Symphony of Office Destruction

Symphony of Office Destruction

IBM/Lotus has fired a shot across the bow of MS at their flagship Office.

I give you Lotus Symphony!

Totally free and easy to download @ 136MB for the file.

"Symphony is based on OpenOffice.org and the Eclipse framework and is meant not only to give consumers and businesses an alternative to Microsoft Office, but also to promote the use of ODF (Open Document for XML), an XML-based standard for documents approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). "The end goal here is the proliferation of the open standard," Rhodin said.

Microsoft Office 2007, which has more than 90 percent market share, does not natively support ODF and instead uses the company's OOXML (Open XML) format, which failed to pass a recent ISO vote for standardization."

And for the record, IBM/Lotus has had 100,000 downloads of the product in its first week of availability.

I have downloaded it and gave it a mild test run this morning. It is quicker to open than other distros of Open Office and a lot easier on the eyes for sure. I'll be playing with it as much as I can over the next few weeks to see if it is a viable alternative to Orifice.

PS: This product is still in Beta but no bugs or crashes found on my system thusfar.

Originally Posted on Ask The Admin By The Slothman