OpenOffice.org more complete than MS Office

[Hex_Mandos]

I've often seen discussions on whether OOo is up to MS Office. Most of the time, the main points are "OOo Eriter doesn't have a grammar checker or a way to switch to Title Case", or "OOo Calc doesn't include some obscure mathematical formula" vs. "OOo can save PDFs". Today, I realized something: OOo includes the Draw component, which I've found is quite nice. MS Office, on the other hand, only includes Visio in the most expensive bundles. I suppose most people end up using PowerPoint for that kind of stuff. For this reason, today I instructed three friends to install OOo: otherwise, they won't be able to open the flowcharts I sent to them.

So, while business users might find Visio better than OOo Draw, most people probably won't know that such a tool exists, as Office is just the big 5 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Outlook, maybe Publisher?). That makes OpenOffice.org better than most "Home" edtions of MS Office, IMO.

[mech7]

You can't compare draw to visio imho.. visio is much more extended not that i like it all that much but it definitly is more easier to draw common diagrams. I like conceptdraw a bit better, i think there was a opensource tool also can't remember the name.

[Hex_Mandos]

Yes, Visio is probably much better. But how many home users have an Office version that includes Visio? Those never come preinstalled by OEMs, and IIRC are more expensive than a Windows license.

[mech7]

Yes, Visio is probably much better. But how many home users have an Office version that includes Visio? Those never come preinstalled by OEMs, and IIRC are more expensive than a Windows license.

Visio is not ment for home users :) as most of them don't know what UML or DFD is ;)

[starcraft.man]

I dunno, can't comment on Visio cuz I've never used it. That said, I do think there are a lot of users who do pay for Office licenses (average users, like at home) and only make simple word documents and basic spread sheets, and don't realize that OO does all of that for free. Thats a shame I think.

[karellen]

I've often seen discussions on whether OOo is up to MS Office. Most of the time, the main points are "OOo Eriter doesn't have a grammar checker or a way to switch to Title Case", or "OOo Calc doesn't include some obscure mathematical formula" vs. "OOo can save PDFs". Today, I realized something: OOo includes the Draw component, which I've found is quite nice. MS Office, on the other hand, only includes Visio in the most expensive bundles. I suppose most people end up using PowerPoint for that kind of stuff. For this reason, today I instructed three friends to install OOo: otherwise, they won't be able to open the flowcharts I sent to them.

So, while business users might find Visio better than OOo Draw, most people probably won't know that such a tool exists, as Office is just the big 5 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Outlook, maybe Publisher?). That makes OpenOffice.org better than most "Home" edtions of MS Office, IMO.

in your opinion....I almost don't care about the drawing capabilities of office/openoffice as I don't draw that much in documents (and if I want to do it, I have corel), but it's very important for me to can write complex formulas and equations...and openoffice is lacking in this area