If the world didn"t need reminding of the ongoing battle of Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice, the software giant reaffirmed that this month by posting a video on YouTube of Microsoft customers complaining about OpenOffice.
Entitled "a few perspectives on OpenOffice", the video details 15 customers who switched to Office after using OpenOffice. The video uses a variety of quotes that hint at lower productivity, poor interoperability and general frustration with Openoffice. Interestingly, Ars Technica note that a lot of the quotes are from case studies and press articles that the software maker has published over the past four years. As these aren"t recent quotes it"s entirely possible that those experiences are no longer accurate.
The timing is impeccable. OpenOffice is currently one of the best office suites available for Linux users and provides good compatibility with Microsoft documents. Until recently, the main developer of OpenOffice was Sun Microsystems which Star Office was based upon. Since the acquisition of Sun by Oracle earlier this year the product"s future has been in limbo. In late September, The Document Foundation sized control of the OpenOffice suite and gave it a temporary name of "LibreOffice" to declare its independence from Oracle. Oracle still holds the rights to the OpenOffice brand and it"s unlikely that the company will release those.
Still, we enjoy a bit of competitive bashing just like the next man. Check out the video below.
Update: A few readers have pointed out that Microsoft has removed the video from its YouTube channel. We have reached out to Microsoft spokespeople for clarification.
Update 2: The video is now back online.