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MS Office vs. Openoffice?

View Poll Results: Which do you have/Prefer
I own MS Office and hate OpenOffice 1 3.33%
I own MS Office, but am neutral about OpenOffice 13 43.33%
I own OpenOffice, and hate MS Office 3 10.00%
I own OpenOffice, and am neutral about MS Office 5 16.67%
What's OpenOffice? 1 3.33%
What's MS Office? 0 0%
I don't use a word processor/I use something else (specify) 2 6.67%
I own MS Office and prefer OpenOffice over it. 1 3.33%
I own OpenOffice and prefer MS Office over it. 4 13.33%
Voters: 30. You may not vote on this poll

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  #1  
Old 06-12-2007
cfitzarl's Avatar
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Location: Boston, MA
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MS Office vs. Openoffice?

I was just wondering which you prefer and/or have ! 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).
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  #2  
Old 06-12-2007
halo71's Avatar
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Location: Augusta, GA.
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Where the option "I own MS Office and prefer OO over it"?
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  #3  
Old 06-12-2007
cfitzarl's Avatar
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Location: Boston, MA
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Lol, I would add it, but I can't edit the poll :S .
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  #4  
Old 06-12-2007
agi_shi's Avatar
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Location: USA
Member since: Jul 2006, 507 posts
Just the fact that OO is free and supports practically everything that MS Office does makes it my winn4r!
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  #5  
Old 06-12-2007
TechSpot Guru
 
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Member since: Apr 2006, 2,420 posts
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OpenOffice is kinda cool, but the Draw program doesn't even compare with MS Publisher.

I still prefer MS Office over OpenOffice.
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  #6  
Old 06-12-2007
mopar man's Avatar
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Location: Tennessee
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Wow, I don't think I have ever been so clueless. What are they?
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  #7  
Old 06-12-2007
RamenNoodles's Avatar
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Location: Baltimore
Member since: Apr 2005, 109 posts
open office is free, plain and simple.
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  #8  
Old 06-12-2007
TechSpot Guru
 
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
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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...
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  #9  
Old 06-12-2007
TechSpot Evangelist
 
Location: Four Corners, US
Member since: Dec 2006, 6,038 posts
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.
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  #10  
Old 06-13-2007
cfitzarl's Avatar
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Location: Boston, MA
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Sorry, I can't edit the poll, I would add these options though .
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  #11  
Old 06-13-2007
SNGX1275's Avatar
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Location: Rolla, Missouri, USA
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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.
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  #12  
Old 06-13-2007
beef_jerky4104's Avatar
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I use both. Open Office on my Ubuntu PC, and MS Office 2003 on my RIG.
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  #13  
Old 06-13-2007
TechSpot Guru
 
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
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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.
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  #14  
Old 06-13-2007
SNGX1275's Avatar
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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.
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  #15  
Old 06-13-2007
jobeard's Avatar
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Location: Southern Calif.
Member since: Apr 2005, 6,556 posts
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.
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  #16  
Old 06-13-2007
Grafficks's Avatar
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Location: Toronto, Canada
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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.
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  #17  
Old 06-13-2007
jobeard's Avatar
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AGREED better support too!
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  #18  
Old 06-13-2007
TechSpot Evangelist
 
Location: Four Corners, US
Member since: Dec 2006, 6,038 posts
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
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  #19  
Old 06-15-2007
Tedster's Avatar
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Location: Talil, Iraq
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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.
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  #20  
Old 06-15-2007
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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.
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