CROSSING THE WORK “4th WALL” ALERT: One of the IBM account managers that I work with discovered my blog (that’s a lie – it came up in conversation and I demanded she read it religiously) and took particular interest in this post about open source free alternatives to Microsoft Office. She informed me of IBM’s free product called Symphony – I figured I would review it.
Since Windows 7 will be the OS platform of choice in a few months, I decided to install it on my beta copy machine. Any quirks I may experience might not be representative of the product.
Version: 1.3
Installer Size: 192 MB download
Installed Size: 517.2 MB
[Installation]
The installation posed no issues (even on a beta OS). Windows gives you the “can I run this window” and you say yes, and it opens. Even on an older machine, the Symphony program installed quickly and has snappy performance which we will get to in a second.
[Overall Features]
It is clear that the developers didn’t just want to take OpenOffice and put an IBM stamp on it. The interface looks sufficiently different without being distracting. The suite looks like it was designed to run under high screen resolutions with the placement of function sidebars. The suite also uses a tabbed approach familiar in most current web browsers. It feels comfortable and does not clutter your desktop and menu bar.
[Word Processing]
The word processing program feels and acts like it should. The graphical creation functions leave something to be desired and wouldn’t stand up to MS Word circa 1997 when it comes to creating basic art. That aside, I like the text manipulation features being placed on the right side on the screen. Again, it seems that Symphony is designed for large monitors and computers with higher resolution.
I was pleased that I could open Office 2007 Word Documents (.docx) format. This closes the gap in the office wars and hopefully Microsoft will relent and switch to the OOF (Open Office Format) or at least support it in future versions of Office. I didn’t try any crazy documents because I don’t live in the Office 2007 world, but I did download some documents and it seemed to open them just fine.
[Spread Sheets]
I was happiest with the spread sheet application in this suite. It feels like Excel but I think improves upon the interface. Once again adding a formatting menu on the right, it was very easy to use (instead of having all of the tools buried in other menus). I downloaded some complex spreadsheets and they were opened with no issue. I read on the spec sheet that macros are not supported, so if you are a heavy macro user you are out of luck. But if you are like me, and don’t go near macros, this is a good alternative to MS Excel.
COMPLEX SPREAD SHEET
SIMPLE FORMULAS
[Presentations]
The presentation or Power Point Alternative looks and feels exactly like Power Point. I don’t have anything to add to this. It seems to open up all of the .PPT files I have thrown at it with no issue. I don’t think sound or video are enabled in this version, so that’s a loss (more the sound than video). But again, if you looking for simple to moderate power point replacement for free. This application seems to do the trick.
[Conclusion]
IBM Symphony is a viable Microsoft Office replacement for basic users. After a few days of using it, I noticed it was slower than I originally thought, but that could be chalked up to using older equipment to test it. The suite has a nice visual look and offers robust features for being a free office suite. It seems to work well with MS Office formats including Office 2007. I liked the tab interface and polished GUI.
The drawbacks are pretty obvious, it isn’t a full replacement. If you are a hardcore users of MS Office products you won’t be able to use macros, sounds, videos, custom scripts for word. The suite does not come with a database product and assumes you are using Lotus Notes for email management. Some not-so-obvious drawbacks are if you choose this product over OpenOffice, you are shunning an active and large user/support group that actively corrects bugs and creates new features free of charge. While this is a lovely IBM experiment, how long will they continue to support this free-ware product? That will be the difference between wide-spread adoption and acclaim or the fate of WordPerfect. Regardless of Symphony’s future fate, IBM has put together a very nice product that is certainly worth your time if you don’t want to spend several hundred dollars to type up a letters and make simple spreadsheets.
If you want to try IBM Symphony, you can download it at IBM’s Symphony Micro-site
