Tesco Office v. Microsoft Office

[pchelpman]

Tesco has announced that they will start selling their own Office suite in competition to Microsoft Office. The office suite will be part of a range of new products sold under the Tesco brand.

There will be anti-virus, firewall and office products available.

All products come from known manufacturers, re-branded to the Tesco name. Support is via the web only (no phone support) provided by a separate company.

The office suite will be provided by Ability Office http://www.ability.com/ which provides a useful set of programs. As with other office suite rivals it can't match the range and depth of features provided by Microsoft Office but is often more than enough for most people and businesses.

While the software is nothing exciting technically it is a major marketing initiative. Tesco obviously believes they can make more money out of volume sales for a cheap office suite than they can selling Microsoft Office.

On a cheap cost basis the Tesco suite will be compelling for many people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5396488.stm


PCH

 

[eggplant]

The problem (IMO) with non microsoft versions of office is that whilst they have basic compatibility with the ms versions, anything other than a simple document isnt compatible, so you cant for eg start work at work (most likely ms office), then take it home(open source/cheap version of office). Possibly anything with macros or other "advanced" features will give issues - anything with VBA code definately will. MS works is cheap and more compatible.
I hacnt used ability so my above points refer to alternate office suites in general, not this particular one, but if their product is to succeed, I hope the product itself is better than its "key points" :

Latest Windows 2003 look and feel

so they are aiming it at 2003 server users? theres no other windows 2003

I have just had a closer look at their site, and the screen grabs do look good and VERY much like ms products, so much so that I'm suprised nothing has been done about it. I might get hold of it and take a looky.

EDIT:

Just read a bit more, and I see they have an export to PDF feature, ms recently withdrew that feature from office 2007 due to issues with adobe, wonder what will happen now?

 

[baldy01]

MS Office is an awful piece of software. Full of bells and whistles you'll never use but bloated, buggy and full of security holes. And VERY expensive.

You would be far better off using Open Office. Costs nothing, has 95% of the funtionality of MS Office, supports MS document formats (plus a raft of formats MS don't do) and doesn't crash every five minutes.


What more could you want? You'd be silly not to try it before shelling out cash for anything else.

 

[eggplant]

but you cant integrate properly with it as it doesnt support vba so unless you just need basic functionality you are stuffed.

 

[baldy01]

but you cant integrate properly with it as it doesnt support vba so unless you just need basic functionality you are stuffed.

I use it everyday for work, instead of the company supplied MSOffice. What exactly can't I do with it? Cos its yet to be a problem for me, but perhaps I'm just a basic user....

P.S. the Novell version of OO 2.0 does support MS VBA