[Sussex] A Year without windows

Tue May 24 08:53:32 UTC 2005

Hello,

Geoff raises some interesting points. It seems that because people can now
create documents, spreadsheets, etc. more easily it has become "essential"
that a wide variety of information is gathered. For example, teachers have
to record vast amounts of information. Policemen often spend more time on
administration than catching, alleged, criminals.

I can think of two examples in my working life where the increased use of
computers was counter productive:

1. I worked for a television company and many workers had to create scripts.
The original VMS - terminal system had many advantages including simple word
processing facilities, central backup, etc. When writers switched to PCs
there were numerous software version problems, backup issues, etc. More
importantly whilst the scripts looked far better in WordPerfect, than in
WPS,  they took longer to write. More importantly, what the viewers of the
channel saw and heard did not improve.

2. When working for a major News Agency, very elaborate QA facilities were
introduced. For a period of 6 months everyone spent their time documenting
code and falling in line with procedures. A department of over 40 people did
not release any software for 6 months and. unsurprisingly, the department
was disbanded. Once again having improved tools did not increase output.

In summary, I agree with Geoff that having the ability to do more with IT
does not necessarily lead to improved productivity.

I think that the "non-Windows" office would be a good topic to discuss at a
moot.

Brendan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Geoffrey J. Teale" <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
To: "LUG email list for the Sussex Counties" <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 12:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Sussex] A Year without windows

> On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 22:30 +0100, John D. wrote:
> ------ %< -----------
> > Perhaps, once OOo 2 hits the streets in anger, we might see a few more
> > of these kind of articles.
>
> Maybe so, though the shift in mind share is something that takes time
> and slowly accelerates.  I doubt Linux will be the most common OS on
> desktops anytime in the next few years, but it's slowly becoming a
> significant player in that market.
>
> As for OOo 2, yeah it's great, it has an Access like DB frontend
> (indeed, OOo 1.x has one too, it's just very well hidden!).
>
> OOo2 even has a planned .mdb file compatible driver layer, that might
> help a few people migrate.
>
> Now though, I see a perfect opportunity to bang on my favourite drum for
> a while.  :-)
>
> Personally I'd rather see more companies waking up to the fact that
> office software is counter productive.  Think about these things:
>
>  - How much time do staff spend dicking around with font's?
>  - How much business critical data is locked up in spreadsheets,
> documents and  crappy little Access databases that are known (and/or
> understood) by only a small percentage of the people who could make use
> of them?
> - How much business process is only defined in terms of Word macros,
> Excel macros, Access forms and VBA?
>
> ... add these things together and you're sitting on a mass of people
> quietly frittering away their hours making a million variations on the
> same spreadsheet.  Dave puts in hours and hours of effort on his new
> year-on-year budgeting spreadsheet not knowing (or caring) that Bob in
> the office upstairs has already gathered those figures in his Access
> database for forecasts that lives in his departments shared folder that
> Dave never looks at.  Jane has spent the best part of a day making her
> powerpoint sales presentation look spiffy (she really loves those
> lab-dissolves), but unfortunately she won't make the sales your company
> needs because she didn't spend enough time researching the content and
> left out some points vital to the client in order to fit in a nice piece
> of clip-art of stick man scratching his head.  At another meeting Jane
> couldn't provide the figures they needed because Bob said they didn't
> have them, even though Dave has a spreadsheet with those figures broken
> down by month that he keeps in his departments shared folder (that no
> one else ever looks at).
>
> Back in the days before Sun Microsystems with actively involved in the
> development of office software (you remember, when Scott McNeally use to
> called Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates "Beavis and Butthead"), they
> commissioned an investigation into the added productivity provided by
> "productivity software".  What they found was exactly as detailed above,
> for organisations of a non-trivial size office software destroyed
> productivity.  Sun went so far as to claim that removing office software
> from all but essential use cases and providing users with just
> plain-text email, plain text editors, a desktop calculator application
> and web browser gave them an 80% increase in productive computer use.
> They saw an change in the way that people communicate, people spent more
> time making sure the information was right and the language clear.  All
> "databases" and "systems" had to be created by a centralised team who
> could attempt to ensure that information was redistributed to all
> appropriate parties instead of people with no software engineering
> expertise creating a thousand and on identical spreadsheets.
>
> Now of course Sun didn't have an office suite in those days, indeed they
> were selling a platform that didn't have an office suite to speak of at
> all.  That report was almost definitely sending a message that Sun
> wanted us to buy into so we could consider buying their thin-client
> products.  They have since retracted that report, now they _love_ office
> software.   StarOffice is the monkey's gamete-glands they tell us.
> Trouble is, that report raised some very good points, situations I've
> seen over and over, and I can't get the idea out of my head - wouldn't
> we  all be better off without massive, bloated, over-complex software
> creating extra tasks in our jobs that never used to exist?
>
> Discuss...
>
>
> --
> Geoffrey J. Teale <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
> Free Software Foundation
>
>
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