Why would you want to pay for these things ? Even if you are stuck with a Microsoft Windows system you can still download OpenOffice and the Gimp for free. Anti virus, try ClamAV.

I suppose you get a nice cardboard box and manual ... but is it worth it ?

If I can do the maths correct, it looks like they sold on average 18.5 copies per store per month... I'd say that was pretty disappointing!

Plus they've taken less than £50,000...

cheap software is a good idea, paid for software is usually better than the free stuff, not only can the user be assured that it doesnt contain malicious software with and i'd hope tesco would provide support for their application. and lets face it MS windows beats most systems. just casue linux and open office are free doesnt mean they are any good.

Is the £20 for support ? Formal, SLA based support is the only think missing from OpenOffice.org, the GIMP, Dia etc.

Reviews seem OK http://www.trustedreviews.com/software/review/2006/11/16/Tesco-Complete-Office/p1

... but is there support ?

I think it's safe to say that the Tesco 20 quid software offerings aren't actually aimed at the average Register reader.

As it stands, most users don't have a clue what OpenOffice is, or where they'd get it from. And as for photo-editing with Gimp? Don't make me laugh- no-one would make head nor tail of it.

What I would have preferred to have seen, though, was Tesco perhaps packaging OpenOffice in boxes and selling it, instead of an office suite made by labelling firm. I'm sure they could have struck a deal, giving some more cash to the OO project.

Oh, and you jest, but there's a lot to be said for providing the average consumer with a cardboard box and manual. A lot of people would assume OO is crap precisely because it's free and can't be bought in stores.

"Why pay for these things?" asks Alain Williams.

Well, the average home user doesn't have a clue. This site is full of us techies who (usually) know what we are doing. :o)

The average home user buys a cheap machine from a High Street store, so it would be natural for them to pick-up their software with the groceries. Most of these people don't have a clue about OSS.

The real question is - is the software any good? Or is it like the awful "free graphics apps" thrown in with digital cameras and scanners?

That'll be marketing for you... some people just don't feel like they "have" something unless it was sold to them.

Ask any of the mums driving the 0.5m to drop their kids off at my daughters' school. I walk past them as they're loading their "preciouses" into their vast 4x4's and then walk past them again as they're unloading their vile offspring at the other end, that is unless they're still floundering with the complexities of fitting a Range-Rover Sport between two other Range-Rover Sports.

It'll be these kind of clubcard wielding harridans or the home woven lentil computing "M$" naysayers that claim that they're "escaping the machine, man"...

Honestly... we're just animals. We're born, we eat, drink, poop, reproduce and destroy things. Every action has a consequence and every consequence sucks. Why not download Openoffice? Well for starters, because day to day interoperability with MS Office is not seamless... and if you work in an organisation like Kingston Communications where the head of the product lines refers to slideshows as "powerpoints" and spreadsheets as "excels", or begs to be "outlooked" a "word document".... well, in that scenario I'd imagine you'd very quickly lose the will to live if you dared to use an alternative.

So stay at home, bit-torrent is your friend... if your conscience pricks at you then plant a seed and don't eat again until its fruit is ripe for the harvest and the eating of.

Grrr, anger... depression. IT, argh.

xxx

Open office is crap - having used it for several years, then going back to a real office product and thinking HOLY CRAP WHY DID I USE THAT PIECE OF CRAP for so long O.o It's like when you watch a film when you're a teenager and you tell everyone for years that it was great. Then you watch it again and are like "Oh my god... that was so crap"

The gimps also a piece of crap - but at least you can draw pictures in it without a degree. If only it had line smoothing ¬.¬

This is just a rebadged version of Ability Office - OEM versions of which are £2 and £4 for Standard and Pro repectively - looking at Scan's pricelist.

It is adequate for most home users and although far less featureful its much more stable than OO.

Gimp is a dreadful name for a piece of software!

Most "average users" would avoid it just because it sounds worryingly like some sort of Internet sex thing...

Come on, if your mum saw and icon labelled "gimp" on your desktop, you really would have to spend a good half hour convincing her it was innocent!

I wish Tesco would sell me a fridge that orders my beer for me so I don't have to go to the supermarket and queue up with these muppets that buy computer products from them!

I agree with Ed about the apparent lack of success. If it were a new food product it would need to be generating significantly in excess of this figure within two weeks of launch to justify its shelf space.

So I wonder, what else is going on?

Be fair, guys !! If you don't like that free software, they offer to cheerfully refund every cent you paid them for that software !!

That said, for every one knowledgable geek that I know, there are at least 38 others whose knowledge of IT is limited to where the on/off switch is on their PCs. Similarly, Tesco sells ready plucked and gutted chickens. If you don't like that, you can always buy fertilised eggs and hatch them yourself and then feed them and wait until the chickens are grown enough to slaughter, pluck, gut and *THEN* cook !!

BTW, I love rearing and slaughtering my own chickens !! Gives me a sense of power !! ***Evil cackles***

for home users I would recommend paint.net

http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html

I think they would be more at home with its UI.

...doesn't anyone who wants cheap software buy bent copies of MS Office 2007 Pro from John down the pub for £5? He also does a nice line in Adobe CS3 plus Sky / Cable decoder cards. Says he'll have Harry Potter and The Order Of the Phoenix on DVD this weekend too.

What ? that was sooooooooooo last week :P

=D

I think Tesco would have been in a better position to come to a deal with O.O and sell the product at a distribution fee (such as .. £4.99?)

O.O would get amazing product placement and free advertising

Tesco would make a good profit selling hundreds of thousands of cheap copies

and the customer would get access to software they probably never thought of using before or had access to.

yes yes its free on the web, but if you've never seen it before or not heard of any office other than Microsofts, you only gained.

"Why would you want to pay for these things ? Even if you are stuck with a Microsoft Windows system you can still download OpenOffice and the Gimp for free."

Because none of their target audience has ever heard of OpenOffice. If software costs nothing, there's no advertising budget.

The only way the rest of us hear about most open source stuff is through technology forums, but people in tech forums aren't the kind of people who buy software in Tescos.

"Anti virus, try ClamAV."

The problem is, how is a non-technical person supposed to distinguish a genuine free AV application from one of the many many spyware apps that claim to be free AV programs?

If we were talking about real life front door locks, most people would feel much more secure buying locks from a shop than using free locks that some stranger gives away in the street.

From what i've seen on the back of the tesco office packaging and on their site, Tesco office seems to be a clone of MS office, since unlike OO it has the correct labeling on buttons etc, so those using MS office at work and Tesco office at home shouldn't notice much difference. I of course use OO on both my mac and my XP laptop, but Tesco looks good for the average user, and Microsoft should be happy, it will cut down on people pirating their software and cause them to buy genuine copies of Tesco office, just what they've always wanted, right?

I have never, ever paid for a piece of software in my life, ever. And I don't intend to start!

If I ever want to install a program, I just type "apt-get install <name of program>" and it installs itself from the Internet.

Why is it so many readers fail to see the point?? It's really very simple!! ... YES you can download it for free, yes you can also pay ridiculous amounts of money for something better, BUT! ... Figure this: If the average joe; dad; mum; use a pc and decide one day they want to write a letter or a CV, are they gonna buy ms word? nope! too expensive! Are they gonna download open office? What is open office? Never heard of it, where do I get it? download from where? how do you download it? Where are the instructions? and the install instructions too?

Most "users" do just that, they use the pc. If they want a different program they will buy it, some may be clever enough to download something and install it but then how many know which free program to choose from? Not everyone keeps up with what's happening in the computer world! They have more important things to do like sort the kids out, check what time the footy is on, call mum ...

This is aimed at people who want to do simple things like write letters or tweak a photo they took who aren't interested in bells and whistles or looking these things up on the internet. They just want to go out and buy it just like they do with everything else in life, it's what they understand and there's nothing wrong that!

I say good on you Tesco. The sales alone say it all!

For most people who would buy software from Tesco they wouldn't need anything as inclusive as The Gimp.

Give 'em Irfanview and Inkscape and they'd be as happy as porkers in poo.

Irfanview -Look at photo's, basic retouch, resize and some superb batch editing plus a few plug-ins for the over the top stuff.

Inkscape -- apart from anything else they'd just get lost playing with spirals and polygons.

A friend panicked when told that he could no longer have updates in the UK to his favourite Quicken software - as an accountant, modesty and the fear of prosecution saves me from making any comments on the subject of Quicken, or the necessity for annual updates. However, I did note that Tesco Personal Finance states that it is compatable with Quicken. In a short sentence - No it isn't. Just thought you'd like to know.

I think this is pretty good news. It's cheap enough to be an impulse buy, and since MS has made it difficult to blag a copy of Office to use at home, it fills a need and make people less dependent on MS. The same suite (Ability) is also badged and sold by Ebuyer (for £12.99) and it's pretty capable, especially the database. Anyone who has tried mail-merging with Word would be pleasantly surprised, with filters and sorting available on the document menu.

It can also be made to default to MS formats (pre-Office 2007 at least) and is a whole lot more compact and faster on old hardware, like a lot of people have at home. I've nothing against Open Office (although for some reason Star Office seems more responsive) but my personal favourite is Ashampoo Office, which can also be put on, and run from, a memory stick.

The emergence of cheap alternatives (not to mention the free on-line editions like Google Docs, Zoho and ThinkFree) must be giving Bill G sleepless nights. IIRC, the absurd profit level in the MS version is what allows them to lose so much money on everything else!

> Not everyone is an IT pro...

Sheesh. Remember when phrases like "IT pro" and "techie" might have had some semblance of knowledge and skills behind them?

Now it seems that any buffoon can call himself an "IT pro" or a "techie" because he "knows about" openoffice or has installed gimp or reads the register?

Installing software, even an OS, doesn't make you a complete fuckwit...suggesting that said act is some kind of "IT professional" or "techie" event on the other hand....

"paid for software is usually better than the free stuff" - that is simply not the case. I suspect you haven't actually tried Free (capital F) software. PD software and Freeware is often a bit naff and unstable, tends not to get maintained for long after its initial release, and of course isn't very trustworthy, but Free (as in GNU GPL, freely redistributable, source-code included) software can be trusted and is often vastly superior to many paid-for packages. A few slick visuals and a thousand features nobody uses doesn't make up for MS Office's tendency to suck up malware like a sponge, generate massive document files that contain data you'd probably rather they didn't and cost enough to make the average home PC user gasp in horror.

MS Office has a lot more features than OpenOffice but if you're typing a letter, throwing a CV together or writing an essay for example OOo is perfectly adequate.

"most users don't have a clue what OpenOffice is, or where they'd get it from" - if most users can't figure out where to get OpenOffice.org from they deserve to buy Tesco's pish in my opinion, and it's no wonder they can't figure out the GIMP. You'd have to have a room temperature IQ not to try http://www.openoffice.org/ ...

Of course it's true to say that "day to day interoperability with MS Office is not seamless" (of OpenOffice) - but I suspect the same is true of Tesco's shrink wrapped stool samples. After all MS Office uses closed, proprietary file formats which are deliberately obscure. Interoperability with MS Office is not really very important.

And to the anonymous coward who opined: "Open office is crap" - in what sense? What is actually "crap" about it? I guess the fact that by your own admission you think in block capitals might actually answer that question though. Also, the fact that you think the GNU Image Manipulation Program is known as "the gimps" and are of the opinion that it is also "crap" is revealing. Oh - hold on, careful, hold your head straight, I think you're drooling on your keyboard...

Simon B: I get your point about the absence of a well-rounded package with instructions etc., but I suspect that most people don't really read the instructions - just pop the disc in and wait for a Wizard, then "Next" their way through to "Finish". That actually works with the Win32 binary distribution of OOo. So the only real hurdle is pointing naive users in the right direction for the download.

Re: "Financial" - try GnuCash. It is possible (though not perfect or particularly easy yet) to import Quicken data into it and it's a vastly superior accounting app - see http://www.gnucash.org/ - specifically http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v1.6/C/t3948.html for some documentation relating to importing QIF files. The documentation and the process it describes are a little involved and suit someone at least a bit technical with some experience on Unix-like systems but hey, this is the Reg, shouldn't be a problem there eh?

Not quite sure how you worked that out, I don't think they're selling them for £2??

It should be more like £1/2 Million, which on a minimal number of stores sounds pretty good to me!