Microsoft office web apps, or free 'open office' app?

My 1 yr old laptop has a microsoft office trial which I haven't used/deleted yet, but I'm considering using "open office 3.3" instead as it can read/write most 'office' documents.
My other option is using Microsoft office web applications instead. I believe this is what's known as clouding computing, which makes my documents available on the net. How secure is this?

Has anyone tried either of these, and if so, I would appreciate any input that would help me in making my decision. Thanks all !!

 

If you want to use office-like web apps, you could also work with Google Docs. I would assume that both Google Docs and MS's Office Web Apps have similar issues relating to security. Personally, I would not put mission-critical docs on the "cloud" yet. But I have used both (Google and MS Web apps) to create, share, collaborate with and store non-critical docs. And, I have to say that - for me - Office Web Apps is visually better to use and preserves (generally) fidelity with my local copy of Office 2010. My experience with Google Docs has not been as good - generally formatting issues. But I have not tried the latest version.

You may also want to check out this link. It's a bit dated though...but you'll get the basic picture.

 

If you don't do web apps, install LibreOffice over OpenOffice, it is a more improved and will keep improving version of OpenOffice.

 

if it is only for occasional use and not sharing documents with other Office users(I mean complex one, simple one is fine), LibreOffice/OpenOffice would be my choice.

Any serious use, get a copy of MS Office, it is a much better program.

 

personally, i would recommend Open Office, just for the sake of connectivity: what if you need to access a document and there's no internet connection available?

Office online and Google Docs are both great, don't get me wrong about that, but they have one massive caveat: you have to be online all the time.

 

Very true! As I mentioned above, I am partial to MS Office 2010, which is why I use it - currently using the Home and Student Version, which was very cheap and comes with a 3-user license. I do miss Outlook for various reasons and may soon upgrade, but for the moment, I use the Windows Live Mail 2011 email client in place of Outlook. But, yes, Open Office or Libre Office would also work.

 

IBM's Lotus Symphony would be another free option. The software is based on Open Office code.

Michael

 

+1 for LibreOffice

 

So yeah, the consensus appears to be that I should be just fine without purchasing microsoft office for my laptop. I do have it installed on my desktop, but still find it necessary on occassion to be able to open documents and spreadsheets on the laptop.
I have pretty much decided on Openoffice 3.3 . Thanks for your suggestions and input.

 

what licence do you have on the desktop? quite some office licences allow up to 3 parallel installations.

 

Thanks for the link to LibreOffice. Just downloaded it. Looks like I will be uninstalling OO soon. From the wikepedia article, it looks like OO might not continue to be supported much longer. LibreOffice developers came from the Sun O project.