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Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

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Shades:
I think they (Oracle) exchange their sales-force on a regular basis with Quest Software (creators of TOAD, a very extensive manager for Oracle databases).

Both are very aggressive. They even used the "...or else..." sales-pitch on me when they called years ago. As I have to work with Oracle, I couldn't drop Oracle, but QUEST got some verbal abuse back and lost me forever as customer.

Hmmm...memory lane definitely has some "potholes" in it.

tosim:
Overall, it appears that LibreOffice has OpenOffice beat. However, can somebody please compare LibreOffice with SoftmakerOffice,2008? Thank you.

Shades:
LibreOffice comes default with a PDF generator/printer that is actually very good (at least for the .doc/.docx documents that I convert to PDF). It also is able to handle the new .docx/.xlsx/.pptx formats.

The portable version of LibreOffice that I am using (3.3) is not fast with booting its components, though. Part of that is the fact that it is portable and LibreOffice is 2 to 3 times bigger than SoftMaker Office 2008.

40hz:
Overall, it appears that LibreOffice has OpenOffice beat. However, can somebody please compare LibreOffice with SoftmakerOffice,2008? Thank you.
-tosim (March 28, 2012, 09:49 AM)
--- End quote ---

To do a feature by feature comparison of Libre vs Softmaker would take a team and fill a book.

The easiest way to see what you think is to either download a free manual from their website, or grab a free copy of the 2008 executable and give it a try. If you like the 2008 version, you'll like the later editions as well since most of the changes have more to do with achieving closer compatibility with MS Office than they do with enhancing Softmaker's already huge feature set.

This is what it looks like:

Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

Grab a copy of the 2008 version here.

If I were to compare it, I'd see Softmaker's wordprocessor more like an earlier version of MS Word. Something like the Office XP or 2003 version. Libre is more like an 800lb gorilla that does just about everything - but has it's own distinctive look and feel. It's definitely heavier feeling than Softmaker. I'm guessing that will change as more and more of the old OpenOffice codebase gets rewritten and replaced by the Libre team. But only time will tell.

FWIW - I pretty much use Softmaker's TextMaker for all my wordprocessing these days. For spreadsheets I still use Excel because I share many of my spreadsheets with clients. So I can't risk glitches or macro/basic hassles when I send files over.

Can't speak about presentation graphics because I hate slides and overheads during presentations. So I'll only use PowerPoint or SM Presentations if there's a gun pointed at my head.

If I do need to create infographics for a talk I'm giving I'm much more likely to use standard illustration apps. I don't need the fancy tray organizers and templates in PowerPoint since I'll seldom ever need more than two or three slides no matter what. I do create handouts however. But they're outlines or notes - not a stack of bullet point charts. I'll usually just do those in a wordprocessor or outliner app.
 :)

tosim:
Thanks for the info. I had already downloaded, but not installed, awhile back Softmaker Office2008. I've just finished downloading the portable version of LibreOffice. I'll wait on that too, as LibreOffice came along with my installalling Linux Mint12 on another machine, and I'd like to check it out there. As an aside, I've been using WinOffice2007 since it came out, but only use Word and Excel.

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