Open Office vs. Microsoft Word 2007

This is a topic for all those people that are wondering whether it is worth it or not to purchase Word 2007, or to just stick with Open Office, the free alternative word processor.

I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to use both, and I've spent time with both of them (probably more so with Office 2007).

This is just a little overview over the features, usability, and user interface of both Office and OpenOffice.

User Interface

This is probably where the biggest difference between Open Office and Office 2007 occur. Open Office has the classic Word interface, while Office 2007 has the "Ribbon" interface.

"Ribbon" must be one of Office 2007's greatest asset. I find the interface wonderful, easy to use, and pleasing to the eye. Everything flows well; even for the first time using the program I was easily able to find all the essentials, and I was even able to find little features i wouldn't have seen otherwise, because they aren't hidden in a stack of menus, but are colorfully shown with little icons and pictures.

This isn't to say that OpenOffice has a bad interface.. it is just dated, and resembles that of Word 2003. It still gets the job done.. but it certainly isn't as pretty.



As you can see, it is quite easy to find what you are looking for with Word 2007. Each tab is clearly labeled, with Home, Insert, Page Layout, etc. Then inside each of the tabs is a set of ribbons which too are clearly labeled. For the "Home" tab, you have the Clipboard ribbon, the Font ribbon, the Paragraph ribbon, and the styles ribbon. If you need to change something related to the font, then you just go to the font ribbon and everything you will need will be there. Need to insert a picture? Just hit the insert tab, and you see a big icon that says Picture. No sifting through menus, just tabs. Simply and elegant.

One complaint about ribbon is that it would take up too much space on the screen, but by the looks of the pictures it takes up the same amount of space as an older interface, yet it is much easier to find everything.

For Open Office, you have the standard interface, with different menus and such. Just to insert a picture proved difficult; it took me several seconds to find the button. See the next picture for yourself.



There is no icon that looks like a picture, and it just seems tucked near the bottom, where you would least expect it. Then again, maybe I'm just spoiled by Word 2007.

Although the windows are thin, it is still easy to find how to insert pictures in Word 2007, you go to the "insert" tab, click on illustrations, then picture. Nice big readable buttons. Even in such a thin window the ribbon interface holds up; it doesn't become any harder to find what you need.

For the Open Office interface, many of the buttons get tucked into that ">>" button on the right side, making it harder to find what you need.

Performance

Quite simply, Word 2007 opens much quicker than Open Office. Word 2007 opens in a split second, whereas Open Office (Writer) can take a few seconds. Not a big deal, but it just goes to show that Word 2007 is a very well tuned piece of software.

Just a slight thing that bothers me, while not major, is how OpenOffice handles resizing the window. While it isn't a HUGE deal, it glitches a little bit, and certainly detracts from the overall experience with the software.



Features

Both Word 2007 and the OpenOffice Writer come with a whole software package. I must say that Word 2007 integrates the rest of the Microsoft Office package extremely well. Word has tons of features, too many to name.

I couldn't really see that much integration of software with Open Office, except for the file types that the program uses. Someone please point something out if I'm wrong here.

But OpenOffice still has lots of features, and doesn't skip on any of the essentials. It has one little neat feature that will suggest long words if you have typed them before. Sadly this gets annoying after a while.

I also find the Spell check in word to be superior than OpenOffice.

Conclusions

These were just my impressions overall from using both packages, mainly the word processor.

Overall, I think Word 2007 is the superior product, hands down.

But OpenOffice is free, and Word is not. If you can afford it, I think the Office 2007 package is a great investment.

But if you can't, or don't want to purchase Word, then go on ahead and get OpenOffice. It is FREE after all, which is a big help.

Then again, in the end of the day, they are both just word processors. Word is easier to use, but after writing an entire essay, I don't think using one over the other will necessarily save that much time, or hassle.

Any one else feel free to discuss the different products.

 

wow..thanks for that review...very helpful

I also wanted to describe my favorite feature on Word 2007, which is the references ribbon. You just enter in the pertinent information, and it generates a bibliography source. You can choose from different formats such as APA, etc. It then gives you the option of inserting sources into the proper sentences that need citing and then an option to list all sources at the end of the paper as a works cited or a bibliography!!

where was this when i was in college?? it would have made my life so much easier!!!

 

You get what you pay for. MS Word is super-responsive. Open Office is sluggish, and, there's no anti-aliasing on drawings. They now refer to anti-aliasing prob as "A LOW PRIORITY ISSUE". Ridiculous.

I think OpenOffice loses everywhere, except in some minor things, like proper opening of hyperlinks, which MS Office XP actually handles unpredictably.

 

And office 2007 pro is $60 with student rebate

 

what is anti-aliasing?

of course it loses in all areas...but it is free afterall....and for business owners, it is a great cost reducer for a business that doesn't require office, but still may ocassionaly need it or view attachments

 

anti-aliasing kills the jaggy edges.

You don't notcied until you try it, onece you did, you are dependant of it

 

Great review by the OP...Microsoft really unleashed a great product in Office 2007. Its UI is so pleasing and responsive. I use it everyday for lots of various needs and it gets the job done in style. OpenOffice is a solid product too and for a free price, its a great alternative for those who cannot quite afford Office 2007 or have rather simple needs.

However Microsoft strides to provide their product to their customers, and I very much like the deals and discounts they offer to students, and they are not scaled down editions of the full versions. I purchased Office 2007 Professional from my school for cheap and its great.

Productivity is essential.

 

I feel the exact same way about your conclusion. Well Said

Too add on to that each one has it's minor annoyances that will make you want to use the other for a certain project.

For example Open Office is much better at starting from scratch, but it's templates pale in comparison to MS Office. On the same not MS Office loves to take control of the outlay/format and can sometimes make it difficult to edit easily.

 

just a quick question, in my processes, i hae groove monitor running from an install of MS Office enterprise edition and it is in my startup programs. recently MSFT has disabled the groove service, which is also evident in the fact that it does not show on media player anymore, is it safe to just remove it from startup in msconfig?

 

Yup I do. It's useless to me.

It is a peer-to-peer program aimed to facilitate business communication and collaboration for small groups.

 

To add, cos you clearly haven't used word in a comprehensive enough fashion or something since v2007.

EQUATION EDITOR <- 2007 Word Saving Grace
TABLE EDITING SYSTEM

 

Hello,
Good review and thanks for the time. MS Office responds so much faster because it loads into memory when it your computer starts up. If you use it alot, thats great, but if you dont, it eats up memory and CPU cycles on a regular basis. Personnaly, I turn it off to save memory and make my laptop faster in general. I use both, but believe that there is only so much you can do with a word processor. For me, MS word doesn't do that much more to justify the cost compared to an open source app.

 

i dont really see a drop in performance with outlook. I use outlook and word on a daily basis and it opens up in less than a second!

 

Gud review.....Rep +

Office 2007 is a vastly improved product compared to office 2003 in terms of responsiveness.......

and Office 2007 beats O hands down.....no doubt about it !!

But u also need to consider the time frame that both have been around...MS office has been in development since 1989 and O started in 1999.....So O has managed good considering 10 years lag.....!!

 

I haven't used 2007, but autoformating can be disabled through the options menu in earlier versions. I too have found the feature tedious at times.

 

I only use OO but now i'm gonna give 2007 a try. Thanks for the review.

 

I'm not so sure that this is true, I just checked my startup list and I didn't see anything related to Office 2007 being started when the computer boots, then again maybe I am just missing the process.

On the other hand, I just noticed that OpenOffice does start something on boot up.

 

I tried OO last night to compare it to an older version of Word I have. Once installed, I couldn't open Word. I uninstalled OO.

 

If you are in the military (Army) you can get Office 2007 Enterprise Edition for $20.

 

I love the new Office interface, from Office 97 right through to 2003, the interface hasbeen very similar. O7 is clean, fresh and very appealing. I must admit though it took me a while to get used to it, and it hogs a heap of ram (I had to upgrade to use it efficiently). I have used open office and it just yells old versions of Ofiice. I love 07 I dont use anything else!

 

I'm pretty sure this was present in Word 2003, but it is much easier to access in Word 2007.

 

MS Word 2007 is a great program - very responsive and well laid out. Yet the one feature that I miss is Reveal Codes. This is incorporated into WordPerfect and is the reason why I continue to use WordPerfect. Reveal Codes makes formatting and editing so much easier.

Does Open Office incorporate that feature?

 

Hmmmm. Im going to be the counterpoint of this discussion I think.

I love the look of Word 2007 and its all pretty but...

1. I find it takes longer to start than both Office XP and Open Office. Both of these take less than a second to open while Office 2007 takes about 2 seconds. I know we laugh at these trivial things but, its a nice feeling watching most applications start instantly with a SSD.

2. Im not keen on the orb I have to open to open/close/save or print a document. yes, Im sure its a menu or 'ribbon' somewhere and I just havent found it yet.

3. Hmm whats the price difference?

4. the space Office 07 occupies is amazingly large. You can really see this on a 32Gb SSD.

For what you would expect at the end of the day, Open Office is a shining example of what freeware should be. For those cringe on spending hundreds just to type a letter, its ideal. And you can save as a doc file.

In the end, although Office 2007 slows me quite a bit as I learn to get use to it, I must admit that I love all the bells and whistles...its like a parade.

 

With little tuning, OO.Org can start as fast as Office

 

First time I started messing with office 2007 was though outlook 2007... that program rocks... after that I started messing around with word, excell, etc... hated it. Those ribbons sucked, bigtime.

After I got my new notebook I started using Onenote 07... In this case, MS really sucked me into a program. Yea, onenote was a trial, but it was there, so I used it. Got hooked. New and faster way of doing things. (side note: Those trials really work... lol)

Anyway, purchased onenote and decided to load the full office 2007 since I thought they would play well together. Tried word again, hated it.... kept messing with it, until two weeks later, I get it.... It is a very nice program... I can get to things fast and it has more options to make my reports look pretty... not that I need that, but they are better on the eyes. lol

 

Groove FTL. Google Docs > Groove.

 

Thanks for the great little review!

 

For me, I really like the new Office 2007 (and subsequently, Office 2008 for Mac as well). The ribbon interface really works and all the graphic effects are easy to do and very nice. Definitely worth the upgrade.

 

I have the same opinion about 2007 office.

For me MS office is better than openoffice in every way.

 

I wonder if Open Office will try do mimic the same ribbon UI? That would be nice.

 

TBH, I can't stand Office 2007. I just got it and it's driving me crazy.

For example, I want single spaced lines and even after I select 1.0 line spacing, there is still a gap.

Back to Office 2003 Professional.... :/

 

That setting bugged me for a while, until I realized that it was really easy to change. On the Home tab, select the "No Spacing" style. I'm not sure why the 1.5 spacing is default, especially after you manually change it to 1. It's easy to get around though.