I stopped, did a U-turn, picked up the box, and lo and behold: a
full-blown suite of office applications...It sounded intriguing.
Correct. When I first heard about it we wanted to quickly evaluate it and start using in for our reports, wordprocssing, et cetera. Instead I can't find any pricing information, I can't download an evaluation copy, and they have some salesman call me up to evaluate my needs. I immediately reconsidered whether or not I wanted to invest because it seemed rather ridiculous to have a direct sales force calling people directly for a commodity like an office-pack. They are missing out on a huge opportunity here: commoditize a Java 1.2 version of Applix Office and add support for add-on Java Beans. OK, maybe wait for the next version of Java, whatever. The point is, the ABM crowd (Anything But Microsoft) is large enough to get the ball rolling on this and if the product meets the grade, they're off. Good software is hard, they should accept help if they needed from outside sources, too. Look, if they had an evaluation copy which millions could download and the darn thing worked on every platform that supported Java: poof, magic, instant overnight smash hit and HUGE side effects for the OLAP product -- and yes, I realize that's where the focus needs to be long term.
P.S. File format should be XML, period. |
