Google, Sun to Challenge Microsoft With OpenOffice

[GomJabbar]

Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., the world's most-used Internet search engine, and Sun Microsystems Inc. joined forces to offer online word processing and spreadsheet functions in a direct challenge to Microsoft Corp.'s dominance.

Quote above from this article at bloomberg.com.

[DavidNZ]

Someone seems to think it was all hot air:

http://gigaom.com/2005/10/04/cheap-publicity-ploy/

[jdhurst]

The answers don't really matter. What really matters is: What will people buy (particularly business people). And right now, Microsoft Office still wins that decision hands down. I don't know what the future holds, but I know (1) I have used Star Office (offline) and I happily pay for Office anyway; and (2) I am not online lots of time and in those situations, an online office won't help me. Web-based office is an idea that is well over 5 years old and continues to go nowhere. We'll see. ... JD Hurst

[mg]

Lenovo bundles StarOffice (with R51e)

[jdhurst]

I hope they don't pre-install it. When IBM bundled the Lotus successor to AmiPro, at least they just provided the CD and a license.

I sure don't mind the packaged driver set that IBM has supplied in past as I find it most useful. I always have to uninstall Norton retail because I use Symantec Corporate, or in the case of clients, they should be using a more advanced Internet Security suite. I don't want to be uninstalling Star Office just so I can install regular Office.
... JD Hurst

[bhtooefr]

Yeah, that's one thing that irks me, and it's the one thing (OK, well one of two - their LCDs are good as well) I like about Dell - IBM only sends a restore image ON THE HDD. Dell, OTOH, sends individual CDs. XP on one CD, drivers on another, various apps on others. You can take a Dell out of the box, and never use the preload, while only using what Dell puts in the box.

That doesn't mean I'm going to go to the dark side, though. At least the only thing with IBM's preload that causes problems is NAV, which I promptly replace with Avast...