Current version of Openoffice versus Office XP Pro

[coolred]

Office XP Pro is the latest version of MS office that I have, so I was wondering, since I am thinking of getting away from windows anyways if I should try openoffice? From what I hear its a pretty good suite of apps, and its free. But is it better then MS Office, in my case Office XP pro?

 

[calldown]

NO.

OpenOffice on Windows (can't say for Linux or not) is the worst piece of software I have
ever had the misfortune to install on my machine (it's still installed out of laziness though ).
The word processor (and I kid you not) takes around 30 seconds to load up. This is on my
A64 3500+ and gig of ram. What the hell?

As well, in the word processor, they have this 'autocompletion feature'. I've gone over documents
I've done and found numerous wrong words simply because I hit 'enter' at the wrong point in time.
Still haven't found a way to turn it off either.

They screw up MSOffice documents I try to drop in, like PowerPoints and such - the Presentation
software isn't bad, but meh.

In short, stay away. Far far away.

-Kyle

 

[Bateluer]

I've been using OpenOffice for a while now, and I love it. It loads plenty fast for me on my 2.4C w/ 1GB of RAM. I mainly use the word processor and spreadsheet program, though I've dabbled with the HTMl editor as well.

I've only imported Word documents to OpenOffice, but I've never had a problem with it.

Give OpenOffice a shot, it definitely worth a look. And besides, its free. What have you got to lose? 20mins of time?

 

[WannaFly]

I use openoffice exclusively on my desktop, loads up fine and fast for me. I mainly use the word processor. I also use office documents in it and havent had a problem.

 

[randumb]

OpenOffice is a good program, but I still think MSOffice is better.

 

[Anubis]

I use it, it DOES load slow, but i can wait 20 seconds for it to load, Ive imported WORD, EXCEL and POWERPOINT files into it and they all work flawlessly, even my 30 meg .doc and .ppt files have no issues, its also like 300 megs smaller then Office 2003 when fully installed, it doesnt have a Access liek program but i dont need that, and Thunderbird > Outlook

 

[PrincessGuard]

If you launch OO from the tray icon instead of the start menu, it loads almost instantaneously.

Compatibility with MS Office is lacking, though I'm suprised it works as well as it does. But if you just do plain documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, it's much better than dropping a load of cash on MS Office.

Anyway, it's free. Try it out and see if you like it.

 

[mundane]

Originally posted by: PrincessGuard
If you launch OO from the tray icon instead of the start menu, it loads almost instantaneously.

Compatibility with MS Office is lacking, though I'm suprised it works as well as it does. But if you just do plain documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, it's much better than dropping a load of cash on MS Office.

Anyway, it's free. Try it out and see if you like it.

I think I recall the issue was MS Office already had hooks installed in the OS to help it load fast(er). (Office, IE, etc are tightly integrated with the OS) Since OpenOffice can't have that kind of familiarity with Windows, it requires a small, continuously running process to achieve similar results. Of course, I'm one of those people who disable nearly every non-system process, so my load time is a good 15 seconds.

I wouldn't say that it's better than XP Office, though, if you've already got a copy. If it's an issue between OO and buying Office, OO wins hands down.

 

[episodic]

The latest office program is Office 2003 not Office XP

 

[drag]

Yep:

Advantage for OpenOffice:
Export to PDF function allows you to create VERY portable documents easily when formatting and structure are important. PDF is the defacto standard for technical documents on the web, and is something that printing shops can easily deal with.

Using Microsoft Office it's file formats are not portable to other applications or older versions of MS Office. Sometimes you will have issues porting documents from earlier versions of Office to newer ones. If you want to have people receive documents created in Office you are basicly forcing everybody that you deal with to own your version of Office or newer versions. Also the propriatory format may cause big big headaches 5-10 years down the line if they need to be used again for any reason.

The HTML code that is generated by Org when making webpages with it is actually decent and fairly usable. Web code generated by MS Office is not.

Org is cross-platform and Windows is not. In order to use MS Office you have to be using Windows, and everybody you come in contact with has to use Windows. (there is a Mac version of MS Office, though. And you can have certain versions of MS Office working thru Wine compatability.) Office works on a very wide veriaty of operating systems and platforms.

You can make copies and give them away, and have friends and family download it off of the internet so that they have 100% compatable apps without making them pay for liscences or breaking the law.

disavantages:

It's not a Microsoft app and thus some people will simply ignore it.

It has slower startup.

It lacks a Access work-a-like that is aviable in the more expensive versions of MS Office.

Not 100% compatable with Microsoft formats. MS makes sure that MS products work together, but don't provide enough information to other developers so that they can acheive the same level of integration. So if you use something like Excel spreadsheets that work with MS SQL database you will have a tougher time translating that to work with Org's spreadsheet stuff. (athough Org does have database functionality so that it can work with SQL databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL. Also there is a limited sort-of like Access app hidden inside of it...) see here

Org doesn't compete with MS Office on a bullet point feature by feature comparision. (although most people dont' use most of those features or even know they exist, or would even care about them if they knew) Which can cause issues for more experianced MS Office workers that have a bunch of tricks and shortcuts that they are used to.

There is some extra work sometimes involved with setting up dictionaries and such for Org.

My biased conclusion:

Basicly unless you have a specific task that requires MS Office for some strange reason, Org is preferable. If your using a business that uses MS Office a lot, then it may be to distruptive to move everybody off of MS Office and that expense may counteract any reduced cost you get from moving away from Microsoft products. I think that most everybody can benifit from having it installed or making it aviable to people. If your have a business that needs productivity apps and you do not have either in wide spread use, then choose Org. You can always pay for MS Office later if you realy need it for something, which is not usually the case.

edit:

Although Org is designed as a entire "Office Suite" of office productivity tools there are other very excelent productivity apps that concintrate on one program at a time.
Such as:
Abiword: WYSIWYG Word proccessor.
GnuCash: Personal and small business financial/accounting software. (not aviable for Windows, unfortunately. Unix only so far (I think): OS X, Linux, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD, etc)
Gnumeric spreadsheet software. (I don't know if it will work with Windows. They will have a version eventually)
KOffice, Office tools for the KDE desktop in Linux/*BSD

even up to a cross-platform EPR/CRM database software Compiere.
(sort of like PeopleSoft/Oracle Apps... It'll track inventory and also provide point-of-sale services and features for small to medium sized businesses. requires Oracle 10g and Sun Java 1.4.2. The clients can by any java platform (OS X, Linux, Windows) and server can be anything java and oracle databases will run on (Linux, Windows NT/2000 server/2003 server)

Things like Abiword are more slick and much smaller then Org, and will open faster and run better on machines with limited resources. So if all you need is a word proccessor you may like Abiword better. It's a matter of taste. Things like GnuCash or Compiere may work out better for things that people use Access for,
( although there is a lack of free easy-to-use database front-ends for FreeSoftware/Linux stuff. However Access is mostly only usefull for systems that require a single user database. Not much functionality above a flat file storage system. For multi-user and networkable solution MS SQL with Access front end is pretty workable, though)

 

[neit]

Excellent comparison drag

 

[imported_obsidian]

I've been using OpenOffice for a while now, and I love it. There is absolutely nothing I haven't been able to do in OO that I was doing in Office. Granted, I was by no means a power user of Office. Mainly just word processing and spreadsheets. In fact I've found I like many parts of OO better than their Office XP equivalent. The equation editor being one of them. Anyways, I have access to Office XP and Office 2003 and I chose to install neither.