You know your office suite is bloated when.. - OpenOffice.org Ninja

You know your office suite is bloated when..

Posted by Andrew Z at Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | Permalink

You know your office suite is bloated and too complex when the help menu prominently features an "Office Diagnostic" feature covering memory, disk, setup, compatibility, and "known solutions."

Well, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 includes Office Diagnostics. The "known solutions" makes sense: Office crashes, it records a signature of the crash, submits it to programmers, and looks for updates. However, why check memory and the disk? In an office suite? Sure, hardware fails, but doesn't checking hardware belong in the operating system and not in an application? Besides, when was the last time you using Firefox or OpenOffice.org, it crashed, and later you found out it was the memory or the disk's fault?

Microsoft Office Diagnostics in Outlook 2007

What's worse is this diagnostic took at least 20 minutes to finish on a nice dual-core with 2GB RAM.

Microsoft Office Diagnostics in Outlook 2007

OpenOffice.org isn't necessarily have a reptutation for being lean itself, but developers are pushing hard to make OpenOffice.org 3.2 the fastest version yet. Stay tuned for more.

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

While we're talking about too complex...

How about the OpenOffice scripting system? It is a frickin nightmare! Impossible for a newcomer to get to grips with. The result: very few add-ons made and low script forum participation.

To compete as an office suite OO would need to be almost as add-on rich as Firefox. To get there a better scripting system is needed NOW.

Andrew Z said...

Anonymous: Are you referring to the API or to StarBasic/OOoBasic? The API is accessible from Python, Java, and JavaScript. I agree the OOo API is more difficult than necessary, even from a nice language like Python.

Dotan Cohen said...

It just might be that MSO includes those features because they di not trust those who wrote whatever OS MSO runs on.

As an OOo user, I think that MSO is a great piece of software. I even like the new ribbon menus. Bloated it may be, but it is a joy to use. Too bad it doesn't run on my OS of choice. I very much like OOo, and I promote it where I can. But MSO is not so bad itself.

Anonymous said...

Andrew: I'm talking about very basic add-on/scripting functionality, things that in a sensible system would be fixed via community support in a matter of hours. Not be unsolvable for months and months. Like this: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=10410

Klaibson said...

Hello

My name is Klaibson and I'm writing from Brazil.

I have a blog here in Brazil that addresses the issue BrOffice / OpenOffice, the www.brofficeparaleigos.blogspot.com

I am writing to you to propose a partnership, or an exchange of links, I disclosing your blog on my list and you disclosing your blog, que tal?

If you want to clarify any questions or to sign the partnership, please contact us.

Good weekend.

Anonymous said...

Ninja, have you try 3.2 ? What's your impression about it ?

Goran Rakić said...

Andrew, I am really missing your blog posts on OpenOffice.org.