Windows XP Office Software Discussion

[DigitalDoctorTech01]

As I am sure you are all aware Microsoft's Office Suites have become widely used in the office, schools, and in the home. I thought I would start up a little discussion on the subject of Office Software.

Some of you may or may not be aware of a little something put out by the Freeware community in collaboration with Sun Microsystems.

I am refering specifically to OpenOffice.

If you have not tried it then I recomend you give it a go.
You can find the Download Here:
http://www.openoffice.org/

Personally, I Love OpenOffice, You can open documents created by Excel Spreadsheets, PowerPoint Presentations, Access databases, and Word documents, and you can even save new documents in the same format as the above listed programs. And Best of all, it is 100% Free!

I am wondering what other people think about the functionality of OpenOffice, Especially when compared to some of the new features included in Microsoft's Office 2007.

Do you think you get what you pay for and that OpenOffice is far more limited than Microsoft?

Or are you like me and think that Microsoft is making way too much money for functionality that you can find for free with OpenOffice?

 

[Anon_F]

And for a moment DigitalDoctorTech01 i thought you were trying to sell me something!

 

[V_R]

Yep, OO is good. I use MS Office at work and OO at home and have only ever had one Excel Book that didn't open. (A World cup score chart that had some monster macros in it.)

Its included in my Sticky in this section of the forums.

 

[muckshifter]

I've been using OO for some time now, helps to have a x-platform software that works in Linux & Windows.

 

[Osamede]

Do you think you get what you pay for and that OpenOffice is far more limited than Microsoft?

Or are you like me and think that Microsoft is making way too much money for functionality that you can find for free with OpenOffice?

For all the programs that are actually included in Open office, it is equal to or surperior than MS Office Suite. So if that is all you use, then you are wasting every penny you spend on MS Office S

However MS Office Suite (or rather some versions of it) has two highly valuable organisational programs which OpenOffice does not compete agasin: Outlook and OneNote.

If you use these at at all or if you need to sync PIM data with a smartphone, then MS Office is worth some money, though not the amout they demand.

Nonetheless OpenOffice is fantastic and it is basically the reason that Microsoft makes the price of MS Outlook (as a standalone program) not much cheaper than buying the whole suite - becuase it is probably the main value added of the whole MS Suite. The rest you can get for free at OpenOffice and its top notch.

 

[ThunderingWeb]

As someone who has just been forced to remove Office at work and replace it with an OO derivative, the functionality gap is staggering. Outlook alone is worth the price of Office Suite to anyone in a multi-national corporate and is the hub of the Office System. It is an integation tool not just a Mail Client.

I now spend half an hour cut and pasting meeting requests, and even longer trying to work out who an email went to as using any of the open source mail clients mean you cannot expand distribution lists in the email.

Anyone worked out how to insert another mail as an attachment using ThunderBird or Evolution Client? Do I really have to save it to "my documents" and then do a Manual attachment?
What is the OO equivalent to MS Project? how does it integrate with the rest of OO
How do you emulate the multi user capability of SharePoint/Excel spread sheets?
Just try getting any accountant or Project manager to use the OO Spreadsheets, they'll kick you out of the door.

Don't get me wrong, OO has it's place - in front of Junior School kids and Local authority drones, but "Enterprise Ready"?

Ha Ha Ha - that's like expecting a Mozarella Browser to understand a multi domain Corporate Infrastructure by querying LDAP

and YES, I am at home using Office 2007, and YES, I did pay the full upgrade price out of my own pocket, and yes I have told my boss that I will resign on the 1st March if I don't have MS Office on my Office Desktop by then.

It's quite Simple,
Question - What's the difference between Microsoft Office and Open Office?
Answer - One costs a lot and expects the Machine to do the work, the other is free ...

Just work out the cost of me cut and pasting half an hour a day, 48 weeks a year for 3 years, and compare to the cost of Office, there is more to Business cases than Product cost, there's this annoying little factor called productivity.

OO on an XP platform crashes more regularly than Windows 95 did.

 

[Osamede]

I love Outlook myslef, but that cant blind me to the fact that there are millions of people who dont need or use Outlook. They use word and the use Excel occasionally

So for those people OpenOffice is fantastic value - free. What is there to complain about? Its not surprising at all that Outlook as a standalone is not much cheaper thant the whole suite. That tells you the rest of little or no market value to most people.

 

[xxcrimsonreddxx]

not really feeling Outlook. I don't know many people that do.

I prefer Office,but there really is not that big of a difference, plus OO is free =]

 

[DigitalDoctorTech01]

OO on an XP platform crashes more regularly than Windows 95 did.

I have personally never had a problem with OpenOffice.org 2.1 causing any crashes on a windows XP machine, and I use the program quite frequently. You might want to scan your pc for viruses and spyware, or maybe you have errors on your hard disk, or in your RAM.
I don't use office software for all the coloboration stuff and all that, I've never even heard of MS Project! I'm not saying OO is the right choice, especially for the corporate user who might need some of the office 2007's more advanced XML functionality.
But, for a home user, small and medium sized businesses, schools, government and the like I think OO is an excellent choice, but may not be right for everybody.

 

[Abarbarian]

FREEWARE ROCKS
FIGHT
AGAINST
THE BIG BROTHER
NANNY STATE
IDEAL
OF MICROSOP

​

 

[prak_sophy]

EMBED Equation.3

I have some problems with MS Word(Office11). When I use Equation Editor and write math symbols but when I return word document to work countinue. No symbols math in word document but it this play message "[font=&quot] EMBED Equation.3" only.
Could everybody help me about this problems?
Thank you so much!!!!
[/font]