Open Office vs. MS Office [Archive] - Page 2

tonyr1988

February 15th, 2007, 05:24 PM

-I haven't had the opportunity to try Office 2007 yet, so I could easily change my opinion on it later. :)

-I don't think I would use the ribbon a ton or find it overly useful. Keyboard shortcuts for the win! :P

-With that said, I don't think it would be horrible for OO.o to have a ribbon feature. The key is that it would have to be disable-able. The only argument against it would be a slightly larger file size (how much bigger can an alternate UI layout make an app?). As long as you've got a choice, I'd say go for it full-heartedly.

-Please move this to The Backyard.

-No more flames...please? :)

tonyr1988

February 15th, 2007, 05:27 PM

Tadpole:
For thoise who have never seen this "ribbon" thing, could you post a screenshot, and maybe a brief description of why it's so wonderful? I have often thought that OOo badly nees a "toolbar toolbar" where you can easily turn toolbars on and off instead of having to pull down a menu of toolbars, and I wonder if that's what this "ribbon" is, or whether it's something else entirely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29

Also, interestingly enough, the wikipedia entry says MS is attempting to file a patent for the ribbon UI. However, there's no citation, so I take it with a grain of salt right now.

loserboy

February 15th, 2007, 05:33 PM

mmmmm.... popcorn

old_geekster

February 15th, 2007, 05:34 PM

I have not and will not, try M$ Vista (Office 2007) until there is absolutely no other choice for me. I don't dislike M$ with a passion, I simply feel that XP and Linux are all that I require. How can you beat FREE.

As a gamer, I only wish that there was a way to play my games in Linux, without using another layer of software that only muddies the waters.

At this point, I am considering purchasing a console, not XBOX, to play my games and use Ubuntu as my default OS.

It is apparent to me that M$ doesn't want us to use Linux, since MS Word doesn't convert OO documents.

There's my opinion.

tonyr1988

February 15th, 2007, 06:01 PM

I don't know if it's just me, but OpenOffice has always seem to have really slow updates and not the most active development in the world.

Don't get me wrong - I love OO.o and use it almost everyday, but I don't think something like this is going to be coming out of it anytime soon (especially if Microsoft is working on a patent for the UI). But...I know they've got extensions for the OO.o suite. Does anyone know if something like this would be possible through something like that, or are they too limited in scope?

Then again, you could always have an off-shoot project. OO.o07 :) Just look at what happened when Beryl shot off from Compiz (a corporate project). Is it time for a fork of OpenOffice (a corporate project)?

I actually have no idea what I'm talking about now. Sorry for that ramblings. :P

tonyr1988

February 15th, 2007, 06:03 PM

Sorry for the constant posting, but definitely don't expect a ribbon in OpenOffice. Look at this:

A leader of the OpenOffice.org project, which makes a competing set of free programs, wasn’t overly impressed when Microsoft unveiled the ribbon last year.

“Microsoft’s innovation here, if you want to call it that, is fine, but it’s not anything that we haven’t discussed or looked at,” said Louis Suarez-Potts, community manager for OpenOffice.org, when asked about it at the time.

justin whitaker

February 15th, 2007, 06:15 PM

I'd like to see less copying of any Microsoft product. I think we spend so much time looking at what Redmond is doing, that we do not spend enough time focusing on any real innovations.

PartisanEntity

February 15th, 2007, 06:16 PM

Ladies and gents,

If you will allow me to make some input. I believe we all need to remain above primitive forms of disagreement and debate, IMHO there is no need to insult MS, its products or forum members who like certain aspects of such software.

We all rose above primitive levels when we chose to use Linux and Ubuntu, so why can't we remain aloof of flaming when debating?

As a very happy Linux and Ubuntu user, I am not embarrassed to say that I have always found MS Office and MS Outlook to be the two truly best pieces of software in the house of Microsoft. I never liked their operating systems nor their business practices, but in terms of products I always thought these two were truly good and useful.

I would like to add my vote to those who would like to see the truly superb OpenOffice continue on a path of improvement as well as efforts in the Linux community to make an alternative to Outlook (which I don't think exists at this time).

I hope we can continue to discuss this topic in a grown up and respectful manner.

Thanks.

igknighted

February 15th, 2007, 06:22 PM

Is it just me or did MS just copy the idea behind the SLED menu for the ribbon? From that screenshot it appears to be the exact same concept, just at the application level instead of OS. Leave it to MS to patent something someone else made first :-/

kairu0

February 15th, 2007, 06:22 PM

I don't understand...you are angry that I like a certain piece of software?

Are you serious?

LOL

All he wants to do is mimic the UI. He is not going to buy the M$ product. UIs are subjective, so I say the more power to him.

Sunflower1970

February 15th, 2007, 06:36 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29

Also, interestingly enough, the wikipedia entry says MS is attempting to file a patent for the ribbon UI. However, there's no citation, so I take it with a grain of salt right now.

Thanks for that link.

Maybe it's me, but that "ribbon" think looks kind of confusing....A little too cluttered for my tastes.

Can it really be copyrighted though? It kind of reminds me of tabbed browsing in FF....

yanqui

February 15th, 2007, 06:45 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_%28computing%29

Also, interestingly enough, the wikipedia entry says MS is attempting to file a patent for the ribbon UI. However, there's no citation, so I take it with a grain of salt right now.

If Microsoft tries to patent the "ribbon" they'll probably have a fight on their hands with Adobe, that is if Adobe purchased the whole of Macromedia's stuff. I've used that sort of "ribbon" in Dreamweaver, Flash, Freehand, Fireworks...It's only new because Microsoft is using it?

BTW, does Office 2007 actually DO anything better, or is it all just prettier makeup?

raffytaffy

February 15th, 2007, 06:46 PM

I'm putting this thread here because I'd like to know Linux users' opinions about this. I've played around with ubuntu on an old computer before, but just when I was about to switch full-time something happened.

Microsoft released Office 2007.

Oh. My. God. I realized it has been poo-pooed by OpenOffice users, but seriously. I've already built two Vista computers and put Office 2007 on both, and I can honestly say this is the greatest piece of software I've ever used, hands down.

Is it possible for someone to make an OpenOffice plugin that imitates the ribbon? I don't care if it's copying; as long as no IP laws are violated, I say do it. What do you guys think?

do u work for microsoft ?

meng

February 15th, 2007, 06:47 PM

All this talk about the ribbon reminds me of that Seinfeld episode, next thing we'll be talking about ribbon bullies.

yanqui

February 15th, 2007, 06:51 PM

I'd like to see less copying of any Microsoft product. I think we spend so much time looking at what Redmond is doing, that we do not spend enough time focusing on any real innovations.

I can enjoy the use of Open Office, but it's really frustrating how long it takes to open, save, close, well, to do anything--and that's in Linux AND in Windows. I'd like to see some gears shifting a little faster there. And unfortunately Open Office can't replace Access yet, and I use that quite extensively. Base is just not ready for prime time until I can create a form that actually lets me type text in it.

I love the concept of open source; I love that there is software that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I hate that it's so cumbersome. It's not any different to use, I'm a specialist on the MS Office products, so I have background to judge that aspect. but the first time I used Star Office several years ago, it was SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, and Open Office doesn't seem to have made great strides since then in that area.

fsando

February 15th, 2007, 06:58 PM

Isn't the point of this thread something in the line: We want a better openoffice"??

That's my take on it anyway - and then I totally agree.

I've used openoffice since 2000 - and have never been fully satisfied. I left msoffice simply because i couldn't handle big files especially with hundreds of frames (images in frames, tables in frames etc.) and the placement of frames was a royal pain. Last time I tried msword was word 2000 it hadn't improved.

So in my opinion openoffice is rock solid and get my jobs done.

That said - I would really like to see something done about a lot of things in openoffice.

the real problem is that that there isn't that much choice: msoffice or openoffice.

What other word processors/office suites are there that will let you do professional word processing?

I would like a professional office suite that supported some sort of plugins - I've looked a little at abiword but i doesn't seem to be enough. Hopefully such a design would allow you to pick an choose.

fsando

February 15th, 2007, 07:06 PM

do u work for microsoft ?Funny :) I had similar thoughts. Such stealth marketing is not exactly unheard of.
On the other hand the popularity of Ubuntu and is similarity to windows is bound to attract a lot of people that are not fleeing windows but expanding their world.

timcredible

February 15th, 2007, 07:12 PM

if you want oo to look different, suggest it to the developers (www.openoffice.org), i'm sure they like to hear what people want as improvements/changes, etc. as for ms office, well, since i haven't used windows in 4 years and will never use it in the future, i can only trust what you say about it looking nice. but then, i hear vista looks nice too, but that it doesn't work well (per today's USAToday article).

Popoi

February 15th, 2007, 07:13 PM

Nice software, bad format... go for open documents, it's the future ^^

PartisanEntity

February 15th, 2007, 07:15 PM

Isn't the point of this thread something in the line: We want a better openoffice"??

That's what I thought as well.

maddog39

February 15th, 2007, 07:17 PM

Well I will offer an educated opinion based on what I think since I was a 2007 Beta tester ever since Beta 1 of it was released. My opinion is that the ribbon thing is drastically different from how the previous interfaces worked and therefore comes with a learning curve to get used to it just as any OS or other software has.

From my personal experience, I have found that it took almost a month for me to really get used to the new interface. I thought all it's eye candy and easier access to some of its functions such as subscripts, superscripts, date & time, and the such was kind of nice. But most certainly not worth the price. I personally still dont see any reason why I should pay $250+ to get some eye-candy and a few new features that I'm probably not ever going to use. OpenOffice works perfectly fine for me and has more than enough features than I'll ever need and or use for that matter. Well that's my synopsis.

qalimas

February 15th, 2007, 08:21 PM

If Microsoft tries to patent the "ribbon" they'll probably have a fight on their hands with Adobe, that is if Adobe purchased the whole of Macromedia's stuff. I've used that sort of "ribbon" in Dreamweaver, Flash, Freehand, Fireworks...It's only new because Microsoft is using it?

BTW, does Office 2007 actually DO anything better, or is it all just prettier makeup?

Not to mention every other web editor out there? Even Quanta and Bluefish have a "ribbon" like toolbar...

Not impressed =/ Too cluttered, and I would prefer a normal menu. Does anyone know if you can go back to normal menus in Office '07?

Rodneyck

February 15th, 2007, 08:29 PM

Personally, I don't care how insanely great any Microsoft software is. Its aim is to take my freedoms away. And until Microsoft changes their tactics in that regard, I am not touching another thing from them. And I am certainly not going to hypocritically embrace with open arms their design styles.

Well said!!! Share the truth brother...well, in this case, popcorn as the truth icon seems to be missing. :popcorn:

Ok, who took the truth icon?

meng

February 15th, 2007, 08:30 PM

Maybe the rumored patent application is just to give the impression that it's an "innovation", at least to the consuming public.

Zadok001

February 15th, 2007, 08:32 PM

Super King

February 15th, 2007, 08:51 PM

The Ribbon actually is a very good bit of UI design, one that deserves to be emulated. We've all been working on the File->Edit->View (or close equivalents) since the dawn of GUIs, simply because that was how it was done.

If anyone should be willing to buck the trend and attack the UI from a new angle, it should be Open-Sourcers, but face facts - M$ beat us to it on this one. The Ribbon concept is superior to traditional menus in almost every way, and Office 2007 in general has a UI that beats everything else on the market, hands-down.

Of course, paying an arm and a leg for a pretty UI is idiotic, but the response from the open source community on the Ribbon has been remarkably silly. Basically, everyone's just saying "Dude, M$ made it, it sucks." Ad hominem fallacy aside, that's ridiculous. When you see something better than what you have, the response should be based on the SUBSTANCE of the product, not the manufacturer. M$ has something good here, copy the hell out of it. :-)

Good post.

The UI and workflow improvement in Office '07 may not be worth several hundred dollars for most people; for them, an older version of MS Office, or OpenOffice, or Abiword or whatever will probably be fine. However, for professionals or those who use word processor/spreadsheet/presentation/database stuff daily, the production increase that Office '07 provides (after the learning curve) will be enough to surpass the cost. In the end, this will differ depending on each user obviously.

fsando

February 15th, 2007, 08:53 PM

if you want oo to look different, suggest it to the developers (www.openoffice.org), i'm sure they like to hear what people want as improvements/changes, etc.Maybe but I'm not entirely convinced. My gripes with oo is not the looks (though some polishing wouldn't hurt) it's rather some features and bug fixes I would like.
The good thing about oo is that is rock solid - I have in the last 6 years experienced one corrupted document - with msword I experienced corrupted documents regularly.

The bad thing is a lot of minor irregularities, and some functionality that is very poorly implemented
Example of irregularities: table from calc pasted into writer will change its size in unpredictable ways, sometimes I've tried opening and closing it repeatedly, every time it would shrink a little - funny to watch but immensely annoying to work with.
Missing functionality: professional mail merge that works - yeah! there is something they call mail merge (have you tried it?) - this was reported to the developers more than 3 years ago.

I don't think the resources are there (sun is not willing?) to develop oo. It will probably die a slow quiet death.
And something better will come along (or vice versa: something better will come along and ...)

solarjeep

February 15th, 2007, 08:59 PM

<rant>
It seems a bit odd that I should be making my first post to this forum in this particular thread but what the heck, why not.

I'm not new to Linux. I first used it in '94 when I picked up what I think was the first Slackware distro. However, it didn't fit my needs at the time. Over the years I've tried it several more times and just found it too time consuming to set up and keep running. I would rather spend my time programming.

About 3 weeks ago, out of frustration at Microsoft for the pricing on Vista, I decided to give Linux another try. It's been about 4 years since I tried any Linux distro. I started with Fedora Core 6. Then tried Knoppix. Then Debian. Two days ago I installed Ubuntu. I have to say of the four I am really liking Ununtu. The others were good, as well. A far cry from text-based installation and almost non-existent drivers. Each of these distros installed and recognized everything! Nice job!

So, why the rambling. This thread caught my eye for a reason. I sensed, shall we say, a little tension. So, here's my take as one of those people who might come in here and praise Microsoft. Microsoft makes good products. Flawed? Yes. Is Linux perfect? Far from it. Which is the best value? Microsoft is very expensive. Linux can be free if you choose. Based on money, Linux wins the value competition. What about time? Some people don't have or want to take the time to figure out how to modify a driver and rebuild a kernel just to get a printer to work. A bit extreme of an example but still...

While trying out Fedora I spent a pretty good amount of time on Fedora Forum. The one thing that stood out to me was how welcoming and helpful everyone was. Even on my second day when I posted something out of frustration I was met with patience and support.

I think it's very important that, as a COMMUNITY, those who support Linux and want to see it grow should understand that making a change from Microsoft to Linux really is a difficult thing to do in some ways. Blasting someone who is TRYING or even who is raving about Microsoft isn't going to encourage them to stick with it.

The Linux community of users will grow as long as people don't feel intimidated or stifled just because they haven't yet taken the lifetime oath of Linux or Death. Give them (and me) time to deal with the withdrawals of all the positives that exist in the Microsoft world. It's painful. In a dark, lonely room banging my head against the wall...I want to believe in Linux. I really do. Show me. Give me a sign, Oh Mighty Penguin! Show me that the path I have chosen will work for me! I'm willing to bleed. To cry. To sweat. Please be patient with me.

Thanks

Oh, and one more thing, Oh Mighty Penguin. Could you get people to stop doing the "capital M dollar sign" thing when referring to the Evil Microsoft? It's so 1999.
</rant>

delfick

February 15th, 2007, 09:17 PM

picpak

February 15th, 2007, 09:37 PM

Haven't tried it, but as long as it's better than Office 2003 I'll be happy. I didn't like Office 2003.

Tadpole

February 15th, 2007, 10:32 PM

Wow! I left this thread alone for a little while and it's packed. I'll try to answer some posts...

do u work for microsoft ?The admins can check my IP...it's coming from pennsylvania, not washington state ;-)

BTW, does Office 2007 actually DO anything better, or is it all just prettier makeup?Hehe, leave it to a linux user to characterize UI design as "prettier makeup" :-D

Maybe it's me, but that "ribbon" think looks kind of confusing....A little too cluttered for my tastes.More cluttered than this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/OpenOfficeorg-Writer-scr01.png)? Really?

I personally still dont see any reason why I should pay $250+ to get some eye-candy . . .The UI and workflow improvement in Office '07 may not be worth several hundred dollars for most people; It does not cost that much, guys. NewEgg is selling Home & Student right here (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832116135) for $130, and it includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Installs on 3 computers, too.

natedawg

February 15th, 2007, 11:20 PM

GFree

February 15th, 2007, 11:22 PM

I want to believe in Linux. I really do. Show me. Give me a sign, Oh Mighty Penguin! Show me that the path I have chosen will work for me! I'm willing to bleed. To cry. To sweat. Please be patient with me.

Unless you have any objections, I'm sticking this in my sig. Summarizes my feelings somewhat more dramatically. :KS

justin whitaker

February 16th, 2007, 12:01 AM

I can enjoy the use of Open Office, but it's really frustrating how long it takes to open, save, close, well, to do anything--and that's in Linux AND in Windows. I'd like to see some gears shifting a little faster there. And unfortunately Open Office can't replace Access yet, and I use that quite extensively. Base is just not ready for prime time until I can create a form that actually lets me type text in it.

I love the concept of open source; I love that there is software that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I hate that it's so cumbersome. It's not any different to use, I'm a specialist on the MS Office products, so I have background to judge that aspect. but the first time I used Star Office several years ago, it was SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, and Open Office doesn't seem to have made great strides since then in that area.

Yanqui, I totally relate...it just strikes me that Office 2007 is adding lipstick to a pig, so to speak, in gussying up the menu interface without that many changes underneath. I understand, Microsoft needs to figure out a way to get you to pay for the latest iteration...and they will succeed.

I don't believe that anything in the current generation of Microsoft products is really innovative, per se, with the possible exception of Sharepoint. That could be a killer tool.

What bothers me is that all of these smart people that develop open source say "Microsoft/Apple has X-we need that!"

What we need is people to step back and say: do we really need that to be competitive, or is there a better way to do that?

Differentiate, not copy!

delfick

February 16th, 2007, 12:24 AM

Tadpole

February 16th, 2007, 12:31 AM

Yanqui, I totally relate...it just strikes me that Office 2007 is adding lipstick to a pig, so to speak, in gussying up the menu interface without that many changes underneath.Firstly, it is generally agreed that MSO runs faster and more efficiently than OOo, so I think the term "pig" is misdirected here.

Secondly, it is true that the biggest change was in exposing existing features through a major UI change rather than adding new features underneath, but that is to their credit. Feature-creep does not make great software.

raffytaffy

February 16th, 2007, 12:58 AM

Wow! I left this thread alone for a little while and it's packed. I'll try to answer some posts...

The admins can check my IP...it's coming from pennsylvania, not washington state ;-)

Hehe, leave it to a linux user to characterize UI design as "prettier makeup" :-D

More cluttered than this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/OpenOfficeorg-Writer-scr01.png)? Really?

It does not cost that much, guys. NewEgg is selling Home & Student right here (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832116135) for $130, and it includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Installs on 3 computers, too.

anybody can use a proxy:lolflag:

aysiu

February 16th, 2007, 01:14 AM

I've merged this with the other discussions on OpenOffice v. MS Office.

If people are really serious about making OpenOffice better, visit this link:
http://contributing.openoffice.org/

You can program, write documentation, create artwork, do marketing, test, donate money...

Simply asking (demanding?) on the Ubuntu Forums that OpenOffice be better doesn't make it better, whether you consider "better" to be similar to MS Office or different from MS Office.

Tuna-Fish

February 16th, 2007, 01:35 AM

steven8

February 16th, 2007, 02:19 AM

It does not cost that much, guys. NewEgg is selling Home & Student right here for $130, and it includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Installs on 3 computers, too.

Open Office cost me about 20 minutes to download, and I can install it on 3,000 + computers if I wish, then I can write a note to grandma, make a spreadsheet for aunt bessie to chart her cow usage or whatever. I don't even know what the dreaded 'ribbon' is, actually, that makes it worth 130.00, and can only be put on 3 machines.

fsando

February 16th, 2007, 04:56 AM

i agree with solarjeep :D

also, i say we start a new thread to discuss how to improve the user interface of openoffice and leave this thread for those who want to continue the ms vs linux discussion (it's too late now to turn this thread into a decent discussion :D)

but anyways, is openoffice even being worked on anymore ???

releases seem so far apart and not so feature-full ........

(i also think the openoffice ui is ugly :P (but then i am an eyecandy addict so that's to be expected :D))

Sounds like a good idea. How is that done - and will anybody listen?
I think the whole oo-enterprise was originally designed by Sun as part of a strategy to slow the growth of microsoft into the server market - and the strategy has been successful. So I guess that Sun doesn't need the oo front that much anymore.
Actually, I believe going for a much leaner and more flexible model than oo is probably the best way to go.

What office suites are there out there?
* How is word perfect doing these days - does it exist for linux?
* Can abiword be made to have extensive (professional) indexing, numbered and unnumbered lists?
* Can abiword have embedded elements from spreadsheets etc. etc.
* What about the Linux word processors?

In my view this is about the all encompassing office suite that can be as little or as much as you like it to be.

I like the plugin structure of Firefox - or think photoshop - also a good plugin model. Or if youv'e dealt with midi composing you have vst plugins. I think this would be the way to go - if such exists I'd like to know.

On another note (the win/nix and time angle): I am writing from windows because my ubuntu is broken (works but at crawling speed). It has been so for more than a week and I haven't had the time to try and fix it - I don't know where to begin or end fixing it - so it will have to wait - a reinstall will have to wait till I have time for a full backup etc etc. Anybody had this experience? :D Ok I've downgraded it to be my second os until it is up an running again.

Unterseeboot_234

February 16th, 2007, 05:26 AM

On another note (the win/nix and time angle): I am writing from windows because my ubuntu is broken (works but at crawling speed). It has been so for more than a week and I haven't had the time to try and fix it - I don't know where to begin or end fixing it - so it will have to wait - a reinstall will have to wait till I have time for a full backup etc etc. Anybody had this experience? Ok I've downgraded it to be my second os until it is up an running again

It has been my experience if I left a server-program, such as ALSA-syth or SAXON running that it really slowed down the computer. Also, since I bang around in java, I could have 3 or 4 copies of my program running without any task buttons or anything else showing. You have to start off in Administration, System Monitor, Processes. That shows current activity. You have to remember if you patched the kernel that started a DB, a Midi-synth to run at startup.

As far as Office, any flavor, I lost interest at Version 2.0. Office doesn't take control work involving a page and its graphics. MSPublisher was much worse. Both claimed to export EPS and what you'd get was 96dpi vertical lines trying to make all the art and all the text (when you were preparing for a hi-resolution commercial output). MS seems to think they will retain the lead goose position in the flying formation by making everything properietary. I don't anticpate anything changing with MS Products before Bill Gates retires in two more years and starts his free-money to the third world company.

OOo is programmable and/or scriptable. Most people just want a button, not coding.

FyreBrand

February 16th, 2007, 05:54 AM

I think the whole oo-enterprise was originally designed by Sun as part of a strategy to slow the growth of microsoft into the server market - and the strategy has been successful. So I guess that Sun doesn't need the oo front that much anymore.
Actually, I believe going for a much leaner and more flexible model than oo is probably the best way to go.Sun didn't design OpenOffice at all, they bought it. Here is a quote from Wikipedia:
StarOffice was originally developed by the German company StarDivision, founded by Marco Börries in 1986. The development of the integrated StarOffice started at the end of 1994. Until version 4.2 StarOffice was based on the platform independent C++ class library StarView.

The company and the rights to StarOffice were acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999 for US$73.5 million. Sun was seeking to compete with Microsoft Office, and also wanted to save money on licenses for Microsoft Office and Windows:

The number one reason why Sun bought StarDivision in 1999 was because, at the time, Sun had something approaching forty-two thousand employees. Pretty much everyone of them had to have both a Unix workstation and a Windows laptop. And it was cheaper to go buy a company that could make a Solaris and Linux desktop productivity suite than it was to buy forty-two thousand licenses from Microsoft. (Simon Phipps, Sun, LUGradio podcast)

Sun soon offered StarOffice 5.2 as a free download for personal use.

Sun then went through an exercise similar to Netscape's release of Mozilla by open-sourcing most of the StarOffice code-base. The resultant open-source codebase is developed as OpenOffice.org and is contributed to by both Sun and the open source community. Sun then takes a "snapshot" of the OpenOffice.org code base, integrates proprietary and third-party code modules and markets the package commercially.

In September 2005 Sun released StarOffice 8, adding support for the OpenDocument standard and a number of improvements (based on the OpenOffice.org 2 code).It's pretty crazy to think that it's cheaper to buy a company than to pay for licensing fees for MSOffice.

steven8

February 16th, 2007, 06:03 AM

well, 42,000 employees, at the earlier quoted rate of 130.00 per seat would be 5,460,000 dollars. I'm not sure how MS does things for a corporate environment, but they probably have to pay a new license fee per seat each year. I don't know if this is true, but in the long run, it would be cheaper.

Arathorn

February 16th, 2007, 07:27 AM

colonelk

February 16th, 2007, 07:32 AM

Dunno if it has been said already, but OOo doesn't support multimonitor in its presentation package (or at least it didn't as of the last time I used version 2.0x). Thats enough for me not to be able to use it at work! :(

ellis rowell

February 16th, 2007, 08:10 AM

I use Open Office now, I started off with Star Office v5.1 (earlier post mentioned no email or web browser, this had both) then upgraded to v5.2. Later upgraded to v7.0 when the .pdf save became available, When Star Office v7.0 became Open Office I changed to that. My first PC had MS Works on and the problems between Works and MS Office persuaded me to change. I am now in the process of changing from Windoze to Ubuntu.

It is interesting that the Windoze system cannot read other system disks without an emulator program, whereas Linux can read and write to Windoze disks.

tigerpants

February 16th, 2007, 08:29 AM

It is interesting that the Windoze system cannot read other system disks without an emulator program, whereas Linux can read and write to Windoze disks.

That's on purpose :)

I don't honestly think that the vast majority of people that use MS Office, or even OpenOffice, use even 10% of its capabilities. Most people just want a tool to type a letter, store some budget data and send an email thats it. There are, of course, power users, but I don't know anyone that would seriously use Front page or Publisher for serious pieces of work. You'd use proper bespoke software like dreamweaver or corel or quark.

There are some things ooffice needs to improve upon - the DB is poor, but then so is Access - linux really really does need a Filemaker alike. Badly.

Email client would be nice as well, although thunderbird is perfectly serviceable - needs a calender feature though.

Apart from that, there is nothing in Office that I can't do in ooffice.

yanqui

February 16th, 2007, 10:56 AM

My guess is that companies get reduced prices if they order a whole lot of licenses.
The only thing I miss in OOo from MS Office is the way to make accented characters. I, for example, I want to type an "é", In MS Word I can type "Ctrl+, e" to get the desired symbol, and I've not yet found a simple way to do this in OOo.

You should be able to locate a chart that contains the ASCII symbols for that; I think they're pretty much cross-platform. Like if you wanted to show the "degrees" symbol, in any windows program it's Alt+248, and it shows the "degrees" symbol. Also, in Word, you can go to Insert>symbol and find most symbols from there; is that also in OO's word processor? I haven't looked for it.

yanqui

February 16th, 2007, 11:10 AM

Wow! I left this thread alone for a little while and it's packed. I'll try to answer some posts...

The admins can check my IP...it's coming from pennsylvania, not washington state ;-)

Contract programmers can work from just about anywhere! :)

Hehe, leave it to a linux user to characterize UI design as "prettier makeup" :-D

:), Yeah, I use linux, but I spend a whole lot more time on MS products. A nicer interface could be important if there was an improvement; but if that's all it is, it should be stated as such. I really don't have a problem using a drop-down menu like in Office 2003 and the current OO products. The fact that the ribbon may keep me from having to click two more times to get to the item I want is just not going to sell me on it.

More cluttered than this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/OpenOfficeorg-Writer-scr01.png)? Really?

It does not cost that much, guys. NewEgg is selling Home & Student right here (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832116135) for $130, and it includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Installs on 3 computers, too.

And as long as you don't need Access, that would do, I guess. But then, with my Open Office installation I really don't have that either, because Base doesn't work in either my Windows box or my Linux box. That means it's taking up hard drive space and offering nothing in return, which makes it worse than worthless.

And it is STILL REALLY SLOW!!!!!!!!!!!

steve.horsley

February 16th, 2007, 11:10 AM

Hmm. I've looked at the ribbon shots, thanks for the link. I'm not sure I like it, and I think OOo might be better off with just a toolbar toolbar - a toolbar with checkboxes to turn all the other toolbars on and off - basically the view/toolbars menu laid out as a series of checkboxes, toolbar style. The ribbon thing seems needlessly complicated to me.

yanqui

February 16th, 2007, 11:16 AM

Well I live in Washington, I have been to Microsoft, I know people that work at Microsoft but still I use Ubuntu and Open Office. I choose to use Ubuntu because I don't like Microsofts DRM, insecurity, and proprietary software. As for adding the ribbon to open office I'm all for it! To tell you the truth I have tested the ribbon and I hate it! The beauty of Open Office is that its open source. If a mob of people or even a select few want a new feature then by all means get together and make it happen. Who knows...if a ribbon like plugin/feature is added to OO then you can count on me to test it out. Maybe I will like the OO version? I love to try new stuff in Linux and having the freedom to choose what I want makes Linux that much better. The only problem that I see with a ribbon in OO has already been mentioned...OO tends to takes its own sweat time with development.

In order to offer something at no cost, much of the production in terms of labor and material must be donated. In order to donate time to a project, it must be time that is otherwise not allocated. I can't argue with the amount of time it takes the Open Source community to do something, because this is probably not the group of projects that provides income to the programmers working on it. It would take me a long time to learn the level of programming skill that would allow me to be able to contribute to the projects.

yanqui

February 16th, 2007, 11:21 AM

One thing i need to point out at ms office loading faster than OO.o: it doesn't really, it just preloads a lot when the computer starts. If you want, you can also make OO.o preload, but doing a lot of preloading of course spends memory even if you dont use the app.

As a new user, I wasn't aware of that. Can you point me in a direction so as to make that happen? Is that similar to the "prefetch" in Windows? Is it possible to make windows preload OO.o? I have plenty of RAM, and I can pretty much guarantee that if I'm booting a computer, at some point during that session, I will use an office program.

That's valuable information, and that kind of thing is why this is my second home!

Arathorn

February 16th, 2007, 11:31 AM

You should be able to locate a chart that contains the ASCII symbols for that; I think they're pretty much cross-platform. Like if you wanted to show the "degrees" symbol, in any windows program it's Alt+248, and it shows the "degrees" symbol. Also, in Word, you can go to Insert>symbol and find most symbols from there; is that also in OO's word processor? I haven't looked for it.
I know that, but the method I described is a lot easier then memorising a list of ASCII codes.

yanqui

February 16th, 2007, 11:32 AM

Sounds like a good idea. How is that done - and will anybody listen?
I think the whole oo-enterprise was originally designed by Sun as part of a strategy to slow the growth of microsoft into the server market - and the strategy has been successful. So I guess that Sun doesn't need the oo front that much anymore.
Actually, I believe going for a much leaner and more flexible model than oo is probably the best way to go.

WOW--that would be a fabulous system, I think; sort of like installing the modules you like, like maybe those that want the ribbon could have it, but those that don't could leave it off--is that sort of what you mean?

What office suites are there out there?
* How is word perfect doing these days - does it exist for linux?
* Can abiword be made to have extensive (professional) indexing, numbered and unnumbered lists?
* Can abiword have embedded elements from spreadsheets etc. etc.
* What about the Linux word processors?
There is a word perfect suite, it's made by Corel. As for market share, obviously significantly behind MS, and probably significantly ahead of OO.o; it's also pretty much what you'd come to expect out of an office suite, if you can use one you can use any of the others. But WP does have the "reveal codes" mode that nobody else has, and I love that; you can use the reveal codes mode to edit formatting by actually working with the reference to the formatting itself, not by guessing if you've got your cursor in teh right place. It must be patented, because nobody else has it, I don't think. I'd love to see that in OO.o.

In my view this is about the all encompassing office suite that can be as little or as much as you like it to be.

I like the plugin structure of Firefox - or think photoshop - also a good plugin model. Or if youv'e dealt with midi composing you have vst plugins. I think this would be the way to go - if such exists I'd like to know.

On another note (the win/nix and time angle): I am writing from windows because my ubuntu is broken (works but at crawling speed). It has been so for more than a week and I haven't had the time to try and fix it - I don't know where to begin or end fixing it - so it will have to wait - a reinstall will have to wait till I have time for a full backup etc etc. Anybody had this experience? :D Ok I've downgraded it to be my second os until it is up an running again.

you can try selecting recovery mode from the GRUB, and if that doesn't help, boot from the CD and select "repair a broken installation." I've fixed a few problems that I couldn't track down using those two methods. No, I don't know what I fixed, but something that was broken got fixed. Worth a try!

yanqui

February 16th, 2007, 11:37 AM

I know that, but the method I described is a lot easier then memorising a list of ASCII codes.

Absolutely! I completely agree; the only one I remember is the one I use, the ALT+248. But since MS Office is a commercial product with full-time effort focused on MS Office Program Coding, and Open Office isn't, it's not surprising that the things that make it "easier" to use may be back-burnered so as to focus on fundamental functionality. I'm sure that those hot key shortcuts will make it into the program at some point, and if I could do program coding, I'd work on it myself, because I agree that they facilitate a lot of things.

Tadpole

February 16th, 2007, 11:38 AM

I don't honestly think that the vast majority of people that use MS Office, or even OpenOffice, use even 10% of its capabilities.This may be true, but for each person it is a different 10%, which is why they must come with so many features. If Wordpad was enough for most people, Office wouldn't be printing money like it is right now.

SonicSteve

February 16th, 2007, 12:31 PM

Perhaps OOo is a bit behind but I'm one of the 90% who don't use anywhere near all the functions of MS office.
I'm actually in the process of switching from MS office. I just finished migrating to Thunderbird from Outlook as step one. Now I need to deal with my MS publisher files. That will be the sticky part.
I'm very impressed with OOo and I recommend it to most people. When I'm done I'll sell my Office 2k3 pro on Ebay or something.

EmilyRose

February 16th, 2007, 12:53 PM

Maybe OO is years behind... but honestly, how many people really care/notice? Pretty much everything I've written in the past 1-2 years I've done on Google Docs for goodness sake (which is mostly recipes & my resume I admit, but still!).... What tiny percentage of the population of the country/world ACTUALLY uses all of the 'features' in Office?? I mean, really!

jrickmar

February 16th, 2007, 12:54 PM

Speaking of Open Office, my young sisters really miss Word Art. I couldn't give a damn about the damn thing, but for them it is a killer feature. See what I mean?

OOo does have 'Word art', but it is hard to use and find (YOU HAVE TO OPEN A TOOLBAR!!! :mad:). In Writer, click View -> Toolbars -> Fontwork. A toolbar will pop up, and you can click Fontwork Gallery on the left.

tigerpants

February 16th, 2007, 01:49 PM

This may be true, but for each person it is a different 10%, which is why they must come with so many features. If Wordpad was enough for most people, Office wouldn't be printing money like it is right now.

Microsofts leverage created that cash cow, not necessity.

Tadpole

February 16th, 2007, 02:16 PM

What tiny percentage of the population of the country/world ACTUALLY uses all of the 'features' in Office?? I mean, really!I think Office 2007 has shown that features aren't everything. Putting it all in a more productive UI is enough to enhance its value tremendously and make people call it the bravest software update ever (http://www.dashes.com/anil/2006/06/19/office_2007_is_).

Hell, I actually am using clipboard for the first time. It's not buried in some menu -- it's right there in the Home tab!

Microsofts leverage created that cash cow, not necessity.This is a separate issue. My point was just that everyone has different needs, so it takes a very feature-packed piece of software to please everyone. That's why Wordpad is inadequate, even though it has all the basic necessities.

aysiu

February 16th, 2007, 02:41 PM

In light of the frequent discussions about how behind OpenOffice is in features when compared to MS Office (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=223793), I thought it'd be interesting to see how many people actually need advanced features in MS Office. While I view this more as the sharing of personal experiences, if it turns out being just another OpenOffice v. MS Office theoretical debate, then I'll merge it with the other Ooo v. MSO thread.

I'm also putting in a little disclaimer that there are some features OpenOffice has that MS Office doesn't have (support for .odt files, export to PDF, etc.), but the most frequently put forth arguments tend to be about what OpenOffice is lacking that MS Office has. So that's why the poll is skewed in that direction.

I voted for I use (only at work/school) features available only in MS Office. We use a database at work that interfaces directly with Microsoft Word (won't accept OpenOffice Write) and uses macros. I also frequently use both pivot tables and pivot charts. DataPilot in OpenOffice Calc just doesn't cut it. Lastly, as part of my job, I get a lot of lists in ALL CAPS that I have to change to Title Case. OpenOffice changes only to UPPERCASE or lowercase. There's no Title Case.

But for home I don't need any fancy features. Occasionally I'll type a letter or make a quick list, and OpenOffice suits those purposes just fine.

What are your "office" needs? How do MS Office and OpenOffice fit into those? You can talk about Gnome Office and KOffice, too, or any other office suite you use.

Tomosaur

February 16th, 2007, 02:50 PM

I use OpenOffice whereever possible. If the document I'm working on needs to be submitted in an MS format - then I'll still do it in OpenOffice. There are some format issues when this is done, but I'm sure they'll be ironed out over time. The only thing which irritates me about OpenOffice is the 'frame' thing in Write, which never seems to work how I expect it to. There's nothing in MS Office which I miss in OO.org

IYY

February 16th, 2007, 02:56 PM

I voted for

I don't need MS Office features or want them for work or home

although this

I don't use any office suite

may be more appropriate, since I only use office software when people send me files in that format. Normally, I use plain text files for most text (I edit them with vim) and LaTeX for more important documents that I might want to send to people.

maxamillion

February 16th, 2007, 02:59 PM

AbiWord user here ... OpenOffice for when I really need its formatting features for class.

muguwmp67

February 16th, 2007, 03:08 PM

I use the commenting features of Office when reviewing student's rough drafts. OO doesn't recognize these.

I still use microsoft outlook to archive email (leave messages on server is checked in Ubuntu) because I still haven't been able to convert my outlook data over without ending up with a ugly mess in evolution.

sanderella

February 16th, 2007, 03:16 PM

I use MS Office only minimally. It's far too big, like a grotesque juggernaut.

mostwanted

February 16th, 2007, 03:21 PM

*look at my next post instead*

alanandhispc

February 16th, 2007, 03:31 PM

should give an option about requiring having to save in Microsoft formats... our work seems to love saving in MS formats despite using openoffice.

mostwanted

February 16th, 2007, 03:32 PM

The grammar checker in Microsoft Office is great. There's nothing like that for Open Office (at least not in any of the languages I write in regularly).

I use MS Office only minimally. It's far too big, like a grotesque juggernaut.

I must say, I consider OpenOffice the grotesque juggernaut. Microsoft Office is actually a good piece of software in my opinion and not as heavy an application as OO.o.

Support for different languages is the biggest force Microsoft Office has. Open Source office applications give you comparable features for the most part, but not in terms of alternate language support (spell-checking, localisation, special input, etc. for languages other than English), which really isn't something the programmer can do anything about.

The language support that exists for OpenOffice is quite lacklustre and unprofessional which is of course because the work is mostly done by volunteers and not by certified linguists. I suspect many of those who speak English natively who never need to write in different languages don't realise how much OO.o actually lacks in terms of localisation. I sometimes think that OpenOffice is deliberately against localisation! Just look at how difficult it is to perform such a simple task as switching the document language.

Mateo

February 16th, 2007, 03:36 PM

actually, I never actually see what features MS Office has that OOo doesn't have. People say that it has lots of features that OOo doesn't have, but they never actually say what those features are.

aysiu

February 16th, 2007, 03:45 PM

actually, I never actually see what features MS Office has that OOo doesn't have. People say that it has lots of features that OOo doesn't have, but they never actually say what those features are.
I thought people were being quite specific, actually:

Language support
More case change options
Grammar checker
Commenting

... and that's only in the fewer than ten posts in this thread so far.

lyceum

February 16th, 2007, 03:47 PM

The only thing I use MS for that is not in OOo (or at least I can't find it in OOo) is putting the page numbers on the outside of the page. I would like to see OOo get the new firefox look that MS 2007 has, but can't say that is a need.

Mateo

February 16th, 2007, 03:48 PM

i meant in other threads where people complain about OOo, i haven't actually read this thread.

nsleiman

February 16th, 2007, 03:53 PM

I am used to MS shortcuts since i use it mostly at work, but OO works fine and no complaints.. only keyboard shortcuts..

EmilyRose

February 16th, 2007, 03:55 PM

I voted for dont want/use MS office, but really I could have gone with just not using a suite... because I really don't anymore. For the past couple years I simply haven't had access to a single computer and as such have needed to be able to access my documents/email from anywhere, so google has been a truely marvelous thing - between gmail, google docs, delicious, I've succesfully put 90% of what I really NEED to do online - which is probably what ultimately made the switch to linux from windows sooo easy for me.

prizrak

February 16th, 2007, 04:34 PM

They make me use Outlook at work :'(

aysiu

February 16th, 2007, 04:38 PM

They make me use Outlook at work :'(
That's funny. I've heard a few of my co-workers complain because they make us use Thunderbird at work...

fsando

February 16th, 2007, 04:51 PM

Sun didn't design OpenOffice at all, they bought it.I already knew that, I tried it then. I was thinking of the move to opensource it and to promote it the way they did. Several of the big ones turned to open source then (in my view) as a means to fight Microsoft - a strategy that I believe actually was successful, Microsoft hasn't been able to decidedly move outside the desktop.

The inhouse licensing part I didn't know, though.
WOW--that would be a fabulous system, I think; sort of like installing the modules you like, like maybe those that want the ribbon could have it, but those that don't could leave it off--is that sort of what you mean?

I mean a plugin-architecture like either Firefox, photoshop or vst. I'm not a programmer so I don't know what would be relevant in the context of an office suite.

What I would like:
I install the oo-base package,
then I install the 'embed spreadsheet' plugin,
then I install the 'index' plugin which makes it possible to make all kinds of numbered and unnumbered indices.
Then someone comes along making a new and improved 'index' plugin which I substitute for the old one
Then ...

My point is that a good plugin architecture could enable a cottage industry of plugins makers just like we've seen in Firefox - good ones will survive and be improved, less good ones will die or may live on as inspiration for yet other plugins.

It will make the development of unique features much much easier. Also the OpenDocument format should in itself be helpful in this process.

AndyCooll

February 16th, 2007, 04:57 PM

I wanted to vote that there aren't any Office features that I need. However, at work we only use MS Office and I begrudgingly had to accept that there are some features that oOo doesn't support very well.

In particular I use an advanced Access database with various scripts in it, and last time I tried it just wouldn't open in oOo. It was a while back and if I'd tried really hard I might have got it working, but Access compatability does seem to be quite weak.

For my own personal use however oOo does everything I need and I'm generally very happy with it.

:cool:

ssam

February 16th, 2007, 05:20 PM

i dont use ms office, but then i very rarely use any office program.

most of what i right is lab reports (latex), lecture notes (xournal on a nokia n800), and email (thunderbird).

SunnyRabbiera

February 16th, 2007, 05:33 PM

I use MS office very limitedly as I only use it for its grammar check engine, I have found grammar check engines for Open office but they are not as good.
MS office is one of the few MS products I like, but still I use it as a proofreading tool.
I use MS office at work but for the most part i use OO at work except for a few small things.

DarkOx

February 16th, 2007, 05:41 PM

Well, I'm a business student, so at University pretty much all the computers have is Microsoft Office.

Open Office Writer seems to be more or less equivalent with Word for my school needs. I use Writer to take notes with, and I found it was better for that than Word for drawing graphs in economics class.

Open Office Spreadsheet is probably gonna be a problem though. So far all it hasn't been able to do is have int or bin values for Solver, but I suspect that as I get more and more complex modeling questions, Spreadsheet is going to fall further and further behind Excel in features I need.

Dad uses Impress for his work presentations (rather than paying for Powerpoint), and other than a lack of templates it's been great for him so far.

Hex_Mandos

February 16th, 2007, 05:49 PM

I actually prefer having no grammar check - the MS Office Spanish Grammar Check actually worsens my documents' grammar with its tons of false positives. I'd rather trust my own grammar knowledge.

Spanish localization is good for both MS Office and OOo... again, except for the Grammar Check!

The only thing I don't like about OOo is Bug #1. I need to open .docs for school, and while they're often ok, a few days ago I had to manually reformat a table which had turned a document unreadable. It was poor formatting on the MS Office user's part, but it still affected me.

basketcase

February 16th, 2007, 05:58 PM

I actually upgraded to Office 2003 about 2 hours ago. I needed it to collaborate on a few projects with.

I've used Thunderbird for many years, but I'm debating going back to Outlook.

It's funny I've since set IE back to my Default Browser, I've upgraded to Office 2003, and I'm considering going back to Outlook.

For people who need an office-type client, but don't want to shell out the coin, I will install Open Office for them, and they've all been happy with it.

Another reason I like Office, is all the products seem to work well together with each other (as they should). I do think Open Office is lacking in some regards, but it's better than nothing.

BTW, as far as work, my first employeer, made it VERY clear they were an Microsoft house, and that they would not be using any one else's products. 2nd employeer, the boxes were so locked down, we didn't have a choice, amazingly enough though, we did have firefox. My newest job, they're an MS house also, but really could care less what I use, it just makes my job easier when I am able to collaborate completely with them.

FyreBrand

February 16th, 2007, 06:10 PM

The only thing I would like to see is better import from MSO formats into OO.org.

I don't want or need any of the features MSO offers that OO.org doesn't have (for work, school, or home).

Unimportant Features (to me):
- Upper to lower case tool: I don't need this.
- Grammar checking: I didn't use this in MSWord. I'm not a big fan of grammar tools.
- Pivot Tables: I really think this is only relevant to a very few people. I do think that if it's important to a certain departments functionality then that would be a great reason to use Excel.

Important Features (to me):
- Word count
- Export to PDF and Flash
- Import from other formats
- Reliability (no crashing)
- Application integration (how well the office suite apps integrate with each other and additional applications like mail clients or graphic editors)
- Extensible (how easy is it to add customized plug-ins or added functions)
- Macros

If I'm going to use a database, then it's going to be a real one not Access or Base. I would like to see how well Base front ends for some meatier db's, but I haven't had the time to experiment with it.

I would like to see how well OO.org interfaces with Novell's Groupwise (that's what we use here at work) since MSO doesn't do a great job of that.

So those are the relevant tasks I need from an office suite. The extra features MSO has to offer aren't important to me at the moment.

brentoboy

February 16th, 2007, 06:44 PM

Aysiu,

My computer room is the "unofficial computer lab" for a nearby college campus for students who are friends or family who need a computer but don't want to trek all the way to school.

The big complaint I get about open office (besides the first day when they say "help, i'm lost") is that often times the word docs that they download for a class syllabus is tweaked up so much in word in order to fit on exactly one page makes it so that the free fonts and "close" formatting for open office never ends up displaying things the way the author intended them.

I don't get much feature missing complaints, or even too much complaining about a learning curve, mainly complaints about inconsistencies for existing documents they get elsewhere that are supposed to look a certain way.

But, the OOo formula editor gets ooo's and ahh's when I show them how to build equations and stuff. After a short demonstration people prefer it over the one in word.

-my 2 cents

Rui Pais

February 16th, 2007, 07:01 PM

actually, I never actually see what features MS Office has that OOo doesn't have. People say that it has lots of features that OOo doesn't have, but they never actually say what those features are.

I don't use much OO (or Ms office) now, so maybe some stuff exists now days..., but i remember at university i sweat a lot, when i was doing an Atomic Physics course, using Calc at home and Excel at Lab... Calc don't:
- make polynomial regressions (the basic ones after linear...)
- make prolongations of tendency lines (nor write such basic thing as the expression of line tendency on linear regression)
- data series; different ones referring to the same scale...

I end up installing an very old Excel version i have from my Win days with wine and get on with it :(

But, the other side, graphs was much uglier and have unprofessional look on Excel, math editor on MSOffice was a bad joke, and amazingly easy and flexible on OO.

One boring thing to OO, besides weak localization support, is the aberrant convention that similar languages are the same language.
This is, besides wrong, diplomatically dangerous.

One annoying thing is have your settings for a different language other then yours implying set each new document for your own language... annoying, but one can live with that. Another completely different thing (that happen to me on dapper days,) was every time i open a new write document it decides that if i have a Portuguese environment then i must have my documents setttings for Portuguese Brazillian!!!!
What the hell... we have an ocean in the meddle! Not the same language. Not even the same orthography!... if one write "O facto de usar um fato torna-me um mentecapto" in portuguese, would be corrected to "O fato de usar um fato me torna um mentecato" Not exactly the same, besides being wrong... :(

steven8

February 16th, 2007, 07:31 PM

OOo does have 'Word art', but it is hard to use and find (YOU HAVE TO OPEN A TOOLBAR!!! :mad:). In Writer, click View -> Toolbars -> Fontwork. A toolbar will pop up, and you can click Fontwork Gallery on the left.

Oh no! You have to. . .Open a tool bar!! Dear Lord, please tell me it's not so!?! :) The first time I used wordart in office I had to accidentally find it in the available tool bars. It wasn't just 'out there'.

alyoung

February 16th, 2007, 07:37 PM

I think, as OO.o is open source, as the user-base increases, the number of developers will also. The ability of the users of OO.o to modify the application to their needs and then share these modifications is what will make OO.o great in the future.

And there ends my tirade on the benefits of open source.

emarkay

February 16th, 2007, 07:39 PM

Where is: " I have to use that crap because the Corporation is a slave to M$ and is afraid to make any changes!"?

hardyn

February 16th, 2007, 07:49 PM

I use open office on all of my machines, its works great for me. I think writer has a much more logical 'class based' editing system and find most of it to generally better layed out than office.

what i hate is the super anemic graphics tools, which i and several others have issued bug fixes for. (over a year ago, hasn't hit yet) and a useless spreadsheet. calc has absolutly no scientific or academic value, with respect to trendlines or trendline equations... but i have gnumeric for that.

i continue to enjoy writer and will continue to use OO.o with the exeption of calc.

alyoung

February 16th, 2007, 07:50 PM

Rui Pais

February 16th, 2007, 07:55 PM

I must say, being a recent OpenOffice.org migrator, and having used only Office 2000 for the last 7 years, I've noticed the difference. OO.o is so much better - it loads faster, is easier to use and runs cross-platform, something which has turned out to be most useful.

In fact it not only runs cross-platform that can in several cases saves some MS work when ones want to open documents made on the same platform but with different versions of MSOffice :lol:
(something that MSOffice fails to do a lot #-o )

alyoung

February 16th, 2007, 08:00 PM

In fact it not only runs cross-platform that can in several cases saves some MS work when ones want to open documents made on the same platform but with different versions of MSOffice :lol:
(something that MSOffice fails to do a lot #-o )

Yes, heard about the fiasco with MSOffice 2007 files and older version of Office. Outrageous!

AusIV4

February 16th, 2007, 08:14 PM

MS Office hardly figures into my life at all. Usually I do my work in OpenDocument Format, and if I have to send a copy to somebody else, I export it to PDF. On the rare occasion that someone insists on a .doc file, I'll save it as a doc but warn them that it may not be properly formatted.

I can understand that MS Office offers some features that OpenOffice doesn't, but I've never run into anything I needed that OpenOffice didn't offer, except on occasion formatting for Word documents, but I hardly call poor emulation of a proprietary format a shortcoming of OpenOffice - it's certainly more useful than if it hadn't been included in the first place.

natedawg

February 16th, 2007, 08:58 PM

Well I use AbiWord for most of my school work (because it loads faster) but on occasion I do need some of the features of OO. I'm all for new features in both open office and AbiWord they don't have to relate directly to MS Office. The major thing I do miss in both programs is a decent spell checker. I don't use the grammar checker(maybe should I? :) ) but AbiWord and OO are way behind MS with regards to spelling.

cowlip

February 16th, 2007, 09:42 PM

I thought people were being quite specific, actually:

Language support
More case change options
Grammar checker
Commenting

... and that's only in the fewer than ten posts in this thread so far.

Personally I`ve had good luck with this for Openoffice.org grammar checking: (for english german polish dutch) http://www.danielnaber.de/languagetool/

BTW thanks to Elixir, KWord and Abiword will both have grammar checking soon.

euler_fan

February 16th, 2007, 09:55 PM

calc has absolutly no scientific or academic value, with respect to trendlines or trendline equations... but i have gnumeric for that.

IMHO the biggest value of a spreadsheet is for doing all the things a real stats package can't or won't or shouldn't do--lists, tables, etc that are not simply for data storage and manipulation.

When I go to do scientific or academic number crunching R (http://www.r-project.org/) is my weapon of choice. I generally eschew a general purpose spreadsheet for anything but basic data formatting or other prep work prior to dumping it into R.

Kateikyoushi

February 16th, 2007, 09:56 PM

I don't need those features, we have MS office on my girlfriend's PC but nothing I can't live without.

euler_fan

February 16th, 2007, 10:28 PM

I generally use OOo because I need to send documents/spreadsheets/presentations to people who may want to edit them and are MS Office users.

On the other hand, if I had my way I would do everything in LyX or learn TeX/LaTeX and use that for everything :)

I can't say I have ever found anything missing that I have used in the last several years.

I haven't to date had any issues going from OOo formats to MS formats or back. That doesn't mean it won't happen, but it seems like they have things mostly ironed out.

JAPrufrock

February 16th, 2007, 11:05 PM

Doesn't.

Anthem

February 17th, 2007, 12:38 AM

I'm ridiculously experienced at Microsoft Office, especially Word. I've produced major 2000-page reports in it, because I had no other choice. Since then, I've tried switching to OpenOffice multiple times, but it gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. My wife, though, uses OOo exclusively, no matter what operating system she's on. She prefers it to Word.

Most of what drives me crazy isn't a lack of features, per se. It's just that the environment doesn't react in the way I expect it to. I'm sure there are ways of making it do what I want it to do, but it just seems cluttered and inefficient.

I also laugh when people talk about Microsoft Office being "bloated." I can open MSOffice 2003 in a heartbeat on this machine, while OOo is noticably slower. If I didn't have a copy of Office lying around, I'd use AbiWord as it's roughly a billion times snappier than OOo.

And I'm not even remotely Microsoft-friendly. I've petitioned my employer to let me use Ubuntu on my work laptop, which (so far) hasn't been allowed. But I'll take MS Office over OpenOffice any day of the week.

fsando

February 17th, 2007, 06:12 AM

IMHO the biggest value of a spreadsheet is for doing all the things a real stats package can't or won't or shouldn't do--lists, tables, etc that are not simply for data storage and manipulation.

When I go to do scientific or academic number crunching R (http://www.r-project.org/) is my weapon of choice. I generally eschew a general purpose spreadsheet for anything but basic data formatting or other prep work prior to dumping it into R.
I have to agree completely, R for science calc for tables and simple calculations
I don't trust excel either for scientific computations - I don't know about today but excel has had serious inaccuracy problems in the past so I would never trust an ordinary spreadsheet with scientific computations.

sicofante

February 17th, 2007, 02:45 PM

Microsoft hasn't been able to decidedly move outside the desktop.
Linux hasn't been able to decidedly move outside the server... I'm praying for the day when developers understand creating software for the desktop is a whole different story than creating software for servers. I honestly don't care if MS understands that, but I do pray for Novell, Redhat or Canonical to start hiring user interaction designers like crazy, as soon as possible.

I mean a plugin-architecture like either Firefox, photoshop or vst. [...] My point is that a good plugin architecture could enable a cottage industry of plugins makers just like we've seen in Firefox - good ones will survive and be improved, less good ones will die or may live on as inspiration for yet other plugins.

I absolutely agree. Firefox has shown the path in numerous user interface issues. OpenOffice is as bloated as MS Office, yet it's not a matter of removing features, but putting them in a repository of extensions where users can add them at will. That, by the way, is something Microsoft fears to do, because too much development would go out of their hands. So the open-source model has an advantage here that MS can't easily follow. (Of course, the user interface in Office 2007 is full of ideas to be copied, but that's another story)

I think, as OO.o is open source, as the user-base increases, the number of developers will also. The ability of the users of OO.o to modify the application to their needs and then share these modifications is what will make OO.o great in the future.
This won't happen. I haven't looked at the code myself but most comments I've read about it is that OOo's code is just too obscure. Besides, until open source development understands where's the line between a user and a developer, the open source desktops will never make it to the masses. The majority of computers users are NOT programmers.

I think Office 2007 has shown that features aren't everything. Putting it all in a more productive UI is enough to enhance its value tremendously and make people call it the bravest software update ever (http://www.dashes.com/anil/2006/06/19/office_2007_is_).
Absolutely agreed.

All of these issues are calling for some new effort out there. OpenOffice's development is simply too slow (compare it to Firefox...). I personally don't trust it any more.

We need:

- Design, design and design. The server is one thing, the desktop is a completely different thing. No more programmers in the design process, please. User interaction experts must act before. Then and only then coders enter the scene.

- A suite written and designed from scratch, not open-sourcing a previously closed design (like what happened with StarOffice/OpenOffice).

- An extension/plugin architecture, so the base product is light and fast. That architecture, when properly designed, can force user interaction guidelines into extension developers, so the product doesn't suffer from inconsistencies.

euler_fan

February 17th, 2007, 02:49 PM

. . . I don't trust excel either for scientific computations - I don't know about today but excel has had serious inaccuracy problems in the past so I would never trust an ordinary spreadsheet with scientific computations.

I heard about the same issues, and I somehow suspect if they ever cared to fix them, it would be some proprietary add on that would have to be purchased separately. :rolleyes:

I have used it for scheduling problems (you know, I have workers with certain hours they can and can't work, and need so many per shift, etc). That seemed to work out nicely. Haven't yet discovered if OOo can do the same thing or not. The problem is, admittedly, a linear algebra one that could be done on Maxima, Octave, SciLab, or R rather than OOo or Excel.

Quillz

February 17th, 2007, 03:11 PM

karellen

February 17th, 2007, 03:18 PM

in linux for simple text writing I use abiword and that's just fine. in windows, it's office. I must admit that I really like the last version office 2007, expecially some fonts and the interface. plus the feeling and the tight integration of many features

fsando

February 17th, 2007, 04:50 PM

If want to have a modern office suite with a modern architecture - whom should we turn to?

Any ideas?

soulfly7x

February 17th, 2007, 05:16 PM

I've only been using Ubuntu for about 2 weeks now (which is to say I only have 2 weeks of any non-Windows experience at all), so there's a lot of things I don't know yet, but I was already using the Win version of Open Office anyway. I don't particulary see the difference aside from the default save format in Open Office being their extension instead of the MS extension.

sanderella

February 17th, 2007, 05:23 PM

:confused:
Who needs grammar checkers and spelling checkers???
They are annoyingly obtrusive. How dare M$ criticise my grammar and spelling?:mad:

Trebuchet

February 17th, 2007, 05:32 PM

I've been using a trial version of Office 2007 for about six weeks, and feel it is a big improvement over previous versions. (I plan on buying it, especially since I can get the full Home & Student version for $30) The ribbon is a clever and very useful interface, and there are plenty of improvements under the hood as well (such as contextual spell checking). I know Microsoft seldom gets credit for being innovative, but in this case they certainly were. (Office 2007 is way more innovative than Vista is.) It'll be interesting to see if other vendors will copy Microsoft as readily as Microsoft copies other vendors. One thing you certainly can't accuse MS of having is a "Not Invented Here" mindset. I think the ribbon, once some narrow-minded types get past their knee-jerk "It's Microsoft, so it has to suck!" attitude, is going to be the interface of the future for word processors. (I don't really use spreadsheets or databases, so I don't have any opinion on the ribbon's utility there.)

OpenOffice 2 is fine, but it's greatest feature is its price. I'd rank it roughly comparable to Office 97 or 2000 featurewise.

Tadpole

February 17th, 2007, 07:00 PM

While Microsoft has licensed the ribbon for third-party use, it doesn't apply to competing products, like OOo.That license is pure BS - until they have a patent for tabbed toolbars, we can copy it all we want.

bender5788

February 17th, 2007, 09:55 PM

Due being at tafe and doing tech support i occasionally need the VB macro stuff in order to complete assignments or to fit existing systems other than i cant actually really spot anything IMPORTANT thats missing.

frup

February 17th, 2007, 10:26 PM

:confused:
Who needs grammar checkers and spelling checkers???
They are annoyingly obtrusive. How dare M$ criticise my grammar and spelling?:mad:

A basic Their, There, They're grammar check often helps, you know just plain mistakes but most of the time as far as i can remember word would ask to change something into far worse grammar. This was sometimes even in a different tense.

Fitzy_oz

February 17th, 2007, 10:39 PM

I work for the State Government and unfortunately, I am required to have a fairly extensive knowledge of it for my work and therefore have to use it frequently to troubleshoot and reproduce problems... That being said, some of the issue with OOo is functionality but the for the average joe it really isn't, If OOo got a face lift and was a little more "Aesthetically Pleasing" i'm sure we would see a a bigger shift in people using it because from what i've gathered from clients here and there is that how it looks is a huge part of whether an average person will use the software or not...

CubicleDweller

February 17th, 2007, 10:53 PM

I usually only ever used notepad in Windows for typing and it was for quick notes or lists.
If I did have to do anything it was just Word for papers. Then when I went to Linux I switched to OpenOffice. Then I switched in Windows too. Never went back, It has all of the features I need... and then some.

fsando

February 18th, 2007, 04:11 AM

OpenOffice 2 is fine, but it's greatest feature is its price. I'd rank it roughly comparable to Office 97 or 2000 featurewise.At one time it was the oo-project's stated goal to match office97 - and that's the point in my asking for a leaner plugins-architecture. OpenOffice is just sustained but not developed, probably because it's too difficult to move with the times for a monolithic program like that. A new structure would open op for brilliant ideas and one-feature developers.
LET'S START A MOVEMENT: The Official Plugins Office Suite Tour :guitar:

Tadpole

February 18th, 2007, 12:37 PM

Why don't people try improving KOffice instead? It's light and modular. Port OOo's filters into it (if possible) and you've got a top-notch office suite.

GeneralZod

February 18th, 2007, 12:40 PM

Why don't people try improving KOffice instead? It's light and modular. Port OOo's filters into it (if possible) and you've got a top-notch office suite.

Easier said than done, I'm afraid :(

http://ariya.blogspot.com/2006/04/why-koffice-not-using-openofficeorgs.html

Still, if I was to work on an Office Suite, I'd pick KOffice - the codebase is far cleaner and more manageable.

Trebuchet

February 18th, 2007, 01:22 PM

At one time it was the oo-project's stated goal to match office97 - and that's the point in my asking for a leaner plugins-architecture. OpenOffice is just sustained but not developed, probably because it's too difficult to move with the times for a monolithic program like that. A new structure would open op for brilliant ideas and one-feature developers.I've never tried any of the OpenOffice plug-ins. What kind of new features do they provide?

geovino

February 18th, 2007, 01:43 PM

I use Office XP at work, Open Office at home. I can honestly say there's nothing I use in OXP during my admin duties at work that I can't use as easily in OO.o at home. The only thing I'm really missing is a Publisher style app and some templates - and that last bit's because I just haven't bothered looking.

Install Scribus, its similar to Adobe Illustrator.

undertakingyou

February 18th, 2007, 01:56 PM

Open Office is behind. But I have suggested it to a couple people at work. They asked what they could do for an office suite, and I said eith pay the 400 bucks for MSOffice, pirate it, or try OO.o for free. After I present that and tell them that is isn't word but they should be able to work around it quite well, they have all said I'll try that. And when they do they say it is great.

It is great, for a free office suite with cross platform installations it is nice. I hope that sometime it will be able to fully compete with MSoffice with things like a better database program etc. That'd be cool.

sicofante

February 18th, 2007, 01:59 PM

Why don't people try improving KOffice instead? It's light and modular. Port OOo's filters into it (if possible) and you've got a top-notch office suite.
All of those K-apps seem to be reminding the user s/he's at the wrong place by not using KDE. That's a mistake IMO. Maybe that's why you don't see so many people using K-whatever outside of a KDE desktop. I know, sounds silly and it's mostly psychological, but there's a reason why you don't see too many pink cars in the streets, people don't eat blue food or elegant people don't wear stuff with brands or logos on it.

I'm pretty sure that if Qt and GTK+ unified a bit the look and feel of apps developed with them and KDE stopped the obsession with K-naming, they would get a lot more sympathies for KOffice.

Just my 2 cents.

FyreBrand

February 18th, 2007, 02:04 PM

Easier said than done, I'm afraid :(

http://ariya.blogspot.com/2006/04/why-koffice-not-using-openofficeorgs.html

Still, if I was to work on an Office Suite, I'd pick KOffice - the codebase is far cleaner and more manageable.I agree wholeheartedly. I've been watching KOffice development and each release is really encouraging. It's improving by leaps and bounds and I like the direction the KOffice team is heading.

I'm looking forward and hoping QT4 will make KOffice portable to Windows. Kexi is already there so hopefully the rest won't be far behind.

Rodneyck

February 18th, 2007, 02:27 PM

I agree wholeheartedly. I've been watching KOffice development and each release is really encouraging. It's improving by leaps and bounds and I like the direction the KOffice team is heading.

I'm looking forward and hoping QT4 will make KOffice portable to Windows. Kexi is already there so hopefully the rest won't be far behind.

I like some of the features that Koffice brings to the table, like editing and creating pdf docs, something Openoffice can not do yet. It also starts and loads faster than Openoffice, greatly.

The big negative though is Koffice's lack of Microsoft word compatibility which unfortunately is a must have for anyone working with the MS crowd on projects, etc. Until they fix this little ditty, I have to stay with Openoffice and keep a copy of Kword for creating pdfs.

qamelian

February 18th, 2007, 02:37 PM

Hi Max- Offic e 2007 rocks, like it or not. Office workers use office, not open source... so get off your soapbox. It is a 1000% improvement over previous versions. Thats all. I am new here, but I felt inclined, or maybe reclined... (in my lazyboy)

Cheers

Oh yeah. It's such an improvement that, after months of studies on usability and how much retraining would be needed, one of the companies I provide support for has decided NOT to use Office 2007 period. The migration to OOo is scheduled to start in about two weeks. That's 300+ Office licenses MS won't see again. I was heavily involved in the testing with this company and I agree with their results. I think Office 2007 is the worst version of office I've used to date.

fsando

February 18th, 2007, 07:01 PM

Easier said than done, I'm afraid :(

http://ariya.blogspot.com/2006/04/why-koffice-not-using-openofficeorgs.html

Still, if I was to work on an Office Suite, I'd pick KOffice - the codebase is far cleaner and more manageable.From the link above:
the code for OO.o converters is tightly integrated with the rest of OO.o. It will take a lot of effort to pull the relevant part and place it in a library
This speaks volumes why openoffice is slowing to a halt (approaching a dead end?).
If Koffice does not support msoffice or is not going to - it is not really an option in the business world, which - again - calls for something new - and may I suggest - the plugins model :)
I'm voting for the grand tour :guitar:

FyreBrand

February 19th, 2007, 02:48 AM

I like some of the features that Koffice brings to the table, like editing and creating pdf docs, something Openoffice can not do yet. It also starts and loads faster than Openoffice, greatly.

The big negative though is Koffice's lack of Microsoft word compatibility which unfortunately is a must have for anyone working with the MS crowd on projects, etc. Until they fix this little ditty, I have to stay with Openoffice and keep a copy of Kword for creating pdfs.I think the import/export feature is really important too. I do like OO.org a lot but would probably use KOffice more if it would import better.

Lately I've had to use the Windows version of OO.org to convert Word documents to .odf. Some of the formulas just haven't been transferring over properly with the OO.org from the Ubuntu repos. It's odd because I've never seen a difference between the two versions other than that old cut/paste crash bug which is gone now. I would file a bug but I'm not sure if it's even a bug or who to file it with.

mediax

February 19th, 2007, 09:21 AM

I spend most of my working life using Excel and Access - and doing a fair amount of VBA programming in both of them. I also make extensive use of third party tools designed to work with Excel, so I'm stuck with Office.

OOo is more than adequate for my home needs - and would be a perfectly acceptable substitute at work for well over 90% of the people I work with.

SonicSteve

February 19th, 2007, 11:05 AM

From the link above:

This speaks volumes why openoffice is slowing to a halt (approaching a dead end?).
If Koffice does not support msoffice or is not going to - it is not really an option in the business world, which - again - calls for something new - and may I suggest - the plugins model :)
I'm voting for the grand tour :guitar:

Is it true that Open Office is slowing to a halt? This is the first comment I've seen about this. Are we not likely to see much development in the future? Or what is the truth about this?

fsando

February 19th, 2007, 01:07 PM

Is it true that Open Office is slowing to a halt? This is the first comment I've seen about this. Are we not likely to see much development in the future? Or what is the truth about this?Well, I don't know. Perhaps I'm being a bit provocative. I've been using Oo since version 0.9 and writer is, in my opinion, much more robust and has important features I would miss if I were to use Word. Calc is fine for my purpose - nothing special and nothing important missing.

But all other parts of Oo are IMHO very immature. And my impression is that nothing has happened for several years.

Therefore my assessment is that it is slowing and may be heading for a dead end.

I know it sounds harsh but if Oo does not evolve it will not survive - and if it (as it is my impression) suffer from the same problems that msoffice has: big monolithic hard to maintain code, well my guess is it can not be saved. It will continue to be useful at the present level but will increasingly be yesterday's news.

The problem is that there are so many needs in the office suite department. Look at various projects: Firefox and others have already been mentioned, think of Beryl that also supports plugins or think of R (http://www.r-project.org/) that supports packages. In short, look how successful that model is and then start dreaming what the perfect office suite could be like....

mostwanted

February 19th, 2007, 01:26 PM

There is a grammar checker thing thats a plug-in for OOo. It is not the greatest but its a start. http://www.danielnaber.de/languagetool/

Yeah, it's a start. But as far as I can see, it's only really useful for English, Dutch, German and Polish:

English: 203 XML rules, 1 Java rule
German: 77 XML rules, 7 Java rules
Polish: 451 XML rules, 1 Java rule
French: 10 XML rules, 0 Java rules
Spanish: 3 XML rules, 0 Java rules
Italian: 5 XML rules, 0 Java rules
Dutch: 196 XML rules, 0 Java rules
Lithuanian: 7 XML rules, 0 Java rules

My fear is that - although it's a noble project - it will never ever reach the professional level that Microsoft puts into its grammar checker. Supporting 4 languages is a start, but the Microsoft touch is polish that the customers have come to expect, not just supporting the very basics. OpenOffice has a chance with home users in places like the USA and the UK, but will always stay in the shadow of MS Office in a small country, because even though an equivalent level of polish can be reached in English, perhaps also in Spanish or any of the other popular languages, it will never be anywhere close to what Microsoft offers. Microsoft offers localised versions of Office where as much effort has gone into them as the English version.

PartisanEntity

February 19th, 2007, 02:05 PM

Has anyone heard of or tried Softmaker Office? It is not free, but I am wondering how it compares to OpenOffice?

Mateo

February 19th, 2007, 03:12 PM

Along the same lines as PartisanEntity's question, how does Abiword compare to Writer? Gnumeric to Calc?

Is there a similar standalone presentation application as those two? A database? I'd only go that route if I could get all 4 programs independently.

OrangeCrate

February 19th, 2007, 06:17 PM

I don't think most desktop users use even a fraction of the features in either office suite. I know I dont'.

That's true for me as well. I converted while still 100% on Windows to OOo at version 1.something. In my work, I use Writer extensively, and what really drew me to OOo, was the ability to create PDF documents on the fly.

I also use Calc, but just to read spreadsheets, not to generate them. For my limited use, the conversion from MS Office to OOo was easy, and permanent. If I ever need another feature, I'll take the time to learn to use it, and will complain with the best of them if it doesn't work for me as I had expected. But for now, I'm pretty happy.

mthakur2006

February 20th, 2007, 01:06 PM

wieman01

February 20th, 2007, 01:14 PM

Same issue with KOffice? Just curious... I know OpenOffice can be quite a pain.

nsleiman

February 20th, 2007, 01:22 PM

Lukeg

February 20th, 2007, 01:35 PM

Did it use any type of special formating? I've never had that happen to me (I've had formating differences, but not errors). Not suggesting that he tried it, but perhaps the document used more exotic features.

hardyn

February 20th, 2007, 01:37 PM

the only time i have had problems is when you are saving back a document with extreme formatting, columns with graphics with funny headings... other than that no troubles, i would not say that OOo is rubbish at all; i have my complaints, but i have more with ms office

y-lee

February 20th, 2007, 01:39 PM

I always use AbiWord to open doc files, and seldom have a problem with it. Even in Windows, AbiWord and open office are my programs of choice for office applications. Tho in all actually I seldom use doc file format for anything, just now and then someone sends me one. haha.

Also I am new to Ubuntu but i noticed the Open office included is version 2.0 but the newest open office is 2.1, maybe updating OO would help.

Really tho to be fair one would have to ask how well windows Word opens OO documents?? Personally I don't know but I imagine it does a poor job if it does it at all. Also the advantage of open source code is two fold, it is FREE and one actually knows what it does as the code is also free. Another advantage is one of taking power from the corporate world.

Consider this at the current price of Microsoft office professional it would take someone at minimum wage in the US almost three weeks to make enough money to buy it, allowing for taxes. That basically places it outside the reach of poor people here unless they obtain an "illegal" copy as such a person has real expenses like rent and food they have to pay!!

Open office on the other hand is nearly as powerful but FREE. Do ya really need to give your money to a rich Corp like Microsoft?? again and again as every few years one has to upgrade to stay current!!

Shatrat

February 20th, 2007, 01:41 PM

I think the real question is why is .doc so rubbish?
Microsoft goes out of its way to make sure it isnt compatible with other office suites or even older versions of it's own office suite, it shouldnt be surprising that rendering them can be buggy.
Anyway, sounds like your "IT teacher" isnt the brighest bulb in the chandelier, don't sweat it.

February 20th, 2007, 01:50 PM

Text was overlapping...i mean i am so disgusted that i am short of words....

It's the fonts. MS fonts are proprietary. You can install them in Ubuntu using msttcorefonts. They are of poor quality, in comparison to truetype, though.

I bet that if you install the MS fonts, that document would render properly.

You can tell your teacher that if you carefuly crafted a document in Ubuntu, using truetype fonts that ship with Ubuntu but that MS doesn't have by default, you can make Word display a document just as poorly. This is not a broken feature, this is an intraoperability problem. Windows claim that they want to start addressing the problem instead of pretenting that linux does not exist on the desktop. Let's see how long they take to fix it.

Catsworth

February 20th, 2007, 02:24 PM

Never had a problem with OO.org, in fact I love it (and I've only been using it for a month or so).

It's saved my bacon a couple of times (we had a .doc which was several hundred meg in size and couldn't be opened in Word, so I opened it in OO.org, saved it as a .pdf, and all was well - with no formatting problems ;) ).

I've yet to find a .doc that it either a) won't open, or b) screws the formatting on - I'm guessing (as others have done before me) that there was some sort of exotic formatting, or Windows specific font in there that caused the problems.....

It's not unknown for Word to screw up the formatting of .docs without any help from anybody ;)

heathenx

February 20th, 2007, 02:28 PM

the problem isn't with oo. it's with microsoft.

hikaricore

February 20th, 2007, 03:23 PM

the problem isn't with oo. it's with microsoft.

QFT

SisterChristian

February 20th, 2007, 04:03 PM

the problem isn't with oo. it's with microsoft.

No, if oo plans to be a MS Office replacement they need to do a better job of handling DOC,XLS files. If they don't plan to be a MSO replacement, then we need one. Too many ppl and organizations have a long history of MSO files. Their ability to switch is tied to their data.

shironeko

February 20th, 2007, 04:08 PM

Today was the first time ever I ever felt angry at linux: the OpenOffice handled .doc documents so badly that I was ashamed. I was trying to convert my IT teacher to linux who hates it. and so I gave him a presentation on ubuntu linux: i took my laptop to school and showed him ubuntu linux....it all went very well until he asked to open a .doc file from his memory stick - it was so shockingly bad handled that I went red and the teacher was laughing at his victory. Text was overlapping...i mean i am so disgusted that i am short of words....never thot i was going to make this post.....maybe i am just angry...guess i ll be okay after a while :lolflag:

Next time you have to write an essay or something, save it and give it to your teacher in ODT.
If he yells at you ask him: Why is Ms Office So rubbish?

the_darkside_986

February 20th, 2007, 04:17 PM

Well, OO is free, and anyone can edit the source code, so there isn't much room for complaining. But if I purchase MS Office for $200, then I should be irritated when it fails. Not that I did that--I only use it when I am at school, since it is already on the lab. I installed OpenOffice for windows on a thumbdrive and use it sometimes since it is less bloated. But these PCs run everything like crap, doing r/w on a network drive and stuff.

aysiu

February 20th, 2007, 04:33 PM

Next time you have to write an essay or something, save it and give it to your teacher in ODT.
If he yells at you ask him: Why is Ms Office So rubbish?
Or just ask him to export his Word .doc to PDF with Microsoft Word...

By the way, merged with the Ooo v. MSO thread, since it's not a support thread.

fsando

February 20th, 2007, 05:03 PM

A lot of comments here are about how well does any opensource compare to msoffice.
The discussion should be, how can we get an office suite for the future. If it's only about msoffice it will be a constant catchup - this is not against msoffice - it is probably a good product with lots of useful features.
When opensource is able to show the way of the future in other areas why not for the office suite?
This should be about the 'dream office suite'.

bodhi.zazen

February 20th, 2007, 05:20 PM

Today was the first time ever I ever felt angry at linux: the OpenOffice handled .doc documents so badly that I was ashamed. I was trying to convert my IT teacher to linux who hates it. and so I gave him a presentation on ubuntu linux: i took my laptop to school and showed him ubuntu linux....it all went very well until he asked to open a .doc file from his memory stick - it was so shockingly bad handled that I went red and the teacher was laughing at his victory. Text was overlapping...i mean i am so disgusted that i am short of words....never thot i was going to make this post.....maybe i am just angry...guess i ll be okay after a while :lolflag:

been using ooo for 4 years, have never had this problem.

would be curious to see the file in question, I think you have bee duped :lolflag:

webbber

February 20th, 2007, 06:38 PM

all the people who only use basic features:

i think that its all about using the right package for your needs... I did my dissertation in Word because it was a large document with some complex features. Now, i'm making simple documents and bullet points and lists is about as complicated as it gets. For these simple documents I now use Kword - its simple, very fast and rock solid (which is more than i can say for OpenOffice even if it is the future of free office software...)

What annoys me is that at my law school all documents come in either .doc format or .ppt for slideshows and no one is even told about free software which can open this all perfectly... my fellow law students have no actual use for Word or Powerpoint but im sure most of them buy or steal MS office for that. If only someone could tell the world!

I think OpenOffice needs some major advertising - maybe giant posters at strategic London Underground stations would work wonders.

nekator

February 20th, 2007, 07:04 PM

I try and stay away from MS most of the time. However, I am a Molecular Biologist and get to work on long sequences of DNA on text editors...I regret to inform that MS word has got at least one very important function (to me!) which has apparently been overlooked by the developers of OpenOffice...that is the capability to select vertical blocks of text (in MS Word with Alt and mouse movement)....To do this...I need to either run to the nearest PC or Mac or (something I found out today)...either usea different text editor (such as Cream Gvim which is a bit slow or CssEdit, which is abs fabs for the purpose)...

My .2 cents worth (equivalent to 2 mexican cents anyways).

Best

Boomy

February 20th, 2007, 10:54 PM

OO works pretty good for me, it opens .doc files 98% perfectly. The only problem I have had so far is when I had a doc file that had some excel graphs imported into it. I couldn't edit the size of the legend etc. like I could in MS Office. I got a good grade on the paper, but next to the graph, the teacher wrote "I don't have a magnifying glass..." because the legend was so small and I couldn't enlarge it. I thought it was funny. :)

PartisanEntity

February 21st, 2007, 05:37 AM

I voted 'other'.

I use MS Office and Windows at work because that is the only software available here.

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 11:37 AM

Or just ask him to export his Word .doc to PDF with Microsoft Word...
I've read this many times and I think it's an unfair claim on the side of OOo. Sure PDF export is not part of MS Office but it's so easy to do it with free utilities that I don't know why it's so frequently highlighted as a great advantage on the OOo side.

CutePDF Writer is a free app and does the job perfectly. As a matter of fact, in Calc it does a better job than the integrated PDF export in OOo (export as PDF will export EVERY sheet in your Calc document, while printing to a PDF printer allows you to select which sheets to print.)

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 11:45 AM

Well, OO is free, and anyone can edit the source code, so there isn't much room for complaining.
Oh, great. Can I send you the OOo sources and will you fix the issues for me?

I would love to see this argument gone for good in these discussions. It's pretty obvious that people showing their opinions here are just ordinary users. Telling them to go and modify the source to fit their needs is just like telling people starving in third world countries to simply head to the nearest dinner.

aysiu

February 21st, 2007, 12:09 PM

I've read this many times and I think it's an unfair claim on the side of OOo. Sure PDF export is not part of MS Office but it's so easy to do it with free utilities that I don't know why it's so frequently highlighted as a great advantage on the OOo side. Well, the discussion is specifically about MS Office v. OpenOffice. After all, I frequently hear criticisms of Linux music apps not having integrated burning or sophisticated ID3 tag editing ("Why do you need a separate application for that? iTunes does it all"). So I don't see how separate PDF applications are relevant to the discussion. Besides, the very fact that people like me don't know about the free PDF applications means they're too much trouble to seek out. One of the things that kept me with Linux is the central repositories full of easily-installable and free (and spyware-free) software. I hated looking around the internet and download.com andwhatnot for "free" Windows software.

Oh, great. Can I send you the OOo sources and will you fix the issues for me?

I would love to see this argument gone for good in these discussions. It's pretty obvious that people showing their opinions here are just ordinary users. Telling them to go and modify the source to fit their needs is just like telling people starving in third world countries to simply head to the nearest dinner. I think you have a point for the most part, sicofante. A lot of times regular users say they can modify the code but probably don't have the skils to (I know I don't), but just so you know, there are some people on these forums who can and do modify code. There are exceptions to every generalization, even generalizations with merit.

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 12:24 PM

I don't see how separate PDF applications are relevant to the discussion. Besides, the very fact that people like me don't know about the free PDF applications means they're too much trouble to seek out. One of the things that kept me with Linux is the central repositories full of easily-installable and free (and spyware-free) software. I hated looking around the internet and download.com andwhatnot for "free" Windows software.
I agree mostly (the ease to install apps from repositories in Ubuntu is being my strongest and most effective argument to converting people to Ubuntu, BTW), but in this case, it's not really a "separate application". It's just a PDF printer, which IMO is a good way of implementing PDF export abilities. It works from ANY app, not just an office suite (now that I think of it, is there anything similar in Ubuntu?). The CutePDF printer is not the only one out there (Adobe has a great one too), just a free (gratis) one and, honestly, it's very very easy to find it, since a lot of people asks for it. Almost every other user of MS Office I know is aware of its existence...

aysiu

February 21st, 2007, 12:28 PM

Almost every other user of MS Office I know is aware of its existence... We definitely run in different social circles, then. I know no one in my life (work or otherwise) who uses a free PDF export/printer program. The only one I know who does is me--using OpenOffice.

wieman01

February 21st, 2007, 12:40 PM

We definitely run in different social circles, then. I know no one in my life (work or otherwise) who uses a free PDF export/printer program. The only one I know who does is me--using OpenOffice.
Then you know two... :-) Our entire office (over 70 people) uses CutePDF. It's an excellent & free (in the broadest sense) alternative.

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 12:43 PM

http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=pdf+printer

All right, it's not as easy as having a nice PDF icon in your toolbar, but c'mon... :-)

(For MS Office 2007, Microsoft also offers a plugin you can trust. Here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=F1FC413C-6D89-4F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en))

scrooge_74

February 21st, 2007, 12:56 PM

We definitely run in different social circles, then. I know no one in my life (work or otherwise) who uses a free PDF export/printer program. The only one I know who does is me--using OpenOffice.

That is the best feature I like from OO, since I dont want to be saving files in MS format I just export things to clients in .pdf and that way i know that things that come out of my PC are ready for my clients.

Hendrixski

February 21st, 2007, 12:59 PM

Oh, great. Can I send you the OOo sources and will you fix the issues for me?

I would love to see this argument gone for good in these discussions. It's pretty obvious that people showing their opinions here are just ordinary users. Telling them to go and modify the source to fit their needs is just like telling people starving in third world countries to simply head to the nearest dinner.

You're wrong, and the way in which you present your arguments does not come across as very intelligent.

The ordinary user can file bug reports, or request features. This is just as powerful as sitting down and coding it yourself, and is equally as effective as when a company pays for a feature in the software because many developers prefer a thousand users who give zero dollars over one company who gives a thousand dollars.

Also, Ubuntu support can put your bugs or required features as a high priority, not just operating system stuff but also for upstream development, like OOo. Also your company can hire a consultant to add the functionality, and he/she will be working with 50 other consultants hired by other companies to add the same functionality. It's a sort of non-cooperative collaboration.

So, yes, we should close this discussion for good. we can close it in that the user can have an impact on how and when bugs get fixed or features get added. You don't have to be a software engineer to make changes in the software you use. And that is one of the many things that makes OOo very good software for both home use, and office use.

Hendrixski

February 21st, 2007, 01:08 PM

hmm one thing is sure that the documents formats are not same! i always need to make some modifications when using an oo doc with microsoft office and vice-versa, but this shouldnt be a matter! i mean microsoft can't open an .odt file at all :P

I'm sure it's been said a few times already but I'll say it again. There is a standard. It's even passed by the ISO, which along with the IEEE is the body that decides what is a standard and what isn't. That is the Open Document Standard. A lot of companies got together to work on it. All software that follows this standard is interoperable: that is to say if you create a .odt file in Google Docs (googles new office suite) you can open it in zoho, in Koffice, in OOo, in AbiWord... etc. etc. However the office suites that do not follow the ISO standard are not interoperable, meaning they don't play well with others, and are deficient. MS Office is one of those.

There is a patch you can download for MS Office that will fix it, and then it can open ISO standard compatible documents.

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 02:02 PM

your arguments does not come across as very intelligent.
I love you too. :-)

You have understood my point so well that I'm breathless and I can't even think of replying anything cleverer.

qamelian

February 21st, 2007, 02:12 PM

Today was the first time ever I ever felt angry at linux: the OpenOffice handled .doc documents so badly that I was ashamed. I was trying to convert my IT teacher to linux who hates it. and so I gave him a presentation on ubuntu linux: i took my laptop to school and showed him ubuntu linux....it all went very well until he asked to open a .doc file from his memory stick - it was so shockingly bad handled that I went red and the teacher was laughing at his victory. Text was overlapping...i mean i am so disgusted that i am short of words....never thot i was going to make this post.....maybe i am just angry...guess i ll be okay after a while :lolflag:

He shouldn't be laughing so loud. The only Word documents I've ever had problems with in OOo are documents in which the creator of the doc did a few kludgy things to accomplish formatting effects that could and should have been handled in a different way. I would in an environment where everyone around me is using MS office 2000-2003. I use OOo exclusively and have no issues with formatting nor do any of my co-workers have any problems opening the documents I create.

aysiu

February 21st, 2007, 02:16 PM

You're wrong, and the way in which you present your arguments does not come across as very intelligent. You have understood my point so well that I'm breathless and I can't even think of replying anything cleverer. Let's keep it civil, please. Thanks.

Hendrixski

February 21st, 2007, 02:31 PM

I love you too. :-)

You have understood my point so well that I'm breathless and I can't even think of replying anything cleverer.

Umm, your point seemed to be sarcastically dismissing the notion that an average user can somehow have an impact on Open Source development. That if they wanted something fixed in OOo and they don't know how to program then they are like starving children in the third world who cannot go to a diner. If that's not what you meant to say then please clarify.

What I pointed out is that the average user, while they cannot program, do have the power to shape the software they are using by submitting a bug (which is pretty easy to do) by requesting features at the projects' website, or even by opening a case with Ubuntu Support (which will then work with upstream development). So users are NOT like starving children, they are like consumers who go to a diner and say "it would be great if you had this and this on your menu, please add it".

OpenOffice users can exactly this. MS Office users, kind of sort of can as well, but less directly.

sloggerkhan

February 21st, 2007, 02:36 PM

I have no issues with Writer, actually prefer it, but Calc has many shortcomings. Most annoying of which is not showing regression equations on graphs, at least as of the version that comes on Edgy.

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 03:33 PM

Umm, your point seemed to be sarcastically dismissing the notion that an average user can somehow have an impact on Open Source development.
No, there was no sarcasm in my first statement (obviously there was in my reply to you).

The argument was that anyone can modify source code in FLOSS and this is simply not true, since most users can't code. Far too many people can simply ignore this part of their freedom when they get any FLOSS app. Sure users can file bugs and all that stuff but that's not what the argument refers to.

When referring to the open source nature of OpenOffice, saying its users can fix themselves what they don't like is particularly wrong, since OOo code is terribly obscure and hard to fix even for their own developers. That would prevent even big corporations to think of touching that code.

That's why I would love to see this argument go away in this sort of discussions in general, but very particularly in this one.

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 04:08 PM

He shouldn't be laughing so loud. The only Word documents I've ever had problems with in OOo are documents in which the creator of the doc did a few kludgy things to accomplish formatting effects that could and should have been handled in a different way.
I have lots of formatting issues, all the time. Most of them are more or less easily fixed but when you receive price lists, proforma invoices and other lot of business stuff daily you can't spend your time fixing formatting issues on each document. I seriously can't believe one full time developer can't solve this, but maybe it is actually that hard. In some businesses you can't even consider using anything but MS Office.

Hendrixski

February 21st, 2007, 05:11 PM

No, there was no sarcasm in my first statement (obviously there was in my reply to you).

The argument was that anyone can modify source code in FLOSS and this is simply not true, since most users can't code. Far too many people can simply ignore this part of their freedom when they get any FLOSS app. Sure users can file bugs and all that stuff but that's not what the argument refers to.

When referring to the open source nature of OpenOffice, saying its users can fix themselves what they don't like is particularly wrong, since OOo code is terribly obscure and hard to fix even for their own developers. That would prevent even big corporations to think of touching that code.

That's why I would love to see this argument go away in this sort of discussions in general, but very particularly in this one.

Ah, then I apologize. I mis-understood. I thought you were being sarcastic and saying that users can't shape what their software looks like, even if they can't code. In that case, I agree, users can't code, and the argument that they can change anything just because the source code is available is false.

I will however stand by my statement that there is more to development than writing code. Submitting bugs, requesting features, discussions with the developers, etc. etc. are all very powerful non-technical ways in which users who cannot code can change the software they are using.

And corporations do touch that code, I guarantee it. I work as a consultant and we touch open source code all the time, and sometimes even send our modifications back upstream.

aysiu

February 21st, 2007, 05:16 PM

Just spotted this article in the news:
Should Microsoft Be Scared? (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2007/02/should_microsoft_be_scared.html?nav=rss_blog)

It postulates that MS Office might be in trouble because of Google Docs. It's the same kind of "threat" OpenOffice is--cost-free and mostly .doc-compatible--but it has the Google name attached to it. My wife, for example, didn't know anything about OpenOffice until I mentioned it to her, but she found out about Google Docs from friends of hers.

Maybe Google Docs could be a thread. Who knows? Online apps are getting big these days...

teaker1s

February 21st, 2007, 05:18 PM

what will kill expensive licencesd products is online apps/free apps and high speed internet access.

Hendrixski

February 21st, 2007, 06:00 PM

Yeah, Google docs is pretty hot. I just tried it earlier this week after UbuCon in Google's new Manhattan offices. Their tools for document collaboration are light years ahead of anything out there. And you can save files as .odt. There's even a hook through which you can post documents to your blog, but it doesn't work very well yet.

I should point out though, while it is free of cost, it's not free software (at least I don't think it grants the 4 software freedoms, because I don't see where one would get the source code for it)

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 06:57 PM

I haven't tried Google Apps yet. Web interfaces usually are not up to what can be expected from desktop apps, but I won't criticise this particular case because I just don't know it.

What I'm pretty sure of is that Google is a tremendous force in the market and their web apps can provide an enormous boost for open document formats. THAT is what might end up "killing" Microsoft Office (like, say, Firefox is "killing" Explorer). I mean, MS keeps too many seats tied to their software just because the market is trapped using their closed formats. If that goes away, they would be forced to compete with free software. While MS Office 2007 looks awesome (I'll be trying it in some days), it better does some really fancy things besides providing full compatibility with MS formats, or no one would pay a nickel for it. If the need for that compatibility slowly fades away, there will be no serious reason to pay MS for its office software (like there's no real need to pay them for their OS right now, other than having access to those closed apps not available in Linux).

aysiu

February 21st, 2007, 08:13 PM

I may have just won over an OpenOffice user.

Someone who works in my office (but not in my department) stopped me today to say she just bought a laptop. She asked if I had Microsoft Office (I'm assuming she wanted to pirate it from me). I told her I didn't (which is true--now that I use Ubuntu, I've given away my legitimate copies of MS Office to friends). I also said she could use OpenOffice.

She asked what it was, and I told her it was a free office suite that is good for home needs. She wanted to know if it could be installed together with MS Office (I guess she's planning to buy a copy of MS Office later?). I said it could.

So I sent her an email with the link to OpenOffice, and she replied with a thank you, saying that she'd never heard of OpenOffice but has now "learned something new today."

My hope is that she'll download OpenOffice and realize it does everything she used to do with MS Office. She can then save herself some money.

sicofante

February 21st, 2007, 09:07 PM

Oh, I win OOo users every other week (no bragging intended). I sell custom made workstations for a living and unless the customer asks specifically otherwise I ship it with Ubuntu installed along with one of those nice ship-it CDs I got. Unfortunately, I sell just one or two workstations a month and I know most of them end up with a copy of Windows installed, but I can't avoid that. (I also sell NAS systems every now and then with Openfiler installed and I know for sure it stays there. Linux servers already have a good reputation.)

But I'm proud of one particular anecdote. The other day a customer asked me to install Windows AND MS Office. She's an architect and I know she'll use the computer for Autocad and some other specific software, but she wanted to make some pretty text files and spreadsheets, probably for invoicing her customers and stuff like that. I told her she should use OpenOffice for that. She said "Oh, well, I had heard about it but I was under the impression that it was some cheap stuff. If you say it's OK I'll trust you." There you go! She'll get her Windows workstation, dual-booting Ubuntu. Of course! ;-)

I've also converted a whole medium-sized company (~30 employees) to OOo, but that's not quite succesful yet. They're happy with the documents they create, but have lots of problems with those they receive in MS Office format. They don't have the time to fix all those little formatting issues and I'm afraid they might end up buying (or illegally copying) a few MS Office copies. Never ending story... :(

SonicSteve

February 21st, 2007, 11:05 PM

I've also converted a whole medium-sized company (~30 employees) to OOo, but that's not quite succesful yet. They're happy with the documents they create, but have lots of problems with those they receive in MS Office format. They don't have the time to fix all those little formatting issues and I'm afraid they might end up buying (or illegally copying) a few MS Office copies. Never ending story... :(

I was wondering about this. I experimented the other day and found that word files didn't import properly. Text boxes were no where near where they were supposed to be. There were other things also. Is there anything that can be done about this?

sicofante

February 22nd, 2007, 06:02 AM

I don't know for sure but I don't think so. OOo forums haven't been very helpful for me (they're user forums, so they don't have all the answers). As somebody suggested before, OOo development might be slowing down. Let's hope this is temporary and they do fix these issues in the future.

FyreBrand

February 22nd, 2007, 02:41 PM

I was wondering about this. I experimented the other day and found that word files didn't import properly. Text boxes were no where near where they were supposed to be. There were other things also. Is there anything that can be done about this?
That has a lot to do with the type of formatting the parent document has along with the recipients settings and font library. I import a lot of .doc files for work and class. The ones I have the fewest problems with are the documents that use more common fonts and fewer tables. Math formulas mostly translate okay, but really intricate math formulas don't translate well at all from Word.

When I get a difficult document I take it to a workstation that has MS Word on it to test and convert it if possible (to RTF or removing odd tables). Usually I find that the formatting is still somewhat out of place and I still need to fix it. This is why postscript and pdf was created in the first place. There has always been the age old problem of moving editable documents from one system to another.

ragadanga63

February 22nd, 2007, 10:12 PM

I think OpenOffice can do mail merges too, in the 2.x version.

Yeah, but not as good and versatile as that of MS Office. I've tried it, but it just sucked.

GuitarHero

February 23rd, 2007, 12:04 AM

Open Office is sufficient for my needs, but I can tell its far behind microsoft office, especially 2007. I would use open office on any platform just for the reason that i do not use office apps much and wouldnt want to buy MS office or iWork for my limited use.

FyreBrand

February 24th, 2007, 03:48 AM

Ahh. The Office 2007 file compatibility nightmare is starting to hit us at work now. This is a lot like the upgrade to Office 97. I now must go patch staff computers individually and update the Windows images with the patches so Office 2003 can convert them.

We aren't upgrading to Office 2007 until fall or winter of this year but the boss wants to ensure we can open Office 2007 files. I can't wait until someone screams that their docx file was ruined by converting it back to a .doc file.

beefcurry

March 12th, 2007, 12:28 PM

True, MS still does alot of things better then Linux, from language support to office solutions. We should learn, make oOO good but not in a way where it copies MS.

laxmanb

March 12th, 2007, 01:56 PM

OpenOffice.org is quite cool... I just wish they'd include some clipart and some templates... that would sweeten the experience...

ShadowVlican

March 12th, 2007, 03:04 PM

True, MS still does alot of things better then Linux, from language support to office solutions. We should learn, make oOO good but not in a way where it copies MS.
agreed.

Linux is the biggest competitor to Windows. Mac OS X is not; it's just an alternative as far as Microsoft is concerned. Thus, they offer Office on Mac platforms. But it will never be made available on Linux platforms because that's helping the competition.
imo, linux isn't a competitor to windows.... not even close... i can't see how OSX isn't though... just because you call it an alternative, doesn't make it NOT a competitor...

if indeed linux were the biggest competitor to windows, then we'd be hearing things similar to "civic or corolla?"... but instead we hear <well.. check the newbie forums or other OS forums lol>

euler_fan

March 12th, 2007, 11:15 PM

. . . We should learn, make oOO good but not in a way where it copies MS.

I half agree . . .

If by copy you mean can do everything MS Office can do, well, I would like to think the OO.org can eventually do everything MSO can do but better ;)

However . . .

Ultimately, no matter who is the innovator in a particular product area (WYSISYG text editors, spreadsheets, etc), everyone else is almost by definition "copying" the innovator whenever they try to compete by offering the same or similar capabilities.

I would just like to see OO.org at a minimum do what MSO can do, and as I said before, preferably do it better or do other things on top of those. One simple example--MS Excel has a bug in its standard deviation function (put in really big numbers with small standard deviations and the reported SD blows up). Simply not doing that would be a small but important way in which OO.org could do something better than MSO. There must be others.

Even if the two systems neck and neck in terms of capabilities, we know OO.org will innovate (if for no other reason but to try to outsell MSO) and that will force MSO to innovate in return to keep its market share. Thus, it ends up working out fine for all of use because each iteration of this process will yield better and more powerful software for us to use.

stalkier

March 20th, 2007, 09:07 AM

I have been using Ubuntu since version 4.10. I just recently got rid of Windows altogether on my laptop. I am running 6.10 edgy eft and I am loving every minute of it. Attending college online, I need reliability in both an OS and its apps. OO, to me, is very stable for my usage level. I use no macros, or special fonts. I have no need of 80% of the features in OO. The only thing I found that I really need in Linux period is newer Web development apps (Dreamweaver 8, etc.). I also found that MySQL is hard to use in Linux. For this I use my XP pro desktop. For most users they will not find any difference in OO then MS Office 97 or 2003. I use 2007 (a pirated copy) and found it to be awesome. Still if you are going to go legal than OO is most likely the right choise (for most).

daynah

March 20th, 2007, 09:13 AM

Guys, I'm MS Office retarded. You should see me and an MS Office person having a conversation when I "can't find the button" usually 10 minutes before a paper is due. Either I had to take it over to a MS computer to print, noticed it reformatted it weird and am trying to explain what I want and basically sound like a monkey, or I'm on OOo, and I'm trying to ask what the official name for what I want is called (so I can search for it on the OOo forums).

They say, "Why don't you use Office?" Instead of going into Linux-y reasons, I usually just answer, "Do you think I'd know where the button is in Office?" "ooohh. Right."

(PS, people make fun of me for saying "Button" because I can't say "t"s when they're in the middle of the words, so any conversation about buttons goes very slowly due to giggling)

LookTJ

March 20th, 2007, 09:58 AM

I'm staying away from any products of Microsoft's. OOo has features that are needed.

MS Office has features that aren't needed like the nice interface.

mustiy

March 20th, 2007, 10:05 AM

Ubuntist

March 20th, 2007, 01:50 PM

For text, I like Abiword, although OO.o Writer is OK. I don't need MS Word.

As much as I would like to dump MS completely, I have to say that I prefer Excel to Gnumeric, which I in turn prefer to OO.o Calc. There are lots of little detailed ways in which Excel just works better.

It's hard to do without MS PowerPoint. I find that OO.o Impress just doesn't cut it.

jharbert

March 27th, 2007, 11:28 PM

I like Open Office, and Writer does fine for most (97%) of my word processing needs. However, Calc has a ways to go before it will match Excel (at least to do the kind of things I need it to do). I do a lot of graphing for school and I've found Calc to be lacking there. Also, there isn't too good of compatibility between the graphs in Excel and Calc (this is important for me since all the computers at school use Excel). I still think it's great, but it doesn't meet my needs at the moment.

CostaRica

October 4th, 2007, 12:37 AM

No one can say that VBA for Office suites power users isn't a great thing if one needs it.

There is no use trying to convince ourselves otherwise. Let's try to get OO to a better place.

Long live Linux and Free Software!!!

easyease

October 4th, 2007, 06:39 AM

Heh, i know were all proud and happy about our *nix Os's and apps - but are you guys really saying that OOo is better then MS Office? Come one guys... Have you seen what MS Office 2k7 looks like? the countless amounts of features...

I tested it out, gave the latest version of OOo to 5 secretaries who do medium to heavy transactions with their office apps, the HATED OOo after trying out Ms Office2k7. They said MS Office 2k7 looked better, had countless amount of more features and was super user friendly not to mention everything was modified on the fly... OOo is nowhere near where MS Office2k7 is, i wont even compare it to MS Office2k3.
hardly a fair and scientific test, i bet these secretaries hve been using microsoft office for years already so they are hardly impartial "sterile" test subjects.
I suggest you try repeating the experiment with people who have never switched on a pc before and not tell them whether they are using open office or microsoft office.....only a "blind test" will provide the truth.

-grubby

October 4th, 2007, 07:10 PM

I find OpenOffice.Org just too slow. that's exactly why I use Abiword and it's just fine

neorou

October 4th, 2007, 07:43 PM

I support a scientific institution which has the consistent problem of standardization. Among the scientific and administrative support staff, we have issues like constantly updating endnote (bibliographic software that works hand in hand with MS Office).
For that reason I HAVE to use MS Office.

I think as far as Word Processing is concerned, I prefer OO - it's more stable, faster and does not have as many useless features as Word. Word tries to be a layout software but it sucks at it. On the Mac, I would end up using iWork's Pages - SOOOOOOO easy to use.

Excel vs. OO spreadsheet. Well, as far as functions and programmability, I think Excel has somewhat of an edge over OO's spreadsheet. But if I really want to create AWESOME charts, I would end up using GraphPad's Prism - it's geared towards the scientific community, but it shows us what excellent charts are supposed to look like.

I don't do too much presentation, but if I need rich graphics, I end up using multiple software to get what I need. I would use Adobe's Illustrator for vector graphics, I love GIMP for the bitmap, and prefer to create a PDF slide-show, because I needed to not worry about platforms in the end. So, for this segment I just don't use MSO or OO altogether.

Also, for contact management and e-mails, more and more I feel the need to set-up my system on some mass managed server system. Needing to depend on a client is so yesterday. There are so many issues like SPAM, the need for better authentication, etc. etc.
In the end I really don't want to deal with all of that.

If I really need to choose OO vs. MSO, I would choose OO simply because it is free. Although, in the end, if they perfect KOffice, I may push people towards that. It has a much more complete suite composition than OO or MSO.

Shibby73

October 6th, 2007, 03:24 AM

I used Open Office run off of a USB flash drive as a portable application on MS networked computers at work where WORD may or may not be installed. I can compose a document and copy and paste what I write to any another application that accepts text entry.

For example in healthcare the applications for documenting patient history and physical as well as the assessment & plans are often horrible (the writers/programmers are not doctors!).

Atleast they might give me a free text box where I can copy and paste a template from OO into an otherwise horrible interface that these EHR programs provide to write in.

That is sorta like using OO as a fancy NOTEBOOK/NOTEPAD on the go... a powerful portable application that doesn't make a copy of the data on the machine your using, so if you are an idiot and put in patient identifying information a version of the document doesn't persist and violate patient privacy rules the way WORD does automatically.

:guitar:

Jammy4041

June 27th, 2008, 04:40 PM

Open office is DEFINIATLY not 10 YEARS behind Microsoft Office- and the Ribbon- I HATE IT! What's wrongwith the "normal" menus?

Just imagine...

2017- Open Office puts ribbon in.

I think NOT!!!!!

cardinals_fan

June 27th, 2008, 08:09 PM

Here's what I do:

Word Processing: Most of my docs are written in html using vim. I occaisonally use Kword for documents requiring more graphics.

Spreadsheets: Kspread and Gnumeric are my main spreadsheet apps. For serious analysis I use Excel on a virtualized Windows XP.

Presentations: Google Docs is my main presentation app. I could use Kpresenter, but I've never had to.

I hate OpenOffice above all else.

doorknob60

June 28th, 2008, 09:33 PM

They're both pretty good pieces of software. I only have two things I hate about OOo. Both about the presentation part of it. 1. No good designs, MS office has tons (which is good, because OOo can use them too :D), and 2. Performance with animations etc. is really slow, even on powerful computers :(

gatorbrit

September 21st, 2008, 07:48 PM

Equations. They are not compatible. I know they are supposed to be and you check the boxes to import them. But they are often messed up when exported from OO to word.

Unfortunately, this one little thing makes OO useless to me.

AaronMT

September 21st, 2008, 11:18 PM

No grammar check.

Renders OO usless for me.

MasterNetra

September 22nd, 2008, 01:01 AM

@AaronMT

YourBoss: You lack grammer skills? Your useless to me... Your fired!

:p

doorknob60

September 22nd, 2008, 01:01 AM

"I don't need MS Office features or want them for work or home"

The only complaints I have are the lack of templats/designs w/e they're called IN Impress, and the slower speed of Impress vs Power Point.

EDIT: Oh geeze, look at the last page, note the date: JUNE 28!!

They're both pretty good pieces of software. I only have two things I hate about OOo. Both about the presentation part of it. 1. No good designs, MS office has tons (which is good, because OOo can use them too :D), and 2. Performance with animations etc. is really slow, even on powerful computers :(

:lolflag:

woli

September 22nd, 2008, 01:07 AM

Damn.. I voted wrong.
I do not need MS Office (2007) features, but I want them.
Also, I do not know if for you OO works in the same way that it does with me, but when I'm handling relatively large documents, OO gets all fuzzy. I'm running on 1GB RAM, so that is not the problem.

I cannot recall the features I miss so much about office 2007, but I think that some of them were:
-'¿' character printed when you where in Spanish mode, and typed a '?' for first time in a sentence
-maybe all the graphical features they added...
-ease of operation for page numbering, and headers and footers in general

karellen

September 22nd, 2008, 03:21 AM

as "value for money" there's no comparison between the two. OpenOffice is far better than MS Office

qazwsx

September 22nd, 2008, 06:41 AM

For home and school OpenOffice. I find M$ office hard to use (I have used it only couple of times for odt,odc to doc,xls conversion checking).

I seriously need to learn some LATEX. It makes everything to look like pro :lolflag:

cmat

September 22nd, 2008, 09:46 AM

@AaronMT

YourBoss: You lack grammer skills? Your useless to me... Your fired!

:p

I'm dyslexic so I need it.

Also Open Office's presentation software is fantastic.

ukripper

September 22nd, 2008, 09:49 AM

I do VBA macro programming on large scale and open office has a large support for VBA as well but not as good as MS OFFICE. So i would like more support for VBA macros in openoffice.

vuvanquang

September 24th, 2008, 06:38 AM

I use Openoffice in Ubuntu and it just crash whole machine. I have to turn off manually my laptop. I feel very dissapoint with Ubuntu (it is perhaps that I am just the beginner). But I still not give up yet. I am looking for a better solution (however, I don't want to pay one laptop just to learn Ubuntu). Crazy my head!!!!

lisati

September 24th, 2008, 06:43 AM

I've used Open Office and Star Office (from which Open Office is derived). One feature that the copy of Star Office I've used has which is absent from the copies of OO I've used is an email client. No big deal since there are alternatives like Thunderbird.

uberdonkey5

October 8th, 2008, 01:11 PM

i do vba macro programming on large scale and open office has a large support for vba as well but not as good as ms office. So i would like more support for vba macros in openoffice.

+100

but gonna try to install converter from:

http://www.linux.com/feature/58348

karellen

October 11th, 2008, 06:28 AM

http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1893
conclusive

Canis familiaris

October 11th, 2008, 06:58 AM

http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1893
conclusive

+1

OpenOffice will meet the needs of 99% of people. For the rest 1% MS Office.

mrgnash

October 11th, 2008, 08:08 AM

In the humble opinion of this LaTeX user, they're both pretty bad.

Giant Speck

October 11th, 2008, 08:09 AM

I really wish OpenOffice was capable of making really attractive charts like Office 2007 can.

And I hate to say it, but I like that ribbon. I don't know why, but I do.

a1z

October 14th, 2008, 04:41 PM

PART 1/3:

Installing Office 2K in Hardy is done with Wine v1.1.2.

1) install wine 1.1.2
2) extract office 2000 ISO (or zip or rar file)
3) install using setup.exe

====================
PART 2/3:

My question:

MS Word 2000 uses CPU all the time. My CPU meter on the task applet bar shows full usage of CPU when MS Word 2000 is opened and being used. The performance is smooth, nonetheless. When I minimize the window, the CPU relaxes.

What is going on? Is there a way to control the workload of CPU by MS Word 2000? Will this affect the performance of the word processor?

====================
PART 3/3:

SUMMARY:

I see this heavy usage of CPU under these conditions:

1) Hardy + Wine1.1.2 + Office 2000
2) Hardy + Wine1.1.2 + Office 2003
3) XP + Office 2000 (mentioned above)

But it is okay when I open and edit a document under these conditions:

1) XP + Office 2003
2) Hardy + Wine0.9.59 + Office 2003

Thanks in advance!

-a1z

david_lynch

October 14th, 2008, 04:47 PM

I choose "other" (odd that my situation was not one of the choices, since it's rather common)

I use features of open office that are not available in ms office, last I checked. Some of the key features are:

* native linux binary
* exports to pdf
* enables cross platform document sharing

:guitar:

gjoellee

October 14th, 2008, 04:54 PM

I do think that MS Office 2007 is quite much better then OOo 2.4 (have not tried OOo3.0 yet)

a1z

October 14th, 2008, 05:12 PM

oOWriter is great. But when a large document (>100 pages) need to be opened and edited, the program drags and becomes sluggish even in 64-bit environment.

Any other advice? Thanks in advance.

tazz4vr

October 14th, 2008, 11:52 PM

I use OpenOffice for most stuff that I used MS office for. Although somewhat on the glitchy side at times, for the most part it does what I need it to do, when it gets the hiccups, it gives me an opportunity to try and find out whether operator error or the office itself.
I use the export to pdf feature alot.
With new job,found myself having to fiddle with the database part, was a wiz with Access, last constant use was about 8 years ago, so once again, learning as I go. Luckily for forums such as this one that can help me out of trouble when unable to figure it out myself.

CrazyArcher

October 15th, 2008, 05:13 AM

I tried to use OO a couple of times, and IMO the best way to describe it would be "amateurish". On the surface, it looks like a clone of MS Office 2003, but when you try to use it a tiny bit, you quickly notice that it doens't match the level. For an ocassional/home user it would suffice, but for a heavy report-writer and spreadsheet-abuser it's not enough (IME).
A couple of words about MS Office 2007. It's one of the rare MS apps that are actually cool to use. I absolutely love the new interface, I've noticed that not only I work faster now, but also use features that I haven't used before. I'm happy that my uni department had it installed on a large portion of machines, and I use it instead of Office 2003 whenever possible.

itisbasi

October 18th, 2008, 02:15 PM

I am a home user and it simple doesn't justify paying so much for MS office. I am more than happy with open office....

ASHIE

October 19th, 2008, 07:01 AM

I use OO.org at work & home. it has some amazing features.The interface is alot like ms office 2003, but that just makes it easier to learn. Been exposed to MS office since school so cant really comment on which is honestly easier to use. Started using open office when our secretary received a word perfect file and nobody could open open it. most of the features are similar in both office packages as far as i know or at least those features the average user makes use of. But for pure interoperability and value for money i think open office rocks. if schools were to start implimenting open office more or giving ppl choice, like installing both suites then in a few yrs time it wont matter whether its open office or ms office. Most ppl r just scared of the unknown. they think they need ms office when in fact they need an office suite, and today there's many to choose from. Dont think any package should b bad-mouthed, but ppl should b aware of the choices. n 4 what it's worth i think OO.org is doing gr8 so far

jordilin

October 19th, 2008, 05:53 PM

I use LaTeX for nearly everything. If I need to type and print something very quickly, then openoffice.

brunovecchi

October 19th, 2008, 06:09 PM

For an ocassional/home user it would suffice, but for a heavy report-writer and spreadsheet-abuser it's not enough (IME).
.

A heavy report/thesis/paper/book writer would use a serious typesetting system such as LaTeX.
A person with high calculation needs would use Mathematica/Scilab/Maxima/R or any other serious math engine.

To me, Office suites are exclusively for casual use, and with that in mind, OOffice excels at its task.

Skorzen

October 19th, 2008, 06:34 PM

MS Office is just needed for work.
For personal use only, OOo fits better.

cleopete

October 21st, 2008, 12:43 PM

What I've enjoyed most about OO is the way it opened a .docx file when my "boss" couldn't open it with MS 2003. Microsloth has since released a patch to make it work, but as far as I know, OO worked first.

I don't use either much, I'm mostly illiterate

1cewolf

October 22nd, 2008, 09:22 AM

OpenOffice works well enough for me. Still, I can't help but be disappointed at the lack of innovation OpenOffice has shown. Office 2007's interface is a welcome departure from the "classic" interface but OpenOffice still looks like it's stuck in the past.

In a way, comparing OpenOffice to Office 2007 reminds me of the current situation with GNOME and KDE 4. GNOME, like OpenOffice, hasn't really shown a great deal of innovation and it seems to be playing "catch-up" in features. Heck, GNOME didn't even have the ability to restore from the trash until just recently in 2.24. KDE 4, like Office 2007, is an innovative redesign in the interest of usability. Not everybody likes it, but it's nice to see someone pushing the envelope.

ukripper

October 22nd, 2008, 11:02 AM

In my opinion KDE4 is just like MS-Office2007, good for your eyes but bloated for your machine.

liferules

November 3rd, 2008, 07:46 PM

I agree with the assesment that it's not as powerful in a business environment as Office. His comment on the email client is very true. I've worked in companies with thousands of employees who depended on Outlook for just about anything you can imagine. Without an email client that is as powerful as Outlook OpenOffice is years behind in my opinion.

I agree that an Outlook replacement is a serious missing application. Beyond that I think there a few features that are missing from OO for the average user. Right now my most wished for feature would be the accounting cell format in Calc like Excel. Anytime I need this feature and print my spreadsheets via Excel and Virtualbox but I would l;ike to see this fixed in OO.

Old_Gray_Wolf

November 3rd, 2008, 08:31 PM

Other.

There are no features of MS Office that I need which are not in Open Office. There are some advantages to Open Office that should be in MS Office.

aysiu

November 3rd, 2008, 08:32 PM

Other.

There are no features of MS Office that I need which are not in Open Office. There are some advantages to Open Office that should be in MS Office. For example, not having to re-sort before vlookup works correctly.
I don't think a resort before VLookup is necessary in MS Office. Are you sure it is?

Newuser1111

November 3rd, 2008, 09:09 PM

OpenOffice doesn't have something like Microsoft Office FrontPage.

Old_Gray_Wolf

November 3rd, 2008, 09:36 PM

I don't think a resort before VLookup is necessary in MS Office. Are you sure it is?

From MS website http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP052093351033.aspx

"The values in the first column of table_array must be placed in ascending sort order; otherwise, VLOOKUP may not give the correct value. You can put the values in ascending order by choosing the Sort command from the Data menu and selecting Ascending. For more information, see Default sort orders."

Old_Gray_Wolf

November 3rd, 2008, 09:53 PM

OpenOffice doesn't have something like Microsoft Office FrontPage.

Microsoft announced that they would be discontinuing Microsoft FrontPage by December 2006. Link http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/FX100743231033.aspx

Linux distros use HTML editors that are independant from Open Office. That does not mean that HTML editors do not exist for Linux distros.

Newuser1111

November 3rd, 2008, 10:32 PM

Microsoft announced that they would be discontinuing Microsoft FrontPage by December 2006. Link http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/FX100743231033.aspx

Linux distros use HTML editors that are independant from Open Office. That does not mean that HTML editors do not exist for Linux distros.But I haven't found a good HTML editor for Linux.

aysiu

November 3rd, 2008, 10:47 PM

From MS website http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP052093351033.aspx

"The values in the first column of table_array must be placed in ascending sort order; otherwise, VLOOKUP may not give the correct value. You can put the values in ascending order by choosing the Sort command from the Data menu and selecting Ascending. For more information, see Default sort orders."
I know that in theory. But in practice, I haven't found it to matter.

cardinals_fan

November 3rd, 2008, 10:53 PM

But I haven't found a good HTML editor for Linux.
Bluefish?

Newuser1111

November 3rd, 2008, 10:57 PM

Bluefish?I think I might have tried that and didn't like it.

theDaveTheRave

November 4th, 2008, 09:57 AM

First off I've not read the through all the posts on this thread, so appologies if I repeat anything.

Secondly, these are only the things that I find agravating about OO.o and MS Office.

Word compatibility:

A disaster, if I write something in OO, save it as "word format" and send it to a friend via email, when the open it the formating is all over the place!

Not good when writing a CV. It seems that MS Office likes to force the use of it's own tab spaces and "default" format settings. This is where the <export to PDF> is usefull. But a lot of companies like to "filter" the file, so don't like PDF format. Personally this isn't a problem for me as a "home" user. but when my CV arrives in a prospective bosses inbox I would like it to have the formating that I have given it. The solution is to send a PDF and a "word" format document, then at least they can see how you intended it too look.

Power Point / OO Presentation

I'm affraid that the OO version doesn't cut it!

The animations are often flaky, or fail altogether! The fact that this failure is indescriminate, variable, and worst of all often transient for different application etc is a real pain. It may work today on my laptop, but tomorrow when I give the presentation is it all wrong!

I've never been able to track this down to if it is a problem with how I set my animations or a lack of "memory" in my system or some other software fault.... either way I look a right prat when I give a presentation that doesn't do what I expect it too.

Does anybody know of another "free" presentation software that I can download!?

General formating Standards.

My biggest bug bear against MS Office is how they like to change formats all the time!

At work we use "office 2007" and I often forget that some of my colleagues are still using office 2000 or similar.

This is a great way to upset potential employees by sending them a copy of your CV in a format that they don't have. The beauty of OO is that as the whole thing is "Free" then updates are also "Free" and hence there is no problem opening other peoples documents, whatever the format may be.

Well that is all I am going to say on the subject.

I feel better now that I've sounded off about that!

Dave

Edit....

Just realised that I missed out MS Access - horrible peice of software, I remember using Lotus approach, many years ago. I looked nicer, was easier to use and set up a database and forms. If I had a choice I would go back to it, but IBM/lotus are no longer producing such an item, I've had not reason to use the OO version, but the best package that I come across for DBases in general is FileMaker (a apple product), it is just a shame that they don't produce a "unix" version!

Just as an aside, how may "illegal" copies of MS office do you expect there are out there today?