Office Suite 2007 or Open Office?

GodsPeace · 02-09-2010, 10:03 AM

I am still running on my trial version of Office 2007, but I am gonna have to get the product key pretty soon. I assume it costs around $100.

I am unfamiliar with Open Office, and I am curious as to the advantages of the program. Will it open Word documents, for instance? I have a bunch of those prepared and I would like to use what I already have instead of having reproduce all new stuff.

I also intend to do extensive writing(creative and otherwise) so I need it to have a good word processor capability.

Normally I asks a lot of questions to which I have a pretty good idea of the answer too, but I don't know anything about Open Office.

baf1 · 02-09-2010, 10:36 AM

I've not gone too in depth with Open Office, but as far as I can tell, it's pretty much a free clone, with all the capabilities of MS Office. I run Office 2007 on my Windows side, and Open Office on my Linux side, and as far as word processing goes, they're identical. I can do my English Essays just fine in Open Office, saved in the exact same format, with all the margins, headers, footers, etc, that you can do in MS Office.

So I'd recommend downloading Open Office and giving it a try.

GodsPeace · 02-09-2010, 10:39 AM

Originally Posted by baf1

I've not gone too in depth with Open Office, but as far as I can tell, it's pretty much a free clone, with all the capabilities of MS Office. I run Office 2007 on my Windows side, and Open Office on my Linux side, and as far as word processing goes, they're identical. I can do my English Essays just fine in Open Office, saved in the exact same format, with all the margins, headers, footers, etc, that you can do in MS Office.

So I'd recommend downloading Open Office and giving it a try.

This is what I am gonna do. I have been researching to be sure it is legit free, and it is. Since that is the case, I see no harm in giving it a run.

hipsterdoofus · 02-09-2010, 11:07 AM

I haven't used open office much in awhile but the complain has been that it is extremely slow and a resource hog...I believe they have improved it some. Personally I use google docs almost exclusively with the exception of a little missing functionality, for which I use open office.

GodsPeace · 02-09-2010, 11:13 AM

It is almost done downloading, and I will find out how well it works for me.

PC_cowboy33 · 02-09-2010, 11:18 AM

I used open office for a long time exclusively when I was dual booting with vista and Win7 RC...it was pain free for me. That said, I had a free download of MS Office from the school so I reinstalled it once I upgraded to 7.

GodsPeace · 02-09-2010, 11:24 AM

I figure that if I don't care for it I will just purchase the full version of Office 2007. I have seen a few places that claim to have the product key, but viewing their comment section it appears it is faulty. Which sucks. What I see in Word 2007 I like, but money is an issue and I don't want to waste it.

ScooberJake · 02-09-2010, 11:40 AM

I tried Open Office once a while ago, seemed like it was about 85-90% there. May be closer now.

Does anyone know how well Open Office handles the new .docx format? (Which I hate, by the way.)

Also, if you want something powerful and free, you could look into LaTeX. It is especially nice if you are doing complicated typesetting like equations. But there is a bit of a learning curve to it. And it is not WYSIWYG.

***Chris H.*** · 02-09-2010, 12:30 PM

Go to your local software shop and get the Students & Teachers version. Will save you money, and you obviously qualify (not like there's any verification though). I'd think it'd be worth the headaches of switching.

Your district might also have a discount or free licensing program setup too.

Poke2000 · 02-09-2010, 01:22 PM

My experience w/ OpenOffice is pretty limited, but one feature that I REALLY like is its ability to export files as .pdfs (without the full version of Acrobat). I've never been able to do that w/ MS Office.

***Chris H.*** · 02-09-2010, 01:32 PM

Originally Posted by Poke2000

My experience w/ OpenOffice is pretty limited, but one feature that I REALLY like is its ability to export files as .pdfs (without the full version of Acrobat). I've never been able to do that w/ MS Office.

http://www.cutepdf.com/ Print to PDF from any application.

Poke2000 · 02-09-2010, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by Chris H.

http://www.cutepdf.com/ Print to PDF from any application.

Smartass.

Okay fine, use whatever the heck you want.

Cobra_PC_Poke · 02-10-2010, 03:32 PM

Originally Posted by Poke2000

My experience w/ OpenOffice is pretty limited, but one feature that I REALLY like is its ability to export files as .pdfs (without the full version of Acrobat). I've never been able to do that w/ MS Office.

This feature is also included in Office 2007 & 2010 in the "Save As" menu.

Speaking of which... if you are buying, the newer version will be out pretty soon, you may be able to hold off until then, perhaps by using the 2010 beta version or OO.o for a while.

monkey · 02-10-2010, 08:43 PM

Originally Posted by Cobra_PC_Poke

This feature is also included in Office 2007 & 2010 in the "Save As" menu.

I didn't know that was an option in Office 2007, but it was nice to have in OO for many years now.

As far as the OP, it is interesting to see another option of saving in Office 2007 is .odt (open document format), the default type of OO. I get Office 2007 for free, but still use OO as much as I can. Some of the options are in different menus than office, but it is very similar and IMO should work fine for the overwhelming majority of users.

hipsterdoofus · 02-10-2010, 08:55 PM

Seriously...no one uses google docs or zoho? For the most part I don't see the point of messing with those bulky applications. There are times, but they are few and far between.

jac1599 · 02-10-2010, 10:39 PM

I've never used google docs...so I can't comment on that.

I do, however, use both Open Office and MS Office. I use Open Office primarily for creating PDF forms. Using OOWriter to create a form is much much easier than in MSWord. Then, as stated as above, I just export to PDF.

I use MS Office for every other task other than that.

Pantone 166 Power · 02-10-2010, 10:55 PM

I use Open Office for Mac and it is a beautiful thing. I use the spreadsheet, slidemaker, and word processor and it does everything I need. Curious to try out the database (Access-like) feature.

GodsPeace · 02-11-2010, 08:42 AM

Originally Posted by Pantone 166 Power

I use Open Office for Mac and it is a beautiful thing. I use the spreadsheet, slidemaker, and word processor and it does everything I need. Curious to try out the database (Access-like) feature.

Since downloading it, I haven't used it much except to open important files to be sure it would work.

I am curious as to what purpose the database serves?

Cobra_PC_Poke · 02-11-2010, 09:16 AM

Originally Posted by GodsPeace

I am curious as to what purpose the database serves?

You would use it to relate the information between several tables of information. Most often it is used to create a sort of "program" that a user will use to track things like customers/sales/inventory. You can track larger amounts of data and see how it related to other parts of your data in a more useful manner.

I find that in a regular office situation, most things that people use an Excel spreadsheet for should actually be done in Access, and the things that people use Access for should really be done in a SQL Database.

GodsPeace · 02-11-2010, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by Cobra_PC_Poke

You would use it to relate the information between several tables of information. Most often it is used to create a sort of "program" that a user will use to track things like customers/sales/inventory. You can track larger amounts of data and see how it related to other parts of your data in a more useful manner.

I find that in a regular office situation, most things that people use an Excel spreadsheet for should actually be done in Access, and the things that people use Access for should really be done in a SQL Database.

Thanks, I don't use Excell or Access for anything. Guess I will let it go for now then.