“I.B.M. plans to announce today a software strategy for corporate desktop personal computers and hand-held devices – one that is firmly anchored in the company’s strength in data centers,” Steve Lohr reports for The New York Times. “The I.B.M. offerings include new Lotus Workplace software for PC’s and hand-held devices, but most of the critical software resides on server computers in corporate data centers. Workers can tap into their e-mail messages, calendar, work group and other software using a Web browser. The approach harks back to a low-cost model of computing – known as ‘thin client’ computing – promoted in the late 1990’s by Sun Microsystems and Oracle as an alternative to Microsoft’s hefty desktop programs.”
“A worker using the Workplace software by I.B.M. can still run Microsoft Office programs. But I.B.M. also offers alternatives, built on free software from the open source project OpenOffice.org, including a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software,” Lohr reports. “The Workplace desktop, I.B.M. says, promises to deliver improved security and cost savings of up to 50 percent over the Microsoft desktop suites… The Workplace software will first be available for Windows and Linux, a variant of Unix that is distributed free. A version for the Apple Macintosh will be released later this year.”
Full article here.
If theyre really serious about Openoffice they need to get some serious work done on it, to make it a serious program. Versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux need to be perfected and then announced very publicly.
office kicks ass.. MS office, that is.. isn’t it amazing that such an expensive program could be the standard… wow.. a virtual monopoly w a $300+ program
Yeah, Mike, the best Office of all is just hitting the streets this coming week – Office 2004 for Mac. The best Word, the best Excel, the best email client, and a pretty decent presentation program.
But I’m rooting for IBM to give MS a run. It can only mean better software in either case in the long run.
or at least – force microsoft to lower their prices
Competition is wonderful, see what it has done for hardware prices.
MS Office has existed for >10 years on the PC, and they STILL can’t figure out to enable a user to paste a complex portion of a spreadsheet into Word or Powerpoint without the format getting mangled. Please bring on some decent competition!!
The problem with thin-client computing is it assumes connectivity to the servers. As a desktop management consultant, I can tell you that products that assume connectivity and can’t deal with the interruption inherent in wireless/mobile computing will fail in the marketplace.
If I can’t use my word processor on vacation, or at home in my basement, etc. then it’s no good to me, even if it supposedly costs less than a heavy client.
What if I can’t connect to the data center? Does that mean my computer becomes a paperweight? Didn’t Sun already try this and fail?
Bring on the competition becos MS Office is shitty – u can’t create a PDF neither can u create anything else that is not compatible with MS. It is time we start using a software that is more functional n verstaile than the dung from MS.
I hope the release for Apple’s MacOSX also means that OpenOffice will finally get ported to native Aqua and not depend on X11 for Mac.
Farns & Jim…
In an article I read about this (can’t remember where) it’s mentioned that they have solved this…you can work offline and sync up when you have a connection.
They don’t seem to be talking about OpenOffice as part of the thin client startegy. You wouldn’t be running OpenOffice from a browser.
They’re talking about the mail and stuff. Often mail is held on servers rather than on an individual’s PC anyway.
I’m all for this … as long as things have improved since I last used Lotus Notes as a mail client. Urgh! It was known in the office as FLN. The LN part was for ‘Lotus Notes’. I think you can guess what the ‘F’ stands for.
nice work
What would really be cool is if IBM and Apple collaborated on this project: IBM would get OpenOffice running on Windows and Linux, and Apple would get OpenOffice running under Mac OS X. Free software wins, file compatibility wins, Micro$oft loses.
if ibm is as good at making software as they are at bringing faster g5 chips out….we�re in for a looooooooooooooong wait.
Kill the office- what a great idea- can they really do it?
It would be great to get the full blown StarOffice on the Mac. But I guess once OpenOffice 2.0 is released, the Mac will finally get a version more Mac like (hopefully).
I’m with Red Wings. I wasn’t exactly impressed with OpenOffice when I tried it on a pc at work. It could open anything I threw at it, but it was clunky to use. I’d love to have an alternative, but the fact is that m$ Office is the best out there right now, IMO. I know there are problems with it, as pointed out above, but it’s still way beyond anything else I’ve found.
If anything, I’d like to see a new and improved AppleWorks 7 with the elegance we see in Keynote. Come on Apple, it’s been 4 years and we know you’re working on it!
Why are people so in love with thin client computing these days? Isn’t that what we had in the 1970s with timesharing? And what’s the point of having all of this processing power on your desktop when all you are doing is running a web browser?
I think distributed computing is much better. It allows each node in the network of computers to maximize it’s computing power, instead of having a dumb terminal on the client end.
“office kicks ass.. MS office, that is.. isn’t it amazing that such an expensive program could be the standard… wow.. a virtual monopoly w a $300+ program” – mike
Once upon a time, Word and Excel were very good. Word 4 was small (it fit on one floppy disk!), fast, had good interface, and did pretty much most of us needed to do. On the Mac side, it got really bad when it got to version 6. I used to like Word… of course, the subsequent versions and the company’s behaviors changed my perspective toward MS.
“Bring on the competition becos MS Office is shitty – u can’t create a PDF neither can u create anything else that is not compatible with MS. It is time we start using a software that is more functional n verstaile than the dung from MS.” – Adam
You can create PDF using Office, but you can’t edit PDFs. Thanks to Mac OS X printing engine, you can just use Print from Office apps and use Save As PDF option to dump your document to a PDF file. One caveat, though: it seems that PDFs obtained from Print has bigger file sizes.
gnugrep, not being a techie, I can only guess that it is liked because it increases dependency on the IT staff. Every computer is identical and no one can add stuff to their desktop. I agree that distributed computing is better, certainly for the vast majority of uses. I was asked why our small biz’ computers aren’t all identical. The easy response was that we all have different uses. Why would people who need different things on their computers want identical computers? Anyway, that’s my uninformed opinion.
Competion is good.
IBM isn’t exactly known for user-friendly, well-designed software. While I was an avid fan/user of OS/2, much of their current technology seems a mish-mash of technologies without a coherent strategic vision. As much as I dislike monopolies, I don’t think it will be IBM that will be able to topple Microsoft.