Open Office - Any Good?

[Auntie Helen]

We've got OpenOffice on both macs. It works well on the Intel Mac, albeit seems quite memory hungry. However it's not a good choice for the older PowerPC Mac - it needs some other programme called X11 to run at the same time which means tabbing between applications is awkward. For basic word-processing I use Bean on the PowerPC Mac as it's less faff than OpenOffice. I do find OpenOffice takes a fair while to load up as well.

 

[Mr Pig]

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.

We've had similar issues where documents typed in MS Office have displayed differently in Open Office. Compatibility is not 100%.

 

[Dilbert]

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.

I've had this too. There are minor compatibility problems but for most users of Word and Excel it is more than adequate, and you can't argue with the price.

 

[beanzontoast]

I've been using M$ Office for years, since a reluctant migration from Lotus products in the mid 17th Century

Ahh, Lotus Smartsuite... remember it fondly... almost wish I'd saved the cd for nostalgic purposes.

Almost!

 

[GrasB]

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.

Even office does this between different versions, but it's much less likely to have different layouts compared to OpenOffice.

Auntie Helen, for OS X have you tried NeoOffice? You can get version 3 on OOo that way, though they are a little bit behind on the revisions.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

I use OO at home and Office at work; but I also use OO at work as some things Office can't handle OO can.

Go for it! If you are what I consider a 'normal' user it'll be fine; there are one or two quirks but generally they are evens for most people. One thing to notice is that 'F4' in OO Calc isn't 'F4' in Office (if you have no idea what I'm talking about then ignore me); the other is that page format isn't hidden in 'file' like in Office it's 'format' -> 'page' which makes more sense TBH.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Open Office is pretty good for most every day purposes. Like other people, I found a few compatibility issues. If I wrote something in Open Office, saved it in Word format and opened it in MS Word, it wouldn't look quite the same.

I have to say, I think MS Office is that bit better, especially MS Office 2007. When I went back to uni, I got a discount version, which I thought was well worthwhile. There are some applications that require MS Excel and won't work with the Open Office equivalent. You've also got VBA (visual basic) with the MS versions. Also, there are a lot of features in MS Word, Access, Excel, PowerPoint (everything else), and since it's the industry standard, there are more books you can get to help take full advantage of it. For example, I'm thinking of using Excel to record some temperatures using a USB thermometer. I'm not quite sure how to do it, but I am confident I could find out. I wouldn't be nearly so sure with the Open Office spreadsheet.

Still, if Punky's got an old computer that's slowing down, it's probably not worthwhile putting MS Office on it. Open Office would do fine.

 

[Davidc]

I have both, although the MS Office is 2003 and OO is the latest.

I prefer OO and it's faster, but have seemingly randomly had the formatting issue mentioned above when the files are read in MSO 2007.

I have to use access, and that's the only reason I keep MSO on the computer.

Ultimately it's the price of MS products deters me from buying and using them.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Just read the start again and that Punky's getting a new laptop. In that case, Open Office is fine and better than Works, but I still reckon Microsoft Office is better. I notice the Office Home and Student version is cheaper on Amazon.

Also, don't chuck your old computer away. Put linux on it.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I have to use access, and that's the only reason I keep MSO on the computer.

Ultimately it's the price of MS products deters me from buying and using them.

Yes, and the annoying thing is that Access doesn't appear to be included in the cheaper versions.

 

[bonj2]

open office spreadsheet hasn't got as good formulas as excel, but that's about it.
not really worth paying for unless you really need the advanced formulas and can't find another way to do it.

fwiw at my work we don't even bother using open office let alone ms office, we just use google docs. All docs are online, accessible from any computer, and you can share them - what's more if two people have got a spreadsheet open at once then one can see the updates that the other is doing in real time.