Replying to OpenOffice Writer Vs Microsoft Word

CompatiblitiyOpenOffice Writer Vs Microsoft Word

I've been using Open Office since it was Sun Star Office.  The other day I heard someone in a computer store telling a student not to use Open Office because "it's not compatible with Word."  I hear things like this all the time - "don't use Linux because it's not compatible with Windows."  The truth is that I can open any file on my linux computer.  I do have XP and 7 because they are required for some classes I'm taking (and they are also free because I'm taking those classes), but I see no need for them.  I was a teacher before I went back to school and I received papers in all types of formats, from OpenOffice, Page, Abi, Microsoft and even Han, a Korean language alternative to Word.  Because I use Open Office I can open any of these files.  Teachers who use Word have to tell their students to use a specific format because they can not read it otherwise.  Changing formats seems simple to some, but it can be extremely confusing for people who are not good with computers.  I was teaching English at the time so I didn't care if my students were able to change the format of their papers as long as they wrote their papers in English.  I don't know why anyone would limit themselves to Microsoft Word (I also think AbiWord, is a waste of processing power) when there is a free alternative that is much more versatile.  

-reply by Jeff

 

As "Alegis" quoted, "Open Source" does not mean it's better. Sure do I agree that MS-Office comes with a price, but when it comes to product, MS-Office is far better than Open Office.  In its current state the usability/capabilities/look and feel of MS-Office is much superior to OO.  At an enterprise level since MS-Office is available for us free of cost, I would prefer to go with it. But personally, I won't like to pay the price for MS-Office and would go with OO instead.

-reply by Sunil

the company that I am working right now is using both MS Word and OpenOffice because we cant really put down the use of MS Word. the reason is that some of our application does not or is not compatible with open office. for example our Oracle E-Business Suite 11i does not work well with open office some of its function will not work. That is why we still use MS Word but not totally maybe just 20% of the work force.

as for the review well I do like MS Word for its easy to use type kinda thing but if personally you are going to let me choose between them provided that I will adhere to the legality of piracy and stuffs like that I would choose open office personally since all my needs can be catered by this software all I need ( I think) is to practice using it so I wont have a hard time using it.

I personally use Microsoft Office Word but I use OpenOffice.org for other stuff like OOo Impress (equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint).
The reason is that formatting issues and etc have came up when saving OpenOffice.org documents as ".doc" and then reopening them in Microsoft Office Word at school.

If I'm sure I don't need to use Microsoft Word to open the document, by all means I use OpenOffice.org Writer.

OpenOffice.org is better because it is free, open-source (more secure) and compatible with a lot more file formats than Microsoft Office software. Also, file sizes are a bit smaller when saving the same document in OpenDocument format (slightly, only sometimes?).

I'm ready to use both if necessary

I agree with beatgammit about it being more morally just using OpenOffice.org (that's the name of the suite as "OpenOffice" was already copyrighted when the program was created) because by using Microsoft Office we're supporting the horrible standards Microsoft forces on us. Sure, their new document format is going to be open, but if so, why not use the one already available? OpenDocument was designed in a very fine manner, and could be easily interpreted, even by humans. Microsoft Office Open XML contains a lot of clutter to be backward-compatible, and is, like almost everything Microsoft does in terms of file formats, cluttered, very unintuitive and not very friendly. Comparing them shows strong points for both, but that doesn't even matter, as OpenDocument was there before and Microsoft had the opportunity to voice its opinion about it, but instead chose to rebel like an angst-full teenager afraid that his best friend will still his girl. Oh, and in the end the girl always dumps the jealous guy.

But don't take me wrong, I never said anything bad about the Microsoft Office suite. It works great and does everything I need! But so does OpenOffice.org, and I'm pretty sure that even in these technical forums, more than 95% of the population hardly use features so special that only MS has it. You're all just being lazy to re-learn how to process your documents. Or maybe you just like the Office UI better, which I must unfortunately agree with.

I used the OpenOffice suite all throughout highschool. The .Doc support was fine, I never ran into any issues. After high school and as of now, I've been writing and rewriting my resume in OpenOffice and saving in .doc format and I've noticed not everything looks the way it should. I write everything in OOffice and then I use microsoft's free word .doc viewer to check and make sure everything looks okay before I send it off. That's how I work around that.

Other than essays and resumes, most of my writing now are screenplays for my movies which I write in Celtx (also free and open source)

I'm currently using microsoft word but not because of my choice, partly because i need the program that can read the .doc formats for work and a program that understands the special features in the doc files.
The other reason i'm using microsoft word is because where i work, it is compulsory and they give copies out to their employees for a discounted price, otherwise i wouldn't even bother using it because i know there are other programs that can do the same (or a bit less) with little or no cost.
Another reason why i'm sticking with word is because i know how to use it and i know where everything is so there's no need for me to spend time reading the manual or help files etc..

I would try Open Office if i ever get linux because word surely doesn't want to work on linux.

-HellFire

Thank-you everyone for your posts so far. In my summer internship, I worked as a computer programmer for a small computer software business. While there, I discovered the beauty of standardization. With standardization, more products can work together to create a better experience for the user, which is the end goal of software, correct? Anyway, I think that OO has taken more steps to adopt a standardized way of creating and editing text files. People on other OS's, like Mac and Linux, are forced to convert between the different file formats, or pay out the wazoo for enterprise software.

I like that OO has a file format that is accepted by a variety of software, like Mac and Linux, and can also save in .doc format. I know that Microsoft is adopting a more open standard, but they are trying to force everyone to use their standard instead of using the existing standard. Sure, Microsoft's office suite has more features, but it also ignores other software out there. At college I know alot of people who are forced to use a product that can read .doc files.

I think OO has taken a step in the right direction. I like OO because of a "moral" point of view, not a feature point of view. If M$ were responsible, I would adopt their way of doing things, but since they make no room for other systems, I prefer OO. Both get the same job done anyway.

For my personal stuff I usually use OpenOffice to write somekind of a document for myself or a friend, but when I need to do something for my studies, I need to use Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access mainly), even though I could work without it and for example .doc files could be shown to everyone as PDF file, I don't like .doc files anymore, because the PDF is much better for me, and it isn't editable and can be easily printed..

On Linux if somebody doesn't use Wine and similar stuff, when Openoffice is the best choice if you don't want to boot to Windows or you don't even have it installed.

But I agree that the GUI of OpenOffice is quite terrible and it is quite slow, when OO will be rewritten using c++ language and will use a better GUI, who knows, maybe it will become much better.

Open Office sure isn't bad. But since I currently have the whole Microsoft Office suite on my computer, I see no point in downloading another office suite. I'm perfectly satisfied with that Office aspect of Microsoft's products. Of course, if I were in college and desperately needed a document editor and couldn't afford Microsoft's Office Suite, then I'll probably go for Open Office.

Now, if I could afford Microsoft's Office Suite while cash-strapped, I might just go for it as I do find it better than Open Office. I might like Open Office better if they offered separate downloads for each of their programs. There was one day that I wanted to just download Calc to create a spreadsheet (and since I was on a shared computer, I thought it was pointless to download a HUGE package), I scrounged their website looking for what I wanted, but I could never find it. It might be helpful to some people who are space-strapped and want to save some by not downloading the useless parts.

And I agree with Alegis that open source does not automatically make a product good. The regular user really isn't going to care if a product's source code is open to the community or not, because, put it plainly, they're not going to be the ones editing it. Only the few developers will care, but since they're the ones making the product anyway, it's kind of expected that they'd care. Therefore, I think it's better to judge open source products just as you'd judge anything else--quality (such as the things it can get done, the price, possible security issues, etc) and not just some tag thrown on it.