OpenOffice -vs- Microsoft Office

dulpit

Hey, I'm curious as to what people think is the better product. Taking money out of the equation is Microsoft Office better than OpenOffice? Or what?

I'm using Microsoft Office 2007 on my laptop, and find it to be a very good product (except when it does annoying things like try to tell me words like organise should be spelt with a 'z' [this is fixed btw] or autoformats stuff). I've only used OpenOffice briefly, either in college while using Linux or for like a week in work last year when we got a new PC and couldn't find the Office cd...

So what do ye think? Is open office a legitimate competitor with Microsoft Office? Or if office was free would everyone use it over openoffice?

DanGerMus

Well in my limited experience i think they're both pretty much the same. they do all the same things really. I did find open to be pretty handy for formating pictures and the like didn't tend to jump like MS does but thats a matter of tweaking the settings. I'd say that if i were to pick one up without ever having used either openoffice would be more user friendly. But my experience is limited.

All that said if you had to pick one or the other you really really couldn't take the price thing out of it could you. I mean if you find you don't like the free one then go buy the other one, if you follow what i mean.

TiGeR KiNgS

Depends what you are after really, Microsoft office has the 'bells and whistles' to add functionality to the suite of applications, while OpenOffice is a plainer more straight foreword product that will do vast majority of people fine.
As you said leaving MONEY BEHIND i would choose M$, HOWEVER OpenOffice is perfect for most people including small and some large businesses, (I may be wrong but working in business there seems to be a stigma relating to OpenOffice just because its free and lacks some of the fancy pants features of Office 2007, i wonder what other people think?)

masterwriter

dulpit wrote: »

Hey, I'm curious as to what people think is the better product. Taking money out of the equation is Microsoft Office better than OpenOffice? ?

I found the spell checker awful on open office, really slow and does not pick up on a lot of wrong spellings.Also as far as i can recall you cannot correct a spelling by typing in where the spelling is shown incorrect you can only choose from the options given i could be wrong I use MS Works WP now

kaizersoze

This thread will no doubt turn into a firefox v IE or Apple v MS type argument.:)

MS Office all the way for me. Open is ok I suppose for the accasional user but if you need to use an office product in a serious way then MS is the way to go.
I've tried open for a while but it was painful, particularly if you receive docs or send stuff to other people. Most of the time I found MS docs wouldn't open or the formatting would be way off and vice versa.

Cue the open source faboys.:pac:

Sherifu

I'd like to see OpenOffice do well but it's not up to scratch yet. Hardly surprising when MS Office is the cash cow it is.

tman

For my occasional home use, OO does me just fine. No point in buying or pirating a program if there's a perfectly fine free alternative...

For work use I'd rather use office, but that's more from a compatibility point of view than anything.

My dad had his pc wiped by some tech monkey recently, who didn't bother putting office back on it for him. I installed OO instead and he couldn't get over the fact that this was free whereas a new office license would cost him hundreds.

(Sorry, but it's just not possible for me to take price out of the equation...)

SeanW

I'm not normally an "Open Source Fanboy" but I use OO.o now, and it kicks ass. MS Office isn't even worth pirating, tbh.

Mr E

I use OO at home, Office in work.
As tman says, OO is perfect for occasional home use and does everything I need it to do.

Shiny

Open Office is fine for occasional use.
Any sort of serious use then MS Office is the way.

Anyone who has used Office 2007 will see how far ahead
it is compared to OO..

papu

yeah if all you want to do is write the odd letter ect ect Oo is grand i guess , ive only used it very limitedly
however for reports/projects ect ect i will recommend office 2007

i use outlook express for email and powerpoint for all my projects ect , some new font features and shadow/bevel/3d/reflect options for pictures and wordart makes making great looking projects really really really easy!