I have used OpenOffice alot of late, creating everything from presentations to documents. I have come to the conclusion that OpenOffice is cleaner and better. I like the whole word completion thing and I love that OpenOffice has smaller files (not really necessary, but I like it). I love how it is saved in an open format that is based off xml so other programs can use it (specifically Google's Docs and Spreadsheets). I like that it is free and offers many of the same features as Microsoft's version (and I like the way they implement them better too).

I was wondering what everyone uses. I know Microsoft Word has been the standard forever, but is it time for a change? Microsoft is also developing their own open xml format to compete with OpenOffice's, which is a good move, but I was wondering if this is reason enough to keep using Microsoft.

MS Word is more mainstream, however I prefer OpenOffice. It does what I need to do, and more.

Now I'm not going to complain about compatibility, that's expected but I would complain when someone does not follow Open Standards, and guess who that would be. The problem with MS, is they sneak in things, that you could say is product placement, they're doing all they can to hook you onto their products and actually trap you to only being able to be with them and while they're mainstream their ability to do this is easy.

I know OO could easily take the mainstream, but people would have to re-learn it, and it's this learning that people do avoid.

Cheers,

MC

I would recommend Open Office for college students who can't afford the price tag of M$ software, just due to the fact the only thing good about it is that it's free and MS can open the same documents. Of course I don't know if their were lawsuits or anything with Open Office though, due to the fact that Open Office is practically a clone of MS word, minus a few features here or there.

Why would people have to relearn it for? If you referring to how it looks compared to MS Word then ok, but formatting text, saving it and all that good stuff is the same. Like I mentioned earlier Open Office is practically a clone of Word, but changed it enough so it don't look and feel like it.

Although I don't like M$ set up on how they sell their products I have to go with reliability in the sense that they never change anything . So finding what you need is easy and if their lack of support doesn't answer your questions you have the net to answer them for you.

This post has been edited by saint-michael: Dec 14 2006, 10:38 AM

I agree with mastercomputers that M$ is mainstream.
On nearly every office pc has the M$ office products.
But we -who doesn't use computer for commercial purposes-
are using both. First of all OpenOffice is free and easy to obtain.

Most of the people i know in the university can not afford M$ Office
and usually use OpenOffice in their own pc.

The main nice feature of OpenOffice is that it's free (and standard pdf support).

Other than that, especially with office 07 I'd have no other reason at all to chose OpenOffice. I'm using the Office 07 Suite right now and I feel like I'm getting worth for my buck.

Word XP vs Word 97 wasn't an amazing difference. Word XP wasn't that special from the OpenOffice suits anyways. But again they've set a precedence OO will have to catch up with, and what is a problem with Open source software - graphics. There are (web) demo versions of the Office suite. Working with documents is more efficient and actually much more fun to do with the interface, as well as adding graphs and the like.

OpenOffice is good. For someone that merely wants to type a document with nothing more I'd definitely recommend as it's free. Office definitely ads something extra. If you don't think you need it or appreciate it, that is fine with you. Don't take me down for praising an enterprise product rather than opensource. Open source does not mean it's better than enterprise because of some company hate many seem to wield, especially vs microsoft.

Try it, it's fun. I absolutely like the vista office suite. I wouldn't say office XP is much or any better than the current Open Office writer.

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.

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.

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.

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

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)