OpenOffice.org Demographics

Submitted by mk on 21 May, 2009 - 18:16

From March 2009 Presentation by Project Renaissance, the initiative to re-imaging OOo, surprising demographics of OOo users.

  • OOo is used by ¾ of the users at home
  • On average, users are between 41 and 50 years old
  • ¼ of all users are 51 years old or older

The first point is understandable, OOo still have compatibility issues with Microsoft Office so companies hesitate to use it in work.

The second and third point are amazing. I have no clue at all why many OOo users are the elders.

Continue from point #1, is it a good strategy to shift OOo focus from work to home use? For example, make it feel more like 'Keynote' than 'PowerPoint'.

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Comments

mementototem

21 May, 2009 - 19:30

ใครใช้ OOo = แก่

/me เผ่น

pawinpawin

21 May, 2009 - 22:22

I think the reason is that people in their 40s/50s were not born in Microsoft Office era, while later generations use MS Office in their education years. So we get used to MS Office but those old folks don't.

mk

21 May, 2009 - 22:33

@pawin

there is some arguments for your hypothesis. If the elders have no preference for office suite, why don't they tend to choose the most popular choice in the market?

Another hypothesis I can think about is these elders are addicted to (long long time ago) StarOffice!!!

สาวก Science (N...

21 May, 2009 - 23:05

I feel most of elderly people, especially in Thailand, all of them are familiar to MS-Office in old style menu not a new interface like ribbon.

When I try to introduce 2007 to my father, my younger brot or my professor, all of them feel unfamiliar to it. My father can't use some function (in fact can't access to hidden function) and he talk like it was removed in new version.

pawinpawin

22 May, 2009 - 00:02

@mk
Heheh.. maybe they're addicted to plain old '1-2-3' and 'WordPerfect'!

Anyway, I think it might be because they just want some simple programs to use without costing them lots of money (They are not going to use the latest features or playing with eye candy graphics anyway... they just want a plain old basic word processor)

I also agree with @Nozomi that Office 2007's ribbons is so hard to use for people who are addicted to menus and small customizable toolbars. As far as I know, the ribbon in the next Office 2010 is customizable at last.

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