Open Office Vs Microsoft So thinking of dumping Microsoft Office?

[xpress 0]

In my opinion also, Open Office is definitely better than Microsoft Office. If the same features(may be more also) coming free of cost, why should we pay? And also, a great communitysupport for open office. And it is improving verywell by every new version.And another thing is it uses very less space(harddisk space) compared to MS Office. Andrecently I had downloaded the Portable open office and using it without problems.About compating issues, some latest MSOffice files are not compatible with its own MSOfficeprevious versions. Then why should we bother about compatibility?

[Lightning73 0]

I choose MS Office, because out of experience I know that Open Office loads slower, now I don't know because that was of my computer or the program.And I'm more familiar with MS Office, and if you know which format to save your files in, you will never have any problems.

[EdgabtheGreat 0]

I use Open Office its almost the same as Microsoft Office and best of all it's free.Why pay for something that's already available for free. I've also never really had a problem with Open Office but Microsoft office always gives me troubles.

[iXeta 0]

Its funny how almost all of us already use Open Office.It just goes to show that Microsoft really is hurting and they're working hard on newoperating systems to make money off of. On OOo itself, Its the same thing asM$'s Office product, with a slightly more confusing interface, but its worth the extrafew seconds of confusion for the price.

[-Sky- 0]

I've only used Microsoft. I've used Microsoft Office before 2007 even came out. I'm staying with Microsoft applications. And wow, I hope new versions of Office are released soon...I think Office 2007 was made for Vista. Even though we can use it on XP aswell but the style..it looks better on Vista then it does on Windows XP of course we could always get the Vista Transformation Pack on, but I ruined my system when I did that. -Sky

[minimcmonkey 0]

If you download the google pack, you get staroffice free, which is the paying equivilent to openoffice, made by the same company.I prefer the real microsoft products though, they seem faster and more reliable, as well as getting good updates frequently, and the online community.

[encryptedwrath 0]

I've got Microsoft office as it came preinstalled with my Vista package. Although I run OpenOffice on my old PC and it works really well on an old machine. There are so many free alternatives nowadays , you can pretty much run a whole Machine on free stuff

[darasen 0]

Part of the marketing at Microsoft is geared at convincing companies that Office is the only real option they have. Even in the latest version of Office the file format is alleged to be more open though it isn't as compatible as it should be. The Microsoft business model is to basically maintain their monopoly. Office will run smoother on Windows because the office program has hooks into the OS. Other companies to not have the ability to do this as the code is completely unavailable to them. Thusly any MS product will run better under windows than a non MS product because Ms alone has the information to make a program run best on the OS. ne of the reasons the latest version of Office switched to the new UI (less intuitive and more annoying) was that the oe in previous versions is too familiar to users. So they patend or copyright or what ever the new layout and every keeps uding Office until a normal UI lay out seems to be the awkward one to make any competing product unfamilair or uncomfortable to users. (read less desirable)

[Jezstarr 0]

I never tried using Open Office, but I heard it's pretty cool. I only ever used Microsoft Office, which suits me well enough.

Yes same here have been seeing advertisements of it around lately but never actually ever used it or seen it in action. Have never heard anyone say it was real good or real bad either. It's a great idea i must say but I'm just gonna stick with my Microsoft Office for now!

[joeblogg 0]

i like microsoft office. its easy and it has great functions. and as mentioned before everyone uses it. its also much more reliable than some free office suite of the interenet. i think you might as well just use office.

[rvalkass 5]

i like microsoft office. its easy and it has great functions. and as mentioned before everyone uses it.

 

Not everyone uses it. A lot of people might use it, but certainly not everyone. There are loads of different office suites, and companies especially often pick a different one. It depends on licence costs, available support, functionality, ease of use...

 

its also much more reliable than some free office suite of the interenet.

Microsoft Office crashes pretty much every time I've ever tried to use it. That is across XP, Vista and Macs, and all versions from about 97 upwards. OpenOffice I don't think has ever crashed on me. Also, in years to come, OpenOffice files will still work. The format is a defined standard that has been supported for many years, and therefore anyone can write software to interpret it. Microsoft has only just realised the massive importance of it, but they're already too late.

 

i think you might as well just use office.

The last point, and the most obvious, is of course price. OpenOffice is infinitely cheaper than Microsoft Office, and does exactly the same job.

[anwiii 17]

Microsoft Office crashes pretty much every time I've ever tried to use it. That is across XP, Vista and Macs

what the heck are you doing to crash microsoft office?! i have used office for years without a single crash so wondering what you know about ms office that is known to make it crash.

now although i use ms software, i wish there is one day i don't have to be a supporter of them. until the compatibility problems are non existent, i will play it the safe and easy way and conform to something that is getting old nowadays...

[Saint_Michael 3]

Odds are the computers he was using we pretty bad in the memory department and thus made them crash, but I gotten Microsoft Office Word to crash on me a few times and that was back Word 97 I believe. As for easy tell that to the people who got Office 2007 boy did the complaints shoot up quickly because of its new layout and that ribbon navigation Microsoft set up.

[kudmus 0]

Because if you would have a company, I'm sure you would like to read and write the same documents that your subcontractors/clients/etc use.

You can do that with OO.orgI'm so sorry to tell everyone that , unfortunately thing arent what we wish they should be. We all would love to see open source bringing MS to it's knees but the truth is: MS Office 2007 rocks. I haven't seen any other suite that can beat it.
I was so happy when Balmer admitted that they face stiff competition mfrom StarOffice and OOo but that does not mean those other guys can beat MS. At least not as yet.
Oh by the way when he said that he was talking about how pathetic Google docs is. He was trying to tell people that they don't compete with such a poor suite.

[Mordent 0]

The way I see it, Microsoft took a pretty hefty blow from the feedback about MS Office 2007, but that's already in the past. OpenOffice's main advantage is, naturally, that it's able to be spread about like wildfire with no real legal issues. Personally, I use MS Office 2003 simply because it was what was installed on my machine at the time, and that it's what I grew up with (MS Office, that is, not Office 2003) so I'm more "familiar" with it.

 

That said, OpenOffice is growing on me more and more as I use one of a few Linux based OSs more and more, but despite this I still use Microsoft Office for a majority of my work. Why? Mainly because it's installed on every machine at the university I'm studying at, whereas OpenOffice isn't. While I realise that I could use OpenOffice and save it such that Microsoft Office could still read it, why bother? I generally like to use the same software if I'm working on the same documents, which is why I tend to stick to it.

 

Over time I think we'll see one of three things happen:

 

1) Microsoft loses out bigtime to a piece of freeware (such as OpenOffice)

2) Microsoft makes some radical changes and releases a piece of software that (heaven forbid!) actually works and conforms to international standards rather than just its own and makes a pretty good comeback.

3) Some other company competes with Microsoft, making both companies have to try hard to keep up with the other and therefore better (although not free) software is developed and becomes used globally.

 

Naturally combinations of the above are possible, but in my opinion they're somewhat unlikely.