Oracle’s OpenOffice and Microsoft’s Office are pretty much the only software solutions in the office category. And they’re both good at what they’re supposed to do. With innovative features anyone would love, these two software suites have quickly become very successful. There are some die-hard fans that creates custom embroidered patches to show their dedication towards MS Office and OpenOffice. However, as with any other competing programs, customers started to ask, “But, which one’s better?”
First, you need to know that OpenOffice is totally free, so you won’t spend a dime on it. However, Microsoft Office is the most widespread and adopted software, and pretty much every company, school and even person in the world is using it. The fact that there are some formatting problems that plague MS Office when opening files saved in OpenOffice just makes everything worse. To answer the above question, you need to know what you really want in your office software suite. Usually, you’ll need a word processor, a spreadsheet application, a database application and an application for creating slideshows. When comparing them, it’s also important to take into account the price.
If you take a look at both OpenOffice Writer 3 and Microsoft Office 2007, you’ll see that there a noticeable difference in the look and feel of both. Before Office 2007, the OpenOffice suite was praised for being easy to use after switching from Microsoft’s solution, but now it can’t be praised for that anymore, as the difference has gotten too big. Nevertheless, it is pretty easy to use. It has all the functionality of Microsoft Office Word (except the ribbon, whose functions are replaced by a simple taskbar, like in Microsoft Office 2003, XP and 97). You can edit text, you have all the effects that MS Office Word has and you can save in the same file formats – basically, it can do everything that MS Office Word does.
Calc is the name of the spreadsheet application, and it’s a very good alternative to Excel. It works just as well, but the look and feel is quite a bit different. In fact, it looks a lot like Office XP, so it should be easy to adapt to for those of us who are older.
Now, I have to say that OpenOffice Impress is a bit better than Microsoft PowerPoint. Impress makes the process of creating a slideshow a bit easier. The wizard does most of the work for you. It asks you to select a background you like, a template, what your presentation is about and the effects you want to insert. Of course, you have the possibility to correct anything afterwards. Even without this, it is still better than Microsoft PowerPoint. The tools are easier to find than in PowerPoint and the backgrounds are much more beautiful than those in MS Office.
In both office suites, you can find a lot of extras. OpenOffice has Draw and Math, while Microsoft Office provides more with InfoPath, Outlook, Publisher and OneNote. Out of all these programs, I found OneNote to be the best (Outlook is also good, but I’ve replaced it with Thunderbird – a free, excellent program with much more functionality). However, in OpenOffice, both extra programs can be very useful, sometimes. If you need to design XML, check your email without using a browser (or when you have more accounts and want to check them all at once) and publish something on the web, the fact that OpenOffice doesn’t have these options can be a setback.
However, if you consider the cost of both office software suites, it all makes sense. If you can afford Microsoft Office Pro at $500 and will use all it’s features, then go for it. But if you just need the basic stuff, you’ll probably find Microsoft’s pricing to high. Why spend $149 on Microsoft Office Student (which is quite limited in features) when you can get the much better OpenOffice?
Overall, OpenOffice is a great office software suite. It matches and sometimes actually beats the value of Microsoft Office, and at zero cost, it’s an excellent choice for everyone. But if you need more features and want to avoid any compatibility problems (especially if it’s important in your work), then you should go with Microsoft Office.
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