Microsoft Office or OpenOffice

[West_ray]

Which one do you prefer, if the factor of cost is excluded ?

 

[dominator]

openoffice fur sure. free yet more powerful usage.

if you ever realise, XP SP1 onwards don't have java included and provider of the free openoffice is also java provider..

 

[skinnylatte]

I don't use Office if I can help it. Being Microsoft is one thing.. being totally clunky and ridiculously bloated is the other. Word and Powerpoint both piss me off. For school uses, I write in Pages and do my presentations in Keynote (Apple's iWork). Can open and save .doc and .ppt. Thankfully I have no use of Excel either. Other than that, for normal writing purposes I use a simple text editor.

OpenOffice is great but ever since I started using a Mac, it was too ugly compared to what I am now used to. Heheh.

 

[xray]

I'll use OpenOffice.org because it is Free Software and it's easy to use. Furthermore, the files with the same amount of words and graphics saved in .doc is far larger than that in OpenOffice Writer files. (Save $$$ and disk space)

 

[edlye]

OpenOffice because it is quality opensource s/w, PLUS it comes with the Adobe Acrobat PDF file generator built-in.

 

[leave]

Which one do you prefer, if the factor of cost is excluded ?

I prefer Microsoft Office mainly for Excel - Calc still has some way to go. Impress seems on par with Powerpoint although I don't use them a lot.

But I voted OpenOffice coz it's *free* and I'm pro open-source :thumbsup:.

 

[Deadpoet]

Which one do you prefer, if the factor of cost is excluded ?

did you guys read the OP's statement, if the cost factor is removed?

MS Office, not becuase I like Uncle Bill or what, but the fact that I want all my files/documents to be 100% compatible across the world. When I receive files from clients or send files to customers, I dont want to worry about compatibility issues.

Open source is good, free is better, but as more developer starts working on it on their own, compatibility will be a problem. For most ppl on the board, you have no idea how "fun" it was before the days of Windows, let alone pre-DOS days.

That said, i do want to see open office getting a meaningful marketshare, keeps Microsoft on their toes.

 

[Del_CtrlnoAlt]

minus the cost, MS office, cos its still overall better than openoffice by few fold... see the powerpoint & features of word will do...

 

[Klose]

MSOffice. Why bother to reintegrate if things are running so smoothly. :think: It's the same case when changing from windows os to open source. People talk about cost savings. However, when you actually work out the dollars and cents of the migration of systems and data for companies, it isnt so cheap after all.

 

[xray]

Think of the long-term benefits. If all the civil servants used non-proprietary formats, a lot of disk space is saved. And we won't be reliable on foreign companies like Microsoft. If we're not happy if the OS, we can always change some parts of it, like in Linux.

The "when you actually work out the dollars and cents of the migration of systems and data for companies, it isnt so cheap after all" argument is put forth by Microsoft and other companies against Free Software.

The long-term independence and costs far outweigh the downsides of migration. And what's so difficult about transition of databases when you've got so many IT companies waiting for jobs and avoiding bankruptcy?