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If you think OpenOffice is a competitor to MS Office 2010, think again
Darwin:
I tried the 64 bit beta at the start of the year and really liked it. However, none of my 32 bit plugins would work with it (obviously) so I reverted to 2007. I'm hoping that the college that I work at will get academic priced copies in soon. I'm faculty, so can't (legally) take advantage of the $80 student offer, sadly (otherwise I'd be downloading it as I type this).
I'm not sure that there are any must have features in 2010. However, having a unified interface would be nice, the tweaks that have been made to things like the paste function were enough to make me want it permanently, and, finally, when I'm teaching I live in Powerpoint, so welcome more flexibility with the master sldie editing function. 2007, in my opinion, was a bit of a step backward in many ways WRT slide layout and design, though slowly I have adjusted over the past three years.
daddydave:
Had the Office 2010 RC a while ago, didn't really do anything with it. Outlook 2010 has a Gmail-style Conversation View, if I'm not mistaken..would be extremely useful at work but at home I use Outlook for everything but email. Didn't really play with the other apps too much.
Dormouse:
I find 2010 much better than 2007 & 2003. Used to have both of them installed - now just 2010. Mostly just easier to work with.
Haven't really seen OO as a competitor for some time. I'm not sure what its changes actually do, but they don't seem to make it better to me. Textmaker & friends seem a better, different alternative.
That said, for my producing my own stuff, I always use other programs and not office suites.
CWuestefeld:
I agree with Dormouse. I have 2010 now, and I'm pretty happy with it. In particular, Outlook seems more stable, although it's still dog-slow, and the ribbon (of which I'm generally a fan) does more harm than good.
I really, really hate OpenOffice. Its performance is slow, it seems inaccurate (as DaddyDave noted), and it really just doesn't feel comfortable to me.
On the other hand, the SoftMaker product is a strong contender, other than that businesses seem ignorant of it. It's an order of magnitude cheaper, and provides nearly comparable functionality (except for not having a mail/PIM app, nor a database -- yet). It's fairly comfortable to use, and performance is fantastic. And it's nearly perfectly compatible with MS documents. I've got this on my main desktop, on my PocketPC, on my Ubuntu netbook, and portable on a flashdrive.
cyberdiva:
On the other hand, the SoftMaker product is a strong contender
-CWuestefeld (June 16, 2010, 02:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
I was about to ask about SoftMaker2010, which I've been thinking of getting. The Neat Net Tricks software review panel had lots of good things to say about it in a review last month: http://tinyurl.com/252evty. I'm glad to hear that you like it. Is there a downside to choosing it over MS Office?
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