A n00b g33k blog

There’s some great discussion going on over at Slashdot about moving from MS Office to OpenOffice. The question was specifically asked for small businesses.

Slashdot | Can a Small Business Migrate Smoothly To OpenOffice.org v3?

Pay The Piper writes “As an IT Support Technician in a small corporation, I’ve been tasked by one of my managers to determine the feasibility of transitioning our small 40 or 50 person office from Microsoft Office 2000 to Open Office 3.0. What are some of the problems I may run into as far as document cross compatibility? Has the Open Office suite evolved to a point that permits easy transition from Microsoft’s suite? Besides the obvious ‘free vs. expensive’ argument, what are some of the pros and cons of transitioning? Are there any reliable ways to view/edit/save a document saved in the OpenXML format through Open Office, or are my co-workers and I still going to be stuck in Microsoftland?” (Given that company-wide rollouts take some time to implement, this early look at the features of OO.o 3.1 may have some relevance, too.)

I personally think this is a great move. I really do like Office 2007, I think it has some great features but nothing that a small business would miss. If you’re already on Office 2007 I think it’s too late but if you’re looking at migrating from Office 2000 I think OpenOffice is a very viable option. Employees will whine no matter what you move to. Having used (as in currently using) all three applications I think that there is just as much of learning curve going from Office 2000 to 2007 as their would be going from Office 2000 to OpenOffice.

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