Open Office or replacements

Hey what do you guys think about Open Office? Will this work just as well as Microsoft Home and Student? Tryin to save some money and have heard good things about it. Pro's and cons? Any other Office software thats just as good or better?

Thanks for the help!

 

Open Office is a good free alternative to Microsoft Office, but it doesn't have all the features of Microsoft Office. If you have lots of cash to spend or want some advanced (but rarely used, in my opinion) features, get Microsoft Office 2007. But if you're on a tight budget, Open Office will be a feature-filled alternative to Notepad and Microsoft Office.

 

Sam, you are reading my mind They each have their own pros and cons( Techsoup does a good job comparing them but the best way to see if Openoffice is right for you is to try it out. Since its free and Open source, Openoffice wins in my book, but i use both(MS office 2002 on my lappy and Portable OpenOffice on my flashdrive/mp3 player.

 

Thanks Kdawgca, as you see I'm not "NBR Psychic" for nothing .

Another note though, if you plan to make really professional looking documents and powerpoint presentations, OpenOffice is currently no match against Microsoft Office 2007 though. The features and graphics power of Office 2007 is amazing, one of the best products Microsoft ever made in my opinion.

But if you're on a tight budget, as I've said before, OpenOffice is the best you can get for free.

 

If you are a casual user, OpenOffice is a great choice. I switched over to it some time ago.

 

OpenOffice is infinitely better value.

 

Openoffice is a worthy suite if the Office suite gives you a price sticker shock. Great for doing casual editing documents and not needing to use the cool graphics of Office.

I have used it for about 3 months, but due to college requirements for presentation standatds, i had to switch to Office.

 

I find OpenOffice is even too good. Too many features I will never use, just like MS Office. I end up using AbiWord and Gnumeric instead. I prefer lighter, smaller standalone applications. All the functionality without the bloat, and much faster opening. I think you should definitely give OpenOffice a try though (as well as AbiWord and Gnumeric). It's not as "pretty" as Office, but it does the job. It has its own macro/scripting ability, but the only downside is that its not compatible with Office's as far as that goes. If you are in an environment where everyone is expected to seamlessly exchange Office documents, then it might be better to get the student edition of Office, because there's no guarantee that everything will always convert seamlessly (although I have never encountered a problem myself). But since OpenOffice is totally open source and free, why not try it out and see for yourself if it suits your needs. Visually, it doesn't fit with the Microsoft everything as a flashy video game and interactive TV philosophy, but as far as doing what needs to be done, it's all there.

 

It's pretty good, I use it mainly because I'm too lazy to install my copy of Office 2007 that I got free from my uni. The interface is decent, not as streamlined as MS Office but adequate. There's always the random text formatting or alignment error, and it seems to open a lot slower than MS Office. Word of caution, never save your files in .odt format, always do a .doc or whatever because you will want to have portability for those files.

 

on that note, if you decide to go for Office, and can find a cheap copy of 2003, might want to consider that. 2003 professional runs perfectly on my Vista. I already had a copy of it so I didn't bother getting 2007.

 

Wow, i made this thread last night and didn't expect NEAR this response! This is fantastic!

Back to the point at hand, a free 60 day trial comes with the notebook, so i can use that for a little while. The school i'm going to next year(oklahoma city university) has free copies of Office 2003 that I can obtain to use, but there not supposed to upgrade to the 2007 edition till the fall. So my question is:
Do i use the open office software, get the office 2003 now, or just wait it out until the 2007 edition comes out? If i get the 2003 now, can i easily upgrade to the 2007 when it comes out?

FTR My new comp is a HPdv6000t. Intel t5600, 2GB of RAM, Nvidia graphics card, bluetooth and all that good jazz. Anyone know which bloatware i should remove and things of that nature? I don't know which HP programs are vital and which aren't?

 

I'd say skip Office 2003 and just stick with OpenOffice until your university gets Office 2007.

 

Open Office is just as good as any version of MS office, except MS office 2007.

 

Will i be able to remove openoffice rather easily when i upgrade?

 

Yeah, its just basically clicking "uninstall". Its easy and there's no obstacles.

 

I have removed OpenOffice many times and never had a problem. The reason for removing it was to install a new version as I prefer to use clean installs.

 

I would call that shortsighted, as OpenDocument is a truly open and free standard which is being adopted by numerous governments. Hell it's the ISO standard XML document format.

Besides, if you want to make sure that things appear the same you can always use the built-in PDF exporter.

 

I'm lucky in that my university offers OOo as our standard office suite. We can submit assignments in .pdf, .odt or .doc. But if formatting errors if you use .doc, too bad.

 

As far as I know there is no reason to remove OpenOffice every time you update it just run the install for the new one and it will remove the old one during installation all in one process, sort of like killing 2 birds with 1 stone .
The clean install route you talked about makes no difference to the end result, just means you take 1 more step to get to the same end result...

 

You are correct Evolution. It is just a habit I got into many years ago when things were a little less smooth in the software world. Making it a quirck of mine for peace of mind.

 

hey thanks for all the help guys! I guess i'll go dL that for free and wait for the Office 2007 next fall!

 

I am a heavy "office" user and a programmer who happens to program "office" applications.

Hands down I would choose "Open Office". It has every feature you will want and is far more stable and predictable. You can choose to save your documents in every office format and they are all fully compatible.

You can tell that OO was coded by a bunch of programmers; everything makes sense and is organized from presentation to code implementation. Far to much of MSOffice has become a marketing decision IMHO...