OpenOffice not worth it?

astrofool

Just been reading an article here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=120

but as [H]ard|OCP says:

OpenOffice = Bloatware?
ZDNet’s George Ou has posted results from a performance analysis of OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office 2003 and the numbers are downright ugly. To be fair, Mr. Ou has written a number of open source software articles in the past that were rather negative but it is hard to dismiss the cold, hard numbers put forth in this article.

If this does pan out, is it actually genuinely worth it for people (who use Windows), to go out and buy MSOffice, is the extra time spent waiting on OpenOffice worth the $240 MSOffice would cost?

I'd have always thought that OO would be the leaner, faster piece of software, but it seems MS is actually getting things right now with regards speed.

Would any OO users disagree/dispute those figures?

mada999

i have to say I use open office regularly and I think its fab....it crashes sometimes....but ms word crashes more..also oo is free so I don't dis it!!!

Laguna

Unless you use every feature available to you in MS Office, I think it's a complete waste of money in comparison to Open Office. I used MS Office for years, when I was computer uneducated and thought there was nothing else availiable to me in regards to Office software except Lotus (which was ****e anyway). When I got into computers more when I was 16 and subsequently did my degree in computing, I soon found out about Open Offic being the free alternative to MS Office, it does everything I need of it.

It has a decent word processor, spreadsheet, excellent presentation maker, superb DB creation program for free. I find it superior to use when dealing with website creation than MS Office is.

It really wouldn't surprise me if the guy who wrote the article was bought by MS (e.g. giving him a free MS Office license! ) into writing a scathing review of Open Office. The damn thing is completely free!, even it does fall slightly short of MS Office, it's bloody free!

1. €299
2. Free

I'll take a number 2 with fries to go please.

Sully

I prefer MS Word to be honest.

mp3guy

OOo2 works great for me, much better than word.

Capt'n Midnight

Don't forget that the OEM version of MsOffice referred at $240 can't be moved to another PC so you have to buy it again when you get a new computer in a few years.

OO is a memory hog, so is FireFox but memory is cheap you can buy a LOT of RAM for €240 - way more than the 200MB they claimed was used. And when it comes to printing OO can be a lot faster on some docs.

When working out the memory did he use something like ProcExp from www.sysinternals.com to see all the other bit's and pieces loaded. Did he try to open a spreadsheet , a presentation and a document at the same time ?

When (not if) an excel document becomes corrupt - who do you call ? - OO !

mp3guy

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Don't forget that the OEM version of MsOffice referred at $240 can't be moved to another PC so you have to buy it again when you get a new computer in a few years.

OO is a memory hog, so is FireFox but memory is cheap you can buy a LOT of RAM for €240 - way more than the 200MB they claimed was used. And when it comes to printing OO can be a lot faster on some docs.

When working out the memory did he use something like ProcExp from www.sysinternals.com to see all the other bit's and pieces loaded. Did he try to open a spreadsheet , a presentation and a document at the same time ?

When (not if) an excel document becomes corrupt - who do you call ? - OO !

OOo2 is out, you must update your sig!

angelofdeath

definitly would prefer to use openoffice, ive OO on my pc at home and both on my pc at work, and openoffice is always the one i prefer to use, besides (free software + minor niggles) > (over priced software + minor performance gain)

Orion

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

OO is a memory hog, so is FireFox but memory is cheap you can buy a LOT of RAM for €240 - way more than the 200MB they claimed was used. And when it comes to printing OO can be a lot faster on some docs.

I don't find that at all. I use OO exclusively now and I find it quite fast and no problem with resources. Admittedly I have 1gb but that's not unusual. FF does crash occasionally and takes forever to reload after a crash but apart from that it's not a resource hog as far as I can see.

Regarding the original question: I use MSO in work (cos I have to). I don't find it any extra value than OO which I use at home. I do a lot of assignments in OO-writer and presentation and it does everything I need it to do. In fact the only niggle I have with OO is I can't find a way to customise key combinations for menu options. Not a huge deal but a feature I'd like. Apart from that - Free ~vs~ Expensive is a bit of a no-brainer.

Khannie

I use openoffice most of the time, but only because I've no option (using linux as my primary platform in work). Just for the record: The MS Office suite is FAR superior in terms of stability, resource usage, speed of load and (most importantly for me) feature set.

I'd never pay for it myself for standard use, so I use OO at home, but in business it's a no-brainer IMO. The 240 is money well spent.

I should point out that as part of my work I use some of the "advanced" features of office as my recent thread on excel with 0 replies is testament to.

tba

Yeah that was a though question. I had to look up some of the words. Did you figure it out anyway?

I was net Nannyed out of the link, did he compare OO running on a Windows and linux platform. It could be that certain programs are optimised or deoptimised for windows.

Khannie

tba wrote:

Yeah that was a though question. I had to look up some of the words. Did you figure it out anyway?

I had to look up some of the words too. Been a while since I was looking at anything more mathsy than a calculator can handle. Never got it sorted, but didn't need to in the end (at least temporarily).

tba wrote:

I was net Nannyed out of the link, did he compare OO running on a Windows and linux platform. It could be that certain programs are optimised or deoptimised for windows.

Both running on windows.

You can be sure that Office is highly optimised for Windows though. Redmond does come out with real quality software from time to time, and there's no doubt that office is quality stuff. I think though that the speed issue is unimportant to most people when compared to the cost issue. I've never had any issues with OO's speed, though I do find it to be slower than Office, I've never found it to be anywhere near as slow as he's suggesting.

The whole thing had a very biased ring to it though.

Stephen

I like both MS Office and OpenOffice. As others have said on this thread, I wouldn't pay the cash for MS office - I use Office 2003 at work and it is very nice indeed. I use OO at home when I need to do that kind of thing at home (which is not very often).
If the OpenOffice devs could improve compatibility with Word documents it would really be great. Anything I make in OO and save as a word document usually looks minging when opened in MS Word - especially if you have borders or tables or anything beyond basic text formatting.

Gandalf23

I use OOo and/or StarOffice 8 almost exclusively, but I have MS Office too.

I agree with most of the posts above... there is no question about MS Office being a high quality and fantastic piece of software. However I'm finding it more and more difficult to justify spending €250 to buy it. IMO interoperability between OOo/StarOffice/MS Office is improving all the time, and will continue to improve now that MS have adopted XML standards http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3509521 (these are the standards OOo and StarOffice are based on).

Khannie wrote:

The whole thing had a very biased ring to it though.

Shock. Horror. Gasp. Microsoft involved in a biased research study. Nooooooo, really...

Khannie

Gandalf23 wrote:

Shock. Horror. Gasp. Microsoft involved in a biased research study. Nooooooo, really...

HAHAHAHAHA. LOL.

Gurgle

tbh, the wordprocessor in OO is far better than MS Word.
I'm particularly fond of the word prediction thingy, it saves a lot of typing.
Also the picture placeholders and stuff all actually work in OO.

It responds very quick too, once its open. It just takes a while to load up.

200MB RAM isn't much of a dent in 1GB

Orion

Gandalf23 wrote:

and will continue to improve now that MS have adopted XML standards http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3509521 (these are the standards OOo and StarOffice are based on).

Read that article a bit more closely. They will not be using Open standards - they have invented their own "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats". Using the Open standard is not part of their plans. This, of course, will surprise nobody (cf. Java)

Cabaal

I think the free v pay basically answers is OpenOffice worth it,
For the average Joe or Mary at home OpenOffice is the business and does everything they need, *maybe* for a business MS Office is better but alot of the time Oo can do the job exactly the same.

Laguna

Why do people assume that MS Office is automatically better for a business than OO?, is it just because people in the workplace are now familiar with the advanced features on MS Office and they don't know how to or realise they can do the same with OO?, OO can pretty much do anything Office can and in some cases, do it better. I think OO wins this war because it's free and more advanced overall.

Some people in the workplace would now have had 10 years experience using Office so understandably they are going to think Office is superior because they know how to do everything they want through familiarity (if Microsoft do anything well, it's familiarity, Office 2000 apps and Office Xp apps, what's the difference?), if they sat down and forced themselves to learn all the functionality of OO, they'd realise there isn't the wide gulf in performance between the two they thought was there.

astrofool

I think the main point in the article, is that the extra time taken to run OO would probably be worth more wages wise than what MSOffice would cost. A person's time also isn't free remember, so it comes down to cost/benefit.

Also, if you have to train someone in another software package, that is also very expensive (if already on MS).

Capt'n Midnight

astrofool wrote:

I think the main point in the article, is that the extra time taken to run OO would probably be worth more wages wise than what MSOffice would cost. A person's time also isn't free remember, so it comes down to cost/benefit.

Excel doesn't make backup copies of documents by default just on a per document. Ditto Word but you can turn the option on. The amount of my time lost on restoring/fixing corrupted office documents and reformatting tables between different versions of word

Also, if you have to train someone in another software package, that is also very expensive (if already on MS).

again with the different versions of office - I really hate that option to hide buttons you dont use that often.. and if you..

Anyway what "must have" features have been introduced into Word since office 97 ? (or 4.3 if you use the long filename add on)

Also abiword and 602suite are out there if OO's "bloadedness" is a problem

art

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

again with the different versions of office - I really hate that option to hide buttons you dont use that often.. and if you..

God, I absolutely despise that "feature" - every time I open a menu in Office I think, "F*ck off bill gates and open the damn menu properly" :mad:

The idea that all of us do everything the same, need stupid little paperclip pals to help us figure out how to write a letter, and must be protected from the terrible spectre of several different items on a menu at once... make me run into the embrace of open-source every time.