Having used OpenOffice happily for years now, I was naturally interested to try out IBM’s revived Symphony office suite, which uses the same code base. My advice if you’re similarly inclined: don’t. It’s prettier than OpenOffice, and seems to include a few innovations which the base product should really adopt (eg a single tabbed instance in the taskbar), but it’s noticeably slower than OOo. But these are just side issues compared to the two things IBM have done completely wrong.
First off, they make it incredibly difficult to actually install. The download server clearly isn’t coping with the demand; and they make you go through so many registration hoops before you even get to a download page. Why make me register beforehand? Why not just throw it open to the world, and allow P2P download for everyone’s mutual benefit? If registration is an issue, how about after installation… or even better, after the beta phase?
But that’s nothing compared to the fact that it automatically snatched all the relevant file associations away from my OpenOffice installation. For me, with a product that is so clearly in beta, and only of interest to the sort of early-adopters who will already be running OpenOffice, this is utterly unforgivable. How dare they do this?
I’m now spending time I don’t have, trying to restore my file associations. I’m genuinely angry. If this is IBM’s attempt to endear itself to people like me, providing an improved version of a trusted open-source tool, they just got it badly, badly wrong.