Linux Solutions

A six month survey on the choice of office software has been taken by ClickStream Technologies, and has found that free desktop-based office applications such as OpenOffice are what keep Microsoft on its toes.

The survey was taken by 2400 internet users in America on their preference of both hosted and desktop-based paid-for , and free office applications The survey results showed that although Google Docs and Spreadsheets were a firm favourite as a competitor to Microsoft’s Office software, “OpenOffice is currently the more likely app t take that position”

ClickSteam found that consumers are still not fully convinced of the merits of ‘cloud computing’, and that this was a good indication of, “the value of offline and local processing enabled by installed applications.”

The survey also pointed out that Google had been unable to use the popularity of its Gmail email service to encourage the uptake of its Software as a Service (SaaS) options. Of all of those surveyed, no-one viewed an email attachment in Google Docs using the ‘Open as a Google Document’ button within Gmail.

The survey found that while the use of Google Docs and OpenOffice remains quite low, Microsoft’s Office showed “no signs of declining popularity”, and was still used by around 50 percent of those surveyed.

OpenOffice was the most popular of all the free applications, with 5 percent of those surveyed using the package. The web-based Google Docs was the second most popular free application, used by one percent of the 2400 surveyed. Over the sixth month period, users performed 1797 actions in Microsoft Word. OpenOffice came second with 548 actions used, and Google brings up the rear with just 40.

Other hosted apps didn’t make much impact: “Less than on percent of the sample used Zoho Virtual Office, no use was observed for ThinkFree or WriteBoard,” ClickStream said.

It added that during the study, “Of all participants who used Google Docs or Google Spreadsheets during the study, 68 percent also used Word at least once, indicating that Google Docs has yet to be considered a stand-alone product by most of its users.”

In contrast however, just 26 percent of OpenOffice users, used Microsoft Word over the course of the six months. However, Microsoft word was shown to be the most popular application used by 51 percent of the surveyed users.

ClickStream conducted the survey on 2400 American internet users over the age of 18. They had to install a program called ClickSight that collects entered data, click patterns, and user behaviour across all browsers.