Why OpenOffice? Why Microsoft Office? Each one makes their argument

[zridling]

Four years ago, the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project put together some web pages to present the case for using OpenOffice.org, which we called Why OpenOffice.org? It’s a sign of the increasing level of worry in Microsoft that they have now produced their own Why Microsoft? pages.

   

The arguments each make are interesting. For example, Microsoft's biggest crank against OpenOffice is that it doesn't work with all of Microsoft's online apps:  OpenOffice.org doesn’t provide email, calendaring, companion web applications, mobile applications, or out-of–the-box integration with companion products like SharePoint and Exchange—a limitation that can impact your user’s, and your IT departments, productivity. If you're not locked-in, your company is losing out!

OpenOffice's argument is more simple: It's built on an open source development model using the open document format (ODF), it's easy to use, and it's free, free, free! Okay, we get it.

[Bamse]

I don't know if they link to Youtube videos but they have a channel called Officevideos with all this "Why Microsoft" http://www.youtube.com/user/officevideos#g/c/5BA7E1E86EE6BA12 may be easier to consume and Silverlight is not required.

[f0dder]

OpenOffice is slow, has been less stable for me than MS Office (in particular it sometime locks up when used in conjunction with ClipX, but can fortunately usually be tricked out of the lock-up - sometimes it plain crashes, which doesn't seem to be because of ClipX), it's macro editor environment sucks compared to MS Office, has worse documentation (article quality, cross references), and ODF sucks pretty much about as much as OOXML (whoever thought non-binary formats were a good default fileformat should be castrated). Also, it's a joke wrt. page layouting compared to MSO.

I still use OOo instead of MSO, though, because it's gratis. And I believe it makes sense for the government to use an open fileformat (which I don't really consider OOXML to be) for interchange... I just which OOo and ODF wouldn't suck so badly.

[TucknDar]

SoftMaker Office

I've never been a big fan of OOo, mostly because it feels very slow and I haven't been impressed with how it handle .doc files (which in a way is understandable, I guess). SoftMaker Office has done this much better for me. SoftMaker Office feels so much lighter too, can easily be made portable and has a pretty good academic license (good for students and teachers, although more expensive than OOo ). There's a version for Linux, also, btw. I find the support excellent, too. The developers are actively discussing bugs and features in their forum.

[CWuestefeld]

I'm still primarily a MS Office user. Of course it's the standard, but it does have good points as well.

But if I were paying myself (rather than getting it through my work), it would *not* be OpenOffice. As TucknDar says, SoftMaker's product is fabulous. The price is remarkably low, and for what I need and the way I like to work, it's just head-and-shoulders superior to OpenOffice.

So I own three copies of SoftMaker Office. One on my notebook (Windows), one on my netbook (Ubuntu), and one on my PocketPC. My main desktop machine has Microsoft.

[Josh]

OOo has never felt quite right to me. Be it the way I try and work with existing documents, just create new documents in general or just interacting with the UI. It feels tacky. It's an OK product that I will recommend to a ma/pa household that needs nothing more than to send a weekly newsletter to the family, but for real productivity I am sold on MS Office or, as mentioned above, SoftMaker Office depending on the situation. I want a product that just feels natural to interact and function with as opposed to one which kinda feels like features were tacked on or just incomplete.

[JavaJones]

I haven't tried SoftMaker Office, but I'm a long-time OOo user, as well as a long-time MS Office user. I find approximately equal levels of frustration with both! Usually in different areas though. OOo is slow and that's probably one of my biggest complaints. It's also a bit clunky. 3.2 has sped up a bit, so you might want to check that out if speed was your main concern in the past. It's still not MS Office speed though.

I have also gone through a shift from MS Office 2k, to OOo 2.x-3.x, and back to MS Office 2k3/2k7 organizationally, and it has shown me some interesting things. I feel pretty confident now saying that there are a similar number of problems with both and in fact interestingly enough we had users complain about some features missing in MS Office that OOo had (particularly in Excel vs. Calc). the vast majority of issues though come from file interchange and format differences, which is true of both MS Office and OOo. It's pretty frustrating that this is the case, and I'm frankly a bit surprised that these issues remain so prevalent. MS's refusal to accept ODF as a standard pretty much guarantees that this retardness will continue, along with the continued default install of apps like MS Works in which you apparently cannot set the default save format as anything by the proprietary WKS. Ugh!

Frankly I'm tired of the whole "Office Suite" paradigm and the traditional document authoring model. Why should I need a separate, sophisticated design tool like InDesign if I want to make my document look really nice and print well? And if I do work in InDesign, why do I lose all spelling and grammer checking? Why does my document authoring team have to edit a document which gets sent to the designer for entry into InDesign, after which the document authoring team have to pass all changes through the designer, instead of doing them directly in a referenced document? Why is document formatting so quirky and hard to control, even today? Why is presentation template support still so limited? (MSO 2k7 was the first notable progress on this IMO) Why if I'm authoring a document for hand-out and presentation is it not easier to combine the two and maintain updates across files (e.g. reference a bulleted list from Word in Powerpoint and have it dynamically update as you edit the latter)?

Imagine if you will a single document development application, with intelligent "modes", customizable workspace and workflow systems, sophisticated (but easy to use) referencing and instancing systems, and a "view"-based methodology for interpreting your document into different models. For example, highlight a block of text, right-click and specify as slide 1 of a presentation, then go to the presentation layout and further edit with transitions, etc. If you have changes to make, do them in the document edit layout and they're automatically reflected in the presentation.

Really, can't they do any better than this?

- Oshyan

[Bamse]

Besides technical "issues" I think this campaign make new Browser choice question look silly. Where MS is really trying to do power marketing is with Office/Windows since that is where the money comes from. When things don't go their way, not as expected, or they are possibly worried you get this "think of the children", "demand of the work place". They have done pretty much the same "Compare to..." pages for IE8. Goes along with practically giving away Office packages to students or selling them to employees at businesses with the right license, for the price of 2 packs of cigarettes. Or doing magic with computer makers so they keep bundling the right OS. Free market where desire to put MS logo on toilet paper has nothing to do with locking people in but is "holistic business productivity approach"

[Edvard]

Jeez, I must be an alien or something...

I LOVE OpenOffice, and now that I'm running the 64-bit version, speed is better than acceptable (though I'll admit it's still not MS Office fast...).
I spend more time at work in the MS environment, so it's not my Linux bias showing, I promise.

:shrug:

[Shades]

Frankly I'm tired of the whole "Office Suite" paradigm and the traditional document authoring model. Why should I need a separate, sophisticated design tool like InDesign if I want to make my document look really nice and print well?

Well, practically a decade ago there used to be a piece of office software called: 'RagTimeSolo' and it would let you do DTP your document in practically any way you wanted. The pay version would handle spelling/grammar checking as well. The company behind this software is still around today, but as far as I know they do not offer a free version of their software anymore. It seems however that a lot of (dutch) download sites still offer the last freeware version (5.6.4 I believe, the version the company sells nowadays is 6.5.

Anyway, I always liked the software a lot, but IIRC there was no option to save in the "popular" .doc or .xls formats.  

EDIT:
Adjusted the recent version number.

[zridling]

I favor OpenOffice, but IBM's Lotus Symphony, which is based on OpenOffice and uses the ODF standard, you get the same features only in a tabbed UI. Symphony also has a ton of sharp template galleries that work on OpenOffice, too. Linux guys like Edvard and me don't get to use MS Office because Microsoft doesn't port to that platform. I'm pretty sure Wine allows it, but honestly, I got to the point where I could no longer afford MS Office.

Still, each one's marketing pages are convincing.

[Dormouse]

Talking mostly about Word:

I'm in favour of OO in theory, but agree with the comments of its being slow and clunky. And it doesn't really seem to be getting any better. I'm really not sure that duplicating MSOffice is what they should be doing. So, I always have it installed, but don't ever choose to open it - except on Linux. Used to a few years ago, but not any more.

I get MSOffice extremely cheaply, so cost isn't an issue. But, again, I find it slow - and it doesn't do what I want it to do (or at least the focus is on stuff I'm not interested in and stuff I do want like Outlining is atrocious). So I have it, but often only use it to print out or edit documents sent to me.

I use Textmaker (I got 2008 free and haven't felt the need to upgrade) much more, simply because it is faster.

In practice I do most of my writing in other programs, especially TreeDBNotes. I do have a lot of portable word processors which I use from time to time.

Within MSOffice, I do really like OneNote and no other suite has a similar application. I don't do a great deal with spreadsheets but prefer to use Excel because it leaves me with nil concern about compatibility: that would be different if I knew more people using OO, but they mostly don't. Access used to be OK, but I'm surprised it is still alive; database emphasis seems to have moved onto mysql, SQLite etc. Powerpoint seemed better than Impress last time I used them.

[JavaJones]

I'll have to check out RagTime. Looks interesting. Of course you cannot save non-standard design to a "standard" DOC or similar format. But I would think you could "export" just the appropriate bits...

- Oshyan

[Shades]

What I always found very convenient in RagTime was the ability to include a fully working excel worksheet inside your letter/report/whatever DTP'ed document as well. Which is very likely why they have their own binary format to store files.

[CWuestefeld]

What I always found very convenient in RagTime was the ability to include a fully working excel worksheet inside your letter/report/whatever DTP'ed document as well. Which is very likely why they have their own binary format to store files.

Isn't that just standard OLE embedding? I do this kind of thing all the time, like embedding a spreadsheet inside a PowerPoint presentation.

[Shades]

You are very probably right, but their software is the only time I have seen it and that it works.

The only reason I have installed Powerpoint (well, the OOo version of that) is because people sometimes send me jokes in this format. Word, Excel and Outlook are the only pieces of the MSOffice suite that I use on regular (non-extensive) basis, but not by choice. And from this set Outlook is the application I despise the most. Besides the issues that DC member superboyac reported on this forum, I would not suggest to do low level coding using its full MAPI implementation (yes, there are two of them). That is if you do not want to pull out your hair out of sheer agony about the misinformation that MS TechNet feeds you. 

Long story short, I do not like Office software and limit my exposure to that kind of software on purpose. At the time (2001) I saw that RagTime was doing their thing I thought that their idea about Office software was a whole lot better than any of their competitors at the time and to a extent even now. 

It is unclear to me how long OLE has been around and maybe they were implementing it already in their software, I do not know (and can't be bothered to look it up). Sorry if this post sounds like a rant, it is not intended as such.

[Tuxman]

OpenOffice.org is free software, supporting free standards and still usable without any "ribbon" things that waste your screen space. Why Microsoft Office? A really good question indeed!

[f0dder]

OpenOffice.org is free software, supporting free standards and still usable without any "ribbon" things that waste your screen space. Why Microsoft Office? A really good question indeed!

As already mentioned: because OOo is slow, clunky and bloated. As for the ribbon, have you actually tried using it, or are you just jumping onto the anti-anything-new bandwagon? As I've already mentioned I personally use OOo even though I think it kinda sucks, but several of my classmates are using Office2007. The ribbon certainly means you can no longer rely on muscle memory, but when using friends laptops it hasn't been slower getting used to the ribbon than it was hunting through the menus in previous office versions (or OOo, for that matter) - and because of it's context-sensitive nature, it often make stuff easier to find.

Not a fan of the morons who add every new feature MS introduces to their apps blindly, though - far from every app benefits from a ribbon.

[Tuxman]

OOo is slow, clunky and bloated.

So is MSO. 

As for the ribbon, have you actually tried using it, or are you just jumping onto the anti-anything-new bandwagon?

"Know your enemy". Tried it for about 10 minutes, laughed and closed it. Seriously, this might be neat for rather inexperienced users; for me, it is not. I can see the benefits because the bars have names now, but I also see that it eats productivity by shrinking your screen; not to mention that it does not even fit into any OS's GUI.

I have been an MSO user for years ('95 - 2003), maybe this is another reason why I prefer the good old way. Small buttons, no screen waste, no buttons for very, very blind people, only pure productivity.

(The ~ three seconds OO.org needs to load are OK for me.)

[Josh]

For the record, I have both OOo and O2K7 running on a netbook with a 1.6GHz Atom, far from the fastest thing on earth.

I have used and still continue to use both suites depending on the need. I leave OOo installed for those few sites where I find the authors relying on ODF, a poor choice in formats IMHO. But that said, I have put OOo through its paces and I still cannot make it function as fluidly and smooth as O2K7. OOo is slow, unnatural, and appears to just be attempting to copy O2K3.

Tried it for about 10 minutes, laughed and closed it.

That is not trying it. That is a waste of 10 minutes. The fact that you claim it "shrinks your screen" shows you really have not given it a fair chance either. If you choose to Hide the ribbon, enabled by default on all NON-ENTERPRISE copies, it disappears until you need it.

I have watched as many users quickly gain in productivity in a unit where most of the personnel are former infantry and thus against anything computer related. I have watched them go from taking 2 minutes to find a feature buried in menus to being able to work very quickly on developing the many reports they use and create. The ribbon puts everything out in the open and makes everything accessible via hotkey combo so you can develop that muscle memory in a very easy fashion.

Again, OOo is a decent product and I do recommend it when appropriate. But for business level productivity, nothing beats MS Office.

PS. I am not a fan boy of any particular product. I recommend products as appropriate based on the situation. I also do not blindly jump onto any bandwagon which is extreme in one nature or the other. I do not base my opinions off of what I read online or hear from some "expert" on a blog, I base them off personal experience and actual testing.

[f0dder]

I leave OOo installed for those few sites where I find the authors relying on ODF, a poor choice in formats IMHO.

Better choice than OOXML, but still a crap format. Yes, something XML-based is the best idea for document exchange, but it's a crap poor default format (binary formats for speed and win!). And both OOXML and ODF are lousy memory dumps rather than properly formatted documents.

Whether the ribbon gives productivity gains obviously depends on what you do. If all you're doing is entering raw text with the occasional bold/italic, it obviously won't gain you anything. If you need a bunch of tables, formulas, styles... it's a definitive productivity win. The formula stuff in o2k7 is actually rather usable, unlike previous versions.

[Josh]

Exactly. For the organization I operate with, most of the users see a producitivity jump as we are doing quite a bit in office every day of the week, especially deployed. As you said, if all you are doing is basic document editing, office and openoffice are both overkill for your needs. Wordpad or a slighly more advanced editor is more desirable and recommended.

And yes, I agree that ODF and OOXML are both poor formats.

[urlwolf]

In linux, I don't like OO. I found 3 bugs on presenter in about 2 hr of use.
Softmaker 2010 beta has huge kerneling problems. And scroll is jumpy full screen. it feels like a wine app.

I'm happy with lyx because it's plain text, fast, crossplatform, and renders beautifully. Best integration with zotero I could find too.

[TucknDar]

Softmaker 2010 beta has huge kerneling problems. And scroll is jumpy full screen. it feels like a wine app.

Hopefully being beta is the important clue and it will work out better when finished

[cyberdiva]

I'm under the impression that Softmaker 2010 is now out of beta.  I haven't tried it, but I was impressed the few times I've used the 2008 version.