In the danish papers there has been some discussion about introducing OpenOffice.org in the public sector. Sceptisme and fear for the unknown is natural. But when it comes to professionals like IT-managers I'll expect a little more.

Anyway; one of the heavy arguments has been that 'The users needs training' and 'Our users knows how to use MS Office. They would need to learn the new system before they can use it'.

Ha..... Thats what YOU think.

First:
A research performed by Andy Brown about average users knowledge about MS Office showed that the users actually don't know how to use MS Office.

The results showed that 86% of users answered between three and nine out of 15 questions correctly.

Sources:
http://www.computerweekly.com/
http://ms-iq.com/

Second:
A research paper from about two years ago (OpenOfficice.org 1.1.3) proved that the average user actualy learned OpenOffice.org very fast and without any training except a brief introduction.

So whats the problem ?

• Users don't know how to use MS Office !
• Users can learn OpenOffice.org very fast !