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Word 2007 Vs. Open Office 2.3 Writer
hairyfeet writes "Bruce Byfield of Linux.com has just posted his third Office shootout between Microsoft Office and Open Office. This is the first version comparing the new Microsoft Word 2007 with Writer from the latest version of Open Office. The verdict: while Microsoft Office beats Open Office in a few categories, overall Open Office wins — but by not as large a margin as in the past." Linux.com and Slashdot share a corporate overlord.
I RTFA, but it doesn't compare Mail Merge. Does Mail Merge have any improvement in OO.o? It used to be completely unusable.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Interfaces: Verdict: OpenOffice.org, not because it is well-designed, but because Microsoft Word's changes seem pointless and upset users for no good reason.
There are 2 advantages to OO that mean anything.
1. Its free
2. Its open source
Does it surprise anyone that linux users go for it?
If you've got money to burn, buy MS Office. If you are a tightwad, download Open Office. If you are somewhere in between, download Open Office, use it, and if you decide you aren't happy with it, buy MS Office. If you still aren't happy, I can't help you. You'll probably never be happy.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
Except where he forgot to review things like collaboration (shared workspaces, SharePoint and NetMeeting interop), revision control, integration, extensibility model, autoformatting, the insane amount of clip art available for free from the Office website, mail merge, the document map functionality, Office Update, speed, etc. etc.
People don't generally use something like Word because it's a good word processor - there are cheaper solutions for that. Word is good because it's part of a complete integrated solution. Otherwise you can get something cheaper or more specialized.
Of course, it's also somewhat amusing that OO has "won" the author's three comparisons in 02, 05, and 07, given his obvious predilection for Linux, and the fact that the article is published on linux.com. I wonder if it would have been published had he said that Word 2007 was superior?
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Linux.com favoring OpenOffice? Get out, really? This comparison is more like a 500 word high school paper. There are no real details, no screenshots and few specifics.
If Microsoft wrote a review / comparison this we'd have 200 comments here screaming FUD.
I'm sure Open Office is a great match for Word now, but if the writer wants to make that point, he needs to use some specific metrics.
As GP said, the OO Writer was actually more familiar to their users than MS Office 2007. Which shows that introducing something new and different can backfire even on a near-monopolist that supposedly controls the market.
:-)
The fact that Microsoft has spread FUD about re-training costs for Linux in the past makes it only more funny
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Indeed, not least because Word 2007 does not have a Linux version. Since I'm a Linux user, OpenOffice wins because the opponents never turned up.
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The only way in which 2007 is "worse" than either 2003 or OOo in terms of interface is that its not the same as one would expect from any other Windows application
Fixed that for you.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Don't have any Karma to burn anyways
I do think the UI in 2007 is an improvement over 2003/XP/2000, but that's really anything's an improvement over that.
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End The FED. -
Any series of articles that thinks OpenOffice Writer has been better than Word in the past is dead before it starts. Only the most OSS-loving evangelist would make such a claim. Of course, the claim is only made because Writer won (according to the reviewer) in more categories (arbitrarily selected by the reviewer, and having equal weight).
In this case, it's interesting that he pans the ribbons in Office 2007. It's only as anecdotal as his claim, but I personally haven't yet found anyone who's given Office 2007 a fair try and didn't prefer the ribbons after a period of getting used to them. Microsoft's usability people seem to have done their job well on this one. Word certainly isn't perfect as far as usability goes, but it's hardly the disaster this guy makes out.
On the styles count, he pans Word 2007 for not having page and frame styles, but frankly, I have never used those features in OO Writer. I use styles and templates a lot, but if I'm doing something with enough flash to be using styles like that, I'll probably be using a DTP program anyway, and neither Word nor OO Writer is really up to that kind of page layout. Meanwhile, has OO Writer got shortcut keys for styles (and for removing them) that actually work yet?
On page layout, apparently the only thing Writer lacks is the ability to link text frames. I imagine that will be of great concern to the DTP big boys! Or not, unless a whole bunch of other stuff has been added since 2.2, and a whole load of bugs fixed. (I can't tell, since only 2.2.1 appears to be available for download so far.)
The comments about templates are only about those supplied with the packages, which unless you're Joe 12-year-old doing a high school project are utterly irrelevant. Professional organisations will generally set up their own, if they use them at all, which means the tools for setting up and modifying templates are far more important than the page layout equivalent of clip-art.
On numbered/bulleted lists, Writer apparently has little room for improvement over 2.2. I imagine anyone who's suffered the pain of trying to get multi-level lists to lay out properly and struggled through the ludicrously overcomplicated numbering architecture will disagree. Lists suck in Word, but they suck even more in Writer. Neither has a feature worthy of a serious word processor.
On headers and footers, the review criticises Word for its limited flexibility. When Writer can even put the most recent heading in the header automatically, get back to us.
On the footnotes and endnotes thing, calling Word's facilities basic in comparison to Writer is rather harsh. There are one or two nice tweaks in Writer that Word doesn't have (at least, I haven't found them yet if they were added in 2007, and it didn't before). Most people will never use these features.
On the subjects of cross-references, both Word and Writer suck beyond the point of being usable. They just suck in different ways. Someone should introduce them to LaTeX, which uses the stunningly complicated system of naming a place you might want to refer to later, and then referring to it by name elsewhere. When the word processors here have bookmarking facilities that do this, reliably, and without a tendency to corruption, they can claim to even have a useful cross-reference facility, but until then, it's just not true.
On indices and tables of contents, the reviewer apparently confuses his own stylistic preferences with faulty design — unfortunate, considering that almost any professional typesetter is likely to disagree with him on that one. In any case, again neither program really shines in this area, though. Simple things (in terms of the kind of documents where you'd care about these things) like having both a table of chapters and a detailed table of contents are bizarrely awkward if they work at all. Again, without better support for pulling these things in and actually getting them to work (there's no point being able to generate both tables if you can't get
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
http://oestrem.com/thingstwice/?p=65 provides an informative comparison of the aesthetics of LaTeX, Word, and OO Writer. When beauty is the goal, LaTeX wins.
I hear ya! I STILL use WP 5.1, god it rocks and the macro facility is second to none. Now THAT is a word processor!
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Crow over this guys story if you want to, but don't be a hypocrite. Consistency would demand that you call his story FUD against Office 2007.
Most of MS's efforts against Linux adoption have been aimed at the server market, where the difference between Linux and Windows are major - arguably more so than the difference between MS Office 2007 and OO.o (any version). The fact that people are switching to OO.o because Office 2007 is too unusual for them is a strong indication that switching to Linux would have MASSIVE retraining costs.
(Office 2007 isn't that different; have you ever used it? The ribbon is basically a merge of the toolbars and the menus, and the hotkeys haven't changed - I personally found it easier to find many the features I was used to in 2007's interface than in OO.o's, even when I had already found them once before in OO.o and had only installed 2007 a few days ago. YMMV of course but I've never liked OO.o's interface and KOffice isn't really any better.)
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Neither spreadsheet is too bad. I used to prefer Excel in the days when I did large spreadsheets, but now I regard them as essentially identical - except that I need WINE to run Excel.
I agree the word processors are horrible, but I think that is because the concept is flaws. What we need is something like Lyx, but a lot more polished: what Lyx would be if it had received the same resources as Open Office.
This is why ODF is so important.
If we had a standard document format (which Microsoft supported instead of attacked), minimalist document writers that worked like WP5.1 could be developed and would interoperate freely with MS and Open Office.
People wouldn't be forced to use these bloated great office packages if they didn't want to.
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