Open Office vs Microsoft Office

I purchased a 3-user version of Microsoft Office 2007 for my household, and after playing with it for a while and hating it, I uninstalled it. Started using Open Office and have not looked back.

Doesn't matter about free, open source, portable, or anything else. Open Office works better for me.

Jim

P.S. Wanna buy the MS Office 2007 from me?

Irrelevant rhetorical question: Microsoft products are not free. Second, they are not portable.

Because it have more applications, and you can have just one icon (the main launcher) in your desktop (I hate to have icons on my desktop).

The only think I still don't know and that keeps me on M$ side most of the time is how to insert a picture and make the background transparent in OOo... as you know in M$ you just choose a tiny pencil in the bar and choose the area you want transparent... I still don't know how to do that in OOo... funny but it's the only think I still need to handle in OOo to definitively uninstall M$.

BTW, as an example... my CV in M$ Office weights 2.4 Mb, in OOo it's only 40 Kb... that's another reason...

If both were "free" then the choice is simple and the decision is easy. It would be OpenOffice.org every time. Why? Well free with OOo means open source; Microsoft Office would still be proprietary and closed source. Plus OOo is multi-platform: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD. Microsoft Office only exists for the first two. As a computing scientist I use the last five by choice so insist on cross-platform conformance. If another open source operating system comes out then porting OOo there will be easy; persuading Microsoft to make Office available well it hasn't happened with Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD so don't hold your breath.

It is hard to get a straight answer on a forum for this type of question. Depending on who you ask you will get a completely different answer. It's the same as asking "Which is better PC or MAC". People have loyalties based on many different reasons, be it open source, history of use, features they like etc.

I have used both OOo and MS Office, and enjoy both. I do have more experience with MS office as this is what we use at work, so am slightly more comfortable with it. However I have Open Office at home, and never have I felt I needed to have MS Office for anything.

When you compare two or more competing software packages you will always be able to say, "this one does something the other doesn't" and visa versa. The bottom line is, which software package do you feel meets the majority of your needs.

I will assume you have experience using MS Office as it is the most popular. With that assumption download OOo and try it. My suggestion would be to try and use OOo exclusively for a given period of time (ie. 1 month) then you will really know what you may not like aboutit, or what you like better about it, compared to MS Office. You have nothing to loose as its free.

To answer your question directly, "Which one would I rather get if they were priced the same". My answer is definitely OOo... it is what I use at home.

Hope this helps.

Why? For one reason- the cut and paste features of Open Office are horrible I paste one sentence and It immediately creates a text block that destroys the formatting of the page That is the only reason I can't use open office. Not won't, but can't. Anyone knows how to shut off that option?

I only use M$ office for the tablet Pc support. I hand write all my note in class on it, and until there is a great OS alternative, or OO.o support it, i'm stuck with M$ junk

OOo Is waaaaay better. In file format and GUI.

i had so many problems while editing, when i write something in a text box, and leave it i wont be able to editi it again!! everything else in Ooo was good but most of my work was on ppt, and not being able to edit my text.... mean no use of it.
Ps: does anyone know if i can run pptx (powerpoint 2007) on Ooo??

While I like OOo I have to say that overall Microsoft Office is better IMO. I use both regularly, and have a few reasons behind my answer. First of all is speed. When I double-click on a document to open it Microsoft Word opens in approx. 2-3 seconds where OOo usually takes 10+ seconds. Speed is also an issue in the program itself after opened. While I like OO.o's interface, it just seems too bloated and lagged down compared to Word. .doc files, although opened and editable in OOo, still don't render correctly in Word when the original file is created in OOo. The formatting is almost always messed up after saving in OOo then opening in Word. I have this problem regularly here in the office where MSOffice is the standard. OSS FTW, but OOo definitelty needs massive improvement.

I'm not a programmer, so the "open software" concept is only half relevant here; and most of my uses are with Windows, so again the multi-platform environment is not terribly important here. So while I prefer the rather open format used by OpenOffice, I find it tends to bug often when opening a file for the first time.

So which one do I prefer? It depends.

Writer vs Word

Writer wins hands down except for a few points:
- Formatting images is harder as one cannot crop online.
- A few "standards" have been imported from MsWord, like the nasty habit of removing the formatting when one backspaces on an empty paragraph. It's almost like MsWord, except MsWord 2003 can be configured the other way.
– Page styles. It's a great concept, and it would be perfect if page styles were dependent on each other just like paragraph styles are.
– There are a few bugs in paragraph and especially character styles.
– Compatibility, when going back and forth with users that have MsOffice.

I should stress that Writer excels in complex documents with variables and especially in form letters that are as easy to do as they were with MsOffice 95.

Impress vs Powerpoint
So far, I have not been impressed by Impress. It's very easy to have slow transitions between slides, for instance. I tried with a couple of documents that work very well with Powerpoint 2003; the equivalent document doesn't work in Impress, even after I change the transitions to use native ones.

Calc vs Excel
Both functionally identical, except Calc is faster than Excel for repetitive computations on a 10-Mb spreadsheet. However, macros aren't mutually compatible, so I am mostly stuck in to Excel.

Overall, I have to say that MsOffice 2003 works as well for me as OpenOffice 3. For me, the main advantage of OpenOffice isn't its portability but the portability of the profile, i.e. being able to use the same default sheets, the same shortcuts, etc. But I really don't like MsOffice 2007.

Well OOo is free so if you already have Microsoft Office, whats the problem using both and after some time 9a couple of years in my case) take your own decision...

I have another example that happened yo me two nights ago (Saturday night)... I finally finished my Master of Sciences Thesis which is done in Microsoft Office 2003 (I hate 2007 interface, too confusing for me)... I finished, and after I saved it I was to reopen it to check the configuration of the tables... I saw a remaining tmp file which I manually deleted... when I was going to reopen the file before send it to my tutor word returned "the file is corrupted and can't be opened"... Horror!!! I relaxed, think a little and decided to try open office writer... the file opened and everything was perfect... I saved it in word again with a different name and reopen the new file this time in word... the file was perfect and half the size...

That's why I love Open Office... It saved my ... day ... hehehe

Open Source for LIFE.
Also, I'm considering switching to linux, so then what do I do if I have M$ office??

I use open Office at home and Microsoft at work and if I was honest I would have Microsoft rather than Open office.

This could be because I have used Microsoft office for years and am just more familiar with it, but I find it easier to do things in Microsoft. Simple things like navigating to the end of a spreadsheet (end in Microsoft, no idea in open office).

I also find Microsoft access (is that part of the office suite, it is on my works laptop) beats the open office version hands down.

The choice is decided by the PDF tools: I need Acrobat for my work. End of story. When each print run failure costs money, Acrobat is the only PDF tool claimed to be supported by the manufacturer, "free" tools don't tend to support CMYK print adjustments or PDF/X standards, and Word gives total integration with Acrobat...there really is no choice. It's kind of like CMYK in Photoshop vs. CMYK in GIMP. As spectacular as GIMP is for RGB, it's just a CMYK toy and not a tool for serious CMYK printers.

This isn't a slam against OOo because it is fantastic for many things I don't use (or perhaps understand). If I ignore Word's integration with Acrobat, Word 2003 and Writer are the same to me. I'd just be ignoring the most important difference between them.

If I could throw a completely different angle out there... I've had MS Office 2002 (aka Office XP) for a while now, completely legally, and while I've played with various Office versions that came after, I didn't keep 'em. There's one thing that's keeping me with Office XP, MS Photo Editor. It's a real simple editor I can use to crop, rotate, and add other effects. I know there are probably a dozen or more apps that do the exact same thing (and then some) but I haven't found one I like.

Beyond that, I only install Word and Excel from Office. I don't need the others and I very rarely use Word and Excel. I'd switch to OOo if I had a good Photo Editor replacement. It just can't have too many more features, e.g. The GIMP... I really just need a simple photo manipulation program like Photo Editor. (One feature it has that I couldn't find in a couple alternatives I tested was gamma adjustment - I use brightness and contrast at times, but gamma the most.)

Not to be bias but i like MSOffice better. Impress was too far from powerpoint. Since i don't use word/writer and excel/calc, i cant comment.
I used OpenOffice before and i have problems opening .ppt files with animations.

OOo is free and that is a great advantage.

Open Office is better, and it is free!