Comments on: OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office

By: SteveL

SteveL — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:46:29 +0000

OO.o 3 has a lot of plusses, especially given the price tag:

- Formula editor is better than the cut-and-paste equation editor in MS office, which becomes nightmarish for equation-heavy documents.
- Combining multiple writer files is less buggy than in MS Office, e.g., when writing a book as a combination of chapter files. In MS Office, if the binder file crashes, all the chapters get corrupted. With OOo, crashes are less likely, and even if they occur, the chapter files are unscathed.
- Open Office has frames.
- OOo files are more secure. Office-based macro viruses don’t work when the files are opened in OOo.
- OOo files are usually smaller (contrary to what the earlier “expert MS Office user” Tiger said. This can be easily verified.)
- OOo files work identically on Linux, Mac and Windows. This is not the case with MS Office. I have often experienced that PPT and PPTX files created with MS Office 2008 on the Mac looked weird when used with Windows (MS Office 2007) in a presentation.
- the OOo database component runs on the Mac, while
MS Access is not available on the Mac.
- Also the OOo macro language is available on all platforms while Microsoft has removed VBA on its Mac version of MS Office.
- more import and export options, including Flash export for presentations (though this is not great)

I end up using MS Office more though, because I have to share files with people who only use it (don’t we all). If I don’t have to, I invariably prefer OOo 3, especially Writer. One caveat is that Excel has a bunch of analysis add-ins that don’t have an equivalent on Ooo 3 afaik.

By: Bidyut

Bidyut — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:21:26 +0000

MS-Office 2007 is beauty without grace. I think it true for all MS software’. Open Office 3.0 is really great. It’s free, no licensing no copyright headache.

By: Dismayed

Dismayed — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:00:19 +0000

Gangstabagz found the OpenOffice spell check doesn’t work. Well, he or she is obviously didn’t use the superior Abi Word spell checker – or maybe they were just being ironic ;)

By: gangstabagz

gangstabagz — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:29:12 +0000

well i found that open offices spel check doesn’t work at all and Microsoft is gay so i use abi word its not a suite but it shore is good if u just using word btw rock on miss davidson

By: abhi

abhi — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:23:02 +0000

well i was using office 07 but i didnt activate it it was a used copy it stopped working after a month or so now i have to use 03 the one i used before o7 and i want a replacement for it will open office do?????

By: Miranda

Miranda — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:35:35 +0000

I recently purchased a new computer with MS Office 2007 on it. But, for some odd reason I can’t get it to activate for the life of me. So with the help of Chris (thanks btw!) I’ve decided to give OpenOffice a try. I’m downloading it right now to test it out. Hopefully it works!

By: Joyce N.

Joyce N. — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 03:47:54 +0000

I wanted to try OpenOffice but then I don’t like the idea of downloading Java. However, OpenOffice comes with my laptop that has Ubuntu and it seems to help the basic needs. I have Ms Word 2003 right now and I’m sort of sick of it, because it keeps telling me I don’t have it installed. I’m not sure if I deleted something wrong (which I dont remember doing) but it just stops functioning all the time saying I don’t have it installed, but whatever..

If I ever use OpenOffice, I’m probably never looking back to Microsoft because they have terrible support and honesty. I can’t even trust them.

By: tumb_sc

tumb_sc — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:49:51 +0000

Tiger says: “The question is who do you trust the experts at microsoft writing the software or a bunch of kids of the street writing open source code ?”

Hello Moron 1!

Its hard to take your question seriously when you have “Microsoft” and “expert” in the same sentence.

Firstly, Sun MicroSystems is in charge of OpenOffice Project. Not bunch of kids. So you’re wrong. They accept code contributions around the world, and then re-write it (clean up the code). This is then distributed freely in both source and binary forms.

Secondly, knowing how Microsoft handles security matters and is not public about bugs, I’d rather trust someone who’s honest and open. (Something Microsoft is NOT).

Thirdly, if you enjoy being on Microsoft’s upgrade treadmill, you go ahead.

Marcus says: “Do yourself a favour and download a cracked copy of MS Office 2007″

Hello Moron 2!

Its this blind and ignorant attitude that has caused Microsoft to introduce their anti-piracy nonsense in the form of “Genuine Advantage” programs in the first place.

You’re saying to break the law over getting something legally free. What brilliant thinking!

I wonder what happens when BSA comes to your business because MS reported an “inconsistency” with the number of MS Office copies you are running VS the number of licenses you bought?

By: Thao

Thao — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:12:54 +0000

OpenOffice is very good. I don’t like all products that come from Microsoft.
If MS Office price is 10$ i will come back.

By: Marcus

Marcus — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:28:38 +0000

Open Office is inferior no matter how much advocation is thrown around.
Do yourself a favour and download a cracked copy of Ms Office 2007

By: PC Rescue

PC Rescue — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:02:36 +0000

As a computer tech I often get asked to install MS Office on customer’s computers, but they are usually taken aback when I explain how much it costs.
As most home users I deal with just need a word processor, OO meets their needs perfectly, and everyone I have installed it for has been pleased with it.
Personally I use OO on my home PC running PCLinuxOS (goodbye Windows!), but I use Office 2007 on my workshop computer running XP- simply because I need to learn 2007 for my business clients.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:51:31 +0000

Can anyone show me a decent, non-convulted tutorial to make Open Office writer easy to work with for page numbering when writing a book? This simple operation is a no brainer in Word – you simply designate each page that you want page numbers to be hidden. However, in OOwriter, long complex documents that require the entire document to be consecutively numbered, yet numbers must NOT show on specific pages such as Chapter, Title, Index pages etc, seem to necessitate tedious playing with styles, is very un-intuitive and I can’t get my head around it’s mechanism.

While the creation of an Index and Glossary are simple in OOwriter, this page numbering ON/OFF capacity seems unnecessarily complex!

By: Tiger

Tiger — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:48:43 +0000

As an expert user in MS Office and open office, I have found many bugs in open office. Open office is not quite there yet. I have also found that documents from MS-WORD take less disk space than open office. There is also a bug in the calculator package of Open office. The question is who do you trust the experts at microsoft writing the software or a bunch of kids of the street writing open source code ?

By: Avell

Avell — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:07:31 +0000

Hey eveyone,

even though OpenOffice is free i dont prefer it, since it does not include as many important feature as Microsoft Office does, even though office isint free id still prefer it. I mean you CAN NOT compare openoffice with Microsoft Office 2007 lol.. neway thats just my opinion.

Have fun!

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:30:12 +0000

I love openoffice. I use it to write various booklets and other items for later use and it’s just fantastic! At first I wasn’t sure I could live without Word (Wordperfect sure wasn’t getting it right) but Writer has all the features I need. Not the least of which is an option to export to PDF. Bye bye Word!