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."

Comments

Who uses Office XP anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Who uses Office XP anymore?

[Com2Kid]

Well, you are definently uninformed.

See, Office XP is a load of garbage. Unusable, horrible UI, and the load time is horrible.

Office 2003 is a nice speed up from XP (although still not as fast as Office 2000), has features that actually work, and can do some downright amazing things.

Are the differences earth shattering? Taken alone, no, but on the other hand, XP is almost unusable, where as 2003 is rather nice to use.

Speaking of load times, that is the one BIG thing that is keeping Open Office from being widely accepted. Until the load times get under 3 seconds (Pentium 4 3.0GHz+ systems with 1GB+ of RAM should NOT be talking over 3 seconds to load a word processor!), OOo is going to go the same way as Winamp3, sure it may be superior, but does it feel good to use?

Re:Who uses Office XP anymore?

[vspazv]

So the choice is either wait 10-15 seconds for the main program to load or stick a 50MB process in memory and make everything else take 10-15 seconds to load (I'm forced to use OOo on computers running NT4 and Win2k with 256MB RAM)

Also, OOo on NT4 will consistently blue screen when running above 256 colors. Thie problem is independent of any hardware that is installed and has occured on every revision i have tried.

Re:Who uses Office XP anymore?

[Komodowaran]

That's a good question indeed. Of course, there are a zillion systems running Office XP - worldwide. But to call you a troll would be sort of cheap. Lemme answer it in some detail then.

Users seldom update their systems. It is even more the case with their software. Therefore, I would be all but impressed learning that the most popular office suite be the aforementioned one, or maybe even Office 2000. There are many instances of Word 97 and Office 8 as well.

OpenOffice positions itself against this base. (Remember the user: those running 2003 will not update. Indeed, they are not in for a change - yet, and might be sticking with their office flavour as long as the hardware goes, much longer than a redmond-based company would favour.) That are those users who run MS-Office 8..10 now, who are targeted by the new release of OOo, because they need to keep running their ageing boxes. Mostly, the want them to run smoothly, and Writer is a smoother ride than Word.

If those users are willing to try Writer now, they will probably ditch their present office suite altogether, and this before long. The question about Word11 will not even be asked. Moreover, because OOo runs under GNU/Linux there will be no need for, say, a secretary to learn new tricks when her employer decides to migrate operating system this way or another.

However, from the purely technical point of view, it would definitely be interesting to learn how OOo 2.0 compares to 2003. I see your point: compare newest release to newest release and all is well. Unfortunately, life does not go this way as far as both competitors are concerned. OOo is wise enough to not compete in the field where there is virtually no demand -- they do very well in those markets, where discriminate buyers double chceck their needs and their means before adopting the best solution.

Frequently, the result is in favour of the Open Office suite, just like the article suggests. Your criteria may be different, but the result will be in many cases the same. If you relay on some proprietary technlology to the point of self-abandonment then it is another cup of tea, but in most cases the bottom line of the article is valid beyond any doubt.

From the article...

[Aranth Brainfire]

"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.

Title seems wrong

[SpaceAdmiral]

The title "Open Office 2.0 Kicks MS Office Around The Block" doesn't seem to match the review. The review seems to give Open Office a better grade for word processor, but for everything else the review seems to favor Microsoft. I mean, look at the summary:

Overall, I've found OpenOffice to be a fine MS Office replacement for my needs. OpenOffice's word processor is more than ready for prime time. As for the other components, I generally wouldn't recommend using them in an environment where it was important to maintain compatibility with Microsoft products.

Did they take the title from a different article and put it on this one?

From What Follows Behind

[Quirk]

"...'Open Office 2.0 Kicks MS Office Around The Block'"

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.

This report is a waste of time...

[spagetti_code]

From TFA:

This is a complete hands-on review

Which is then followed by 4 paragraphs, which can be summed up as: "tried one. tried the other. liked it". Then a paragraph each on calc and impress.

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.

No grammar check is NOT a feature

[Darth Cow]

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.