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While the concept behind open office spaces is to drive informal interaction and collaboration among employees, the study found that for both groups of employees monitored (52 for one company and 100 for the other company) face-to-face interactions dropped, the number of emails sent increased between 20 and 50 percent and company executives reported a qualitative drop in productivity. “[Organizations] transform their office architectures into open spaces with the intention of creating more [face-to-face] interaction and thus a more vibrant work environment,” the study’s authors, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban, wrote. “[But] what they often get—as captured by a steady...

Linus Torvalds The Linux community often recognizes two anniversaries for Linux: August 25th is the day Linus Torvalds first posted that he was working on Linux and said “Hello, everybody out there…” and October 5th is the day he released the first kernel.To mark the anniversary of the first kernel release in 1991, we look at some facts and consider the progress that has been made since that early version. Version 0.01 of the Linux kernel had 10,239 lines of code (source: Wikipedia). Version 4.1, released in July 2015, has more than 19 million lines of code (source: Phoronix). ...

Very recently my Office 2013 software generates a message stating my software has not been activated and features have been disabled. I have been a marginally happy PAYING Office customer for YEARS/ I have NO idea what my MS account log in is. I *NEVER* contact them. I logged in to MS to get the issue resolved and they wanted to charge me $42 to fix the problem!!! HOW do I get this fixed without paying ransom to MS?

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I saw a promo the other day for Google (GOOG) Work. Sadly, I can't locate it or I would have inserted it here so you could see it for yourself. However, it might be fitting that you can't see the promo. Because Google's assault on Microsoft (MSFT) continues to fly under the radar. For whatever reason, it's the most under covered story in tech ... in finance ... and for the sake of extraneous ellipses ... the world. But it's real and it's happening. And Microsoft has no idea what to do in response. How could...

After Firefox, OpenOffice may be open-source software's greatest desktop success story. For years though OpenOffice has stagnated. While under Sun's management, OpenOffice got off to a great start, the program hasn't been doing much of anywhere lately. That may be about to change under an independent non-profit group called The Document Foundation. On the morning of September 28th, a community of developers and other volunteers announced that they were forming The Document Foundation to fulfil the promise of independence written in the original OpenOffice charter. According to the group, "The Foundation will be the cornerstone of a new ecosystem where...

Microsoft Corp will release a free version of its dominant Office software that users can access over the Web, catching up with products that arch rival Google Inc launched three years ago. The world's largest software maker will offer a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a note-taking program with the same look and feel of their counterparts in the Office suites that it sells for personal computers. It is the latest salvo in an intensifying war between the two technology giants. Google announced plans last week to challenge Windows with a free operating system. Microsoft introduced a new search...

I usually offer PC help, not ask, but... I having a problem reinstalling MS Office 2003. It's looking for MT561403.CAB, which doesn't appear to be on the install disk. I've seen copies online, but I have no idea how trustworthy any of those are. I haven't seen a solution.

OpenOffice 3 has been officially released, with one of its biggest enhancements being support for file formats in Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Office 2007. The debut of the open source productivity suite follows a three-year development cycle. Nevertheless, some reviewers questioned whether the upgrade was sufficient to be billed as a full upgrade. Released on Monday, the upgrade attracted enough attention to overwhelm the OpenOffice.org Web site. On Tuesday, the site still appeared to be having trouble with the load. "Apologies -- our Web site is struggling to cope with the unprecedented demand for the new release 3.0 of OpenOffice.org," the...

Has anyone used or is anyone out Free Republica using Open Office Suite? What has your experience been like? When did it switch from free to member fee based?

The Fall of Microsoft Office By Anders Bylund (TMF Zahrim) May 27, 2008 On the same day that the state of New York published a report supporting open formats for electronic documents, mighty Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) said that it would support the open-source ODF format in Office 2007. Redmond's own Open Office XML specification may be heading for the great Recycle Bin in the sky, never to come back. What happened? The twin developments are noteworthy to astute investors for multiple rasons. While several European countries, the EU itself, and the state of Massachusetts have distanced themselves from proprietary document...

Nifty OpenOffice.org extensions By Dmitri Popov on January 07, 2008 (9:00:00 AM) Printer friendly page Print Comment on this article Comments Apparently, the only thing that stopped developers from creating useful OpenOffice.org extensions was the lack of a place to publish them. With the launch of the OpenOffice.org Extension Repository, the number of extensions listed there has shot up, and there are no signs of a slowdown. Although quantity doesn't always mean quality, the repository already offers a few nifty extensions that can expand the functionality of OpenOffice.org and make your work more efficient. Bookmarks Menu On the face of...

Looking to get a jump on the lucrative back-to-school shopping season, Wal-Mart has begun selling a sub-$300 PC. The Everex IMPACT GC3502 comes with Windows Vista Home Basic and OpenOffice.org 2.2 installed on a system that includes a 1.5GHz VIA C7 CPU, 1GB of DDR-2 SDRAM, an 80GB hard drive, a DVD burner, and integrated graphics, as well as a keyboard, mouse, and speakers. The Everex machine will be competing for Wal-Mart shelf space with the low-cost Dells recently introduced to the world of brick-and-mortar sales. The retail giant currently sells the Dell Dimension E521 for $498 alone or bundled...

This is one case study, out of a three-part series, where OpenOffice expert and instructor Solveig Haugland examines the successes and failures of a school, city government and corporate migration from proprietary office suites like Microsoft Office to OpenOffice. More from this migration series: Migrating a city government to OpenOffice Migrating a corporation to OpenOfficeSteps for a successful migration Pete Poggione is an IT director for a school district. The school district just switched last year and is still in the process of working out some kinks. Pete took a big risk switching to open source, presenting it in the...

The OpenOffice.org community released version 2.2 on Friday, including updates to OpenOffice's word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and database software. OpenOffice.org claimed its free software package provides a "real alternative" to Microsoft's Office 2007 product — and an easier upgrade path for existing Microsoft Office users. The community claims to have addressed security issues in the upgrade, a number of vulnerabilities recently having been discovered in the suite. On 21 March the US Department of Homeland Security reported two critical vulnerabilities — a stack-based buffer overflow was reported in the StarCalc parser in OpenOffice.org, plus a vulnerability that would allow the...

OpenOffice.org security 'insufficient' Researchers at French Ministry of Defense say vulnerabilities with open source office suite may rival those of Microsoft's version By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service August 11, 2006 With Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite now being targeted by hackers, researchers at the French Ministry of Defense say users of the OpenOffice.org software may be at even greater risk from computer viruses. "The general security of OpenOffice is insufficient," the researchers wrote in a paper entitled "In-depth analysis of the viral threats with OpenOffice.org documents." "This suite is up to now still vulnerable to many potential malware attacks," they...

I've had mostly positive things to say about the free OpenOffice.org suite, so in the interest of equal time, here's a link to an interesting ZDNet blog item (via Scobleizer) which looks at the speed and resource requirements of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org. It's far from exhaustive--the numbers reported relate only to launching the applications and opening a spreadsheet--but it shows OpenOffice.org as being far more memory- and CPU-hungry than the Microsoft suite.

GOOGLE & SUN OFFICE: THE WORLD CHANGES THIS WEEK [Oct 4, 2005] Google & Sun are to announce an Office Suite based on OpenOffice, and accesible via webbrowser, according to Jonathan Schwartz --President and COO of Sun Microsystems-- (the original title of his post was "The World changes this week"). It's probably the beginning of the WebOS, an Operating System based on the Web. UPDATED: Some interesting links: :: Sun president: PCs are so yesterday :: Google Office wishlist: seamless Web storage, great built-in search, integration with other Google tools, a truly better user interface, true browser-based operation :: Some...

I have been exploring the use of free Open Source software as an alternative to Microsoft Software for quite some time now. I have been using Open Office for about 8 months now for my word processing needs. In a nutshell I am satisfied. Last week a new beta was released, I downloaded it as soon as it was made available, on first view, even though the key functionality in version 2.0 Beta remains largely intact, it promises dozens, possibly hundreds, of changes. NeLogic Content Management System The beta seems complete enough for a preliminary review. Changes to the installation,...

Several years ago, I wrote "Opening Up to OpenOffice.org: Finding an Alternative to Microsoft Word" -- my most quoted article. At that time OpenOffice.org (OOo) was barely known, so I confined myself to highlights. Now that OOo is starting to be used in business, a more detailed look seems overdue. Accordingly, I compared the beta of OOo Writer 2.0 with Microsoft Word 2003. Both are adequate for most users' purposes, so I focused on functions that power users are likely to want: Click here! * Styles * Templates * Outlining * Bulleted and numbered lists * Tables * Headers and...

The 'relatively serious' flaw could allow remote execution of malicious code on computers running OpenOffice. A patch is said to be imminent OpenOffice.org has confirmed a buffer overflow issue that could allow remote attacks. The problem in its freely distributed productivity applications has been fixed, the organisation said late on Tuesday. Representatives said the group hoped to release a patch within the following 48 hours. The flaw, first discovered in late March, according to postings on the group's Web site, is present in OpenOffice Version 1.1.4 and the OpenOffice Version 2.0 beta release of the applications, as well as in...