We are starting to do some project and application roadmapping, and am thinking about OpenOffice (and StarOffice) as a replacement for OfficeXP and Office 2000, which is on the bulk of our PCs.
- Roughly 120 users and PCs
- OE Windows XP Pro on virtually all desktops.
- Office 2000, Office XP, properly licensed (knock on wood).
- No Software Assurance
- Windows Server 2003 and Active Directory
- MS Exchange 2003 – not sure yet about Exchange 2008
- Outlook 2003 on top of lower Office installs
- "newish" but aging PC inventory .. very little change in the last 12 months.
- Windows SharePoint Server for the intranet .. it's use is growing
How much should I consider the Open Source alternatives?
What sort of things should I be concerned about?
What hidden issues and second-order consequences should I be aware of?
I am looking forward to hearing pros and cons, and any other comments.
Best Answer
Every year or two, I install OpenOffice and the problem is the same - documents don't format/translate quite right to/from their MS Office counterparts.
It doesn't seem to be overly wacko-paranoid to observe that Microsoft is good at stamping out competition. All they need to do is tweak things just a bit in each service pack & patch to make sure things don't translate quite right, and they continue to lock me in, because I don't have the resources to handle the additional support requests.
I think this is surmountable if:
Otherwise, I'd say the business disruption is more costly than the licenses (unfortunately).