Open Office vs. MS Office

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129613-page,1/article.html

I'm not sure how recent this is, but it's good news for those torn between OO and MS Office. Any OO users out there?

 

cool tip! wondering if it is already been included in the latest 2.2-RC3

cheers ...

 

MS Office will always be better than OO.

I only use OO because its free and MS Office is way too expensive.

I might consider picking up the Student and Teacher edition though.

 

I love Ms Office 2007.
It came installed with my Asus A8Js!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Well, apart from OOo being the only one of the two that runs on my preferred platform, I had never used MS Office because they didn't feature support for ODF documents. Now that 2007 has basic interoperability functionality, the fight could get interesting.

But I still don't believe Office wins on value for money.

 

Well, by value of money Microsoft Office will never win against free OpenOffice.org. But in terms of features and ease of use Office 2007 is much much better than OpenOffice, if you ask me.

 

MS office 2007 is well ahead of open office in terms of ease of use and powerful features....

 

I haven't used MS Office 07 yet.
But IMHO Openoffice is better than MS Office 2003.
I find it easier to use and it is more responsive, plus it has some features MS Office doesn't have, such as exporting to PDF directly.
The best thing is that it's free though, I can't afford any version of MS Office.

 

Most OpenOffice apps are on par with MS Office... I'd say "Impress" is the only one lacking, really... but not far behind.

 

I have the Student version of MS Office '03 and use it primarily for PowerPoint presentations. I use Word only when I have to, preferring Nota Bene for word processing needs.

I'm not sure that I want to spend the money to upgrade to MS Office '07 and am thinking about Openoffice 2 instead. How does Openoffice compare to MS Office 2003, particularly Impress versus PowerPoint. What differences may I notice?

Any other thoughts concerning Openoffice and MS Office?

Thanks,
Bill

 

I think this might help. http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page4765.cfm

I've used MS Office 2000 Small Business, 2003 Student/Teacher / Professional, and 2007 Enterprise. 2007 is my favorite so far.

Mike.

 

http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/0607MG-DifferencesInUseImpressPowerpoint.pdf

 

Office 07 is 10000000000x better than OpenOffice 2 right now...maybe OO can catch up but it's nowhere close right now. It also depends on what you use it for, if all you really use is a word processor and maybe a spreadsheet to keep track of your financials or something then OO is perfect. But other than that, Office 2007 is great.

I got lucky, went to a Microsoft launch event for Vista/Office07 and they gave out free legit copies of Office 2007 Professional.

 

I'm going to side with free, open-source as always, but to be fair, the tools in OpenOffice are not on par with M$ Office just yet.

For example, the spelling and grammar checks are poor, and the English dictionary is very much lacking. I hear OoO 2.2 (already out, or almost already released) deals with a lot of this.

Also, have you tried to make footnotes when writing a thesis in OoO? You can use a keyboard shortcut to do it (Cntrl+F, I believe for M$). This is terrible for someone writing a paper with thirty footnotes.

Oh, where's the OOO publisher equivalent???

For all my bashing, free rules and M$ drools.

 

OOo Impress isn't nearly as good as Powerpoint 03, let alone 07. The framerates aren't as smooth, the anti-aliasing sucks, and you don't have nearly as many customization options/transitions and things. I'd stick with office 03, since you already have it.
IMO, Openoffice is great, for being free. I definitely wouldn't pay for MS office, when there's a decent free alternative around. MS office is better though; it just feels more polished.

 

I have merged two discussions of the same topic - Open Office v. Microsoft Office. Remember to mention if you are talking specifically about a 07 feature unavailable in 03.

 

I have generally found Microsoft Office to be better myself, especially Outlook (which there isn't anything in OOo to match anyway). However, OpenOffice 2.2 is out (and included with Ubuntu 7.04 ) so I'll hopefully be getting some good time in on it. I really never cared about grammar check to be honest as I have good grammar (and MS Office likes to point out grammar problems with statements I make for emphasis or effect in literary writings). But other than that, Microsoft Office has just been around a lot longer and has grown to have a lot more features than OOo does. Compare OOo 2.0 to Office 97, and IMO OOo will blow it away. Compare it to Office 2007... not really.

 

Yeah, I agree with this. My grammar is fine, but my spelling is horrible. Just now I had to use FF spell check to change "grammer" to "grammar."

I read the change tickets for OoO 2.2, and better spell check is a part of it...I'll just have to see.

There are other quirks...like headers don't format correctly when page margins are altered. I can't complain, since like you say, OO is very young.

For what I do, which is mostly academic writing and fiction, OO serves me just fine.

 

I use Open Office.

The difference between Open Office and Microsoft Office?

1. You support free-ware vs. paying a lot of money to somebody who already has a lot of money.

 

Interesting reading...I have various versions of MSO but never really have adopted it...Only got it as an OEM throw in or as part of my MSDN sub.

I tried OO for a week a couple years back and it was nice. But I have been using IBM/Lotus WordPro since it first came out as AmiPro and MSO has been trying to catch up with the features it has since they first ported Word to Windows. WordPro was a Windows WP from day one whereas Word still to this day has roots in it's DOS version.

Lotus screwed themselves when they, for reasons only know to Lotus exec's at the time, renamed the program WordPro...??? Which pretty much killed any brand recognition and doomed the program to also-ran status. But interestingly enough it still has a huge foothold in the legal community as almost a de facto standard. Not that "those people" really are held in high regard by "the rest of us..."

I use the whole Lotus SmartSuite over wither OO or MSO. It is not free but the whole thing costs around $20 if you buy online like eBay. For that I get Lotus 1-2-3, WordPro, Approach, Freelance and a couple other goodies I can't remember and am too lazy to look to see what they are. The only glaring weakness is the lack of an email client.

WordPro supported HTML and an early version of XML long long ago and was what pushed me into learning HTML and it's related junk.

But, if someone wanted a nice solid suite of sorts then they would never go wrong with OO...heck most folks could really get along just fine with MS WordPad really.

But really, if someone is looking to find a nice solid office suite I would add SmartSuite to the mix. None of the others have the depth of functions found in WordPro. It even supports true bezier curves in it's drawing tool. Also has a nice equation editor. Approach is a nice database package for the average user and I think it's easier for people to use over Access. Though Access might be overall more programmable.

Oh, yeah I actually have long used Lotus Organizer. I forgot about that one I use it so often I take it for granted. I think I like Outlook a leetle better but Organizer is better in different areas then Outlook. Plus Organizer does not function as an email client...but I have Gmail for that now.

BTW, speaking of Gmail, their spreadsheets and docs are actually nice. I was surprised that my better half discovered them on her own. Mind that is is a PC doofus (her terms NOT mine, so no nasty notes...hehehehehe) but, she took to them almost instantly over excel or 1-2-3...same for the word processor they offer. I find them too limited but for something fast and easy they too should be considered for a casual user of such software.

 

It looks to be maybe a bit out of date but here is a nice chart comparing the various office suites. Some I have completely forgotten about and many I never even knew existed!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_office_suites

 

I love OpenOffice. It's pretty remarkable that it's free. On Windows, it has evolved to look pretty good since its StarOffice 1.5 days, but I will admit it's not as pretty-looking as MS Office. But I don't use computers for the looks. I'm more interested in the functionality. I don't like features on my computer that I never use anyway, and I find OpenOffice already has more capability than I will ever need (including all the dictionaries I might need in any language). Upgrades come free whenever they happen, and I'm always up to date without being obsoleted by Microsoft every few years. Even before OpenOffice came along, I preferred Wordperfect over Office.

 

I agree with WordPerfect over MS Office. I used WP since the old 4.2 DOS days. The "revealed codes" feature was the biggest reason I liked WP. I take it that OOo doesn't have the reveal codes feature, either, does it?

BTW, Nota Bene has been described as WordPerfect on steroids.

Bill

 

I think a lot of people reject OpenOffice on the idea alone or on very old experience.

I have MS Office2007 and I recently istalled OpenOffice just to have a look. And I was pleasantly surprised. The word processing is fantastic, as is the spreadsheet prog. Both as just as good as MS Office for my usage, maybe even easier to navigate.

Only reason I stuck with Office 2007 was Outlook, because it is the only thing that syncs with my phone in full. But honesly the day that G-mail/Google calendar is fully done and syncs to my phone to a degree I am happy with, there really would be no reason for me to have Office 2007.

Not surprisingly, the price of Outlook 2007 alone is really not much different than that of the MS Office 2007 suite. In other words Microsoft too, knows that Outlook alone is 90% of the value in that suite and the rest does not stand up any case for charging money vs free alternatives.

 

i like wp x3 too more than ms office simply because its a lot easier to do systematize footnoting and formatting... though i go on office 2007 when it comes to looks...