8 Dec
2003
8 Dec
'03
3:35 p.m.
With OpenOffice 1.1 I have yet to meet a user in real
life (I've
heard lots of accounts like your own on the net and I believe
you, but in business I gotta rely on the experiences of those
who pay me) who's unable to use it for basically everything for
which they used Word/Excel previously. So I'm going to go out
on a limb and say that number is a lot larger than 5% now, and
is growing with each release even if the market share's a lot
slower due to the primary marketing being word of mouth. I'm
surprised the low end PC makers aren't already preloading it in
lieu of MS Works or WP Office, but I bet they do sooner or
later.
Our local white box mail order computer builder already ships Windows
XP PC's with OpenOffice preloaded. It's a no-brainer for them, given
the cost of an MS Office licence, which they can't put much mark-up
on because the customer will go to the volume software retailer
instead.
They can't put much mark-up on XP either, so I expect the operating
system market for the smaller independent builders will go the same
way. I expect that in future Windows will be priced as an optional
extra, which is only fair. I believe the Windows licence is the most
expensive individual component of an entry-level PC.
Cheers
Daniel