Office bloat and alternatives

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by Kerodo, Nov 11, 2008.

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  1. Bob D

    Bob D Registered Member

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    Doubtless that.
    Numerous (all) updates since released.
    Sun's updates do a poor job of cleaning out redundancies.
     
  2. acr1965

    acr1965 Registered Member

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    This offer just came out from Ashampoo today-

    Office 2008 for $14.99

    http://r.ashampoo.com/mailings/1/081112_en.htm

    More info-

    http://www2.ashampoo.com/webcache/html/1/product_2_0238__.htm

    Should be the same as this-

    http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofw_en.htm

    If nothing else, you can also download and try the Ashampoo Office 2008 with the 40 day trial. Not sure how long the $14.99 sale will last though.
     
  3. Pedro

    Pedro Registered Member

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    Are you saying Ashampoo and Softmaker are somewhat the same program?

    This kind of info would be most valuable here. Like OpenOffice ~ StarOffice and so on.
     
  4. acr1965

    acr1965 Registered Member

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    Softmaker 2006 and Ashampoo 2006 are the same. Ashampoo just OEM's the product and sells it under a different name- just like they OEM Avira free version and sell for $29.99. Softmaker 2008 looks like AS 2008- so I am assuming they are the same.
     
  5. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    It's not so much the disk space used, I don't care bout that, I have 2 500 gig HD's. The issue is performance. If you compare Outlook 2000 to 2003 and then to 2007, you see a steady slowdown and performance decline, even on a brand new triple core machine here with 4 gigs ram. Bloat is also perhaps over-feature-itis as well, but mostly I just see more sluggish performance. And then again, I also don't need all that Office offers, so why have it around if I don't need it? I have also heard several people claim that just installing Office on a new machine will slow things down in general.
     
  6. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    Thanks, I will definitely have a look at that one also...... :)
     
  7. n8chavez

    n8chavez Registered Member

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    My apologies folks, I need to correct an earlier staement. Staroffice 9.0 will be release on 11/17, not the 12th as I said earlier.
     
  8. Long View

    Long View Registered Member

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    Interesting. I had assumed that you were concerened about disk space. I hadn't thought about performance slow down as I haven't experienced this.
    Outlook opens in 2 seconds the first time and then less than a second thereafter. word, excel ... the same. I don't have any realtime security running.
    I wonder if av. as, hips etc are slowing things down ? when I stopped using real time av I found that one program which had taken 30 seconds to load only took 6 seconds. I'm using an E8400 with a small seagate 160 for C: and WD 1TB for data.
     
  9. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    Yeah, I think every person's experience has to be a bit different. Outlook loads in a reasonable time, but then the time it takes from there to go about it's business sync'ing folders and picking up mail just seems to take longer and longer with each new version. I tested 2007 on Vista x64 here and compared it to 2003 on XP x64 and the 2003/XP install blows the newer one away. Something similar happens when comparing 2003/XP to 2000/2k. Just my experience on a few PCs here....

    Who knows, perhaps I'll be back to Outlook later, I don't know.. For now things just seem quicker and lighter overall... which is nice...
     
  10. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    Ashampoo Office and SoftMaker are my choices for alternatives. Essentially, they only cover Excel (no macro support though), Word and PowerPoint, but those are what most of us use anyway. And SoftMaker does provide true support, which means something to me too.

    One other bonus about the SoftMaker/Ashampoo package. Once installed, you can create a portable copy for your USB flash drive to carry with you where ever you go. And it works great!
     
  11. Pedro

    Pedro Registered Member

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    One thing makes me use MS Office still. Formats of course.
    I haven't found a solution that makes me feel at ease. There's always something that isn't right..
     
  12. Arup

    Arup Guest

    Open office may be bloated to some but on my Ubuntu x64 the x64 version with quickstarter enabled opens in a flash, like notepad does in Windows.
     
  13. Long View

    Long View Registered Member

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    This is what I don't understand. If I open notepad it opens almost too quickly to measure. If I open word I can tell that it does take a bit lonfer than notepad
    but we are still talking less than half a second ( once opened previously during a session) I just don't see Office as slow
     
  14. Alphalutra1

    Alphalutra1 Registered Member

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    KOffice is definitely smaller and leaner than open office, however, I don't know if it has as many features yet
    (I'm pretty sure it can't save ODF yet...)

    Cheers,

    Alphalutra1
     
  15. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    Of the MS Office apps, I use Outlook by far the most, and as I mentioned, Outlook 2007 just seems much more sluggish overall in performance than prior versions. The other apps I really don't have much problem with, you open 'em once, use 'em and you're done. I certainly use Excel at work 8 hours a day, so I have no issues there. At home, it's Outlook mostly, with an occasional Excel or Word usage. So I guess my chief concern was Outlook performance. Sure it opens fast enough, but form there it fiddles with processing for quite some time before I get mail etc. It's a subtle thing perhaps, but annoying to me.

    There is no denying that Office is bloated in terms of disk space. It's not that that is an issue by itself, but usually bloat manifests itself in multiple ways, none of them desirable.

    I certainly am not bashing Office or anything, I have been an Office user for over a decade. But at home, with minimal needs, I do like something lighter and quicker now, most particulary for email.
     
  16. Long View

    Long View Registered Member

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    Do you archive outlook ? My current pst is stored on D: which I think may help and is currently just over 100 mg. Every six months or so I archive and keep these pst files on D: to be called if needed. all incoming e-mail is sorted to follow up - may be wrong but I like to keep the inbox clear - prefering to flag stuff. I know many people hate outlook but It is one of a small number of prpgrams that has allowed me to run a business without the need for admin staff. not sure if compacting the pst would help.
     
  17. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    I do archive each month's messages in Outlook at work, Outlook 2003 btw, and no problems. At home it was 2007 and not that many emails yet. It just seems slow to me. I have had pst files up to a gig in size before in 2k without any problems. I do heavy email at home, as well as work. Next time I use 2007 at home, I may fiddle with some things like that and see what happens. It might just be some odd interaction between Vista x64 and Outlook 2007 (x32). No idea.... But for now I am good... I personally have always loved Outlook, it has been my favorite, just lately starting to wonder about it in the newer version.

    Thanks for the suggestion though.... :)
     
  18. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    Hi Alpha......

    I usually wind up using OO in Linux, but next time I use a KDE setup, I'll take a look at KOffice. Thanks....
     
  19. n8chavez

    n8chavez Registered Member

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    For those that are interested, there is a review of the new Ability Office 5 (Business Edition) here. The only difference between the Home and Business versions is that Home does does not include a database component.
     
  20. Pinga

    Pinga Registered Member

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  21. doctorow

    doctorow Registered Member

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  22. acr1965

    acr1965 Registered Member

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  23. acr1965

    acr1965 Registered Member

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  24. Arup

    Arup Guest

    For Windows I strongly recommend the Go-OO version, this is the same team that makes OO for Ubuntu and Debian officially. Its far more optimized and works truly good. The app with quick start enabled opens in a flash.
     
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