Table of Contents

Executive Summary

OpenOffice.org software was put to the test in an academic environment. This paper examined how the newly released software stood up to the test of newspaper and technology columnists and how it stood up to the rigorous testing in the English Department at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

The question that was answered is thus: In general, is OpenOffice.org a viable alternative to Microsoft Office 2000 in an academic environment? The answer turned out to be yes. OpenOffice.org software stood up to nearly all of the requirements of teaching faculty and staff in the department. There were a few who disliked using OpenOffice.org software, but the same people also find Microsoft Office clumsy and unusable.

The recommendation that is given is to experiment with the software, determine its strengths and weaknesses, and if it turns out to be software that you can use productively, migrate its use in your work and reduce the costs associated with purchasing and upgrading other office suite software.

Introduction

The primary reason for conducting this research is to see how an open source software package could stand up to the competition in a real-world situation. The secondary reason for conducting this research is to determine the amount of money that would be saved by migrating our department to software that can be installed and used without any initial costs. The third reason was to see if the total cost of ownership (TOC) was lower than the alternatives.

OpenOffice.org 1.0 software is an office suite that includes a word processor (Writer), spreadsheet software (Calc), and presentation software (Impress) as well as a couple of other tools for drawing images and creating mathematical formulas. It is an open source project, meaning that the source code, or programming code, is also available and can be modified by anyone who knows the computer programming language in which the software is written. The name OpenOffice.org was chosen because of its open source nature. The '.org' on the end makes a handy reference to its website, but the name was chosen because OpenOffice is trademarked by someone else.

StarOffice 6.0 is a commercially available product from Sun Microsystems. StarOffice 6.0 is built upon the same source code as OpenOffice.org 1.0, and offers additional features such as a database component and WordPerfect Office file compatibility. It is available for purchase (MSRP $75.95). At the time of this study, StarOffice 6.0 was not available for evaluation for an academic license. Thus, all of the research for this paper was completed using OpenOffice.org 1.0.

Microsoft Office 2000 is referred to in the title because Office 2000 is the most prevalent version of Microsoft Office that is currently installed on the computers in our department. This paper will use Microsoft Office XP interchangeably with Microsoft Office 2000 throughout the rest of the paper because information retrieved from various sources refer to both versions of Microsoft Office, as well as the fact that Microsoft Office XP is the only product that is currently available from Microsoft.

Research was conducted at the place of my employment, currently the English Department at Utah State University. My position is Network Administrator for nearly 95 faculty and staff members. The research was completed between June 3, 2002 and June 21, 2002, and because of the summer semester, 12 faculty and staff members participated in the study.

With each participant, I conducted two separate interviews, one before they had used the software and one after the trial period. During the initial interview, I asked the same basic questions and also gave them the opportunity to ask any questions that they may have had. After the trial period, I asked a basic set of questions, but most of the time during the interview was spent discussing their reaction to this software.

Total cost of ownership includes the time spent learning how to do the old tasks with the new software as well as the time that is spent troubleshooting problems that may arise. Generally, the participants in the study said that there was a slight learning curve, but most were as productive within a short period of time while using OpenOffice.org software. Most of the participants used the word processor component of the OpenOffice.org office suite, which is the component of software that they use most often. They were encouraged to use OpenOffice.org software the same way that they would have used another office suite, rather than trying to learn how to use the presentation component. By using this software in the same manner as they would have used another office suite, they avoided the stress and confusion that may have developed from not only learning how to use OpenOffice.org software but how to create a presentation in general.

Problem Statement

Increasing costs of software and reduced funding that is available to our department have sparked interest in finding alternative software products that reduce the total cost of ownership. One such product, OpenOffice.org, is office suite software that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software. OpenOffice.org software has zero cost associated with installing and upgrading on both department and home computers.

There is one question that this paper will answer. The question is this: In general, is OpenOffice.org a viable alternative to Microsoft Office 2000 in an academic environment?

This is an exploratory study using the qualitative method. This paper will refer to literature and the research that was conducted in an academic environment.

Literature Review

Literature that is available on the specific topic of OpenOffice.org software is limited to the reviews given by editors and magazine technology columnists because of its recent release. Version 1.0 of OpenOffice.org was released on April 30, 2002. It was made available for download from OpenOffice.org's website (http://www.openoffice.org) as well as numerous mirror websites around the world.

Of the literature that was reviewed, there were numerous statements both for and against the idea of OpenOffice.org software becoming a replacement for Microsoft Office software. This paper will discuss both points of view.

Many office suite software packages are cumbersome to learn and to use because of their non-standard icons, their non-compatibility with the file formats of other office suite software, etc. "This suite couldn't resemble Microsoft Office more if you ran it through a photocopier. The menu commands, terminology and even keyboard shortcuts are nearly identical," (Pogue, 2002, para 11). By displaying familiar icons and menu options to the user, the learning curve is decreased dramatically.

Software product support is one of the main reasons that many people and companies question the validity of open source software. "In many cases... the free support offered in public newsgroups and e-mail lists is more helpful than the pay-before-you go support supplied by Microsoft," (Fasoldt, 2002, para 18). Nearly all of the faculty and staff in the English department rely on the help files that are included with the software, the network administrators, and/or others in the department who may have run into similar problems. As one of the network administrators, when questions are asked about desktop software that I am unable to answer, the first place I look is in the documentation that came with the software, and the second place is the Internet. I haven't yet made a service call to the vendor of a particular software package for support.

Another reason that many people are unwilling or unable to switch to an alternate office software suite is that the format in which their documents have been saved generally does not work with other office suite applications. An example is the ".doc" format for Microsoft Word users. Few applications besides Microsoft Word can open a ".doc" formatted file and display or print it correctly. The good news about OpenOffice.org is that in most cases, it can both read and save to a number of formats, including the ".doc" format. OpenOffice.org software also saves to its own XML based format. The XML format is well documented and saves the documents in a text-based format, thus allowing other software to easily read and modify the contents of a saved file. OpenOffice.org also imports and exports to other formats, such as ".rtf" and ".html."

Although there are many reasons to switch to OpenOffice.org, there are nearly as many reasons to stay with Microsoft Office. "One area of incompability... is programmability. Microsoft Office is actually a full-blown development environment that allows for everything from the recording of simple macros to the development of complex applications." They go on to say "Those applications are totally incompatible with StarOffice; and Sun's Rogers highly doubts if Sun will ever offer tools that ease migration from one suite to another," (Berlind, 2002, para 13).

Another columnist also offers a point of view: "I rated OpenOffice.org a 7 mostly because of its lack of formal support infrastructure and the relative immaturity of the product (version 1.0)," (Farber, 2002, para 6). Rob Pegoraro goes on to say, "This program's one real failing as a writing tool is its word-count function, which is concealed inside the file menu and can't measure selected text, just the entire document," (2002, para 13).

During the trial period the research showed that a few people had problems when they opened documents that were created in Microsoft Word. "OpenOffice's developers still have work to do here. But let's be realistic, too: In the untidy world of different program versions, settings and fonts, the only way to guarantee perfect reproduction is to save a file in Portable Document Format," (Pegoraro, 2002, para 16). Portable Document Format, or PDFs, are files that can be generated by a number of software applications. They can be displayed on screen or printed in the original format intended by the author, using software such as Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Microsoft Office 2000 Standard Edition includes four products: Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. MS Office Professional Edition includes Access, and the Developer Edition includes additional products such as FrontPage, SharePoint Team Services, and Developer Tools. OpenOffice.org 1.0, by contrast, only includes Writer, Calc, and Impress as replacements for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. OpenOffice.org does not have an equivalent product that is comparable to Outlook, Microsoft's premier email/contact manager/scheduler software product. StarOffice 6.0 does include the components that are found in OpenOffice.org as well as the Adabas database software application.

Even though it lacks an Outlook equivalent, OpenOffice.org should be compared to MS Office 2000 standard. OpenOffice.org will open and save word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation files in a multitude of Microsoft Office formats, from MS Office 95 up to MS Office XP.

Interviews

Before the Trial Period

Participants in the study participated in two interviews, one before the trial period and one afterward. Participants were asked similar questions but were allowed to express any opinions and views they had on this study. Commonly discussed items as well as uncommon items will be discussed here.

Commonly mentioned items by the participants included easy to format and easy to learn. Nearly everyone who participated mentioned that they use office suite software to write memos, letters, and other documents. When asked how important office suite software is to their work, a few people responded that it was essential to their everyday tasks. One respondent said that office suite software helps them stay organized, and others mentioned that they use the word processor component of office suite software most often.

One person said that they use whatever office software suite is installed on their computer whether they were at home or at work. Another person had concerns with opening complex spreadsheets that they use on a regular basis. A few people mentioned that they would like to use software that was easier to use than Microsoft Word 2000. Another person stated that they were interested in manipulating graphics with this software. Others mentioned that a mail merge feature was important to them. One respondent said that they like to see competition in office suite software.

Other important items that were mentioned that they would like to see in OpenOffice.org software is the ability to use international characters, set up custom toolbars, and quickly set up columns in their documents.

Yes, there were a few WordPerfect Office fans that participated in the study. A couple of them mentioned that they prefer WordPerfect Office to Microsoft Office. It turns out that the people who prefer to use WordPerfect Office had disliked using OpenOffice.org more than the other participants.

After the Trial Period

During the second interview after the trial period, the participants were each asked a similar set of questions. Before asking any particular questions, though, they were encouraged to talk about any thing that they liked or any problems they had with the OpenOffice.org software. Some of the positive items that were mentioned were that they liked the ease in which they were able to import and manipulate images in Writer. One person mentioned liking have a stop button available on the toolbar, which allows the user to stop loading a file, especially if the file is large and time consuming. Another person liked the fact that there is an address bar available on the toolbar. The address bar allows the user to view quickly the path and file information of the document they are currently viewing, as well as to provide a drop-down list of the user's most recently accessed files.

One respondent liked the Word Completion feature. This feature suggests words based on words that have been typed previously, and as you type the word a second time, suggestions will appear. The user can then hit a pre-configured key (the default is the Enter key) and the software will finish the word and put the cursor directly after the word. This allows the user to type documents more quickly because of the assistance that the software is providing.

Of the twelve participants, nine said "Yes" when asked if they thought that OpenOffice.org was a viable alternative to Microsoft Office. When asked if they would consider using OpenOffice.org on a permanent basis, eight people responded positively. Three of those people said that they would consider using it permanently, as long as it wasn't the only office suite that was available on their work computer. Of those that said "No," one person responded "it acts too much like Microsoft Word," and thus would not consider using it permanently.

When participants were asked if their productivity had increased, remained the same, or decreased while using OpenOffice.org, seven people answered that it had remained the same. Three people answered that it had decreased, with two of those people saying that it was because of the learning curve that was involved with learning the software.

One person said that the help files need to be written better. With participants of this study consisting mostly of university English professors and instructors, this comment was to be expected.

When comparing OpenOffice.org software to WordPerfect Office, one person noticed that they couldn't open Quattro Pro spreadsheets. The same respondent also said that other than the file incompatibility problem with WordPerfect Office documents, OpenOffice.org's Writer component is comparable to WordPerfect. Another person mentioned that WordPerfect couldn't read ".rtf" (Rich Text Format) files that were created in OpenOffice.org, and that even after trying out OpenOffice.org they still prefer WordPerfect Office to any of alternatives that are available.

Technical Aspects

Support

As one of the network administrators, it was my responsibility to provide technical support for hardware and software-related issues. Of the few telephone and email messages that I received from them about OpenOffice.org software, one person had trouble on a Windows 95 computer at home. The software would freeze while working in Writer, and began to freeze their computer on a regular basis. Another person wrote, "it is too much like Word, which I don't like... can't WordPerfect be the word processing standard?" Another user said that the computer would display an "An unrecoverable error has occurred" error message while changing the font colors in Writer on a Windows 95 computer. The "This program has performed an illegal operation," error message would then appear, and when the user pressed the "Close" button, the OpenOffice.org application would close.

Overall, I provided nearly the same amount of assistance to those who were using OpenOffice.org when compared to those who use Microsoft Office or WordPerfect Office. Other than the computers that were locking up, the assistance that I did provide was on the configuration and extra features that are available in OpenOffice.org.

Computers Used

OpenOffice.org software was tested on the following hardware and operating systems. Hardware that the participants use range from a Pentium I 133 MHz with 16 MB RAM computer up to a number of Athlon 1.0 GHz machines with 128 MB RAM. One computer was running Microsoft Windows 95, one was running Windows 2000 Professional, and the rest were running Windows 98. One participant installed OpenOffice.org on a home computer, running Windows 95 and said that the computer began crashing on a regular basis. Another person who is running Windows 95 in an office experienced problems with OpenOffice.org when making changes to the font colors in Writer.

Nearly all of the installations of OpenOffice.org were performed by myself. The configuration changes that I made to the software after installing on individual computers are outlined here. Rulers were set to display inches as a measuring unit. Text documents were set to default to save to the '.doc' format. The default font was changed to Times New Roman. The Word Completion feature was disabled, although one person who installed OpenOffice.org on a home computer left it enabled and liked using the feature. I also set the Load/Save options to AutoSave every 15 minutes without prompting, to prevent the loss of documents if the software or computer crashed.

Conclusion

Based on the respondents' feedback before, during, and after the trial period, it was found that nearly all of the participants could use this software and remain as productive as when they were using Microsoft Office.

The first research question stated at the beginning of this paper was "In general, is OpenOffice.org a viable alternative to Microsoft Office 2000 in an academic environment?" The conclusion that can be drawn from the results of this study is "yes," OpenOffice.org is a viable alternative to Microsoft Office 2000 in an academic environment. There are quirks that are associated with the software. With nine of the participants responding positively when asked if it was a viable alternative to Microsoft Office, the problems that they encountered were not large enough to consider them a detraction from using the software to accomplish their everyday work.

With the findings in this study, my recommendation is that for any entity, whether an individual, a company, or an academic institution, to reduce the costs associated with licensing office suite software, consider using OpenOffice.org alongside the software that is currently used. As new versions of Microsoft Office become available, compare them to new versions of OpenOffice.org. Test to see if OpenOffice.org software can serve as a replacement to reduce the costs associated with upgrading your current office suite. If you find that OpenOffice.org software can serve as a replacement, you can migrate slowly by keeping your current office suite software as a backup for the occasional software-specific file that you receive and can't be rendered correctly by OpenOffice.org.

Bibliography

Berlind, D. (2002). Why it's real hard not to try StarOffice. Retrieved June 25, 2002 from http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,6061,2865769-92,00.html.

Farber, D. (2002). Considering OpenOffice.org. Retrieved June 25, 2002 from http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,6061,2865704-92,00.html.

Fasoldt, A. (2002). The new home Office? ; Free, open source suite beats Microsoft on several counts. Times - Picayune. Retrieved June 21, 2002 from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?Did=000000123041451&Fmt=3&Deli=1&Mtd=1&Idx=13&Sid=1&RQT=309r (registration required).

Pegoraro, R. (2002). The Office Suite That Lets You See Past Redmond. The Washington Post. Retrieved June 21, 2002 from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?Did=000000119217577 (registration required).

Pogue, D. (2002). The Office Suite That Roared. The New York Times. Retrieved June 21, 2002 from http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/20/technology/circuits/20STAT.html (registration required).

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