OpenOffice Vs. Google Apps

jammag writes "Both OpenOffice and Google Apps are free, so the choice is purely down to which is better. Bruce Byfield, after looking at both, concluded, 'comparing Google Apps to OpenOffice.org is like clubbing a staked-out bunny — Google Apps is so far behind that the whole exercise seems like an exercise in pointless cruelty.' Ouch, that hurts."

Comments

Why the Vs?

[BrotherJustin]

Is there something wrong with using both? If I have net connection, it's Google. If I'm offline, it's OpenOffice.

Re:Why the Vs?

[Xtifr]

Ever tried expressing a liking for two supposedly opposing products in a room full of geeks, or here?

As someone who uses both emacs and vi on a daily basis, that's a solid yuppers! :D

In fact, I don't bother with OpenOffice or Google Apps, because I already have both emacs and vim! :)

Office apts of declining importance?

[pubjames]

Is it just me or are office apps becoming increasingly unimportant.

Ten years ago I spent most of my computing time in some kind of office app. Now I rarely use them. And I receive fewer office documents via email.

Perhaps the office app is just dying? Are they just transition applications between a paper based office and a paperless one anyway?

Re:Depends..

[zarlino]

The day Google Apps will be full of ads or will ask you for a subscription fee, I'll pay for a video of you trying to export your documents one by one after the announce that the export feature will be removed in 24 hours.

Re:Depends..

[RiffRafff]

True enough. I can't access Google Docs from work, for instance:
Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Personal Network Storage;Interactive Web Applications"

font choices & UI

[amigabill]

I'd tried using Google Apps for some stuff in my HOA (Home Owners Association) to make up flyers to hand out and stuff like that. I can tell OpenOffice I want a 50 point font size for a big headline. I can't make a really large font size in Google Apps. Google Apps does not seem to have a WYSIWYG editing environment, so it's hard to tell if I'm fitting into a single page, into a single half-page, or what amount of space it's taking up. I have to keep telling it to "print" which then gives me a pdf dump that I can see in Acrobat to see my real-life formatting. It's a huge pain in the ass.

I ended up typing it up in OpenOffice and then uploading it to Google Apps for access by other HOA board members and shared storage. Weird, as uploading docs, it preserves the large font sizes that it does not allow me to choose during document creation directly on their site. I've ended up considering Google Apps to be an online storage area only, and not as a functional office tool.

And my biggest annoyance is just using the Google Apps tools. The user interface for spreadsheet is extremely different than the user interface for their "word processor". There's really no commonality in the user interface at all between tools. That annoys me. I'd like a little consistency, but Google doesn't seem interested in that at all.

One of these days I'll take some time to check out Adobe's online office tools. They can't be any less useful than Google Apps are.

That'd be great if Google didn't re-format

[JSBiff]

I created a resume in OpenOffice, and saved it to a USB flash drive. I forgot to export the file to PDF or .doc after saving, and as I don't have a printer at home, I took my thumb drive into the library at my University to print the resume. Unfortunately, the Univ has MS Office on everything, without the necessary plugins to load .odt files, and I can't install anything on the Uni computers.

I then remembered that Google docs lets you upload and open ODF files, so that's what I did. I *was* able to open the resume and print it, but unfortunately Google messed up some of the spacing and margins, so that the resume didn't quite look right when opened in Google. A resume that doesn't look right isn't worth the paper it's printed on, because it will just make potential employers think you're incompetent or just don't care.

Luckily, this was just for a class, and was just the first draft, so it didn't hurt me this time. It'd be great if Google really could flawlessy open ODF docs. Until that time, you're idea of using Open office to create the docs, then store and use it with Google Apps/Google Docs, is a non-starter.

Collaboration

[ElectricEuphonium]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the power of the collaboration features in Google Apps. I love OpenOffice and I use it for everything that only I need to maintain, but when it comes sharing spreadsheets with friends, teammates, etc. Google Apps is in a totally different league. Try having 3 or 4 people edit the same spreadsheet at the same time on any other platform. To me that is the main reason to consider Google Apps over OpenOffice.

Re:An answer to SharePoint!

[jaxtherat]

Have you tried Plone? http://plone.org/