Poll: Why do you use Microsoft Office?

Because Open Office sucks.

 

[randomlinh]

everyone else uses it... compatibility isn't perfect... and well, open office was really buggy with some settings I wanted... it just refused to keep them.

that and office 2k loads up faster

 

[Abos]

I use MS office 2000... it always works and does what I need just fine... I have no need to try anything else. I will not, however, pay for a newer version of Office unless it is severely discounted or free...

 

[bunker]

I voted "I somehow managed to acquire a free copy, which puts it on par with the others"

Work gives me copies to install at home.

Even if that wasn't the case, I'd still buy it. It's what I've always used and am very familiar with it. I had to use WordPerfect for something once and it took me much longer to do than if it was in Word because I had to figure out how to use the features I needed.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Can't beat the real deal.

You get what you pay for.

EDIT: For students it isn't THAT expensive.

 

[spyordie007]

how about an option for "because it's the best way to connect to a microsoft exchange server (outlook)"?

If it wasnt for outlook I would just use open office.

-Erik

 

[n0cmonkey]

I only use it at work. At home, I use Open Office. Because it's almost close to good.

 

[nageov3t]

because it's the best. and because I've been using MS Office in its various incarnations for over 5 years, so it's what I'm accustomed to.

I tried OpenOffice, and it was alright... but there were minor differences in the GUI and hotkey commands that really grated me.

 

[drag]

I use Open Office/Abiword for everything.

Number 1 reason MS stuff is to expensive and there isn't any reason to use it.


Org may not get formatting correct 100% of the time, but 98% is good enough. I am not going to pay 300 dollars to get bullet points to line up 130% of the time.

If I need a professional looking documents I use PDF's because it's easier to deal with fonts and formatting then messing around with anything else for a final draft and MS Office doesn't do pdf's as easily.


Oh (just remember for future reference) and due to the numerious different versions of MS Office you will see numerous incompatability problems between different versions of .doc and like files. Org can deal with all of them and most MS products can't. So when you can't go MS old to MS new you go MS old to Org to MS new and 70-90% accuracy is better then 0%.


As far as work goes, they had the forsight not to get themselves locked into a specific vendor (for example not depending on Exchange for everything, actually don't use Outlook at all.) and actually have people that will provide Org CD's if requested.

 

[dighn]

because it just works

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: drag
Oh (just remember for future reference) and due to the numerious different versions of MS Office you will see numerous incompatability problems between different versions of .doc and like files. Org can deal with all of them and most MS products can't. So when you can't go MS old to MS new you go MS old to Org to MS new and 70-90% accuracy is better.

Wrong, I use Office2K at home and I have yet to get anything that hasn't opened and formatted perfectly. And I've received files from OfficeXP and Office2003.

 

[TSDible]

Originally posted by: PrincessGuard
I used Office 97 up until last year when I switched to OpenOffice. Didn't feel like spending hundreds of dollars on a new version of Office and I haven't gotten a document OO can't handle.

I would have completely switched to OO, but it does not handle complex excel files well at all. As luck would have it, I write and use complex excel spreadsheets.

 

[BenSkywalker]

A combination of 'it's the best' and 'everything else really sucks'(Including Lotus)

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Megatomic

Originally posted by: drag
Oh (just remember for future reference) and due to the numerious different versions of MS Office you will see numerous incompatability problems between different versions of .doc and like files. Org can deal with all of them and most MS products can't. So when you can't go MS old to MS new you go MS old to Org to MS new and 70-90% accuracy is better.

Wrong, I use Office2K at home and I have yet to get anything that hasn't opened and formatted perfectly. And I've received files from OfficeXP and Office2003.

Well apperantly you don't have docs that are old. Let your word files lay around for 5 years or more and see if they work fine in the newest versions. This is a fairly common and well known thing to happen.

 

[Megatomic]

My Office2K is almost 5 years old. I can send of my stuff from home in here to work where I use OfficeXP and not have any problems. I have yet to try out Office 2003 though, you may be right about that version.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: Megatomic

Originally posted by: drag
Oh (just remember for future reference) and due to the numerious different versions of MS Office you will see numerous incompatability problems between different versions of .doc and like files. Org can deal with all of them and most MS products can't. So when you can't go MS old to MS new you go MS old to Org to MS new and 70-90% accuracy is better.

Wrong, I use Office2K at home and I have yet to get anything that hasn't opened and formatted perfectly. And I've received files from OfficeXP and Office2003.

Well apperantly you don't have docs that are old. Let your word files lay around for 5 years or more and see if they work fine in the newest versions. This is a fairly common and well known thing to happen.

So let me get this straight. You point out that it is okay that formatting is only correct 98% of the time in OO on new documents however it's not okay that that Word periodically has formatting issues with Office 97 (and older) Word documents? (it's very rare to have problems with anything more recent).

Personally I think I would rather have the odd formatting appear in my 6 year old Word documents than my 6 day old OO documents; but that's just me

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
My Office2K is almost 5 years old. I can send of my stuff from home in here to work where I use OfficeXP and not have any problems. I have yet to try out Office 2003 though, you may be right about that version.

The occasional formatting issues generally appear when working in Office 2K or newer with documents created in Office 97 and older; they are however not terribly common (just well known).

-Erik

 

[zodder]

how about an option for "because it's the best way to connect to a microsoft exchange server (outlook)"?

Very true.

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
A combination of 'it's the best' and 'everything else really sucks'(especially Lotus)

Agreed.

 

[xSauronx]

i rarely need anything than a very simple text editor, and even thats unusual. if i need to do anything i use OpenOffice though.

 

[Alex]

got it for free somehow and its the accepted windows standard pretty much specially as far as taking work from home to school and emailing assignments to prof etc....

open office is nice i used it with linux for a bit but ms office has been around for eons and although somewhat bloated can do everything you want from it and then some. plus open office cant handle ms files properly either apparently.

 

[jm0ris0n]

I don't get it free, but its the established standard out there, and with educational discounts, how can I say no !

 

[hdeck]

it only costed $15 at the campus computer store

 

[Armitage]

For the most part, I don't. But Open Office isn't all the way there yet ... to damn slow, especially starting up. And isn't as compatible with MS Office as it needs to be ... especially for presentation stuff. But powerpoint presentations are the work of the devil, so that doesn't pain me to much.

Years ago ... early 90's ... Word Perfect & Quattro were so much nicer then MS Word & Excel. Haven't used em lately so can't say now. But it was a shame to see much better tools overrun by the MS juggernaut.

 

[beatle]

I have to support it @ work on occasion and I like being familiar with products I support. Otherwise I wouldn't care.