What do you think of MS Office?

[MONODA]

personally, I really dont like it. I prefer OOo writer over MS word any day. I just have found MS Office to be so buggy and many things about it just dont make sense. Yes OOo is almost a complete copy with a but less features, but it fixes that with making it logical and adding in a few useful features. I need MS Office compatibility though for giving presentations on windows computers, I would use OOo portable but sometimes I distribute the presentation. It gets really annoying to find that the formatting of a spreadsheet/presentation/document is all messed up. What do you guys thik of MS Office and how it dominates the market?

[aysiu]

I think Microsoft Office is the best product Microsoft has ever produced, and I definitely like it better than OpenOffice, but I actually use some MS Office-only features (unlike 99% of MS Office users, who would be perfectly happy with OpenOffice if they had open minds about it).

[Xerp]

I don't like MS Office all that much - especially considering the price! Open Office and Thunderbird give me everything I need for free :)

[RiceMonster]

I agree with aysiu. It's really good, and it's better than OpenOffice, but OpenOffice does everything I need it to, so I use that.

[LaRoza]

I think Microsoft Office is the best product Microsoft has ever produced, and I definitely like it better than OpenOffice, but I actually use some MS Office-only features (unlike 99% of MS Office users, who would be perfectly happy with OpenOffice if they had open minds about it).

I think it is a pretty good product. It seems great because it is a "standard", everyone is expected to use it, however, I have met professionals who don't use it and find other (nonfree) office products to be superior. So I guess it all comes down to what you expect.

I never used MS Office specific features, and Abiword fulfills all of my needs.

I think the XBox is the best product.

[will1911a1]

I'd like it just fine if I didn't have to pay for it.

Open office does what I need and doesn't cost me anything so the choice is pretty clear for me.

[qazwsx]

Needs odf support.
I don't use it.

[Incense]

I use it at work. I personally don't see the big deal, and always find myself loading OOo portable off my USB key so I can use the export to PDF function. I think it would be better if MS bundled it with windows. I think it's silly to expect a home user to pay so much for a word processor. A side from price though, I guess I really don't have any complaints, and Visio is a really nice program. OOo draw just isn't the same.

[aysiu]

Needs odf support.
I don't use it.
Sun offers an ODF plugin for MS Office:
http://sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin

[uraldinho]

standards aside, it's a very good suite.

Quote: "I just have found MS Office to be so buggy."

It might be buggy initially, but if you update your MS programs as often as you update your linux distro, you might find it to be rather bug free. I was working on some documents recently, and for almost a month I didn't close Word or XP. Every night I put the machine on standby mode and continued the morning after from where I left off... A program that continues running for a month can't be that buggy.

There isn't much wrong with OpenOffice neither, it does everything I need, and for free. I used it for almost a year, but I gave up and went back to MS Office.

If I had to criticise MS Office, I would criticise its platform dependence and lack of standards, but not the program itself. I share the same feelings about XP. I actually happen to like XP, but I don't like the fact that MS pushes its own standards, etc.

[Cresho]

I HATE OFFICE! I once did a report which I wrote with pics and all. The final file size was about 5mb big i asked my self, "5MB BIG?!" SOOO!! I coppied the text and pics and pasted it into a new file with the same name in a different directory. FINAL FILE SIZE IS about 1mb big! Soo.....where did the other 4mb go? I do my reports like this. When ever I finish a document, i recopy and paste into another word file shaving tons of space.

This is so stupid!:confused:

Lately, I have been using ooo and Have not bothered doing this method to try since I havent written thick school reports.

[uraldinho]

I HATE OFFICE! I once did a report which I wrote with pics and all. The final file size was about 5mb big i asked my self, "5MB BIG?!" SOOO!! I coppied the text and pics and pasted it into a new file with the same name in a different directory. FINAL FILE SIZE IS about 1mb big! Soo.....where did the other 4mb go? I do my reports like this. When ever I finish a document, i recopy and paste into another word file shaving tons of space.

This is so stupid!:confused:

Lately, I have been using ooo and Have not bothered doing this method to try since I havent written thick school reports.

it probably keeps track of all the changes you make so that it can do UNDO. The clipboard also keeps all your copy/paste info, plus the formatting information... It all adds up.

Just a guess....

[popch]

It works. Most of it, most of the time, anyway.

[Kernel Sanders]

Microsoft Office 2007 is the best office software I have ever used. It's beautiful, has a very intuitive UI, and is ridiculously functional.

It was worth the £50 student license I paid, no question.

[MONODA]

It might be buggy initially, but if you update your MS programs as often as you update your linux distro, you might find it to be rather bug free.
well the most recent edition is what I was refering too when I made this post (the 2008 edition). Considering that I have only used it on a mac may be why my experience was so negative, I found many bugs while using the software and It seemed too slow for me to use regularly. I havent used any of the features that MS Office has the OOo doesnt have since I dont need any of them, I would be fine with a text editor and some way to save as .doc.

[Kernel Sanders]

Microsoft Office 2008 for MAC is indeed widely considered to be garbage.

[Kinst]

Way better than their operating system.

[hessiess]

I use OO whenever posable, but thay are so simaler it dsent make much difarance. but then I could do most of my written work in notepad without much trouble.

[kazoo boy]

In some cases I found OpenOffice to be buggy, at least on Windows. I had some trouble with it just trying to copy/paste from the Internet(????)

and I've also notice that I cannot find a way in OpenOffice 2.3 to rotate a picture you insert. Sometimes thats pretty important. Lately I've been using OpenOffice, but Office 07 was DEFFINTELY a major improvement over Office 03. Also, I think Office 07 is better with colors and things like that.

[meho_r]

I think it's not so good as many claim. I witnessed three times total break of documents to the extent that they were absolutely unusable. Dozens of important documents lost thanked to the famous Word (all that docs were created and edited in MS Word, it was v. 2000 and 2003.).

And about 2007 -- it's a huge step backward. All people I know hate it since they can't find the most basic functions anymore. It's "Office Vista".

I discovered StarOffice couple of years ago (I was still on Win in that time ;)). From the first look I liked it more than MSO. It was more intuitive, more logical, no mess which only MS Word can do (I really did learn MSO and used it extensively so don't think that all that is because of "one-return-to-much" thing or some "forgotten formatting"; I used styles, sections, indexes, fields and all that elements which should have made a doc consistent, but every time there must be some glitch...) It's simply frustating. If you ever tried to prepare a book in MSO you know what I mean. As I said, nothing special, really...

[Incense]

Microsoft Office 2008 for MAC is indeed widely considered to be garbage.

+1. I had the 2008 trial on my mac for a week or so. It took forever to load, the UI was confusing, and it crashed while typing up a simple document. OOo 3 beta on OS X is much nicer IMO.

[nachomania]

I find it essential. I write essays and projects in french for school, and cannot use OpenOffice because of grammar/spell check problems. It is still great for 100% free program though.

[atomkarinca]

I think Microsoft Office is the best product Microsoft has ever produced...

I think the best thing they've done is Visual Studio 2008.

As for MS Office, with OOo 3 beta I guess there's no need for it. It's fast and it has ooxml support.

[imT]

I agree with aysiu. It's really good, and it's better than OpenOffice, but OpenOffice does everything I need it to, so I use that.

+1 exactly what i was thinking :)

[Redrazor39]

MS Office 2003 sucks crap. I'm serious; it's full of bugs, the UI is crap (nothing is in the place you'd expect and it's definitely NOT efficient), and the format SUCKS. Too bad the format is standard...


MS Office 2007 still has a few bugs, but the UI is AWESOME! There are some redundancies and annoyances, but you can almost expect that from MS now. If OOo just revamped the UI to something really cool, good looking, efficient, and easy to figure out, then OOo would pwn MS Office in every way. OOo just needs to organize the UI and then it'll be perfect!

[DeadSuperHero]

I liked office up to 2003.
2007's interface is too different for me. Not my thing.

[lyceum]

I think Microsoft Office is the best product Microsoft has ever produced, and I definitely like it better than OpenOffice, but I actually use some MS Office-only features (unlike 99% of MS Office users, who would be perfectly happy with OpenOffice if they had open minds about it).

I agree. If MS could make everything as good as their office suit they would be in much better shape (program wise; they are obvously fine $$ wise :) They really have the money to not care either way.

[LaRoza]

I agree. If MS could make everything as good as their office suit they would be in much better shape (program wise; they are obvously fine $$ wise :) They really have the money to not care either way.

I wouldn't say it is good. What good is it if its formats are not open? Now if it supported open formats...

[mkendall]

I made an extensive spreadsheet using Excel 2000 that weighed in at 11+ megabytes in size. I decided to rebuild it in Open Office. (It was necessary to rebuild it due to incompatibility issues in syntax.) After adding even more functionality and tables to the spreadsheet, the final size in Calc was under 950 kb.

Things I like about Calc:
90% smaller file size
"Sort Entries Ascending" <-- very useful in my spreadsheet
price

Things I liked not so much:
How Calc processes Names; getting "Err 512" for =Lvl1 is rather annoying
Lack of true WYSIWYG in print preview

[jrusso2]

Seriously I think the best version of Office was Office 2000. I got a free copy for doing beta testing and I have used it since.

Open Office pretty much does what I need though.

I got a free copy of Office 2007 for attending the launch, and I tried it out and while its nice, its a bit confusing to me.

[kazoo boy]

I've noticed there's a lot of people who don't like the new interface of Office 07. I think people who never like the old one take to very well (like me) but I think people who were finally used to the old one have a problem. To me it looks a lot better, but I've been raised in a generation of graphics I guess. :)

[cardinals_fan]

OpenOffice has done a good job of imitating Microsoft Office... which is why I despise it. They're both bloated programs that waste my time and disk space.

[a1z]

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

[Corfy]

The first word processor I had any experience with was WordPerfect, which at the time was produced by Novell and was installed on the computers at my college. When I got my first computer, I purchased Corel WordPerfect Suite 8 for it (with Quattro Pro). My first job used Macs that used ClarisWorks (and another program that I can't remember for our word processing... it wasn't an MS product, but I don't remember what it was off hand). So it wasn't until I started a job in 2000 that I started using Word and Excel, and then only at the office.

So I have had less exposure to Microsoft Office than some have, but I am less than impressed with it. Granted, I haven't used 2007. I do have a copy of it after attending a Microsoft event last year, but I have no interest in installing it, and I don't really have anywhere to install it since I don't have Windows at home and we don't use 2007 at the office.

I switched to OpenOffice.org from WordPerfect in 2004 with version 1.1.3, and I have been happy with it ever since. (That was before I tried Linux for the first time, BTW.) I have looked at some other office suites (KOffice, GNOME Office, etc.), but I keep coming back to OOo.

[Giant Speck]

Microsoft Office 2007 is to OpenOffice.org 3.0 as Photoshop CS3 is to Gimp 2.6.

Office and Photoshop are the best you can possibly have in their respective genres of computer programs, have the most features, and have the most desirable user interface. However, they both contain so many features that a good portion of them are never used by the average user.

OpenOffice and Gimp are great for the average user almost solely because it is free. Second, OpenOffice and Gimp are able to replicate the features of Office and Photoshop that average users use the most, therefore making it an easy and inexpensive replacement for those programs. However, the fact that OpenOffice and Gimp don't have every feature that Office and Photoshop have, and that the user interface of both programs may not be as great, is enough to be a turn-off for more serious users.

So, for normal everyday users, who use an word processing suite to create simple documents such as letters and reports, OpenOffice 3.0 is the best choice because it is able to do those things just as well as Microsoft Office 2007, but with absolutely no cost to the consumer.

However, for more serious users, such as those in business, who need the features that average users don't even know are there, the clear choice is Microsoft Office 2007.

[myusername]

Abiword to me is far greater than MS Office or OOo

[bomanizer]

I can do all that I need to do on both MSOffice and OOo, so it's a draw... at least between Word and Writer. I've used Word extensivly at school, but I wrote my thesis with OOo.