OpenOffice Five Times As Popular As Google Docs

CWmike writes "Confirming recent comments by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, an independent report released Friday found that OpenOffice.org's free office suite is five times more popular than Google Docs. This was according to a survey of 2,400 adult Internet users conducted between May and November. Microsoft's share was 10 times that of OpenOffice.org. Microsoft hopes to cement that lead with its upcoming Office Web, as well as online versions of its Exchange and SharePoint products to be announced on Monday. OpenOffice.org may provide some resistance, however. The latest version, OpenOffice.org 3.0, had a strong first week in October, with more than 3 million downloads. After one month, OpenOffice.org 3.0 had been downloaded 10 million times." And reader Peter Toi informs us of the open source release of yet another office suite, Softmaker Office. Its claimed advantages are its compactness and speed (making it suitable for netbooks), its excellent MS Office filters, and the fact that it can be installed to USB flash drives.

Just in time

[Tubal-Cain]

Just what I need after the news that OOo may get ads.
As soon as it has full ODF support.

Re:Did they ask the right question?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you must have *old* hardware.

Like 1998 era stuff.

Ram's cheap grandpa, upgrade!

Re:Just in time

[Ethanol-fueled]

I get a good chuckle out of the folks who say OO is to slow as if they're using it to build an embedded real-time OS.

"Oh noes! it takes 20 seconds to boot!" // as if those nerds have anything better to do with their precious time

Re:Google Docs really isn't ready.

[maxume]

God forbid the Russians get your muffin recipe.

Re:Google Docs really isn't ready.

[AmberBlackCat]

My muffins are moist, fluffy, and ridiculously good. I'd encrypt them if I could.

its?

[jhp64]

I don't understand the summary: it keeps using this word "its", which I don't think I've ever seen on Slashdot before, or really anywhere on the internet. The poster must have meant "it's"...

Re:Just in time

[Ethanol-fueled]

People who are using office applications are not necessarily nerds, you know.

Yeah, they just have the patience of a chopping block because their conceived productivity is tied to the start time of MS Office which will or will not increase actual productivity.

So what if OO takes 20 or even 30 seconds to start(much less on my computer)! Is that really SO BAD given the boot time of Vista? Shit, Vista loads so slowly that I wouldn't be surprised that Microsoft included an install of Office with every Vista and ran a global hasOffice==true check everytime the user booted so the user wouldn't know any better!

Re:Even worse!

[MrNaz]

Not here on Slashdot it isn't.