want to dipute George's methods, motives, nor his results - I'll take his numbers at "face value".

So, when opening a 279 Mb spreadsheet, Excel could do it in a mere 2.3 seconds, while Calc took 60. That is a fairly significant difference.

However, if we can assume that there is something approaching a linear relationship between file size and the time it takes to open that file, the same two programs opening a file one-tenth the size could be expected to take 0.2 and 6 seconds respectively - plenty of difference for one to see.

But, it an even more common file size of 2.79 Mbytes were to be used, then those numbers would drop to 0.02 and 0.6 seconds - you might have trouble telling the difference. And, if a truely typical file size were tested, 279 Kb, then the 0.002 and 0.06 second times would be impossible for anyone to notice.

George's numbers are probably a fair reflection of the comparability of the two suites. So, if you deal with 100+ Mb files, you're definately going to want Office. But, if you use 100+ Mb spreadsheet files, you might also want to consider if a datebase might not be a better vehicle for storing, organizing and retrieving that much data.

0 Votes

+ -

Finally, some perspective

bobsherrill@... 27th Apr 2007

Now, I understand that even though the test was accurately represented, the results are generally meaningless. That none of us would ever notice the difference, except in our bank accounts in using one or the other.
Thanks.

0 Votes

+ -

OO.o also provied tools to reduce filesize

shis-ka-bob 29th Apr 2007

If I have files of this size, I would use a relational database. In contrast with Access, OO.o's Base doesn't suck. I state this as someone who has made a fair amount of money writing Access databases. Access hasn't evolved in about a decade, while Base has a number of features that make it much better as either a front end to an Enterprise database or as a stand-alone database.

Many large text documents can be logically broken into chapters. With OO.o Write, it is easy to have each document stored in a separate file and to build a Master Document that links the Subdocuments.

Finally, I can put OO.o onto a blade and have users access virtual PC's on the blade. Then, using thin clients (using whatever scavenged hardware that will support a modern monitor), I can provide many users with access to OO.o. Since OO.o will be in memory (at least after 8:02 AM), it will load fast. Since our documents are on a SAN, we can read them very fast. While it's true we could do this with Office, the licensing is (relatively) expensive and a PITA.

So, while it is true that OO.o is slower than MSO for large documents stored on a PC, OO.o offers tools and deployment options that can effectively compensate for this issue.

Besides, OO.o is evolving much faster. If OO.o were to use something like Cubework's BXML, we could see the tables turn rather quickly. See http://www.w3.org/2003/08/binary-interchange-workshop/05-cubewerx-position-w3c-bxml.pdf

0 Votes

+ -

Dang fast HD, doncha' think?

NoCalDrummer 30th Apr 2007

Wow! "So, when opening a 279 Mb spreadsheet, Excel could do it in a mere 2.3 seconds, while Calc took 60. That is a fairly significant difference."
Nearly 280MB in 2.3 seconds?hat's over 120MB/sec. And that's just for opening the file. I'd sure like to know what hard disk he's using! Granted, 60 seconds for opening the same file (I'd assume it is?) is no speed freak(4.65MB/sec), but perhaps there's more going on than we're seeing. Maybe Excel is merely "opening" the file (i.e. getting the pointers, reading a few cells) whereas OOo is reading the whole file or perhaps the whole sheet before presenting the page. This might help account for some of the difference in observed time and observed system resource usage.
After all, since Excel is a closed, proprietary program, we've no clues as to what's actually happening. While it would be a fairly clever trick to ONLY do the calculations on those cells which are "visible" (after all, who'd know, since you can't see the others), one test for this would be to have nearly all cells depend upon data in other cells, maybe on other sheets (there's 16,000 cells x 9 sheets, right?) to see how "fast" each of them is. For example, Sheet1.A2 would contain a number that Sheet2.A2 might need in a formula, which Sheet3.A2 would need for its formula, etc. and Sheet1.A3 would need data that was calculated from Sheet9.A2, etc. but Sheet1.A1 would need data from Sheet9.A15999. Now THAT would be a test! And it wouldn't be too hard to set up, either.
Anyone want to bet that the 2.3 second "opening" gets blown away?
-R

0 Votes

+ -

2 seconds is for the 50 MB XLS file

georgeou 1st May 2007

2 seconds is for the 50 MB XLS file which works out to about 25 MB/sec which is correct.

0 Votes

+ -

Yes please...

lenohere 27th Apr 2007

give them the link to the files so we can put this to rest and the whining can stop...

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Actually, YOU are the only one whining on here

Scrat 27th Apr 2007

Everyone else seems to be having a decent, constructive talkback. Your posts are just inflammatory garbage.

0 Votes

+ -

Actually...

xuniL_z 27th Apr 2007

you call a long list of people trying to prove George is not being fair constructive? In a twisted way, maybe, but one more time, instead of telling others they are not constructive, why don't you take on the role of doing some of your own testing and post your results.
How hard could that be? then we'd have some actual comparisons instead of a continuing line of conjecture.

0 Votes

+ -

Just like last year

TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 27th Apr 2007

I posted this response and got zero replies.
http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10533-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=14492&messageID=409011&start=409

Summary
1) The supplied sxw file took 300 secodns to load (OO)
2) The supplied xml file took 30 seconds to load (Office)

Doing a .sxw-->xls, flip to office, save as XML, restart computer, then test that file load time was 120 seconds.

Doing the reverse, xml --> xls, flip to OO, save as ODF then retest load time took 70 seconds

I was able to prove that while each file LOOKED the same, there was obviously a LOT of extra formatting or hidden tags or each element has a separate characteristic or something in the OO file that was not present in the Office file.

I even hosted the files I generated for a while asking for some logical reason why the "same" files were not actually the "same".

So George, without the source files for independent evaluation, I find any results suspect. I would like to take the OO file, convert it into Office 2007 XML and test the times, then do the reverse.

TripleII

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

Why don't you do your own independent study

xuniL_z 27th Apr 2007

if you are that skeptical. Download trialware versions of the office suite and do your own tests with your own files??

I can't imagine nobody has done this considering the amount of suspicion there is by the OO backers. wouldn't that be the most simple way to refute his tests?

0 Votes

+ -

Simply because GEORGE is the blogger...

mdsmedia 27th Apr 2007

...so the tests HE runs are the ones up for debate, not the ones anybody else runs.

If a scientist runs tests and posts an article about them he is debated about his tests. This is what is happening here. Would you prefer that we all just sit back and LOOK at the BLOG and not even question it?

Oh yeah, you'd prefer that because then nobody would question it.

0 Votes

+ -

No, as I said,

xuniL_z 27th Apr 2007

I'd prefer you put your money where your mouth is and run your own tests. This isn't an out of reach experiment requiring vast sums of money and access to pregnant panda bears and a spaceship.

0 Votes

+ -

pregnant panda bears???? spaceships??

andrej770 30th Apr 2007

Dude! That's truly left field! LOL

0 Votes

+ -

Who is Office Milleage Champ?

i2fun@... 27th Apr 2007

So we have two formidable opponents, one in each or one in each lane of a race! Costs for the two is Open Office = $0.00 and Microsoft is??? Wait you didnt' know that cost should be figured into this equation, George? Well of course you don't when you're trying to prove you're right and the man here above has a question for you as well.

We want to make this fair right? Or is it just fair on your terms? I mean basically if two products are very similiar and the only real difference is a few mili-seconds, most people (if it's just for home) are going to choose free! That's a fact Microsoft has to live with.

Especially with Googles of the world doing better than they are with the pay for business model. But alas bringing costs in that you would generally use in a Versus Shootout would have your buddies at Microsoft losing once again to the OPEN and FREE guys! Google, Sun Open Office, who's next?

I think we got your number, George!!! wink

0 Votes

+ -

Google?

xuniL_z 27th Apr 2007

Yeah, nice model. Your personal data, or private corporate data on Google servers. Not at my sites. Won't even allow Google desktop due to the open internet link, which has been hacked and the storage of deleted data on their servers when using indexing. Not someting the casual or even possibly many businesses that allow it ever realize. I tried to upload a very minimal excel spreadsheet, mind you it was a poor man's time slice analysis of volume over time simply using binary values to indicate in use or not in use for 10 mintue intervals. the values are summarized to give hourly and daily totals...and beyond. Very simplistic use of a spreadsheet and I gave up after it worked over 30 minutes and had no sign of uploading. Sharepoint is a hellavu lot better for office app sharing anyway and provides blogging, calenaring, wikis and with web parts and MOSS, Google can't touch it. Google is only good for small workgroups since there is no admin controls and no way to provide any real security.

I don't know about OO. Seems like we are talking dumping again. I don't know how a free product can be put into the market at an availability rate that undercuts established business. Heck, I think even simple application of the Sherman act might come into play. Who owns OO or how many copyrights are involved? Like Linux itself, it will run into the situation where it's goint to have to play by the rules of capitalism, at least in the U.S. Charities can provide free items to people and such but dumping laws prevent this kind of market killing. Who benefits in the long run? Unless we are headed for democratic socialism, what is going to replace the money and jobs it displaces? It's a cancer really. All of "free" software is a cancer. It erodes the ecomomy and Jobs for thousands of people, at least Americans that don't want their lives to be subsidized by the government, like much of "free" software has been over the years.
I'd rather pay for a quality product that undercut families and children from a happy life. The U.S. is about more than "free software". I will bet that if OO reaches critical mass there will be action in the U.S. It would have been knocked down already if it weren't for the Microsoft judgements and it's "monopoly" which was born of and remains a political issue. If we had 30 seperate Office suite players with equal share in the United States each competing fairly, there would be no way a free product would be allowed to undercut those 30 businesses. Predatory pricing includes free.

0 Votes

+ -

Pot, Kettle - Black!!!

I am Gorby 29th Apr 2007

"there would be no way a free product would be allowed to undercut those 30 businesses. Predatory pricing includes free."

What about Microsoft providing FREE Internet Explorer to kill Netscape.

0 Votes

+ -

Fine to question it, but you need to provide your own numbers

georgeou 27th Apr 2007

Fine to question it, but you need to provide your own numbers if you want to contradict mine. Making accusations that my numbers are wrong without running any of your own tests and posting your own numbers is a cheap tactic but it doesn't mean anything.

0 Votes

+ -

Good point

FatherJ 30th Apr 2007

As the guy already said, if someone disagrees with even the most basic case study, the only way to refute the evidence is to perform your own study. It's called the scientific method:

1. observe a behavior
2. develop hypothesis
3. test hypothesis
4. repeat, repeat, repeat

If you wish to debate the original observations, then come up with your own test and repeat it until you're blue in the face. Although the article is limited in scope, it's purpose is very clear - although MS Office 2007 uses more resources than 2003, it still uses a fraction of OO 2.2.

End of case study.

0 Votes

+ -

Yup, that's all it says

georgeou 30th Apr 2007

Yup, that's all it says. The article says nothing about which suite is the better choice. It doesn't analyze usability. It doesn't tell the reader which solution to buy or download for free. I admit the scope is limited, but this isn't a thesis.

But what we have are a vocal minority who are simply angry with the results.

0 Votes

+ -

Ok?

dragosani 27th Apr 2007

So someone on a talkback forum posts their analysis of Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice.

Do you honestly believe that anyone is going to take them seriously?

It would be meaningless.

0 Votes

+ -

Well

xuniL_z 27th Apr 2007

Apparently from the response so far, your results would gain more favorable review than George's, so what is stopping you?
Go for it!! Show us how it's done fairly.

0 Votes

+ -

It wouldn't change your view

dragosani 27th Apr 2007

Thus it would be pointless.

However, why don't you do a complete write up on exactly how George's methods are absolutely without fault. Show some citation were these are procedurally correct according to proper scientific methods.

I would love to see that.

0 Votes

+ -

Well, if nothing else...

xuniL_z 27th Apr 2007

I'll give you a few small points for the dodge.

You point to where I've expressed how I feel about George's testing methods and I'll think about it.

In the meantime, thanks for the compliment! If I didn't believe your test, it would be meaningless. That's sweet of you to say, I mean there are many others on here that would love to see as well, so I feel special.

0 Votes

+ -

No write up of George's methods

dragosani 27th Apr 2007

I would really love to see them.

In the meantime, thanks for the compliment! If I didn't believe your test, it would be meaningless. That's sweet of you to say, I mean there are many others on here that would love to see as well, so I feel special.

I enjoy my EGO trips too! happy

Sometimes it is nice to share.

0 Votes

+ -

Sorry for Delay

TripleII-21189418044173169409978279405827 28th Apr 2007

Last year, on the company supplied laptop they provided dual boot, I had access to Office 2003. I was therefore able to do a somewhat accurate test (OO on Linux and 2003 on XP Professional), but it would not be valid to compare with so many differences. The only data point that was conclusive is that starting with the original story supplied .swx file, the load times were, as reported, just terrible. After taking the Office source file converting to binary on Office, transferring to the Linux side, converting, using OO into .sxw, that new version of the file loaded in 70 seconds or so.

Since the spreadsheet looked the same, was formatted the same and had all the same data, it led me to ask what was in the original spreadsheet in terms of formatting that cause the horrendous load times.

This year, I have a new laptop from IT, Linux only, no Office, let alone Office 2007, and buying XP and Office 2007 to perform my own analysis is simply not in the cards. Especially since I don't use or want office.

TripleII

0 Votes

+ -

ok, so you work at or are

xuniL_z 29th Apr 2007

a Linux only person and from your statement don't care for Microsoft at all. Ok, got it. I'm not sure how that buys any informative decisions in any IT shop to not look at all the options but whatever. Cost does not always mean more expensive you know. As Joe Biden points out there are many programs that the Dems want to do that are under fire for more taxes or more money, more money. But nobody ever seems to stop and think about what they might get back from that investment. At least the ultra conservatives don't. I think there is a mindset in the Linux community, esp. amoung those that support the radical FSF, which the inventor of the linux kernel himself does not support at all, that proprietary software, ms in particulare is evil. While I appreciate the socialist-like viewpoint on all things should be free (therefore subsidized by the government at some point, which means subsidized by the taxpayers which did happen for Unix research, which is all over Linux, for decades and continues today), I prefer the market economy and what it creates for the citizens of given country. More wealth all around. The best healthcare in the world w/o a doubt, the lowest amount of unemployment and lowest amount of welfare.
I'm not saying you are democratic socialist just because you don't like MS but many are that post here, if you read their posts over time and very carefully.

I think office 2007 has the potential to pay for itself in grand style in the short term. there has never in history been progress made without somekind of investment. I'm not willing to see if the communities of Linux programmers continue to do free work or get subsidized somehow for the next 10 years. Business needs some level of guarantee and it's too hard to plan for 5 or 10 years with open source since the roadmap is not there in most cases and you never know if a niche application might just go away or fork into anther project forcing big change. If you have a very tech savvy set of programmers and network admins it might be fine but if you have a shop with a budget, it's actually cheaper to buy Windows as capital investment than to hire and pay out benefits to a much larger IT dept. I've seen both. An avg. Windows shop needs no programming support if it doesn't want it and one person can run all of the network side. I konw a site where the datacom guy also manages the network including PC troubleshooting. PCs of this era just don't have that many problems, it doesn't take a Mac to last 5 to 7 years. With Active Directory and Group policy and the strong integraion from the XP and Vista clients it a snap to secure your network internally, right down to usb ports of course w/o a full time network admin. In theory and practice I've seen shops with 50 servers and 1000 clients get by with 3 people in IT and one of them does help desk and client staging and rollout.(cell phone helpdesk). and one person to handle the enterprise system running on Windwos that is the healthcare system (proprietary). I just don't see how that could happen in a Linux shop, esp after working with Unix for 10 years, and giving room for the change and new tools in Linux land.

0 Votes

+ -

They're the same ones I always used, but I haven't converted them yet

georgeou 27th Apr 2007

They're the same ones I always used, and they're linked on my older blogs from last year I referenced. However, I haven't converted them to the updated ODF and DOCX format for the download yet. When I do, I'll update the blog with updated links.

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

???

D T Schmitz 27th Apr 2007

Would it make sense to convert and rerun your empirical test?

0 Votes

+ -

I did convert them

georgeou 27th Apr 2007

I did run with the converted files. I just didn't post the converted files.

0 Votes

+ -

Are you...

D T Schmitz 28th Apr 2007

...trying to confuse me? wink

0 Votes

+ -

Read the blog, I clearly stated that I ran ODS and XLSX

georgeou 28th Apr 2007

Read the blog, I clearly stated that I ran ODS and XLSX files.

ODS = ODF XML format.
XLSX = OOXML format.

It's the same test files from last year which is merely one hyperlink away in my blog if you want to try them yourself. Those posted sample files weren't converted and they're the older XML formats but you're free to convert them yourself if you want to try them.

It's the weekend and I can't get anyone to post the converted files yet. So the best I can do for now is tell you to go to last years blog (linked in this blog) for the older files.

0 Votes

+ -

Nice article George

Scrat 27th Apr 2007

George,
Am I correct in thinking that the Java overheads are what is skewing these results i.e if OpenOffice was written with native code it would probably hold its own quite nicely against MS Office?

Reply
Flag

0 Votes

+ -

But.....

lenohere 27th Apr 2007

"If OpenOffice was written with native code it would probably hold its own quite nicely against MS Office?"

But it's not.. Get over it. You compare the finish products.. not what if's....