[ILUG] random web bits

[fuzzbucket]

Niall O Broin wrote:

> 
> Why? For values of "knock off" which include "Product with more than 
> a passing similarity to better known competitor" Star Office / Open 
> Office can fairly be described as a (Microsoft) Office knock-off.
> 
> I know of one pilot implementation of OO where the only remark made 
> to the support person by the people who had their Microsoft Office 
> replaced by Open Office was "Oh - did we get a new version of 
> Office?" Sounds like a pretty accurate knock off to me.
> 

I would read knock-off as counterfeit, like a knock-off Rolex. If you
read it as something which offers similar functionality then is MS
Office a knock off of every previous word-processing and spreadsheet app?

Your average office employee can't remember a PC badge ("I think it's
Dell"), let alone software names/versions. You could stick the latest
version of WordPerfect or AbiWord in front of them and get the same
reaction. The truth is there is little you can do to innovate with the
Office suite apart from add horrific bloat. OpenOffice seems quite
lightweight compared to MS Office (60-something MB for the Windows
version compared to 2 CDs for Office 2000) and offers its own feature
set. I think calling it a knock-off is just a
little unfair.

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