OpenOffice vs. MS Office and Works

[OOZ662]

Open Office will do EVERYTHING (and more in some cases) that MS Office will do, but it can be somewhat harder to do (like an icon not in the same place or the function named differently). That's what happens in open source.

[Gunslinger]

so I took the plunge.  I DLed Open Office and have to say it is really simular to office 2000.  Works just like the MS program but faster.  They upgraded our computers at work to 2007 and ALL THE FREAKIN BUTTONS MOVED!  I can't stand it.  This is just fine and it's free.  I've even considered sending a few pay pal dollars there way.  Highly recomended vs spending the money for microcrap.

[Fulmar]

you can save as pdf in word 2007...but i'm not sure if it was available in earlier versions.  don't think it was.

You can, you just need to have Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader), the $250+ kind.

[indy007]

I'm stuck on MS Office for the forseeable future. I can't complain at all. It cut what's an 8 hour process into 10 minutes once I coded all of the automation. Now I've got this neat system that handles all of my offers, orders, billing, etc, etc all virtually hands free.

It didn't take long to teach myself the code I needed to know to do what I want. Now I just check my email, copy over new lists into the directory, open my Access DB, and click 1 button. It matches inventories, creates nice excel spreadsheets with everything relevant, mails them out, marks the transaction logs, etc, etc.

I managed all of that without any computer classes since highschool... so I can't complain about MS Office at all, let alone contemplate switching.



and you've been able to save as PDF files for a long time, on pretty much any version of MS Office. There's plenty of little plugins that will do it for you. Hell, my lexmark printer install disk came with one that works perfectly.

[straffo]

you can open and save .doc files in OO, if i'm not mistaken.  not sure about works files.  hate works so i've never checked.

(shrug)

usually OO can open .doc word can't open without crashing !

[ROX]

OO can open most documents, spreadsheets, and tables & queries that Office can.

If you don't mind the version with slightly fewer bells and whistles you will be quite happy.  The folks who did OO bright, innovative, and showed a slightly stripped down model would fill most people's needs.  It also requires less of a learning curve than Office.

Sadly, I have to go with Access & Excel as some of the databases and queries I maintain are pretty complicated.  That, and my clients usually need their stuff done in them.. Thank goodness for delimited text files...usually fairly quickly downloadable.




ROX

[DYNAMITE]

I've got MS office and Open office... both are great.  But for the price OO cannot be beat.  I find it to be just as capable as MSO.  As a matter of fact, I don't imagine I'll be buying MSO ever again.

[Nilsen]

I have used open office for work and personal use for a few years now. Dont see the need to pay lots of money to MS when Open Office does it just as good for free. Use it both on my mac and wintels. I do miss Outlook tho, and hope they will soon start to sell Outlook only as they promised not too long ago.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I have used open office for work and personal use for a few years now. Dont see the need to pay lots of money to MS when Open Office does it just as good for free. Use it both on my mac and wintels. I do miss Outlook tho, and hope they will soon start to sell Outlook only as they promised not too long ago.

Thunderbird is much better than outlook anyway.

[Nilsen]

Thunderbird is much better than outlook anyway.

No because it cant sync appointments and contacts with my smartphone like the calendar in Outlook can.