Office 2007 Beta - Better keep up, OpenOffice

[XQC]

I am well aware, that there is already a Vista Beta thread but this is just really about Office.
First I have to say, I'm not really into this Micro$oft vs. Lin0x stuff, I just use the software that better suites me, regardless of the background of the software developer (yes, I already see some angry faces there)... and second, let's keep the costs aside, even if it's an important factor for many people...

I just downloaded the free available Office Beta and I have to say: Kudos to Microsoft! This is truly the first piece of software from these guys that blew me away.
I might even say: The first office software where my first thought in the first couple of minutes was: "This is usability". Because I have the feeling that even my Dad could create a professional looking paper e.g. for a presentation with a nice looking layout, beautfil diagrams and so on in, like, 5 minutes...
One example, you mark a word with your mouse and right away there's a little window (NOT a popup, really just a small transculent window) that offers you to make the word bold, italic or give it a new color. Yeah, might sound not so great, but no office suite came up with that before. Now you don't have to scroll your mouse all over the place to make it bold, change the font, color or style. Also, if you want to change the style, you just have to roll over with your mouse over the preconfigured styles, that you can see in some sort of "gallery" and you can immediately see the effects, goes faster as when you have to click through...

Another useful thing is, that Office offers some preconfigured styles for the documents that look really nice and professional, didn't see that with that extent on OpenOffice either. Inserting tables or diagrams is also child's play, an assistent helps you with diagram styles and layout and with a few clicks you can make a presentation that looks really fancy.

On a side note, the application itself looks nice and at the same time has an intuitive layout - whereas OpenOffice looks cluttered, some items are out of place, it somewhat has this Win98-feeling to me... well that's my opinion...

As you can read, I am not destined to become a software review writer and I'm not an English native speaker, maybe someone else can make it better than me, also I can't provide any screenshots (but otherwise, there are masses of them on the web...)

So, anyone else gave it a shot? Other experiences...?

[Jucato]

I haven't had a chance to try it myself. Is there a download somewhere for Office2007? And it will overwrite my current Office install?

But anyway, those are just make-up and UI. true, UI has a lot of impact. But the main concern nowadays is not just the UI, but the format itself. Anyone can make a document, make it look what they want. But no matter what you make it look like, it will always be a .doc file. As ODF was recently approved by ISO, it will be MS Office that needs to catch up with OO.o for ODF support.

[Sef]

I'd like to see how well it works on GNU/Linux. If I tried to install it on my Ubuntu,this would be the result ](*,). Think I will stick to OpenOffice.org, and Abiword. Maybe I should give Kwrite a shot again.

[BoyOfDestiny]

I am well aware, that there is already a Vista Beta thread but this is just really about Office.
First I have to say, I'm not really into this Micro$oft vs. Lin0x stuff, I just use the software that better suites me, regardless of the background of the software developer (yes, I already see some angry faces there)... and second, let's keep the costs aside, even if it's an important factor for many people...

I just downloaded the free available Office Beta and I have to say: Kudos to Microsoft! This is truly the first piece of software from these guys that blew me away.
I might even say: The first office software where my first thought in the first couple of minutes was: "This is usability". Because I have the feeling that even my Dad could create a professional looking paper e.g. for a presentation with a nice looking layout, beautfil diagrams and so on in, like, 5 minutes...
One example, you mark a word with your mouse and right away there's a little window (NOT a popup, really just a small transculent window) that offers you to make the word bold, italic or give it a new color. Yeah, might sound not so great, but no office suite came up with that before. Now you don't have to scroll your mouse all over the place to make it bold, change the font, color or style. Also, if you want to change the style, you just have to roll over with your mouse over the preconfigured styles, that you can see in some sort of "gallery" and you can immediately see the effects, goes faster as when you have to click through...

Another useful thing is, that Office offers some preconfigured styles for the documents that look really nice and professional, didn't see that with that extent on OpenOffice either. Inserting tables or diagrams is also child's play, an assistent helps you with diagram styles and layout and with a few clicks you can make a presentation that looks really fancy.

On a side note, the application itself looks nice and at the same time has an intuitive layout - whereas OpenOffice looks cluttered, some items are out of place, it somewhat has this Win98-feeling to me... well that's my opinion...

As you can read, I am not destined to become a software review writer and I'm not an English native speaker, maybe someone else can make it better than me, also I can't provide any screenshots (but otherwise, there are masses of them on the web...)

So, anyone else gave it a shot? Other experiences...?

I haven't used it. I'd like some screenshots... I found this

http://www.laboratoire-microsoft.org/n/18275/

It looks pretty cluttered to me?

As for Open Office, which I've used for years now... File -> Wizards, choose the type of documents, plenty of styles.

For bold,color,italic etc, You have the traditional little button, or you can use a short cut key...

I've found inserting tables easy... You click the little table icon, set the size with your mouse and done...

Anyway, open office is here and out now... Office 2007 is 7 months away (well if its release is tied to Vista, possibly later still.)

Yes opinion on my part too (and yes I dislike MS office, not the actual suite really, just the file formats...)

P.S. Virtual office assitants bother me (I've been spurned by the evil Clippy TM ;) )

[XQC]

I haven't had a chance to try it myself. Is there a download somewhere for Office2007? And it will overwrite my current Office install? You can grab it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
Though you have to register, if you don't have a hotmail account, which will probably turn off many users... second, yes it overrides the current install. It is in fact a 180-day-trial, after that you can reinstall the old office, I suppose...
Not really userfriendly but I just was too curious about the Beta.


I haven't used it. I'd like some screenshots... I found this

http://www.laboratoire-microsoft.org/n/18275/

It looks pretty cluttered to me?
By just looking at the screenshots, same thoughts exactly on my side.
But, yeah, I actually tried it out and I have to say, it's not bad at all.

[dimatrod]

From screenshots I've seen, only thing I notice is they completely overhauled the UI to include some eye-candy (and we know that usually means stuttering performance in most cases). Other than that, from what you say about the document styles, is that they are somewhat trying to bring what Apple did with its Pages and Keynote, which isn't necesarily bad, since it'll help to have the designing stuff Apple did well and have the world known "productivity" Microsoft always had (I say "productivity" because it's what everyone use to get the job done).

I must say Microsoft is making a good effort trying to bring people back with their Office software (I won't talk about Vista since well, this is about Office), and from certain interviews made to Microsoft employees, they seem to be interested in including nifty features like integrating a messanger into Office so that you can somehow interact with other people whilst doing the document (I assume it'll permit you use clip art from others? Lame idea but they might have something under their sleeves).

About OpenOffice, yes, they seem behind Office and iWork, but it's still a good completely free application that gets the job done quite well. Remember it is software that is being developed voluntarily, while Office is something that people work on to get paid. Back when I used Windows (it'll be a month next week!), I used OpenOffice because I HATED using pirated software (reason I completely changed to Linux, also security), and had a legal copy of Office 2003 but that was just slow. It took me 15 seconds to open a Word document on a fairly new computer, while it took me 6 to open on Open Office in Linux. Regarding the little window popping up for bold and whatnot, I usually select the text, then press ctrl+b, and that'll bold it. Having a Microsoft Wireless keyboard also has the keys having the control functions written on them, so it's easy to look up stuff, and by now I pretty much remembered it.

I hope someday OpenOffice developers will reach Microsoft's Office, and will become public. Seriously, I can't believe people don't notice OpenOffice and completely change to it. It has features for us procastinators like video player on the Writer window (can't see it in Linux version though, must be a plugin now)

[Jucato]

Looking at the screenshots, I dread the toolbar. I, for one, am used to many icons/toolbars activated, but despite their numbers, they still look neat. On the other hand, the Office 2007 toolbars look inconsistent and messy. Some things occupy 2 rows while others only occupy 1.

And regarding the "small translucent window" for formatting, how can that not be a pop-up? Sure it might help some people in formatting, but I sure hope it can be turned off for the more experienced group. Besides, you don't have to scroll all the way up to turn your fonts to bold. Ctrl+B does the trick, and is so easy to reach. Of course other shortcuts are not so easy to rich, but in OO.o and KOffice, you can rearrange the keyboard shortcuts (I think, not exactly sure). While you're stuck with what's there in MS Office.

But anyway, I think MS is really trying hard (this time) to bring in something really useful and usable. But until they start supporting ODF, I'm sticking with OO.o/KOffice. :D

[Harold P]

Looks pretty nice to me. It's probably just the new toolbar and the 3D graphs, though. :-?

[drizek]

FYI to one of the posters above, to avoid any confusion, its called kword not kwrite. kwrite is a text editor, kword is part of the koffice suite.

BTW, koffice 1.5.1 came out a couple days ago(see kubuntu.org for the repo). Id recommend it if you are finding OOo sluggish, even on gnome. MS office compatibility is pretty poor, but it works great for ODF files and it has all the basic features youd need to write an essay.

As for office 2007, it follows windows vista in being extremely annoying. All an essay is is just a header, maybe a footer, and a bunch of paragraphs. we dont need all that other formatting crap they put into MSWord. the popup window is a total PITA and is distracting. The one area where MS office is better than the opensource versions id say is that they have a better spell check.

[Bragador]

On linux you don't only have Open office you know ?

Personally most of the functions ing Microsoft Office are too advanced. I don't need that much. I write texts, use the basic stuff and graphs in programs like excel and need a basic powerpoint software. I don't even need these files to cross between these programs. So for me Microsoft Office is too much and thus I wont pay that price.

On the other hand, I wish the spellchecker was better in open office. Didn't try star office though. It seems the spellchecker is great in it.

[DigitalDuality]

Abiword + OO.o's Calc and Impress + Thunderbird + Firefox is all you need.

anyways, i think MS Office looks slick as hell and they're definately taking things to the next level, not only withwhat you download in the beta but with share point as well. Kudos to them. But they lost me a while ago.

[XQC]

On linux you don't only have Open office you know ?

Personally most of the functions ing Microsoft Office are too advanced. I don't need that much. I write texts, use the basic stuff and graphs in programs like excel and need a basic powerpoint software. I don't even need these files to cross between these programs. So for me Microsoft Office is too much and thus I wont pay that price.

On the other hand, I wish the spellchecker was better in open office. Didn't try star office though. It seems the spellchecker is great in it. I know there are other opensource office apps but since OpenOffice is the most popular one, I used it for the title and for the opening - though this applies to other office apps as KOffice or Abiword as well.

I don't want to discredit anyone but it's hard to argument with people who just say:

- "Yeah, well, I just use the basic stuff, so keep it basic" - What's the point of that argument? Then you could stop developing a few 1000 apps because 90% of the users don't use all the features. And on the other hand, why make the basic stuff not more simple or approach it in a more effective way? (But not simple in the sense of cutting away some features like in Gnome, for example)

- "Yeah, it looks [insert negative word here] on the screenshots"... sorry, but that was not the original point of my post. I actually wanted people, who tried various office apps AND the new beta as well, to give a more objective view of things... since you can't tell quality of apps just by looking at screenshots (or even videos), you know.
Though I have to admit, that it is a hassle to test the new beta since it overwrites the previous install of Office.

Oh well, it really looks that I am a MS-Fanboy, though I think that Ubuntu is the superior OS :-k

[Kernel Sanders]

I'm using Office 2007 Beta 2 right now, and I havent found a single bug.

It doesnt expire until February 1st 2007 either, and since the Office 2007 suite is released in January 2007, (Its release isnt tied to Vista) then I can simply continue using the (apparently bug free) Beta 2 until I am able to buy the release version :)

**Here's a fairly accurate review of Office 2007 beta 2** (http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/office2007_beta2.asp)

With Office 2007 MS really have innovated. Although not many features have been added, the new UI brings features to the forefront that you didnt even know were there before! It makes every user a "power user"

Even the noobest of noobs can now do things in word that you didnt even know it could do! All as simply as touching a button.

I am seriously excited by this release.

If OpenOffice/free software in general wants to provide a "real alternative" to users, then they should seriously have a look at what MS are trying to do with Vista and Office 2007. The beta's i've tried of Vista and Office have really shown me that there can be a universal layout that allows the noobs to have everything they need at their fingertips, in such an obvious way that they wont need to ask for help, while the experienced users are able to continue using the rich features that they were able to use before, only more polished, and faster.

[Jucato]

- "Yeah, well, I just use the basic stuff, so keep it basic" - What's the point of that argument? Then you could stop developing a few 1000 apps because 90% of the users don't use all the features. And on the other hand, why make the basic stuff not more simple or approach it in a more effective way? (But not simple in the sense of cutting away some features like in Gnome, for example)

Because other people might want more than just the basic stuff that being offered by the other 1000 apps. What these people are saying is that they only need the basic stuff and they would have no need of all the bells and whistles that other productivity suites, be it MS's or others', offer. It's what they need/want. It's not really reflective of what other people want.



- "Yeah, it looks [insert negative word here] on the screenshots"... sorry, but that was not the original point of my post. I actually wanted people, who tried various office apps AND the new beta as well, to give a more objective view of things... since you can't tell quality of apps just by looking at screenshots (or even videos), you know.
Though I have to admit, that it is a hassle to test the new beta since it overrides the previous install of Office.

Well, by posting a thread, you are in essence inviting comments, sometimes not in the way you intend it to be.

And I don't think there is a purely objective view of things (except when you say that "the thing is there", but that's way too philosophical). Our views will always be colored by our impressions. And you cannot divorce the GUI/appearance from the full experience of the app. If you have a killer app that does killer things, but whose GUI will kill you, it will give bad impressions. In GUI apps, the UI is not just icing on the cake, but an essential part of the system (of course a non-GUI app barely needs a beautiful UI. the CLI is enough). Part of the quality of a GUI-based app is the appearance.

Of course, it's really hard to test MS Office 2007 beyond the screenshots because, as you said, it doesn't install without overwriting your previous Office versions. That can be a real hassle.

[GoA]

I'm using Office 2007 Beta 2 right now, and I havent found a single bug.

It doesnt expire until February 1st 2007 either, and since the Office 2007 suite is released in January 2007, (Its release isnt tied to Vista) then I can simply continue using the (apparently bug free) Beta 2 until I am able to buy the release version :)

**Here's a fairly accurate review of Office 2007 beta 2** (http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/office2007_beta2.asp)

With Office 2007 MS really have innovated. Although not many features have been added, the new UI brings features to the forefront that you didnt even know were there before! It makes every user a "power user"

Even the noobest of noobs can now do things in word that you didnt even know it could do! All as simply as touching a button.

I am seriously excited by this release.

If OpenOffice/free software in general wants to provide a "real alternative" to users, then they should seriously have a look at what MS are trying to do with Vista and Office 2007. The beta's i've tried of Vista and Office have really shown me that there can be a universal layout that allows the noobs to have everything they need at their fingertips, in such an obvious way that they wont need to ask for help, while the experienced users are able to continue using the rich features that they were able to use before, only more polished, and faster.

Same here, this seems to be A Very Good Office. You can see from Microsoft products that they spend money on the user interface "a little bit more" than open office/linux programs.

Microsoft - Made by geeks for not geeks.
Linux - from Geeks to geeks. :D

However, I have to agree, I don't use much of Offices features currently. I do have strict formation rules to obey for my school work and I can do them more easily in Office. I think that Office 2003/2007 are way better than Open Office.

And then Dapper, currently, only thing what's great on it's user interface is XGL. Nothing more.

[Jucato]

Same here, this seems to be A Very Good Office. You can see from Microsoft products that they spend money on the user interface "a little bit more" than open office/linux programs.

Microsoft - Made by geeks for not geeks.
Linux - from Geeks to geeks. :D

However, I have to agree, I don't use much of Offices features currently. I do have strict formation rules to obey for my school work and I can do them more easily in Office. I think that Office 2003/2007 are way better than Open Office.

And then Dapper, currently, only thing what's great on it's user interface is XGL. Nothing more.

Just wanted to make some clarfications:

I think the reason that Microsoft is able to spend "a liitle it more" on user interface is that they have a whole lot of money. MS Office is made by Microsoft and has access to the vast amount of riches that MS has accumulated. OO.o, on the other, while certainly backed by some major corporations (specially Sun), does not enjoy the same monetary sources that MS Office has.

Also please don't equate OpenOffice.org with Linux, as we are talking here about productivity suites (MS Office, OpenOffice.org, etc) and not operating systems (Microsoft, Linux, etc).

From the OO.o front page:


OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform (http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs.html) and multilingual (http://www.openoffice.org/project/projects/native-lang.html) office suite (http://www.openoffice.org/product/index.html) and an open-source (http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php) project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

No where can it be seen that it's a Linux app that was just ported to Windows. Besides, OO.o, while being an open-source project, is really focused on Open Formats. Also, while it may be partially true (although it is arguable) that Linux is made by geeks for geeks, OpenOffice.org is definitely not.

OO.o is open source, but not everything open-source is Linux. So not everything that applies to Linux, applies to OO.o, like funding or intended audience.

Just wanted to clarify those. I might be trying out MS Office 2007 if I can safely assess that installing it will not damage in anyway my current setup and files.

[IYY]

I.... like it. Especially those new pie charts in Excel, but I like all of it. But then again, I was always a fan of MS Office. I think that's what made MS so popular to begin with. Their only product that was better than the competition, and even somewhat original.

[Kernel Sanders]

Same here, this seems to be A Very Good Office. You can see from Microsoft products that they spend money on the user interface "a little bit more" than open office/linux programs.

Microsoft - Made by geeks for not geeks.
Linux - from Geeks to geeks. :D

However, I have to agree, I don't use much of Offices features currently. I do have strict formation rules to obey for my school work and I can do them more easily in Office. I think that Office 2003/2007 are way better than Open Office.

And then Dapper, currently, only thing what's great on it's user interface is XGL. Nothing more.

I agree wholeheartidly with that! 8)

[bruce89]

Abiword + OO.o's Calc and Impress + Thunderbird + Firefox is all you need.
You gnow there is Gnumeric (http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/)?

[Robgould]

Office is obviously a nice suite...no doubt about it. But for the money, I will use Open Office. IMHO open office is not as nice as Office 2003, never mind 2007. But Google's involved now. It is all about to change. You can expect to see chages in Open Office, and probably a much faster release cycle than MS Offfce. Open Office has to catch up before the can keep up, but it will happen.

http://news.com.com/Google+throws+bodies+at+OpenOffice/2100-7344_3-5920762.html

[daveisadork]

Office 2007 is a complete pig on my machine for no good reason at all. Guess we'll all have to upgrade again to keep using the latest MS apps... [-(

[Kernel Sanders]

Office 2007 is a complete pig on my machine for no good reason at all. Guess we'll all have to upgrade again to keep using the latest MS apps... [-(

What do you mean "a complete pig"??

Have you found a bug? Or are you just muttering some general anti-ms sentiment :mrgreen:

[daveisadork]

What do you mean "a complete pig"??

Have you found a bug? Or are you just muttering some general anti-ms sentiment :mrgreen:

It's S L O W. Much slower than Open Office (both Linux and Windows versions) or Office 2003 (on a P4 3.0gHz, 1gb RAM, etc).

[bruce89]

Yikes, that can't be good...
...But good for the hardware companies.

[GoA]

It's S L O W. Much slower than Open Office (both Linux and Windows versions) or Office 2003 (on a P4 3.0gHz, 1gb RAM, etc).

then there's something wrong with your system.

Athlon 2800+, 1 gig mem, geforce 6800LE and as fast as Office XP or 2003. Open office is the slow one on my system.

[ThirdWorld]

You can grab it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
Though you have to register, if you don't have a hotmail account, which will probably turn off many users... second, yes it overrides the current install. It is in fact a 180-day-trial, after that you can reinstall the old office, I suppose...
Not really userfriendly but I just was too curious about the Beta.


By just looking at the screenshots, same thoughts exactly on my side.
But, yeah, I actually tried it out and I have to say, it's not bad at all.


MS Office is light years ahead compared to Open source Office suites. lets remember those guys have lot of cash. Hopefully Open source devs will rewrite the whole O.Office suite and eventually, they will catch up with microsoft. Or maybe that will never happend who knows...

[XQC]

then there's something wrong with your system.
No, I think that's the nature of a beta software. It is not supposed to run on every machine properly.
On my side, I too didn't experience any slow down...

[Kernel Sanders]

No, I think that's the nature of a beta software. It is not supposed to run on every machine properly.
On my side, I too didn't experience any slow down...

It runs better than Office 2003 for me.

And public beta's are designed to run well on everybody's systems, or nobody would be interested in buying the full release version, like Vista :p

(Thats why a public beta of Vista is still months away :p )

[sha_man]

well i'm an eye-candy guy :) and i must say that the screenshots make a good and professional impression (very nice gui).
So I hope:
-There will be a way to have it on Linux
-Or, better, that OpenOffice, with the help of Google maybe, will make a complete rewrite (better code quality) and bring out a stable, fast (!), clean (!) and ergonomic Office suite with still a lot of features. 8) 8) 8)
It's time now, since much opensource projects make a LOT of progress towards these points. (Wait to see the next GIMP version :-))

[rado_london]

This software is brilliant. I did many things today on it and have to say well done to MS. This is the only good peace of code you ever released. OOo sucks for my hardware (see sig) and the beta runs just fine. Plus i never found OOo useful. Just my 2 cents. By the way OOo should come with original GUI not the one that is "easy for the OLD MS users". We need inovation in GUI as well and MS shows us how to do it so lets do it better!

[drizek]

to everyone that says that openoffice is slow, you should seriously consider koffice.

I still dont understand what everyone likes about office 2007. its a ******* text editor. your essay wont be any better if typed in office 2007 or in abiword or kword or OOwriter or wordperfect or textmaker or...

its just "double spaced, one-inch margins, 12 pt font". thats it. I honestly would have no problem using office 97 if it wasnt for the compatibility issues. MS keeps adding more and more useless features to office every couple of years and they screw people into forking over several hundred dollars for it every time.

[rado_london]

to everyone that says that openoffice is slow, you should seriously consider koffice.

I still dont understand what everyone likes about office 2007. its a ******* text editor. your essay wont be any better if typed in office 2007 or in abiword or kword or OOwriter or wordperfect or textmaker or...

its just "double spaced, one-inch margins, 12 pt font". thats it. I honestly would have no problem using office 97 if it wasnt for the compatibility issues. MS keeps adding more and more useless features to office every couple of years and they screw people into forking over several hundred dollars for it every time.

Well I have office 2003 at college. When I use OOo or Abiword all the inserted pictured and the done layout are crap in MS OFfice. Same appliess the other way around. Then I got used to MS office. Plus it offers a reliability in terms of writing stuff i never had in linux. FOr example the imediate spell checker. in ubuntu it takes 1 second to thiink.
Dont get me wrong people. I love all linux stuff except the office suits . They simply sucks for me.

[sonny]

Just a question to XQC, can you open your documents of MS Office 2007 in your MS Office 2003??

[drizek]

I put Openoffice on my USB key, i just load up openoffice on the computers at school and i can open up my ODF files and print/whatever from there perfectly.

You can make a presentation in Impress and then load impress onto whatever computer is running the projector. It saves a lot of headaches because you never have to worry about compatibility issues. The versions of office at my school are older, and id have problems just saving from office xp or 2003 and opening in office 2000.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Its funny. I kinda always thought they built a better Office Suite than OS. :) But what do I know.

[Bragador]

I know there are other opensource office apps but since OpenOffice is the most popular one, I used it for the title and for the opening - though this applies to other office apps as KOffice or Abiword as well.

I don't want to discredit anyone but it's hard to argument with people who just say:

- "Yeah, well, I just use the basic stuff, so keep it basic" - What's the point of that argument? Then you could stop developing a few 1000 apps because 90% of the users don't use all the features. And on the other hand, why make the basic stuff not more simple or approach it in a more effective way? (But not simple in the sense of cutting away some features like in Gnome, for example)

- "Yeah, it looks [insert negative word here] on the screenshots"... sorry, but that was not the original point of my post. I actually wanted people, who tried various office apps AND the new beta as well, to give a more objective view of things... since you can't tell quality of apps just by looking at screenshots (or even videos), you know.
Though I have to admit, that it is a hassle to test the new beta since it overwrites the previous install of Office.

Oh well, it really looks that I am a MS-Fanboy, though I think that Ubuntu is the superior OS :-k

What I was saying is that most people don't need all the things available in the office suit and yet they have to pay for it. Office costs a lot of money you know ?

They should sell a basic version for everyone (see star office is 60$) and sell a professionnal version with all the macros and stuff for 400$.

I would be happy with that.

[Jucato]

Hmm... For all the beauty/advancements of MS Office 2007, I guess we all have to remember 2 things.

1. It won't run on Linux natively
2. It doesn't support ODF

Well, #2 is not that important as #1 since ODF is not yet that well known. But still, the fact that it has these two limitations makes it a no-no for me personally, no matter how good looking or better or faster it is. :p

[Autoclamp]

I don't think OpenOffice.org needs to "keep up" with anything. Sure, it has in many ways been a flagship app (or set of apps) for open source, but I have frankly been confounded by this "we won't rest until we've buried MS Office" mentality many OOo fans seem to espouse. OOo is great at what it does. I believe it's getting better.

I use and will continue to use MS Office at work because it is what my organization uses. My company is happy and compliant, having paid for a license for every copy. They consider it the cost of doing business. All of the Ooo ambassadors in the world couldn't get them to change.

And you know what? They shouldn't. I use OOo at home. I think OOo belongs on every school desktop, on every non-profit desktop, and on every first, second, and third-world business desktop for organizations unable or unwilling to pay for MS Office. Satisfy those people worldwide, and you've got a much bigger market share than first-world suit-and-tie business.

OOo should concentrate on improving its stability, its speed, and its internationalization efforts. Once it has those things down, I would love to see the developers listen to their tried-and-true users and provide innovative and useful solutions to their problems.

The day they come out with a ribbon menu-thingy just because MS Office has one is the day I stop using OOo.

[zentus]

ive been using office 2007 beta at work and i have to say it is nice to use. there is no way i would pay any money for it though when you have a perfectly good free alternative with OOo. you can install it alongside office 2003 if you are worried about writing over older versions. has anyone tried to install it in ubuntu under wine? no success for me, am i being stupid?

[Kernel Sanders]

Just a question to XQC, can you open your documents of MS Office 2007 in your MS Office 2003??

Not only that, but MS have gone one better.

They've made a free official plugin for those users using Office XP and Office 2003, so that not only can they read files in Office 2007 formats, but they can also create files in Office 2007 formats aswell. :cool:

[ade234uk]

If all I want to do is write a letter Open Office 2 or Abiword does it. You then click print and you have a letter simple job done.

If I want a logo at the top Open Office can do this too.
If I want to justify the text, left, center, right Open Office can do this too.
If I want to change the font, color and size Open Office can do this.
If I want to correct the spelling Open Office does this.
If I want to save at as a shity .doc format .txt or ,htm Open Office does this.

If I dont want to pay over £150.00 to Microsoft download Open Office 2. Why do I need new eye candy when Open Office will do for me.

These are the questions I now ask myself these days. Why do I need to get this new Office when what I have does the job for me.

So what if you can rollover a word and choose the style, its just more timewasting when writing a letter. In the end you never get the job done.

The quality on screen is only as good as the printer, and do people really look at it and say hey that was done in the new Microsoft office wow. Think about it.

[GoA]

I wouldn't pay for it myself. But still I will get it for my personal use. ;)

[rado_london]

If all I want to do is write a letter Open Office 2 or Abiword does it. You then click print and you have a letter simple job done.

If I want a logo at the top Open Office can do this too.
If I want to justify the text, left, center, right Open Office can do this too.
If I want to change the font, color and size Open Office can do this.
If I want to correct the spelling Open Office does this.
If I want to save at as a shity .doc format .txt or ,htm Open Office does this.

If I dont want to pay over £150.00 to Microsoft download Open Office 2. Why do I need new eye candy when Open Office will do for me.

These are the questions I now ask myself these days. Why do I need to get this new Office when what I have does the job for me.

So what if you can rollover a word and choose the style, its just more timewasting when writing a letter. In the end you never get the job done.

The quality on screen is only as good as the printer, and do people really look at it and say hey that was done in the new Microsoft office wow. Think about it.

But OpenOffice is 3 times slower and bloated compared to any MS office

[drizek]

thats why you use koffice.

[bruce89]

thats why you use koffice.
Or Gnome office (AbiWord, Gnumeric)!

[Sirin]

Well, let's see here. Personally, I believe Microsoft has the head start here (hopefully no one will kill me for going with Micro$oft... :eek:).

Which UI looks more functional and simple? Toolbars vs "Ribbons" (Microsoft's revised version of the toolbar). Instead of using seperate toolbars for each
function group, they use "Tabs" (very much like in Firefox), which cut the clutter. This way you won't have to worry about toolbars covering 75% of the screen.

http://www.techzine.nl/uploaded/7801_47422e5a.jpg

http://images.betanews.com/screenshots/1009574294-1.jpg

Here's a video (WMV video, make sure you have the latest WMV plugins) showing the new UI of Office 2007:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/asx/OfficeUIIntro.asx

[JeevesBond]

All these technical arguments are somewhat superfluous to the conceptual differences between Microsoft technologies and Open Source. Most OO.o users will always prefer that package because it's free, and that's free as in freedom, not beer. It's well on the way to becoming an ISO Standard (http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20060503080915835) too. Apparently the Microsoft OpenXML (which is neither in my opinion) format probably won't make it as an ISO Standard. So an Open Format, there's no risk of being locked into, or a spangly interface? I know which I'd choose.

I have tried the online demo of Office 2007, I wasn't impressed or unimpressed. I just felt numb. You see, whether or not Office 2007 is the best peice of software ever written, or bloated rubbish means nothing to Open Source users. We've made our choice, and that choice was for philosphical not technical reasons.

It doesn't matter how many people bleat about the pros-and-cons, whether the Ribbon is better than toolbars, the eye candy etc. We can't use it because it's closed source, it's as simple as that.

Remember: Linux is not Windows (http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm), and Why Software Should Not Have Owners (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html). Some good general discussion about Open Source (http://www.webmaster-forums.net/showthread.php?t=34664). Philosophy, background etc.

Unfortunately if you chose Open Source for technical reasons, you'll probably be disappointed somewhere along the line. Apparently both because Open Source is not exactly the same as Closed Source and yet not different enough either. That's not a personal attack, it's just the truth. I would love it if you found everything you wanted from Open Source. :)

*** EDIT ***
I just tried out KOffice properly for the first time. It's nice, very simple and quick, it's Open Source and supports ODF. Perfect! Thanks for pointing it out drizek.

Will make a personal note to try Gnome's office suite as well at some point. Have used them all, but not very thoroughly before settling on OpenOffice.

[GuitarHero]

I hate how anytime a commercial software company improves visuals linux users always just proclaim that they just added eye candy and nothing else while typing from their xgl/compiz enabled os. Sure, office07 looks nice, but thats because they overhauled the UI. All the functions arent hidden behind a series of menus. Everything is right there. I dont like windows for the most part, but you have to admit the office suite is an industry standard for a reason.

[JeevesBond]

I hate how anytime a commercial software company improves visuals linux users always just proclaim that they just added eye candy and nothing else while typing from their xgl/compiz enabled os. Sure, office07 looks nice, but thats because they overhauled the UI. All the functions arent hidden behind a series of menus. Everything is right there. I dont like windows for the most part, but you have to admit the office suite is an industry standard for a reason.

Well I hope you're not referring to my post in that reply. :)
That certainly wasn't the crux of my argument, I have no real feelings about the interface.

[Lord Illidan]

Before shooting our mouths off, how many of us have actually tried the BETA? I am going to download it right now.

From the screenshot, MS beats Open Office by a loong way, in terms of UI design. That's a plus. Open Office doesn't look as good, and for Joe Average, that means a lot.

And as for functionality, sure many of you are doing essays, but when it comes to doing more advanced things, where do you go?

You can do an essay in Koffice and OOffice easily, sure enough. But MS still remains more userfriendly up to a point. I still have to hunt for features in Open Office.

I like Open Office for its philosophy, but it has to catch up.

[bruce89]

I think the ribbon is quite interesting, but also quite confusing. I think that the icons should resize according to how much they are used (bigger for more often, smaller for less used.

[Lord Illidan]

Just installed and tried it out.

So far, impressed.

The UI is excellent, best I've seen.
It is not very fast, though.

Word 2007 loads up very fast, as fast as Word 03, and faster than Open Office 2.02.

In terms of speed, I find that with a picture included in the document, it gets slow, particularly when moving around. Otherwise, it is still slow... slower than the other two.

I have a Celeron 2 GHZ.. perhaps that's the reason for the slowness.

Confusing? Only for 1 minute until I grasped the interface. Most features I need are there on the ribbon, no need to go bungling around.

Word Art remains the same, hehe...My sister is going to be bored with them... OOffice can create better ones with some patience and knowledge.

For users with large screens the rightclick windows are a big big bonus, as they don't have to travel all the way with the mouse.
Sure, they can use shortcut keys, but who memorizes them all.


I like the software. Let's get the devs at OOfice working hard to get this functionality...and fast.
And I am not an MS Fanboy, as you probably already well know. I just give the dues to Microsoft when it deserves them.

In terms of Memory Usage, it takes around the same as Open Office, a bit more.. with 43,848 k.
This rapidly increased to over 55,000k when I inserted an image and started playing around with the toolbars. OOfice takes 36,304 k, increased to 42,000k when I inserted the same image.

The translucency feature when moving images of the new Office is really bad. It looks good, but slow. CPU usage climbs to 90-99% and it is not a very big image...

Firefox takes the bunch with 81,840 k and counting. A shame, eh.

One thing I also like. You can publish to blogs right within the interface. Great thing for MS, as people can write their blogs from wherever they are from the comfort of their own word processor.

[Sirin]

Just installed and tried it out.

So far, impressed.

The UI is excellent, best I've seen.
It is not very fast, though.

Word 2007 loads up very fast, as fast as Word 03, and faster than Open Office 2.02.

In terms of speed, I find that with a picture included in the document, it gets slow, particularly when moving around. Otherwise, it is still slow... slower than the other two.

I have a Celeron 2 GHZ.. perhaps that's the reason for the slowness.

Confusing? Only for 1 minute until I grasped the interface. Most features I need are there on the ribbon, no need to go bungling around.

Word Art remains the same, hehe...My sister is going to be bored with them... OOffice can create better ones with some patience and knowledge.

For users with large screens the rightclick windows are a big big bonus, as they don't have to travel all the way with the mouse.
Sure, they can use shortcut keys, but who memorizes them all.


I like the software. Let's get the devs at OOfice working hard to get this functionality...and fast.
And I am not an MS Fanboy, as you probably already well know. I just give the dues to Microsoft when it deserves them.

In terms of Memory Usage, it takes around the same as Open Office, a bit more.. with 43,848 k.
This rapidly increased to over 55,000k when I inserted an image and started playing around with the toolbars. OOfice takes 36,304 k, increased to 42,000k when I inserted the same image.

The translucency feature when moving images of the new Office is really bad. It looks good, but slow. CPU usage climbs to 90-99% and it is not a very big image...

Firefox takes the bunch with 81,840 k and counting. A shame, eh.

One thing I also like. You can publish to blogs right within the interface. Great thing for MS, as people can write their blogs from wherever they are from the comfort of their own word processor.


Don't forget that as you hover over an object in the ribbon, you can get live previews before even clicking on the object. Saves a lot of time and helps reduce the time using CTRL+Z. ;)

[JeevesBond]

Before shooting our mouths off, how many of us have actually tried the BETA?
I haven't but have tried the online demo, essentially the same thing over a Citrix metaframe.
Most businesses can't justify the cost (http://news.com.com/Office+upgrade+hard+to+justify,+warns+analyst/2100-1012_3-6086693.html).

I like Open Office for its philosophy, but it has to catch up. Catch up with what? OpenOffice is fulfilling it's aim of providing a way for users of Open Source to work with annoying proprietary formats, whilst pioneering a new open format. It's doing very well at it's aims, my only criticism is they've tried too much to look like Microsoft products so users would find it easier to move over.

As businesses will not be changing immediately and everyone is familiar with previous incarnations, it would be folly to immediately take the bait and change their UI.

It's a little worrying that you seem so obsessed with how great the new version of Office is. I really think you need to buy into the philosophy (http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netsecur/article.php/3617056) of Free Software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html) before using it (or voicing an opinion on it!), to be honest you look a little silly preaching to dedicated loathers of all things proprietary.

[Koori23]

Things that I've noticed on tech support and stuff in the past.. People (i.e. Administrative folks, exec's, etc) just use the basics and don't really know a whole lot about style sheets and formatting. I used to work for a 400 user Insurance company and they were still using Office 97 even though Office 2003 has been out for years. I don't see that adding all the flash and pretty stuff is going to help any. It seems to me MS Office is great at the basics, but so is OO.org. Plus, you take a particular GUI interface that you've used for 15 years and change it all the sudden, people aren't going to like that much.

When this rolls out in 2007, with a 500 dollar price tag, you're going to ask yourself.. "If all I do is use Word to type a report, do I really need to pay 100 dollars for that application ALONE?"

[spier]

... I don't see that adding all the flash and pretty stuff is going to help any. ..."

Hei, like the tobacco industry, regardless the "Office" term, is Ms focusing teenagers now too?;)

BTW, I'm feeling old after reading this thread. I thought writing was just about typing letters in...

[JeevesBond]

is Ms focusing teenagers now too?
Funnily enough, yes! If Microsoft get them while they're young, they hope to get them for life. Take a look at the - now failed - threedegrees idea (http://news.com.com/2008-1082-960666.html). That was a few years ago, but I doubt they've changed tack that much. :)


BTW, I'm feeling old after reading this thread. I thought writing was just about typing letters in...
Agreed, am certain that the people who matter (parents, schools, governments) will agree. What you must agree is that having an open format is important, on that's an ISO Standard would be particularly good...