Open Office

[blendermassacre]

Just put open office on my father in law's computer. Is there anything that I'll be missing over MS office, besides the price?

[MadMan118]

Not really, IMO you're getting more.

[bassybill]

I tried Open Office on one of my machines, and the apps generally do what their MS Office equivalents do, but with a slightly clunky feel to some aspects imo.

I'm still using Microsoft's stuff because I get a special deal on it because of my occupation, but if I had to pay full retail for it, I'd probably make the effort to get used to Open Office and put up with what seem like quirky aspects when you're making the transition.

[blendermassacre]

When I was messing around with it tonight, it didn't have the "polished" feeling of office 10. It's also free, so I really don't care. I figured for my computer illiterate father in law, it should be fine, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing something big.

[Pilgrim]

I use both - Open office does a decent job of translating file formats, although some special characters like bullets can change on you. If you were working in Open Office all the time, I'm confident it would be just fine. Shifting documents back and forth between the programs can certainly be done, you just need to keep track of which version you're actually working on.

The main difference will probably come in third-party apps which are designed to integrate with MS Office applications. They don't recognize Open Office...but for most people, that's no issue at all.

I don't think you're missing anything important at all.

[tjmdetroit]

Originally Posted by blendermassacre

Just put open office on my father in law's computer. Is there anything that I'll be missing over MS office, besides the price?

nope!...kewl hey?
There were 2 schools of thoughts when software development started out.... 1) develope software for money.... 2) develope software for the benefit of mankind.
peace

tjm

[DigMe]

For anyone who uses Powerpoint a lot then you'll definitely be missing something with OpenOffice as compared to Office 2010. PowerPoint is absolutely KILLER in 2010!

I was an OpenOffice user for years until I got ahold of the Office '10 beta and now I'm a convert. OO feels so dated now.

bc

[dullsilver_mike]

I find the interface very clunky for Writer, and that's a shame considering I spend hours and hours a day using a word processor. A lot of formatting errors tend to pop up when I save it as something other than an open source document (even when I save as an rtf.!) I guess that's an issue to be expected with most word processors, but it seems to happen more often than not with Writer.

I still use open office on my laptop, where I'm less likely to do any real amount of writing.

I haven't used the other programs extensively, but I like what I've seen.

[MJ5150]

Microsoft Office is fine for me. But then again, I don't have to pay for it. I saw the prices for it one day at Office Depot, so I clearly understand the desire of some people to use Open Office.

-Mike

[KarateKid25]

MS Office costs too much... *cough* torrents *cough*

I gave Open Office a go once. Not bad, but as already posted, a bit clunky feeling. The price is great!

[blendermassacre]

After searching torrents for 30 min and finding nothing but scams and malware, I figured open office is better than waste of time / computer threats.

[KarateKid25]

Originally Posted by blendermassacre

After searching torrents for 30 min and finding nothing but scams and malware, I figured open office is better than waste of time / computer threats.

I was only joking Open Office is by far the smartest way to go in that regard! I have the latest version of Office and yes, it was a torrent, but in general I try to avoid those places. Great sources of malware and not to be recommended.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

I used to use open office.

Now I'm on MS Office 2007.

Open office, while clunky, does the job pretty well.

I had some problems, but only with the presentation software. I made the presentation in open office, saved it as office 07 compat., opened it on a computer running MS office 07 and text boxes and images had all been nudged about a bit. Enough to make things look untidy (overlaps etc).

[Spraeg]

Yeah, the only thing I've had an issue with is format changes when switching to some versions of MS Office. Other than that, it's just a slightly more utilitarian interface.

[UnsungZeros]

I just made it 4 years through college using Open Office. It works just fine.

[BlacksHole]

For a regular to light user, Open Office is the way to go.