I agree that looks is important. (In user interfaces, that is )

My favourite is actually RedHat's Blue Curve. It looks nice and clean and (most importantly) it's not a rip-off of Windows or MacOS X. I've seen skins that makes your favourite window manager look like Windows XP or MacOS X. I don't see the point in that. Style is important. Having your own is more so!

Martin

Edit: The opposite seems to be possible too:
http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.as...=1&SkinID=3418

Here's my 2 pennorth - MS Office is now in version 11, 12 something like that. OpenOffice is in version 1. So Open Office is still trying to get it to work. Once everything is working and it does everything it needs to do they can start in on making it look pretty.

If we look at it like for like, I'm pretty sure that MS Office v1 couldn't do half the things OOo v1 can.

But I agree, Office progs do look prettier. If only that was all that mattered, we'd all be confirmed Windows users and would never want to touch anything else.

whose to say MS office makes Open office look ancient?? What if i think OO makes MS look ancient.....beauty is in the eye of the beholder...


btw, i don't agree with that, it was just a thought.

hehehe jpat.

Very true. It kinda brings home that we are saying OOo looks ancient when compared with MS Office - a set of apps which concentrate very hard on looking nice.

Ah well.

I can't stand to even think about Outlook It sucks trying to find out how to do what I want. Evolution is much simplier. And I don't have to run a virus scan on each email

I like the way OO works.

Well, I wouldn't say that OOo looks like a junkyard, but when I switch on my computer, if I want to look at pretty pictures, or play games, I can do that, btut if I want to work, it should be functional. If you want pretty grass, trees and flowers, there's no need to look out of the window, just switch on windoze xp, and there you go, just don't try and do anything useful on it, you wouldn't do that while looking out the window.

Corporate users don't care what looks prettier. Honestly, do you think that a CTO or CIO is going to choose one program or application over another because it looks better? Before an application is adopted into a corporate working environment it will spend months in a model office being tested for functionality, usability, and interoperability with other applications. The best apps are then weighed based on initial cost and overall cost of ownership, and finally factors like support and setup are taken into account.

Now, as far as the average home user, then of course 'Coolness' is a major factor in deciding which software to buy/steal. Why do I say buy/steal? Because most people probably wouldn't pay the price that M$ charges anyway. Just about everyone that I know that has any of the office suites either obtained them with the PC they pruchased, or pirated them.

slight

Yep, it clearly needs to be tidyed up - however - the fully featured functionality of it is astonishing considering its age - all credit to the developers.....

I don't think anyone should reasonably expect otherwise, but of course there
are quite a few linux users who are too passionately in love with their OS to
see anything but amazing power and quality. Take StarOffice: a hugely
bloated, poorly documented, buggy, absurdly slow, resource hungry,
commercial application that fell pathetically short of its aim of competing with
MS Office. Okay, Star Office sucks. Now let megacorporation Sun acquire Star
Office. Okay, Star Office still sucks. Now let Sun open source it as Open Office.
Ooops! Star Office doesn't suck anymore! Now it's 300 times better than
MS Office! It doesn't matter any more that it has no serious documentation.
It doesn't matter any more that it takes over a minute to load, creates its own
brain-dead desktop, displays all kinds of weird visual artifacts, takes hundreds of
megs of disk space, inhales ram, lacks over half the features of MS Office, etc. It's
now joined the hallowed ranks of open source software, so it must be incredibly good.

It's hard to compare the Microsoft and Linux/OSS models point for point because
they are produced in such different ways and aimed at such different
crowds. However, I would say that Linux is roughly 5 to 10 years behind
MS in most application areas. I also wouldn't expect this to change much in
the future. I have watched quite a few operating systems over the years
and I've never seen anything develop as slowly, unevenly, and haltingly as Linux
and its applications.

Let me pause for a moment to allow the mouseketeers time to gasp, LOL, hoot,
screech, faint, go HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, etc.

In view of this, I think doing as well as Office 97 is pretty good.
That's about as good as your going to get from an open source model.
Do you know of any Linux apps that are more modern and powerful than Open
Office?

Mozilla? It had a corporate sponser and millions of dollars of development; it's finally
getting to be a halfway decent browser. Perhaps.

Evolution? It also benefited from the .com boom and had millions of dollars dumped on
it. But, nope. (I've used Evolution for 2 years. Too flaky, but it definitely sucks less
than the Linux alternatives I've tried.)

Gimp? The poster child of the purely OSS model has often been taken to be Gimp, but
... well ... no.

Emacs, Latex, ... ? I've used them for the better part of 20 years. All I can say is,
I'd give my right arm to break the lock-in that sustains these feature impoverished,
poorly designed, and absurdly antiquated systems.

Anything else? I'm drawing a blank.

Some days......that's how I feel. I get so frustrated that I wonder if it's worth it.

K this is what I think...

MS Office 2003 came out and takes up around 900 and something MB whereas OpenOffice 1.1 takes 140ish..... now thats where your pretty gui is

I like Office aswell but not that much, I use it on a day-to-day basis at work (yeah still haven't got them converted fully lol) and I find Office extremely unstable, and thats on a pretty clean machine. Whereas when I get home, I have a PC running a web server, SQL server etc etc and it still runs fine.....

Now thats why I don't care about how the GUI looks... it's just not important

A very interesting statement. Now, if I may ask, what qualifies one program as 5 to 10 years ahead of another? Eye candy aside, I think that Office 97 and Office 2003 are quite similar. One may have a few extra features, but in the end, how can one editor/spreadsheet/presentation app be 5 to 10 years ahead of the other. They both do the exact same thing. I think it is all about perspective. Applications on Linux are built for functionality, mainly because they do not have to rely on 'coolness' as a means of marketing. Most OpenSource programmers would rather let their app speak for itself, rather than spend needless time beautifing it so that it is visually appealing to the masses. I value a program that does what I ask it to do, and does it in the most efficient way possible. Old or new, I could care less. If it works, it works.

slight

Stop comparing Office 97 and 2003, they are the same thing.
Find me GREAT characteristics that couldn't have been changed with a patch(bloat interface aside) And then you will have a point.

Here you go:

Email Desktop Alerts
Announcements inform you immediately of new e-mail messages coming in, no matter which program you are using. You can open or delete the e-mail message from this notification window.

This is not an annoying pop-up window. It is a really nice feature that makes me use Outlook 2003 over Outlook XP


Inking support for the Tablet PC
If you use a Tablet PC, you can use a digital pen to annotate files in your own handwriting. Take notes, insert diagrams, or send files with comments to others.



XML support in Word 2003
Word 2003 supports customizable XML schemas, enabling you to open business documents that contain XML data and work with them like any other document. In addition, you can save and open XML files in Word 2003 to integrate with key business data in the organization.


Word 2003 formatting restrictions
Lock down a document through the Protect Document task pane. Give coworkers permissions to edit content in a document, but not any of the styles that make up the document formatting.

Shared contacts
Share your contacts with others to ensure that team members have the contacts they need to reach people and conduct business. View shared contacts from within Outlook 2003.


Shared attachments
Simplify the process of working with others to co-author, edit, and review files. When you send a file as a shared attachment with Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003, you can create a Document Workspace.1

If you want more on this look here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/edit...o/compare.mspx

I use most, if not all, of these features at work every day!

Tell me that OOo can do this. Please........show me where/how!

As more and more businesses use Collaboration in the workplace for documents and email OOo will just become further behind.

Peace,
Whitehat

Whitehat, the features you outlined are minor, and as Baldorg said, all of these could have been accomplished with a minor patch, even to 'OLD' software like office 97.

Feel fortunate my friend.... you have fallen into the black hole that is Microsoft's strategic marketing plan. Take an old product, tac on a couple of small additions, make it look pretty, and then convince people that they should pay out the ass for it.

Now, I will agree that Office2003 does include features that are not a part of OpenOffice, or KOffice. Are the features necessary? Do they justify the cost? Do they improve the end result? Maybe, maybe not. OpenOffice is not perfect, by any means, but it does what I need it to do, and it doesn't get in my way.

slight