Open Office - Any Good?

[punkypossum]

I'm getting a new laptop as the old computer is way past its best and slowly grinding to a halt. Currently, I have got an old version of Microsoft Office installed, however, it's so old it's even past the online support phase and I'm not even sure it would work with Windows 7 and I don't really want to fork out for an up-to-date copy of office. The new machine does come with Works pre-installed, which I have used in the past but never found particularly great. Is it worth installing Open Office? Is it any good or at least better than works? Any advice appreciated!!!

 

[kettle]

http://www.software4students.co.uk/

44 quid for microsoft office pro
you or family member needs to be a student with id
you can put it on2 computers

 

[kettle]

i did have open office before my daughter became a student
great value at nil pounds
save everything as microsoft documents A1

 

[Chamfus Flange]

Open Office: similar to MicroSoft Office just not quite as up-to-date.

I've used it in school's and tutoring, and had no problems. Open office will read and create MicroSoft files with little difficulty but not the lastest versions. I currently use both.

.

 

[vernon]

The latest version of OpenOffice will read the latest versions of Microsoft Office's documents the one's that are XML format and have extensions that end with an 'x' e.g. letter.docx

I had the onerous responsibility of transitioning a large user base i.e. 150 adults and 1400 pupils from Microsoft Office to StarOffice (virtually identical to OpenOffice). There wasn't a problem with the pupils but a large number of adults voiced protests about the difficulty in using StarOffice despite it having a user interface that was more or less identical to Microsoft Office 2003, the office software that was in use at the time.

When staff came and asked me to show me how to do a task in Staroffice because it was different to how it was done in Microsoft Office I always asked them to demonstrate to me how they did it in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Almost invariably they couldn't do it in the Microsoft products either and they retreated with their tails between their legs.

I dispatched the 'inferior product' arguments when no one could identify something that that could be done with Microsoft's products that couldn't be done with StarOffice.

A significant minority of staff fought a rearguard action by attempting to indoctrinate the pupils into believing that StarOffice was an inferior product. A lead indoctrinator undermined himself when he bought himself Office 2007 for his school lap top and had greater problems with it than StarOffice and had to accept that I was unable to offer assistance with it - an experience repeated for several Microsoft disciples.

My argument of 'why pay £16000 license fees per annum for transition problems with Microsoft when you can have them for free with Staroffice?' has held sway with the senior management.

Some command are slightly different but for most tasks you will not notice the difference. OpenOffice does have some shortcomings: there's a lack of clip art and templates and the database is weak.

In short - go for it. It does the job and the weakness barely impinge upon the user.

 

[vernon]

Open Office: similar to MicroSoft Office just not quite as up-to-date.

I've used it in school's and tutoring, and had no problems. Open office will read and create MicroSoft files with little difficulty but not the lastest versions. I currently use both.

.

Try the latest version of OpenOffice - it does read the Xml marked up versions of Microsoft documents.

 

[arallsopp]

I like open office. Works a treat. Use it on a few older laptops, and its far far faster than anything else that'll read docx.

 

[MadoneRider1991]

i use it on linux and is great to use

 

[GrasB]

Generally it's nice, quick & very useable if you don't need the full feature set of MS office, however it is missing a few things which you may or may not notice; the admin staff at work say it's missing features they need, but I use it & haven't come across anything it couldn't do after a fashion. The only real problem is I find that it can be pig slow when dealing with very complicated spreadsheets & graphs, but it's not consistently slow so YMMV. As it's free try it & see, as it exports to MS formats what have you lost if you find it doesn't float your boat?

 

[chris667]

Openoffice is good, a real challenger to MS Office, but frankly they're like my Kenwood Chef - packed with lots of features I'll never use.

If all you do is write the odd letter with Word, I would say Abiword is product of choice, and also free. Less of a learning curve migrating from Word as it looks just like old versions, too. In fact, I'd say there's less of a learning curve when you migrate from word 2000 to word 2007. Office looks nothing like it did.

 

[Samjacksons]

Open Office

I find that Open office is just as good as Microsoft software in most cases, but occasionally it does limit you.

 

[Garz]

I use it and think its great. The only problem I had lately was when I mailed work some files I saved upon opening them up they were not identically laid out as they were on my machine. This led to the person thinking my reports were shabby until I showed them in OO how they should have looked.

Probably just a saving format issue.

 

[Norm]

I've been using M$ Office for years, since a reluctant migration from Lotus products in the mid 17th Century, I think, but recently loaded Open Office onto The Smalls' laptop. It's as good for most day-to-day tasks but I don't like the handling of graphs or tables and the auto-formatting is every bit as bad as M$ Office was 6 years ago.

I've switched back to Office because I had the choice and didn't need to learn the Open Office way of doing things but I liked it for the price.

 

[JamesAC]

What I really liked about Open Office was that it could open a damaged XL spreadsheet that M$ Excel couldn't!!

The WP and SS applications are fine. The presentation thing is ok. The database is geeksville city.

 

[jeltz]

I use MS Office at work and generally I think its better than Open Office but I do like Open Office and its gradually getting better and better.

My advice is try it its free you have nothing to lose, it may well do everything you need.