Subject: ...GPLd Star Office
From: Colin Mattoon (cjm2@lewiston.com)
Date: Mon Jul 24 2000 - 10:03:57 CDT
One of the reasons I have followed Abiword with such interest is that the
majority of my workstations have no room to install WordPerfect 8.0 and
lack adequate memory and processor speed to run Star Office -- even if
they had adequate drive space.
Providing Star Office to workstations configured as Xterminals is
feasible, however it consumes an inordinate amount of memory on the file
and application server.
Abiword (when fonts are installed on the Xterminal machines), loads
quickly over my networks and makes it not only possible, but practical, to
provide wordprocessing simultaneously to several 486sx workstations
connected via thin net from a "mere" 586 file/print/application server.
Granted, computers grow faster and cheaper each year. 100 MB ethernet is
commonplace, and in time, we will upgrade our hardware and our
network. But, at the same time, we intend to grow -- and increase the
number of workstations. A single session of Star Office will still consume
more resources and network bandwidth than several Abiword sessions.
Even if Sun began to pay me to use Star Office for all our word processing
needs, I would still have to weigh the expense of the hardware required to
run Star Office against the minimal requirements imposed by Abiword.
We continue to use Star Office for jobs that Abiword cannot do -- opening
XLS spreadsheets, for example. Wordperfect 8.0 fulfills another
purpose by allowing us to open and use a variety of government forms,
available only in that format. But, by migrating most of our basic word
processing to Abiword, we have managed to put off an equipment upgrade
that would have cost more than our small business can afford to spend
right now.
I don't feel our business is unique in wanting to "wring" the maximum
service life out of our existing hardware. Opening up the code to Star
Office may, or may not, bring about some good things...but it is not going
to eliminate the need for a word processor that consumes few resources.
Think about it...how many hundreds of old, obsolete PIII workstations
(with 32 MB ram) can be served Abiword over a fiber network from tomorrows
4 gHz server (with 4 GB ram)? Compare that to an estimate of how many can be
served Star Office with the same hardware over the same fiber.
Abiword will continue to fill a need, because the ratio of resources to
users will remain essentially the same.
Later,
Colin Mattoon
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