Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

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Tag Archives: Project

Openproj – Project Management software without the cost

OpenProj_big

We have all heard of Openoffice, as a replacement for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint but the replacements for other tools that people are really comfortable with has been a little more difficult – and in this I am mainly talking about MS Project. MS Project is a very costly product, particularly for the small business or independent contractor, costing upwards of £500 for the most basic version. If you do not have it, then it really impacts you when that client sends you a project plan to follow, or if you needed to create a project plan for a particular customer, so you used to have to just buy it. You could of course use the various software as a service free/low cost systems out there like Basecamp and a number of others and hope that no-one wanted to have all that information available in the MS Project file format.

Now though, there is an open-source piece of software available that offers the 80% features that people use out of MS Project including the ability to open the MS Project file format – this is Serena Software’s Openproj. It is pretty basic and, shall we say, a bit ugly in most eyes but it does the job and there is no outlay. Openproj has advanced significantly since the version 0.90 that I started using to what is now version 1.4. It has become more stable, and slightly prettier. It also has one other major advantage – it works on multiple platforms, so if you are not a Windows fiend then you can actually fire it up on Linux/Unix and on Apple systems. One weakness it has is in the filesaving capability as it saves in the MS Project 2003 XML format, which needs to be imported into Microsoft’s product rather than simply opened but that is relatively simple to do. It does also have its own file format for those who do not need to keep files always in a Microsoft compatible format.

I am sure this is going to continue to develop, and the recent purchase of the Projity company by Serena Software, shows that the product has some legs.

Netbooks and the Long Distance Worker

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has taken a look at several Netbooks and has posted a summary video as follows:

Walt pushes his review from the perspective that Netbooks are some sort of halfway house between Smartphones and standard Laptops. This may have once been the case when dealing with the little 7” EeePC 701 and it seems that much of his perspective comes from the review of that little device back in January 2008. I purchased the EeePC 701 and used it as a web/email device and did find the small screen, lack of storage and slightly limited performance a problem but the 2nd generation EeePC 90x, Acer and MSI Wind products have resolved those issues.

Earlier in the year, I moved over my primary laptop to being the Advent 4211, an OEM branded MSI Wind U100. This has sufficient performance (Intel Atom 1.6GHz), storage (80GB HD) and screen size (10” 1024×600) for my needs, which are largely email (Outlook), Office applications, Project planning, Blogging, IPTV Video playback and messaging – all in fact except playing games. The only issue that arose was one of battery life where for cost and supply reasons, the battery was limited to being a 2200mAh one which provided a little over 2 hours of use. This however was solved by adding the 4400mAh 6 cell battery which cost less than £50, although I would have much preferred it to have been included from the start. This provides over 4 hours of use and is certainly the most long running laptop that I have ever owned.

This is all in addition to having a Windows Mobile 6.0 Smartphone which allows on the go email (I use the HTC S710 Vox) but in no way replaces having a full PC. Even if I had the famed Apple iPhone, I would not see that replacing the Netbook as my workhorse device as it simply does not have the power, keyboard, and application capability of a full OS based device. All the same, interesting view and I look forward to the 3rd Generation Netbooks that are now becoming available that make use of onboard 3/3.5G communication devices.