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OpenOffice 2.0 vs. MS Office Review
trewornan writes "There's an interesting, if partisan, review of OpenOffice 2.0 in comparison to Microsoft Office over on Real Tech News. Open Office gets a general vote of approval, as you might guess from the title 'Open Office 2.0 Kicks MS Office Around The Block'" From the article: "My primary use for OpenOffice has always been as a word processor and I believe this is an area where it excels (so to speak!). For anyone used to MS Office, the difference in the two interfaces is minimal. In fact, I find it easier to use OpenOffice's interface than MS Office's for various things such as inserting a header and footer. To create or change a header and footer in MS Office XP, you must go to the "view" menu. I'm not sure why something like a header or footer would be placed in the "view" menu before it is actually part of a document."
Why would you compare it to the older version? Office XP is almost 5 years old. Why not be fair and compare it to 2003?
Reviewer says:
I generally wouldn't recommend using them in an environment where it was important to maintain compatibility with Microsoft products.
e.g. in real life. He's a school kid. Yeah, Open Orifice is great for school, where the profs are more open minded than, say a 'client' or a 'boss'.
Then he goes: My school even offers students copies of MS Office for $25 and I never bothered to get one since, for me, it would just be a waste of $25.
There goes all his credibility out the window.
Note: This review was written using OpenOffice.
Wow. What an age we live in. One can actually write a review in something besides MS Office. Wonders never cease.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
He has been a longtime user of the product
Hmm. Sounds to me like the review may be biased a little.
"Another nice thing about OpenOffice is that it is actually a complete office suite."
You know, unlike MS Office.
Just seeing a single line like this in an article should immediately tip you off that it's probably not worth the bandwidth you used to download it.
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
Although I don't have a fancy review to back it up, I can tell you that I've used both extensively, and OpenOffice.org does NOT stack up to MS Office, no matter how badly the author of this article wants it to.
I disagree. I tried hard to migrate to OO, and found it okay for a while, but whenever I had to do anything more complex - even changing colors was a learning curve - I found that it wasn't worth it, that Word would do for now.
I mean, props to Open Office, they have a really good product, and their Powerpoint equivalent saved my life when I found out I didn't have powerpoint and needed a PPT presentation. I learned that program on my own quick enough and well enough for the project I needed to get done.
But switching from Word to OpenOffice? No. It's not that easy. It's like...I guess you could compare it to, Photoshop -> Gimp. Perhaps not that bad, but still it's something that will take time to get used to. At least it did for me.
Notepad. Nuff said.
or has the bias of heaps of these "reviews" been shifted from pro-microsoft to anti-microsoft? This is just as bad! We need un-biased "reviews"!
Given how long Open Office has been chasing after MS Office, it's about time it got close enough to give MS Office a kick; but, in my experience, Open Office comes off like Charlie Brown kicking that damn football.
I'm not a Windows apologist. I run a wintel box as a multimedia web box because too many formats are locked into MS apps and I'm not enough of a zealot to forgo information.
I've had MS pro copies of Office for many years and I've had years of experience with Linux. My opion is Open Office doesn't yet touch MS pro office, especially Power Point.
I'll keep MS Office Pro because it's not a big expense in terms of the extended latitude it offers.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I've found that people want things that "just work" and as an extention to that, programs have to "just work" in the way that they are used to.
So, like most programs, people don't care about quality, security, or amazingly even cost. In the end, all they care about is doing some task in using the fastest assembly line that they know.
(I like the assembly line comparison because it illustrates the desire for speed, but one can still make the point that if an assembly line produces a terrible product, the job is still accomplished)
A semi-offtopic question here. Does anyone think that the "It comes from brandname X, therefore it must be good." mentality of previous decades still exists? Or are cases like OpenOffice/linux/etc. ones where people are worried about compatibility and such concepts?
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
This is a complete hands-on review from someone who has used the product religiously for years. And I think you'll see why OpenOffice 2.0 truly Kicks MS Office around the block.
It was a one page review with some luke-warm analysis of some of the functions of either product. Nothing really in-depth here. Rambles a whole paragraph about PDF exports which is kind of irrelevent. I have a PDF phaser that I use to export to PDF, let the processor do the real word processing.
I have been using Word as a power user writing on average documents up to 300 pages a shot. Sure, Word has some shortfalls - I have seen times when a doc has shit itself in a few rare occasions. I have tried Oo, its quite good but I think it has a few more years to catch up to anything remote to Word. And I love Linux! Its unfortunate that I am stuck with Office in some respects, although no religious war will win me over when you have no choice but to be 100% collaborative with other Word users on very large documents, the slightest change to the formats can screw you big time, no Word importer will do.
I recently moved to a mac with Office 2004 which isnt bad although I'm still trying to get use to less use of shortcuts that arent consistant with the Windows version. I only moved to the platform for the *nix backend and to ability to contine my c++/dev hobbies outside of working hours on a platform built for development.
Saying that I think Oo has a real chance, especially in areas of the free market, small business, students and home users.
This is a complete waste of time and does not merit the front page of slashdot. C'mon - did Zonk even look at TFA?
Just off the top of my head, there is no:
- comparison of file sizes
- analysis version tracking
- comparison of printing/preview capability
- review of scripting capabilities and availability of scripts
- review of the style system
- interoperability of: templates, objects etc
I am underwhelmed.OpenOffice also supports all of the major features of MS Office (and a few of its own) except for the grammar check. I'm personally fine with not having a grammar checker since it has given me the opportunity to actually learn the English language instead of relying on my word processor to make my sentences coherent. Erm... and I trust he's also personally fine without having a spell checker for exactly the same reason? And pocket calculators weaken my mind because I should be able to do it in my head or on paper? What world is this guy living in? I like my computer programs to be smart and do things for me by noticing, say, subtle flaws in the document that my proof reading might not pick up. Word's grammar check can indeed be useful at times, especially with some of the few slightly more obscure grammatical checks it has that we may not pick up from everyday usage but are still good to know.
First few versions sucked in terms of compatibility, ugly UI, and general bugs. Most MsOffice users, including me, played around with it and went back to Office.
The first really usuable version was 1.1. This really rocked in terms of compatibility, and though it still had some bugs, was infinitely better with word docs and general usability.
Upcoming version 2 is slated to be real good. the beta I'm using is nice, with much improved UI, better word compatibility, Database tool etc.
Writer is the best. Calc follows. Impress and Database app need some work, though impress has improved a lot in the recent version.
Office has MUCH better version tracking, sharing and collaborative features. OOo can't touch it here. Writer is catching up with Word in terms of pure Word processor features, in fact has some features that are better than word. (predictive typing)
OOo is suitable for SOHO operations where word processing is major app. Larger corporate users need to stick with Office for many reasons. You know what they are.
The article is more like a comparision of Writer with word, and it totally ignores the advanced features of word..
I love OOo, and use it every day, but that doesn't mean that I can't see where Office kicks OOo's ass...
Here's a longer review I did a while back.The author admits "In fact, I felt so comfortable using it [the Lotus suite] that it quickly became my first choice of office applications. I never bought MS Office after Office XP ,and I rarely ever used that."
and goes on to write a comparison between OO and MS Office...
Guess we can wait for better reviews.
The athor recommends users stick with Powerpoint due to the large amount of templates and artwork included in MS Office.
Some points:
- Professionally designed Powerpoint templates work in Impress, and are generally better quality than what MS produces, even more so because your presentation stands out more when you spend some cash on a unique looking template.
- OpenOffice.org really needs to hold a pre-2.0 design competition. . The best presentation templates created with OOo 2 beta should be included in the final, with links to the designers webpage.
Eg, under the bit where you select the template:
ModernFunkyThing v 2.7 by Professional Design Company inc. Visit www.professionaldesign.com for more info.
ProfessionalDesignCompany get good exposure for their other (paid for) designs, OOo gets templates better than MS Office and hence more users, users get better looking documents, everyone wins.
However, every time there is an article about OOo, the only comments that get modded past +1 are pro-OOo. Anything that speaks ill of the product gets demoted to 0 or -1.
This accusation is made every time there's an OSS/commercial product comparison, but it only takes a quick look at the posts below to see it's completely misleading. Almost all of the posts modded 3 or above (including the parent post) are pro-MS or at least dismissive of the review.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I tried OO (including the newest release version) and keep going back to MS. It's just too crashy. Yes, it's amazing it works at all, but everytime I try to do a serious project in it, I spend too much time trying to recover from bugs.
Best Buy can have you arrested
I just got a MS PowerPoint in the email, and apt-get install'ed OO.o to view it (with Impress). It totally worked. Which was interesting, not because the PowerPoint was that complicated. To the contrary, it was 10 slides of simple bullet-point lists, no more than 3 levels deep, with no transitions or other fancy stuff - it could have been just as easily "presented" inline in the email to which it was attached. Which means the only role MS Office could have played in the process was to get in the way, locking me into the MS monopoly the way it's got the sender locked in. Which means the role Impress played there was to unlock me, without the sender even needing to know how much more free am I than are they. Which of course I told them - right in the reply email text :).
--
make install -not war
Even if that person used OOo I could get garbage; if they used the linux version, and I used the Windows version, the files got mangled.
You had me until this line, which makes it clear you are somewhere out in left field.
What do you most appreciate about the view from your Redomd, WA office window?
The main reaon I've standardized on OpenOffice for my own use is that it works equally well on Windows/Linux. I've had no issues whatsoever copying OO files to/from Windows/Linux machines.
OO reads office files fairly well, well enough that when I need to read/collaborate on tech specs (my primary need) I've not had an issue using my OO for about 2 years.
PS: The specs for OO are open and freely available, but those for MSOffice are subject to incredible (all but nonexistent) licensing. It's not an issue of OO "playing nice" with MSOffice, it's an issue of MSOffice "playing nice" with nobody.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Because the review would be exactly the same.
MS Office needs a grammar checker that actually works. I hate the stupid thing, 90% of the time what it suggests is totally wrong so it gets switched off.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
(The following analysis, until stated otherwise, only applies to Word. For why, see the last few paragraphs.)
But what if you want to edit it after you inserted it? Then it makes sense to have it in 'view' and not under 'insert'.
To me, the situation seems as follows:
* When you're adding them for the first time, it makes the most sense to have them in the 'insert' menu. However, having them under 'view' does make a small amount of sense, and furthermore is unlikely to cause the user to think about whether that's what they want if they see it in the menu. (Also, in OO, chosing Insert -> (Header|Footer) -> (whatever is selected) removes the header or footer. A lot of sense THAT makes, putting the removal in the 'insert' menu.)
* When you're editing it later, it makes the most sense to have it in 'view'. Having it in 'insert' makes (to me) absolutely no sense at all, and, I think, could even cause the user to wonder if that's what they are looking for even if they find it there while exploring. (For instance, maybe it will replace the header and footer I already have. Or maybe it will add ANOTHER header or footer above and below what I have.)
From these it seems to me safest to put it under 'view'.
(End Word-specific part.)
However, for OO it makes the most sense to put it in 'insert'. The reason is that the header and footer are always available, always there to view and edit. Thus there's no action required to do it.
For Word, this isn't so. If in the 'normal' editing mode, the header and footer are not visible. In Word XP, choosing 'view -> header and footer' changes the view to page mode (thus showing the header and footer) until the user is done editing them and chooses close, at which point it returns to normal mode. So in Word, a specific action is sometimes needed to view the header and footer. (Remember, OO doesn't have an equivalent of normal mode, and only operates in page view. (Or web view, which is irrelevant to this conversation.))
Thus it seems to me that for both applications, the header and footer option is exactly where it should be.
(Incidentally, I'm not sure whether I like Word's or OO's style of dealing with the header and footer in page view. I think I like Word's better, but probably out of familiarity rather than merit. Though I can't figure out how to change from editing text to editing the header/footer in OO without using the mouse. There's probably a way, but I almost gurantee that someone with MS Office will find out how to do that before someone with OO.)
Same as with GIMP vs Photoshop. It's a decent substitute. Given choice: Have a raise and use free OOo or have MS Office purchased for your workplace, what would you choose? In my work position an office package is not essential. Write a request to another dept, report something to the boss, open a .doc file sent in by a clueless customer. It's all good for it, and fulfills its task perfectly. Maybe there are tasks where OOo is not sufficient and you need MS Office - I didn't find them yet. .doc file. But once in 1000 emails, attachment of OpenOffice happens (usually from high-paying international customers, so can't be neglected). And then they come to me to have the file opened and printed with OOo, because they can't open it. Open Office's support for .doc files may be poor and buggy, but sorry, MS Office's support for .sxw is nonexistent. So, to whoever claiming you HAVE TO have MS Office instead of OOo if you don't want to lose your customers, you're wrong. You need BOTH.
OTOH, the customer support dept uses MS Office exclusively. In most cases they get emails from the customers as common emails. Sometimes some dumbass customer sends the content of the email as attachment with Word
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
But more to the point: In real life, you're not going to use Office XP in 2010, and at that point, you'll find loads of incompatibilities between you old Office XP docs and your new MS Office MMX, just like Office 2003 for Windows is incompatible with docs written in Office 2004 for Mac (and vice versa), if the docs contain unicode characters. This makes it impossible to achieve perfect compatibility for other apps as well. MS Office might be far better than OOo, but standardising on it is very short-sighted. That's why governments demand open document formats these days.