EggXpert

What do I need to be aware of if I change from MS Office XP Pro. (2002) to Open Office (from openoffice.org)?

What changes do I have to make. I know I will loose Outlook, but I am also thinking about Mozilla ThunderBird to take it's place.

I have used MS Office for years and my fears are loosing my data from Word and Outlook mostly.

I would value and thank you for your opinion about these changes.

LR 

 

Wait...why are you replacing MS office?

mrbiggums:

Wait...why are you replacing MS office?

That is the question I am asking...

I am in the process of selecting parts from Newegg for a new computer build.

I will not be able to move my MS Office oem version to the new computer and reactivate it.

So, my choice will have to be an upgrade or replacement of Office.

I would like pros and cons of each office that would help me make up my mind. From persons that have used both would be great!

LR 

I haven't spent an extensive amount of time in Open Office but I've used the Word Processor a bit.  So far it's worked fine for me.  I did notice that when I tried to update my resume I saved it as being compatible w/ all office versions and it made the size of the file far larger than what I expected and what I could use.  Beyond that I haven't had any major issues w/ it.  I don't use much more than Word processor and for email I use Evolution which I like much better than M$ Outlook and Thunderbird.  Never hurts to try it.  I didn't bring my Outlook info into Evolution due to my info being stored on my phone and I haven't gotten it to sync w/ Linux.  Tried but not terribly hard and I haven't put in the time to make it work.  Just make sure you back everything up.

Update:  I use Open Office and Evolution on my home PC running Ubuntu.  On my work laptop I run M$ Office.  Only real slowdown I ran into at home is that some things are named differently and moved to other menus.  I guess if I'd started w/ Open Office though I'd think M$ Office was strange.

My opinion?

1) MS office

2) Chiseling information into stone

3) Openoffice

 

How open office got such a good rep I'll never know, but it's garbage. 

Here is a comparison of memory and CPU usage between Microsoft and OpenOffice.org office applications. 

Freezrburn:

I haven't spent an extensive amount of time in Open Office but I've used the Word Processor a bit.  So far it's worked fine for me.  I did notice that when I tried to update my resume I saved it as being compatible w/ all office versions and it made the size of the file far larger than what I expected and what I could use.  Beyond that I haven't had any major issues w/ it.  I don't use much more than Word processor and for email I use Evolution which I like much better than M$ Outlook and Thunderbird.  Never hurts to try it.  I didn't bring my Outlook info into Evolution due to my info being stored on my phone and I haven't gotten it to sync w/ Linux.  Tried but not terribly hard and I haven't put in the time to make it work.  Just make sure you back everything up.

Update:  I use Open Office and Evolution on my home PC running Ubuntu.  On my work laptop I run M$ Office.  Only real slowdown I ran into at home is that some things are named differently and moved to other menus.  I guess if I'd started w/ Open Office though I'd think M$ Office was strange.

This is the first I have heard of Evolution.  I am downloading it now and will give it a try. Thank you for the tip. I have not tried anything since Windows 3.1 except for Microsoft. I like Microsoft Office, but Hate to give the price for the new version.

(Anyone have a Full version of Microsoft XP Office Pro., that would still activate, and have upgraded to a newer version, and would sell it?) 

LR 

yinzh888:

Here is a comparison of memory and CPU usage between Microsoft and OpenOffice.org office applications. 

Man...This is unreal to me. Even with a faster computer that I will have, this does not look good!

Makes me think about getting Microsoft Office again. (I would be have with a full version of Microsoft XP Pro....It has worked good for me).

Thank you for the chart....I appreciate it.

LR 

OpenOffice is great, I used it for years.. The only thing it's not so good on is printing out envelopes. Yes, I agree that OO.org is getting a bit bloated, but since it's got Java plugins and support, for me that balances things out quite a bit.. 

For a free application, it is extremely powerful and flexible.. If you know how to code Java, it's a million times better as the interface for it (API) is way better and much cheaper than Microsoft's .NET framework..  Consider this, first you need to buy Office and THEN you need to buy .NET studio to write decent plugins, enhancements, macros, etc for MS Office..  Total cost is going to be over $1,000..  On the other hand, OO.org paired with Java is totally free.. Java is free, Eclipse development environment is free and OpenOffice is free.. You just can't beat that if you're on a budget, even if you're a developer..

I'd have to say that OO.org beats every MS Office out there EXCEPT for MS Office 2007.  MS Office 2007 just simply rocks.. Plain and simple, I love the banner interface, the enhanced graphics and it puts it in a whole different league of its own. \

Another thing that OO.org has that MS Office doesn't is cross-platform compatibility and the open document format.  Yes, the open document is slow, yes the open document is bloated.. But the advantages of moving to a standard file formatting for a document is going to overrule the cons in the coming years as many third party programs will be able to read, process and dump data directly into these files..  With Microsoft's closed proprietary format, the only people opening those files are people who have purchased Microsoft's products, and even people who write Microsoft software won't be able to process the files unless the user has purchased Microsoft Office (a real pain in the booty when you want to push a file to 100 people in a small business as you have to buy office licenses for everybody every 5 or 6 years!!)..

In the end, it really depends on what you're planning on using it for.. The only thing I used OO.org for was to write letters, journals, a few simple spreadsheets, and some plugins for tallying resource (CPU,RAM, etc.) usage of computers on a network (which I then typically exported to JChart for drawing instead of using the primitive charting tools in Excel and OO). If it's basic stuff then OO should be more than enough.. Even if you're building charts/graphs that are 20,000 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall OO combined with Java programming is enough for most things..

If not, I'd go with MS Office 2007 or later and skip those old versions of Office altogether.

Just for giggles, here's one of the smaller charts I made that graphs CPU Usage, Available Memory (RAM), and the disk queue (amount of data waiting to go in and out of the hard drive) for two drives. Not something you'd want to try and graph in either Excel or OpenOffice, but with Java plugins to a 3rd party graphing library, it's a piece of cake. Even though OpenOffice can't do that kind of graphing alone, it has the hooks to let other software come in and do the job (JChart in this case).

The latest version of open office is much better than versions from a year ago, but it's still not as good as MS Office. IMO, Office 2000 is better than the latest OO.  Office 2007 Home and Student from newegg is $120 and is good on up to three different computers. That's only $40 per computer. Doesn't come with Outlook though.

 Also, as far as plugin development is concerned, anybody can download the Visual Studio express editions for free, and there's even a fairly lengthy trial period for the full versions. You could write a plugin using any of the .NET languages. The Visual Studio IDE is by far the best I've ever used and Visual Basic is much easier to learn than Java.

 I think you'll find that OO is good in a pinch or on a tight budget, but MS Office is still definately the best all around.

          Sidicas: "If not, I'd go with MS Office 2007 or later and skip those old versions of Office altogether."

You have good points in your post..You laid your thoughts out very well!...I trust your opinion very much.

If I decide to stay with MS Office, I will have to consider MS Office 2007.

I am getting many views, which I really wanted and appreciate! 

LR

needforspeed:

The latest version of open office is much better than versions from a year ago, but it's still not as good as MS Office. IMO, Office 2000 is better than the latest OO.  Office 2007 Home and Student from newegg is $120 and is good on up to three different computers. That's only $40 per computer. Doesn't come with Outlook though.

 

 

The problem I have with the OEM version that I now have is that it is locked in the computer it is installed on. You cannot move it to a new computer.

The Office 2007 Home and Student editions have too many restrictions for me. I would want Outlook too. If I buy a new version of MS Office, I do not want to be trapped again. I want the freedom to change my computer if I wish without loosing Office.

Thank you for your input!

LR 

I definitely prefer OpenOffice, just because I don't like the lock-in that MSO has created.  But, it's too slow!  For me, I don't need spreadsheets or databases or anything except word processing, so I use AbiWord.  It's much smaller than MSO or OO.o, and faster as well!

I don't use a mail client, but if I did I'd use Thunderbird.  I tried it for a while and found it very nice, simple, and usable...I just have no need for a desktop client. 

Wow I didn't know Abiword was still around.  I used that program for years. 

RjBass:

Wow I didn't know Abiword was still around.

Haha, really? I think I discovered it about two or three years ago...I remember for at least part of 2005 I was definitely still using OpenOffice.

One advantage OO.o has, by the way, is built-in export to PDF feature. Very handy. Otherwise you need a PDF printer.

One disadvantage of all such software is the cross-platform compatibility. If you make a .doc in MS Word and open it in OO.o/AbiWord, or vice versa, the line breaks and such might not always be in the right places. This even affects different versions of MS Word though (opening a Word 2000 doc in Word 2K3 or vice versa)

A weird thing about OO.o is if you use the custom install it doesn't change the program size. Like I installed the full suite (this was OO 2.0.0.1 and around there) and it took up 200MB on the hard drive. The next time I installed it, I only put Writer and didn't install any of the other programs in the suite. Hard drive space used? 200MB! Not a big deal, but strange.

One thing I definitely don't like in OO is the reliance on Java...constantly notifying of updates, like every week, and it doesn't overwrite the old version, and different versions aren't always compatible. I don't know if this is still the case--again, this is like three years ago. Can a current OO user confirm or deny?

sick486 wrote the following post at 03-27-2008 2:11 PM:

"One thing I definitely don't like in OO is the reliance on Java...constantly notifying of updates, like every week, and it doesn't overwrite the old version, and different versions aren't always compatible. I don't know if this is still the case--again, this is like three years ago. Can a current OO user confirm or deny?"

 

I would very much like to know about this too!  Why would this type of program need Java?

LR 

 

GiddyUpGo:

I would very much like to know about this too!  Why would this type of program need Java?

'Cause it's made by Sun and they want to push their cruddy platform :P

sick486:

GiddyUpGo:

I would very much like to know about this too!  Why would this type of program need Java?

'Cause it's made by Sun and they want to push their cruddy platform :P

I'd have to disagree there. If they really wanted to be pushing their products, Sun wouldn't be supporting OpenOffice at all.. They've already got an Office suite and it's called "StarOffice" and they do sell it for money..  There's no reason for them to push OpenOffice..

The reason why OO.org depends on Java is obvious if you're a programmer, but to everybody else it doesn't seem to make sense. For a long-term project that wants to remain platform independent (that is, runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Mobile Devices, etc.) it can't tie itself to libraries in the operating system because your BlackBerry's libraries are different than the Microsoft Foundation Class libraries which are different from the new Vista libraries that replace MFC.. If you use these libraries, you'll have to write the instructions for the program again and again and again using each of the different libraries.. Not a very smart idea..  To break free from this Operating System "prison" as I like to call it, applications should be developed with libraries that are provided with the language itself and are available to be recompiled on ANY operating system (past, present and future).. It is those libraries that you should tie your programs to, not some proprietary closed source library that Microsoft uses and Microsoft decides when to make obsolete and Microsoft decides when it's time for you to rewrite your program from scratch...

As such the only libraries you should be using when you've got such a large audience scope as OpenOffice has are the ones that are bundled with the language itself and thusly can be recompiled on any operating system and used on any computer or even handheld device (even if that device has a RISC chip on it that is very different than a Desktop equivalent)..

Guess what? Java is the language with the most libraries that are platform independent.. now I could go into the "how" and "why" writing files to a unix filesystem /home/username or /usr/share/OpenOffice/config.xml  would be entirely different than writing to C:\My Documents\username and C:\Program Files\OpenOffice\config.xml..  but since most people would fall asleep in that kind of lecture, let's just leave it to the fact that filesystems are different, the way files are saved (permissions, scope, location, etc.) are different and when you tie your program to the java libraries, these things that make Operating Systems different become Abstracted (keyword) from the application.. What does that mean? In short, it means that they don't matter anymore.. It doesn't matter to OpenOffice what file system you're using, or what operating system you're using or what user level permissions your Operating System enforces on those files, it behaves exactly the same as it hooks into the same libraries that are provided universally by the Java runtime environment..  The Java Runtime environment however, is dependent on the Operating system and as such, you need to make sure you have a version of Java that runs on your Operating System (one for Windows 98, one for Windows XP, etc. etc.)..  The application doesn't change, but your java runtime environment does! And that's such a beautiful thing!!! You don't compile a Java application into an Operating System specific .EXE file, instead you compile it down into Java bytecode.  You can take the same Java bytecode and run it on ANY operating system's Java Environment without changing the bytecode at all! Even better, you can code the application without giving a hoot about what file system they're using, it simply doesn't matter in Java..Which is why many Mobile devices, that use special RISC chips and compile their binaries into formats that you would only be able to run on a Desktop PC inside of an emulator have been moving towards Java.. These mobile devices can run the exact same application / bytecode as the desktop without having to change it!! It's so beautiful, I hate to see people bash Java.

Now, not all parts of OpenOffice are totally Java, certainly many parts are written in other languages for performance reasons and they still tie into the Operating System.. But the parts that are Java are the parts that are universal. And if it was entirely Java (like StarOffice) then you could take any device that runs Java Environment and run that application on it without changing the application at all! It doesn't matter what chip it has, you don't have to recompile the software every time you want to make a release on a different device (such as the case would be if you wrote the program in C, C++, C#, etc.) ! It just works!  It won't be long until every cell phone on the market (even the budget ones) will be shipping with Java runtime environments built in and you can just visit a webpage and run the application on the page without having to get the source code and recompile it and without having to deal with all sorts of other silliness that you'd be forced to do in most other languages.  You can then hop on your desktop, go to the exact same page and run the exact same application in the Java runtime environment for your desktop which is an entirely different operating system, processor, etc. than your mobile device and the application won't even care, it doesn't even need to be coded with those considerations in mind!   What about the files that you generate with the application? E-mail them back and forth between your device and your home PC and not even think about whether you need to change the fileformat to .TXT or some other silliness...  Because you're running the exact same application everywhere you go, you don't need to worry about vendor lock-in with Microsoft's proprietary format or Apple's proprietary format or PalmOS's proprietary format, or Amazon Bookreader's proprietary format, etc. etc.

Sidicas:

I'd have to disagree there. If they really wanted to be pushing their products, Sun wouldn't be supporting OpenOffice at all.. They've already got an Office suite and it's called "StarOffice" and they do sell it for money..  There's no reason for them to push OpenOffice..

1. I meant they want to push Java.  2. The :P means it's a joke.

Sidicas:

The reason why OO.org depends on Java is obvious if you're a programmer, but to everybody else it doesn't seem to make sense. For a long-term project that wants to remain platform independent

Darn you....I originally wrote "Less cynical answer:" and went into that, but then I decided it ruined my "joke."  Anyway, this is absolutely correct.  OpenOffice could be ported to a web app [the only truly platform-independent, uh, platform] with far less work than it would take for MS Office, and most other desktop applications...Unfortunately, Java is still a pain to me, as an end user. 

I wish that more entities would have the guts to drop MS Office, and use ODT.  I feel if OO.o was less slow, it would help.  But when people like me, who are willing to use F/OSS, aren't interested, where can it take root and grow?  Well GoogleDocs has been gaining in popularity I hear, even some corporations are using it.  But it's not open source.  I guess all it really takes is to be a household name.  Everybody knows Google, very few non-"geeks" know who Sun Microsystems is.

Well, it's been some time since I've used OOo, but I know I hated it when I tried to use it, and I've heard from others since then that hate it too.  To put this in perspective, the last time I used it, I was trying to replace Office 97 with it in a place of business, and even Office 97 beat it (I believe that was OOo 2.0).  As soon as we tried to start using it, there were problems with it rendering existing Excel files properly.  The school my sister teaches it uses current versions because they can't afford to buy MS Office, and she says everybody there absolutely hates it.

 

I think that if all you need is something simple to write documents with and a simple standalone mail reader works for you, then OOo will work fine, although I would personally recommend the Windows Live Mail client over Thunderbird.  It handles more like current versions of Outlook do.  And yes, one can argue the fact that the open formats are cross-compatible.  But in my somewhat biased opinion, I believe there's value in something that works very well on a large number of systems over something that works on every system but not so well.  To that end, Microsoft Office may not be cross-compatible with every system, but Microsoft does at least offer free reader programs for all Windows PCs, and I give them credit for trying to create an open standard with their OOXML format, which is a big improvement over their previous proprietary binary formats.  Plus if you need to share a document with somebody who can't open it, you could always PDF it, which is definitely cross-platform.

 

As far as overall functionality and style go, I'd again have to side with MS Office, especially with version 2007.  The newly-redesigned interface is absolutely spectacular, and it really brings the true power of the software to your fingertips.  Even since it debuted, I've been hearing about "new features" people have been finding that have been in the software already for several versions, but were buried in various menus and dialogs.  Also, Office 2007 has lots of nifty little bells and whistles like live-preview features during things like font and color selections.  It's honestly hard to describe in a nutshell.  It's a huge improvement over Office XP (2002).  Oh, and Office 2007 has the ability to convert documents straight to PDF format, with the help of a free plugin from Microsoft.

 

As for OOo, again I am somewhat biased.  I have had lots of bad experiences with Java compatibility issues for web apps.  Sun decided for some reason that they wouldn't allow multiple versions of Java to be used for web apps on the same system anymore, citing security risks as an excuse.  They apparently do not live in the real world, where running multiple Java versions is an absolutely necessary job requirement, despite the potential security risks.  I've spent hours trying to rig up custom scripts and registry hacks to allow multiple JRE versions to co-exist for web apps where I work.  Also, I personally think that the Java GUI elements are downright ugly, and look very foreign in a Windows environment.  Therefore, just because of the fact that OOo is Java-based is a reason for me to hate it, because to me it's ugly and relies on something that has given me lots of headaches.  But as I said, my sister uses it at school, and has MS Office at home, and there are lots of projects that she just does at home and takes to school because MS Office is so much easier to work with.

 

Having used Office 2007 at work and home for some time now, both on Vista and XP, I would have to say that I would be very hard-pressed to switch to something else.  If you can cough up the cash for a license, it's definitely the best office software available.  I do believe it's overpriced, but I also don't believe that anything that's free or dirt-cheap can compare to its true power.  The nice thing now is that you can buy Office 2007 Home & Student edition for $150 or less in retail, and you can legally install and activate it on up to 3 PCs in your household, making it $50 or less per copy.  However, that version only includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.  Sadly they've removed Outlook from this version (in all honesty, it's overkill for average home users), so you'd have to buy Outlook separately or use an alternative mail client.  The Windows Live Mail client I mentioned earlier allows you to import existing email from Outlook PST files I think, so you'd probably be safe there.  Plus it handles multiple email accounts fairly well.

 

In the end, if you want to try out OOo and some other email client, they're free, so you have nothing to lose.  If you don't like them, you can always go back.  Personally, if you're tight on cash, and there aren't any features in Outlook that you think you'd miss, I would buy Office 2007 Home & Student and either switch to a free email client or grab a standalone copy of Outlook 2007.  Office H&S and Outlook 2007 together will cost you about $208 on Newegg right now.  In my opinion, that's quite a bargain, and I personally feel they can beat OOo hands-down.

onli one good point for OpenOffice I think, it is free!

but it is not nice at all!

I work with MS Office Pro 2003 at work and I have the latest OOo at home. At work I do a lot of vba scripting in Excel and Access for the department I work in and then we also have Outlook 2007 with an Exchange 2007 server that I use as well. At home I really only use OOo for basic office docs and opening MSOffice files now and then.

I have had no problem opening spreadsheets in OOo and very few problems with documents and there are usually small problems with presentation files from MS to OOo. Databases on the other hand have to be imported and I have had no luck with this as of yet. I personally have had no problem opening files saved to MS format from OOo in MSOffice in at least Word and Excel.

OOo supports many more languages for scripting which is a good thing, however I don't think there support for vba is quite complete and I think its best to use a different language for scripting however this does make it difficult to work with the same files in both formats.

One advantage I would say OOo has over MSOffice is file recovery in their native format. I've had many a corrupt MSOffice file in my time that was completely lost and I had to go to a backup file and loose all work done since that backup. In the 3 years I have used OOo at home I have had one corrupt file which was an ods file. Since the odt file structure is a zipped file with text and xml formatting files inside I was simply able to unzip, go to the file and line stated in the error message I received when I opened the file and remove that line of formatting and rezip it and my ods file was as good as new.

As far as an Thunderbird, it is and Outlook Express replacement and a great program which I use, but if you need something that OE doesn't have then I would look to Evolution which looks like a great program, but I have not had much experience with yet. I am watching the status of the exchange connector that is being built for Evolution and will try that as soon as it has enough functionality as I have always had problems with outlook and I'm finding 2007 to be better, but still very slow and problematic.

ivorycruncher wrote the following post at 03-31-2008 9:25 PM:

Thank you for your input. The option to buy Office 2007 Home and Student and Outlook 2007 from NewEgg for $208 is a good pointer. 

I am saving and printing out all the responses. This will surly give me something to consider.

Free is important to me, but not if I have problems in converting my Word, Excel, Power Point and Outlook data.  I know of no one close by that is not using MS Office. EggXpert has been a great resource for me in this.

LR 

Ralyon wrote the following post at 04-01-2008 10:03 AM:

"As far as an Thunderbird, it is and Outlook Express replacement and a great program which I use, but if you need something that OE doesn't have then I would look to Evolution which looks like a great program"

 

I will try Evolution when I get ready to start trying programs. Do you know how secure Evolution is? Security is one of the things that is important to me.

LR 

ivorycruncher wrote the following post at 03-31-2008 9:25 PM:

"The nice thing now is that you can buy Office 2007 Home & Student edition for $150 or less in retail,"

You mention the Office 2007 Home & Student edition.

Is there any difference in the Office 2007 Home & Student Edition Word,etc. programs than the Full Office Programs?

 LR