________________________________
From: webmaster-Kracked_P_P <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2013 8:18 PM
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] LibreOffice vs. MS Office
On 01/12/2013 01:00 PM, Kannan Moudgalya wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I would like to re-open the discussion on this topic, which was discussed a
> couple of weeks back.
>
> I already mentioned in a previous mail that we offer LibreOffice workshops
> for clerical and support staff of many organisations, such as government
> offices and universities, free of cost. What is interesting is that the
> participants learn advanced features of the software, for example, track
> changes and the like. Most of them, however, are not aware of such advanced
> techniques in MS Office. The reason is that no one teaches these things on
> MS Office - the training programme is possibly expensive or only limited
> seats are available in a training programme.
>
> Thus, even if LibreOffice is less powerful (for argument sake), it is used
> effectively - even the advanced features are known to the users. In
> comparsion, the MS Office is used less effectively, even if it is more
> powerful, once again, for argument sake. Thus, the LibreOffice users end up
> being better users of the software, compared to the MS Office users.
>
> The above observation got corroborated in a blender workshop that we
> organised. Here is a feedback from an official of the organisation, where we
> conducted this workshop.
>
> /"The workshop as informed to you earlier over phone was really successful.
> By the end of four days the participants were very happy and confident in
> developing 3D animation. Earlier they were using licensed products which did
> not actually fulfill our requirements of 3 D animation. Added to that they
> were also introduced to interactive game development using Blender. In the
> four days they were introduced to modeling, lighting, 3D Animation and
> interactive games. The best part was the spoken tutorials helped them get
> ready with the installation, interface and utilities of Blender before the
> physical workshop in the IGNOU campus. Spoken tutorials were really useful as
> the participants could use them time and again as reference material even
> when the physical workshop was on. We are very happy with the workshop and
> looking forward to an advanced level workshop."
>
> /Kannan
>
>
>
I know there was a link about "spoken tutorial" for India. It was an article
link.
Yes having "spoken word" tutorials can be easier for people than printed text.
Yes, we need more public workshops for the use [and marketing] of LibreOffice.
If I did not have a "communication issue" brought about after 3 strokes, I
would do one locally in my library, or even in a Adult Education center.
It would be great if some "professional quality" presentation is created for
teaching LO to users. That that presentation and display it in a room of users
via a projection monitor system. Have handout material included. Make it all
on a DVD set of disks that can be downloaded. I was think about having videos
along with Impress presentations and have some working examples worked through
showing the users how to do these things. Make these free so local marketing
people can present LO in a workshop. I do not know how to do many things that
are not "basic" or things I have never needed to do, but that does not mean I
would not be willing to do a workshop if someone created the materials for me
that would show the workshop how to do these things.
MS Office is "more powerful than LibreOffice for one main reason, it is bloated
with so many features that it takes "in-depth guides" to know they even exist.
There has been figures like less that 1% of 1% of the business users either
know these features or know how to use them. Do you really need to do things
like edit a spreadsheet table inside a Word document? Do you really need to do
things in LibreOffice that are used by 1 out of 1,000,000 business users? Sure
some feature are going to be used, but using a package like Word or Writer for
desktop publishing of a 100+ page magazine with all of the fancy text and image
options you can think of, might not be very useful to the users we are
targeting LO towards. Sure, making newsletters and other multi-column
text/image documents under 20 pages or so is useful, but more than that may not
be for our market. I would not even want to try it with Word or LO, but I know
there are those that do use a
word processor for very large desktop publishing needs. Doable but not
recommended.
The key is ease of use for the "standard user" not the 1 in 100,000 user. The
key is not adding so many features that it takes 1 to 5 GB of disk space to
install the package and 2 or 3 minutes to load up to the point where you then
can type or edit the document. I still work on/with desktops and laptops that
take 3+ minutes to boot up MS Office 2003 to the point where it can be used.
Those same system take less than 30 seconds to get LO to that same point.
I think the subject is quite an important one in a marketing perspective. Where
I work, I am convincing people to install LO, half of the work is done, but
many people don't trust (I would say don't know much) it. I fight against it
showing how many public institutions have adopted LO. there are many
explanations about (even what is reported as 'judging quality by price' or
having mso is a mode, no matter wether the choice is rational). yes, we may
think MSoffice has a higher quality, but nobody asks wether such quality is
necessary. I saw MSoffice 2010 a couple of times, but was not impressed; main
differences are about muti-user features, network and data protection, but
maybe 2% of users wuold note the difference between LO and mso. One thing,
however, strongly suggesting the use of LO is the compatibility of data with
other packages (while mso is hardly compatible among different versions, giving
the idea that each version brings a
revolution, while it is just a marketing spot making its use more confusing).
Then 2 points should be considered (both have already benn considered): 1
stressing the many features which make LO better than mso for the average user
(and asking wether people know yhe difference - generally no - or need really
more features); 2 including slowly in the the time some new features which are
already sometimes requested by some users.
60 milions users aren't a jock or a small number; LO is suitable for everybody
and not a niche product. there is still to do, but we are alredy winning
(growing faster in quality and diffusion).
moreover, keep in mind that many resources are alredy produced by autonomous
different users: from the uml modules produced in UK (which could give us a
very big opportunity in the sector), to the wollmux.net project develped in
germany, to a lot of small tutorials, video tutorials, extensions and short
guides available in schools and universities. such things should be better
known.
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