Open Office vs MS Office

topcatcbr

I have been reading some posts here on the open office free software. I have reciently downloaded this and am starting to use it. I cannot believe how good it is for free software (which is usually crap IMO). I was used to MS Office and found that most things learnt on MS translate directly into OO I also particularly like that it can produce PDF Docs with the press of a button. Perfect for publishing to net.

Why do we not know more of this?

Epic Tissue

It's fairly well known and even comes with a java download iirc. (Tickbox if you want it or not).

I don't like it at all, but it has gotten better than it used to be. Word is much better.

EKRIUQ

I still find open office a bit buggy, but it's a great alternative to Microsoft Office and it's always improving

Unregistered.

As far as free software goes, it's FANTASTIC! Probably the best IMO.

Not as good as MS Office though.

Capt'n Midnight

Unregistered. wrote: »

Not as good as MS Office though.

which version of office ?

remember you can always have the latest version of OO
but you have to buy m$ office upgrades so many many office users will be on older versions

dulpit

I currently have the latest version of office, and compared to openoffice it beats it hands down (in my opinion)

However, if you have no office software at all, openoffice is brilliant... Also beats the crap out of paying for MS Office..

byte

On a similar vein, how does StarOffice differ from OpenOffice, or compare to MS Office?

MunsterCycling

Star Office is / was? owned by Sun, essentially their version of OO but been out longer IIRC

pickarooney

If they'd add tabs and make it a little prettier, I'd buy it.

Shiny

Cant stand open office.

After using office 2007 (word, excel and access) it feels almost
like going back to word 97.

Everything is old, the annoyances with word in terms of
alignment and positioning are even more annoying in Open Office.

Its acceptable for small tasks but I think it would be madness to
do write a Thesis(or something of that level) using it.

MunsterCycling

Shiny wrote: »

Cant stand open office.

After using office 2007 (word, excel and access) it feels almost
like going back to word 97.

Everything is old, the annoyances with word in terms of
alignment and positioning are even more annoying in Open Office.

Its acceptable for small tasks but I think it would be madness to
do write a Thesis(or something of that level) using it.

Would you be one of those people who think the 2007 file formats are the bees knees too? MS is trying to push their version of the open document standard on the world even though the ISO has already ratified the real OpenDoc format long ago. Open Office is probably the most hated itme out there by MS as it has features that MS can only hack together or not have at all: Try this with Office 07, open a document and then directly save it to a PDF without needing any further software installed, perfect for an online submission or thesis, THis cannot be done in 07.

MC

Orion

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Would you be one of those people who think the 2007 file formats are the bees knees too? MS is trying to push their version of the open document standard on the world even though the ISO has already ratified the real OpenDoc format long ago. Open Office is probably the most hated itme out there by MS as it has features that MS can only hack together or not have at all: Try this with Office 07, open a document and then directly save it to a PDF without needing any further software installed, perfect for an online submission or thesis, THis cannot be done in 07.

MC

I agree entirely. I use OO.o exclusively. For college assignments, some pretty large spreadsheets it's the bees knees and I have never looked back. OO v.2 had some bugs particularly with graphing but Oo3 is a vast improvement.

The MS open format is a misnomer - it is not open and should never have been ratified as such by the ISO. There were some very dodgy dealings when the ISO ratified it and it is now under appeal.

MunsterCycling

Did MS version get ratified? Last time I heard it had failed the ratifacition process.


MC

Cabaal

Open Office is pretty good and I have to say in many respects I';ve found it much nicer to work with when formatting stuff in writer when compared to MS Word.
Also it converts to pdf very very easily!

topcatcbr

I found the irish (english) dictionary not usefull but if you change this to uk dictionary this is fine. I am becoming very fond of write ( I am used to office xp) I dont see the need to buy the newest version of MS office when you can get a package of this quality for free.

I think that the major pc manufacturers should install this as standard instead of ms works which is complete rubbish.

PaddyTheNth

OO is very nice, although in Apps such as Calc it really does not scale well.

Calc also is missing the Accounting format and for some bizarre reason the developers won't acknowledge that it is a requirement...its only one of the most commonly used formats in practice.

They also need to make spellcheck "just work" out of the box...its a pain in the arse and not a consistently reliable process to get it set up.

One of my main loves for OO is its similarity to the MS Office 2003 interface...I ****ing hate the ribbon.

It would be nice if the people who say MS Office is way better could give a few specific examples of where this is the case, because I struggle to find any except for what I've listed above.

Orion

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Did MS version get ratified? Last time I heard it had failed the ratifacition process.


MC

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080401-microsofts-office-open-xml-now-an-official-iso-standard.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/16/iso_rejects_ooxml_appeal/

iirc there's another appeal underway but I can't find a link.

MunsterCycling

Typical M$ buy the vote crap... :shakes fist:

MC

mach1982

Open office is just basically a free version of SUN's StarOffice , so no wonder it 's the better than MS office , Oh to the poster who free software is crap, try googeling opensource( which the source code is free to any to modfiy/ distrubite )

Orion

mach1982 wrote: »

to the poster who free software is crap, try googeling opensource( which the source code is free to any to modfiy/ distrubite )

That would be the OP who is already converted

topcatcbr

mach1982 wrote: »

Open office is just basically a free version of SUN's StarOffice , so no wonder it 's the better than MS office , Oh to the poster who free software is crap, try googeling opensource( which the source code is free to any to modfiy/ distrubite )

What i said is most free software is crap (I also said MS Works is crap) and is usually full of adware, spyware, etc. I have tried Linux (red hat) before and found it wasnt great but this openoffice is a different kettle of fish. It seems well thought out and compatible with most other application standards and full of the type of features usually found on bought software.

Id love for all opensource software to be this good but alas this is not so.

I am not a computer programmer so as far as modifying opensource code forget it.

Heinrich

Oh I love these software discussions. Firstly, in my experience most people who think Word is better that the Oo offering seem to be the ones who use the computer as a glorified typewriter. Same can be said for Excel. Other than those two programs the rest of Micro$oft is rubbish. Don't even get me going on Powerpoint.

I have recently installed Ubuntu on a brand new machine and the only glitch was that I could not install it natively and had to install XP to get the yoke up and running. As I weanted to give it a good run for it's money I was happy to get it on to t he machine. Now it does everything I might need. I attached a scanner and the program found the necessary driver. Idem for my smal laser printer. It accepts my iPod, I can edit photos do emails, internet. What am I missing?

I do find that people becomed accustomed to their Micro$oft and even OSX and refuse to look any further. I imagine that there are very few who actually pay for Micro$oft Office and if they had to the Ubuntu/Open Office servers would die from overload. That also apploes to Photoshop...

Orion

topcatcbr wrote: »

What i said is most free software is crap (I also said MS Works is crap) and is usually full of adware, spyware, etc.

There's a difference between free software and open source software. It's the free 'as in' beer vs free 'as in' speech argument.

Free software (free = zero price, gratis) which isn't open is still proprietary software and some can contain rootkits, adware, spyware etc. However most free software is perfectly safe. Good examples would be Avast or ZoneAlarm. Bad examples would be Gator or some of the crap Internet Explorer search bars which track and report your internet usage.

Free and Open Source (FOSS) software (free as in freedom, libre) is free to use, modify, distribute and extremely rarely contains any of the above. If it did contain malware that would be removed very quickly by the FOSS movement.

ethernet

topcatcbr wrote: »

What i said is most free software is crap (I also said MS Works is crap) and is usually full of adware, spyware, etc. I have tried Linux (red hat) before and found it wasnt great but this openoffice is a different kettle of fish. It seems well thought out and compatible with most other application standards and full of the type of features usually found on bought software.

Id love for all opensource software to be this good but alas this is not so.

I am not a computer programmer so as far as modifying opensource code forget it.

Oh dear! Red Hat must have been some experience. Things have improved a lot since then.

Had to get Office to complete an Access project for college in its lovely proprietary style. Like OpenOffice. Works well, a little sluggish but that can be attributed to multi-platform-friendly Java. Somewhat, there aren't that many developers working on OpenOffice, at least in comparison to other open source projects.

What *really* annoys me about Office 2007 (not 2003 and prior versions) is Microsoft's demand for your to pay for additional dictionaries (€60/€70 IIRC) as there's only support for English, French and Spanish out of the box. This, alone, is enough to win me over.

PaddyTheNth

Heinrich wrote: »

What am I missing?

Games.

Heinrich wrote: »

Micro$oft...Micro$oft...Micro$oft

:pac:

Macros42 wrote: »

There's a difference between free software and open source software. It's the free 'as in' beer vs free 'as in' speech argument.

Free software (free = zero price, gratis) which isn't open is still proprietary software and some can contain rootkits, adware, spyware etc. However most free software is perfectly safe. Good examples would be Avast or ZoneAlarm. Bad examples would be Gator or some of the crap Internet Explorer search bars which track and report your internet usage.

Free and Open Source (FOSS) software (free as in freedom, libre) is free to use, modify, distribute and extremely rarely contains any of the above. If it did contain malware that would be removed very quickly by the FOSS movement.

Great post.

Orion

ethernet wrote: »

Oh dear! Red Hat must have been some experience. Things have improved a lot since then.

Fedora Core 10 (Which RH is based on - or vice versa depending on your point of view ) is getting great reviews. I'm going to stick it on a VM to have a look at it - or maybe on my laptop.

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

Games.

ORLY? I play World of Warcraft, Unreal Tournament, all the Half Life series and other Steam games in Ubuntu through Wine. Eve Online has a native Linux client, other games studios are actively developing ports as well.

Admittedly some games just won't work due to DX10 mainly but I'm perfectly prepared to sacrifice those games if the developers won't support my OS.

zilog_jones

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Try this with Office 07, open a document and then directly save it to a PDF without needing any further software installed, perfect for an online submission or thesis, THis cannot be done in 07.

The Save As PDF and XPS Add-in for Office 2007 may be an extra thing to install but it's free and fully integrates with Office.

I like Office 2007; I think the Ribbon interface is a lot more user-friendly and intuitive than the wall of toolbars in older MS Offices or OpenOffice but it's but it's far from perfect and needs a bit more work.

PaddyTheNth

Macros42 wrote: »

ORLY? I play World of Warcraft, Unreal Tournament, all the Half Life series and other Steam games in Ubuntu through Wine. Eve Online has a native Linux client, other games studios are actively developing ports as well.

Admittedly some games just won't work due to DX10 mainly but I'm perfectly prepared to sacrifice those games if the developers won't support my OS.

I'm not saying that you can't play quite a few games, and I think it would be great if all studios developed linux ports/versions, but Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead (yes, there were binaries in the demo but you still can't play it), Fallout 3...that's a serious chunk right there. You can't say that gaming on linux isn't an inferior experience to gaming on Windows...currently.

Capt'n Midnight

zilog_jones wrote: »

The Save As PDF and XPS Add-in for Office 2007 may be an extra thing to install but it's free and fully integrates with Office.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator this will give you a virtual printer that will print to PDF or image files , so you can generate pdf's from any application that can print.

if you are using microsoft office to make web pages then fine, edit the pages in microsoft office and then save the document and use openoffice to convert that document to html. the difference in the raw html is amazing, openoffice is just so much cleaner

Orion

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

You can't say that gaming on linux isn't an inferior experience to gaming on Windows...currently.

Yes I can. Gaming experience on Linux is identical to gaming on Windows. In fact in some games I get better FPS in Linux. So maybe Linux is superior for gaming.

The number of games available is slightly less is all. The same argument could be used for PS vs Xbox. Some games for Xbox are not available for the PS. It doesn't make the PS an inferior console.

Epic Tissue

Macros42 wrote: »

Yes I can. Gaming experience on Linux is identical to gaming on Windows. In fact in some games I get better FPS in Linux. So maybe Linux is superior for gaming.

The number of games available is slightly less is all. The same argument could be used for PS vs Xbox. Some games for Xbox are not available for the PS. It doesn't make the PS an inferior console.

Slightly less? A LOT less.

kaimera

if you are using microsoft office to make web pages then fine, edit the pages in microsoft office and then save the document and use openoffice to convert that document to html. the difference in the raw html is amazing, openoffice is just so much cleaner

then you'd be an idiot.

notepad(++) is better than office for html.

BostonB

Anyone do any serious VB/VBA with office applications or similar with OO or StarOffice?

mach1982

topcatcbr wrote: »

I have tried Linux (red hat) before and found it wasnt great it.

When was did you tried Red Hat, it been called Fedora for about 6 or 7 years , try Ubuntu it the easiest ditros to use now a days .

PaddyTheNth

Macros42 wrote: »

Yes I can. Gaming experience on Linux is identical to gaming on Windows. In fact in some games I get better FPS in Linux. So maybe Linux is superior for gaming.

The number of games available is slightly less is all. The same argument could be used for PS vs Xbox. Some games for Xbox are not available for the PS. It doesn't make the PS an inferior console.

I was talking about the higher level concept eg "If I buy this game can I play it on my computer without having to run a separate translation layer or at all?"

If you want to compare nuts and bolts, the realism DX10 brings is quite a large advantage. On my midrange - in gaming terms: E8400, HD4850 - computer the only game that I can't play on next-to max settings and keep FPS over about 40 is Crysis...how does Crysis run in WINE? :P

topcatcbr

mach1982 wrote: »

When was did you tried Red Hat, it been called Fedora for about 6 or 7 years , try Ubuntu it the easiest ditros to use now a days .

About 6 years ago.

The main reason i wont consider running Linux anymore is i need to run Autocad and Linux does not support this AFAIK (unless things have changed)

Orion

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

how does Crysis run in WINE? :P

It doesn't of course - it's one of the DX10 ones I mentioned. Like I said - I'm prepared to sacrifice games that aren't supported on my OS of choice. Other people won't make that sacrifice - that's up to them. But the more people who request Linux support the more it will be supported. As I said earlier some development houses have responded to fans comments and provided Linux support.

topcatcbr wrote: »

The main reason i wont consider running Linux anymore is i need to run Autocad and Linux does not support this AFAIK (unless things have changed)

AutoCAD 2004 has Gold support in Wine - but that's the only version it looks like.

PaddyTheNth

Macros42 wrote: »

I'm prepared to sacrifice games that aren't supported on my OS of choice.

But people who play games on windows don't have to ever make that sacrifice...

I love FOSS and the ideals behind it, but linux still isn't up to scratch for gaming.

Orion

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

But people who play games on windows don't have to ever make that sacrifice...

I love FOSS and the ideals behind it, but linux still isn't up to scratch for gaming.

That's where we disagree. Linux is perfectly 'up to scratch' for gaming. On games that are ported to Linux or that don't use MS proprietary code performance differences are negligible and in some cases better on Linux. I get better FPS on Linux using OpenGL than I got on Windows using DirectX in WoW. You cannot blame the OS for developers not supporting it. And until they do I am perfectly happy to make that sacrifice. I don't judge you or anyone else for not making that sacrifice however - it's all about choice.

Here's a non-gaming related example. I have a Zen Vision M - Creative refuse point-blank to support Linux. You can get it to work - some open software such as Gnomad2 - but it's not ideal. There is absolutely no technical reason why Creative cannot support their device in Linux (it's only an MTP device) but they just refuse to. I've just bought a new PMP - it's a Cowon S9 - Cowon support Linux out of the box.

ATI are another example. Again no technical reason why they can't support Linux apart from laziness/stubbornness. The ATI proprietary drivers is pants, MythTV breaks if you use it and ATI's standard response is that they don't support Linux. This is despite them providing the driver. So I have an nVidia card in my HTPC which works perfectly.

astrofool

laziness = hiring a dev team to develop and fix bugs in Linux. They clearly don't see the cost of the team being outweighed by the benefits of having a better driver for Linux.

Crysis also works in dx9, so should work on Linux?

PaddyTheNth

Macros42 wrote: »

You cannot blame the OS for developers not supporting it.

I'm not blaming the OS - Linux (Ubuntu, for me) is damn good. As you say, the problem is that people don't support it.

However, the fact remains that if you run a Linux OS to play games, you're going to be more restricted in playing games (eg you just can't play some of them, and you can't take advantage of DX10) than if you run a Windows OS.

And for me, not being able to play any game I want and take advantage of the latest in graphics effects means that its not as good an experience.

I guess we may have to agree to disagree on this one

Orion

I think we will

Don't forget I also said "I don't judge you or anyone else for not making that sacrifice"

Khannie

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

But people who play games on windows don't have to ever make that sacrifice...

I agree with that....BUT....

I'm with Macros49 on this one. I ditched windows and wont go back. I hope that in some small way, my playing games that run on linux will lead to games being made for linux. If nobody does it, it'll never happen.

I should say that there's no technical reason preventing games running on both platforms from a (more or less) single codebase. People have just been sucked in by the directx malarky.

Khannie

topcatcbr wrote: »

The main reason i wont consider running Linux anymore is i need to run Autocad and Linux does not support this AFAIK (unless things have changed)

If it's just for a single application, consider running a windows virtual machine in linux. I do this for MS project.

Shiny

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Would you be one of those people who think the 2007 file formats are the bees knees too? MS is trying to push their version of the open document standard on the world even though the ISO has already ratified the real OpenDoc format long ago. Open Office is probably the most hated itme out there by MS as it has features that MS can only hack together or not have at all: Try this with Office 07, open a document and then directly save it to a PDF without needing any further software installed, perfect for an online submission or thesis, THis cannot be done in 07.

MC

Hate the .docx format.
Got the save as pdf addon from the microsoft website. (for free as stated by others)

I have tried the alternatives, OO2.4, OO3, Latex.
I prefer the Office Suite 2007. Sorry:rolleyes:

I want(really want) to switch to Linux but this is one of
the things holding me back. I'm not good enough yet to
figure out how to get it working with WINE.

I also play most of my games on Steam now, does this
mean that all steam games will work? or just open GL ones?

Alzar

Folks,

I'm working on the IT Team in our company.
Are any of you running OO at work, say 400/500 seats? Whats the feedback from your users? We are currently looking at OO -vs- O2k7.

Would you like your business to migrate to Open Office or have you deployed Open Office already? If so, are there many support issue's with it?

Thanks.
Al.

PaddyTheNth

Alzar wrote: »

Folks,

I'm working on the IT Team in our company.
Are any of you running OO at work, say 400/500 seats? Whats the feedback from your users? We are currently looking at OO -vs- O2k7.

Would you like your business to migrate to Open Office or have you deployed Open Office already? If so, are there many support issue's with it?

Thanks.
Al.

Smaller scale so can't comment on that size...but it depends on your user's needs. Calc just doesn't handle large (like 5k+ rows) spreadsheets as handily as Excel. Also its missing accounting format which drives me and other accountants up the wall.

All OO apps have a startup (time from clicking open to it being usable) lag compared to MS Office. On a nice new 3Gig processor and fast HD its only a couple of seconds more, on a 2-3 yr old mid range its about 10 secs more.

Spell check is an absolute **** to set up in Writer in my experience.

Orion

Alzar wrote: »

Folks,

I'm working on the IT Team in our company.
Are any of you running OO at work, say 400/500 seats? Whats the feedback from your users? We are currently looking at OO -vs- O2k7.

Would you like your business to migrate to Open Office or have you deployed Open Office already? If so, are there many support issue's with it?

Thanks.
Al.

You'd probably be better off asking in the Open Source forum or Unix forum.

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

All OO apps have a startup (time from clicking open to it being usable) lag compared to MS Office. On a nice new 3Gig processor and fast HD its only a couple of seconds more, on a 2-3 yr old mid range its about 10 secs more.

Spell check is an absolute **** to set up in Writer in my experience.

Have you tried OO3? It's a hell of a lot faster to startup than OO2.x.

I agree about the spellcheck. The dictionaries should be standard install and selectable.

PaddyTheNth

Macros42 wrote: »

Have you tried OO3? It's a hell of a lot faster to startup than OO2.x.

Yeah, I agree...3 is what I use daily. But side by side - on a Windows machine - MS Office starts up faster than OO3. On my machine at home, Word opens faster in a VM than OO does in the host machine, both Windows XP.

BostonB

BostonB wrote: »

Anyone do any serious VB/VBA with office applications or similar with OO or StarOffice?

Does no one do this, even Excel, Word Macros at the minimum?

BostonB

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

Yeah, I agree...3 is what I use daily. But side by side - on a Windows machine - MS Office starts up faster than OO3. On my machine at home, Word opens faster in a VM than OO does in the host machine, both Windows XP.

I think MS Office 2007 apps, Excel especially starts up slowly.

I find it doesn't open excel files unless minimize then maximise the window, or alt tab back to it.