IBM Enters The Free Office Suite Arena

Free is good

http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa
from WinCustomize Forums

In case you thought Google was going to have all the fun in trying to draw users away from Microsoft Office, IBM has decided to jump into the fray by offering up its own free set of office productivity tools.

IBM Lotus Symphony was launched along side of Google Presently (the presentation tools discussed in the story below) and is based on the Open Office code base.  The suite comes with a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation application.  This marks the fourth major entry into the office productivity market in recent years attempting to break the hold Microsoft Office has on the industry.

This also marks yet another major suite to come out that supports the Open Document Format in competition to Microsoft's proprietary document formats.

2,632 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm a fan of and always will be of competition or, a word a like better, choice.   

I'm wondering what these office alternatives will consider success within the market place? What percent of the user base will make them happy? Will it be enough that collectivly they grab say 25% or does it need to be more? Are they only considerering they have a chance with the home user or are they really thinking they can take customers away from MS in the Buniness Market also?   
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hey thanks for this Zoomba.  I've used OOo for ages which is excellent,so I would hope this Lotus (as it is based on OOo) will be at least as good.
I'm downloading now to give it a test drive.I must say though that the IBM site is painfully slow (2 1/2 hours left !) ,but I guess everyone's looking for freebies.  
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Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Now I am getting scared that they will incorporate parts from Lotus Notes into the OOO suite. It can only get worse.