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MS Office vs. Openoffice?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by cfitzarl, Jun 12, 2007.

?

Which do you have/Prefer

I own MS Office and hate OpenOffice 1 vote(s) 3.2%
I own MS Office, but am neutral about OpenOffice 13 vote(s) 41.9%
I own OpenOffice, and hate MS Office 3 vote(s) 9.7%
I own OpenOffice, and am neutral about MS Office 6 vote(s) 19.4%
What's OpenOffice? 1 vote(s) 3.2%
What's MS Office? 0 vote(s) 0.0%
I don't use a word processor/I use something else (specify) 2 vote(s) 6.5%
I own MS Office and prefer OpenOffice over it. 1 vote(s) 3.2%
I own OpenOffice and prefer MS Office over it. 4 vote(s) 12.9%
  1. cfitzarl TechSpot Chancellor

    I was just wondering which you prefer and/or have :D ! I have Openoffice and I'm happy with it so far....well....I've really only used the spreadsheet, but it was exactly like Excel (feature wise).
  2. halo71 Newcomer, in training

    Where the option "I own MS Office and prefer OO over it"?
  3. cfitzarl TechSpot Chancellor

    Lol, I would add it, but I can't edit the poll :S .
  4. agi_shi Newcomer, in training

    Just the fact that OO is free and supports practically everything that MS Office does makes it my winn4r!
  5. kitty500cat Newcomer, in training

    OpenOffice is kinda cool, but the Draw program doesn't even compare with MS Publisher.

    I still prefer MS Office over OpenOffice.
  6. mopar man TechSpot Ambassador

    Wow, I don't think I have ever been so clueless. What are they?
  7. RamenNoodles Newcomer, in training

    open office is free, plain and simple.
  8. kitty500cat Newcomer, in training

    OpenOffice Draw is a part of OpenOffice that you can use to design stuff like maybe cards, advertisements, etc. Microsoft Publisher, a part of certain versions of MS Office, does that too; but I think Publisher is better.

    Considering the price, however...
  9. raybay TechSpot Addict

    Where is the option that says I love Open Office, and I love Microsoft Office Version ____
    There are still way too many tasks for MS Office, than Open Office cannot do...
    But Open Office is getting better every month...
    When it will create all the files that MS Office does, and when it will read all the files MS Office does, then it is the winner.
    Unfortunately, in the work environment, MS Office is out ahead. In the college and personal use department, there is no reason to spend all that money on Microsoft products.
  10. cfitzarl TechSpot Chancellor

    Sorry, I can't edit the poll, I would add these options though :( .
  11. SNGX1275 TechSpot Special Forces

    I have a legal copy of Office 2007, and I must say it is the first major advancement in the "Office" world since 97. Now I'm not a power user so perhaps some major advancements have been made between 97 and 2003, but visually and ease of use are much improved in 2007.

    I've been using NeoOffice on OS X and it is alright. Incredibly slow to load up though, and it doesn't do the only Excel macros I've ever needed to use. Its pretty good for tossing together something but interoperability with MS Office on a more complex level just doesn't work well. One thing that is fantastic about OO/NeoOffice is it natively can save to pdf.
  12. I use both. Open Office on my Ubuntu PC, and MS Office 2003 on my RIG.
  13. kitty500cat Newcomer, in training

    Doesn't MS Office 2007 save to PDF? Or is that only an add-on?

    I had used the beta version of MS Office 2007, and once I got used to the new GUI in Word, I liked it. I do remember that I could save documents to PDF, but I think that may have been an add-on.
  14. SNGX1275 TechSpot Special Forces

    Probably can, I haven't needed to yet. But OO has been doing that for a long time, MS just now got around to it.
  15. jobeard TechSpot Ambassador

    The Office Suites are bundled/integrate programs, some of which are usefull and to others,
    portions are useless or better performed by other software. The basics of any
    Office Suite is the word processor and spreadsheet programs.
    The other portions are like candy to a kid; not necessary for day to day use.

    The BIGGEST issue for an Office Suite is compatibility with your correspondents!
    Office implies business and a team of others with which you exchange documents.
    Thus your documents must be able to be processed by their software as well as easy to use by you :)
    At the worst case, you can save as ... into a common format, such as
    RTF(word) or CSV(spreadsheets) but risk loosing things like colored backgrounds.

    Yes, there are many nice components to MS Office, Publisher, Draw, Access,
    Outlook (email+calendar+contacts), but each of these have competing offerings from other vender's.

    So the real issues for MS vs OO is price, support, and B L O A T.
    The subtle benefit for OO(OpenOffice) is it's compatible across platforms,
    which is HUGE in my opinion.
  16. Grafficks Newcomer, in training

    I have both. I have Office XP on my main desktop PC, and I have Office 2007 on my laptop. However, I also have OpenOffice installed on all PCs.

    I'm just a big fan of open-source software. OpenOffice gives you a clone of MS Office with a more attractive price tag.
  17. jobeard TechSpot Ambassador

    AGREED :) better support too!
  18. raybay TechSpot Addict

    No, there are a lot of networked systems, and special software programs that simply will not work reliably with components of OO. Anytime you are using a number of software packages that need access or exporting to and from MS Office, you better test to assure that they will work as well with OO as they do with MSO
  19. Tedster Techspot old timer.....

    Open Office is great. I use open source almost exclusivly on my computers. OO is one of the best things that ever came out in the PC world. I also use Mozilla browser, Firefox broswer, 7Z compression programs, Crap cleaner, Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad-aware, Thunderbird email, Sunbird Calandar program, and other free programs. There really is no need to buy commercial when there are so many good free software programs out there.

    Now if they could only make an open source PDF editor instead of having to buy Adobe standard or professional. There are free readers out there, but I would like a PDF editor that's open source.
  20. Mictlantecuhtli TS Special Forces

    Hate is such a strong word.. so I voted neutral.

    At work I use OpenOffice, and every now and then someone in this building asks me to print / convert an OpenDocument file or something else they can't open with MS Office. Apparently some people are beginning to realize there are alternatives to Microsoft's applications.

    At home I don't have either installed - I simply have no need for such applications. If I happen to stumble upon a Word document or something, I use AbiWord to open it, or if it's a result from Google search, I read its HTML-converted version.