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Desktop Suites - Which one?

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by pvdwalt

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I am in the process of investigating possible upgrade or possible replacement of my office desktop suites (currently a variation of Office 97, Lotus Smart Suite and some WordPerfect) to a single standard as part of a major excercise.

The questions that I have is:
1. Which package should I standardise on (Office 2000, Lotus SmartSuite, WordPerfect or even StarOffice)? Realising that the BackOffice might be Microsoft or even Lotus Notes...

2. What aspects other than cost of training, TCO, integration/interoparibility, etc. should I look at?

Any advise appreciated...

Kind regards

Pieter

4 replies

by alex

I currently use Office 2000 professional. Several reasons why I do. One is it fits into my already established MS open licensing program. Two is the ease on the users, most are familiar with MS products already. Do not get Office Small business instead of Professional, the cost difference is not worth it. Professional includes alot of stuff Small business does not, the major one being MS Access. Most users have MS office already at home, so take advantage of that and save some training time, and most of all less hassle for you.

by doc_howell

We are a Lotus Notes and SmartSuite shop and have been for about 4 years. Yesterday, I had a Lotus Sales rep tell me they are going to Office on their laptops. I could have choked her. SMart Suite is a good suite of products but MS Office owns the market. I expect IBM/Lotus to sell off or neglect until death SmartSuite over the next couple years. The main problems we have with Smartsuite is that people opening MS attachments can't open the most current versions and filters are not added to SS fast enough, training availability is also very tough to find.

One big advantage of SS over Office is that none of those Macro viruses ever have any effect on us. That is not an insignificant advantage.

Wordperfect has been a dead product for a few years now and I think they are swinging their focus to Linux instead of Windows.

All in all, Office is the safer choice. Sad to say.

by ed spencer

There are a number of reasons for choosing any of the platforms you mention. Let's look at each one and why you would/would not want to choose that suite.

Microsoft Office
The suite from the Microsoft Jagernaut. Need we say more? Yes. It provides lots of functionality and virtually seamless integration with thier backend suite of products. Most people are familiar with the products and training is easy to find. This suite's biggest advantages become apparent when you use the MicrosoftBack Office servers with them. If you opt for Microsoft Select or a similar licensing agreement you can cut cost.

Lotus/IBM SmartSuite
At one time formidable competition to MS's product, SmartSuite's popularity has declined over recent years. If you are using Lotus Notes for your back end this is the way to go. Integration with Lotus Notes is a nice addition to this product. Major issues were mentioned previously - slow upgrades, lack of support for the latest Microsoft formats, etc.Corel Office
Wordperfect. Well need we say more? At one time the largest word processing company in the word driven into the ground by poor foresight in the purchase of the company and a 'suite' of products and subsequently selling it off. Originally plagued with kludgy functionality between the products in the suite it's really started to come of age with the later releases. Strong cross integration with the Corel Graphics products is a nice touch. If your company is strong on graphics or forsees a move to Linux this may be the way to go. Keep in mind though that WordPerfect for Linux is actually Windows Code ported to Linux under WINE. It's not the fastest thing in the world but it does work.

Continued in next post --->

by ed spencer

StarOffice
JAVA. Pure and simple. Nice office suite that runs on a multitude of platforms. If you have a strong processor, plenty of memory and a wide variety of platforms, this may be the best choice. You can run this product on Win32, Linux, Solaris, and most other major platforms. Direct support for Internet protocols is a nice touch and Sun has been more on top of supporting Microsoft's current file formats than SmartSuite. There is talk of this going open source in the near future which could mean modifications within your environment if you have the staff to support it. Most people like the price as well. FREE (Well almost... check thier site).

Which to chose?
This is where you have to determine your final environment. Pick the back office packages that you need. Select a vendor to provide them. Once you've selected those pick the suite that provides the most functionality throughout the environment. That should help to make each of your choices easy. I hope this helps...

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