Word 2007 Vs. Open Office 2.3 Writer 492
A reader writes "Bruce Byfield of Linux.com has just posted his third Office shootout between Microsoft Office and Open Office. This is the first version comparing the new Microsoft Word 2007 with Writer from the latest version of Open Office. The verdict: while Microsoft Office beats Open Office in a few categories, overall Open Office wins — but by not as large a margin as in the past." Linux.com and Slashdot share a corporate overlord.
What about Mail Merge? (Score:5, Insightful)
NO bias at all evidently..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this come as a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Its free
2. Its open source
Does it surprise anyone that linux users go for it?
Why compare? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's great! (Score:4, Insightful)
Except where he forgot to review things like collaboration (shared workspaces, SharePoint and NetMeeting interop), revision control, integration, extensibility model, autoformatting, the insane amount of clip art available for free from the Office website, mail merge, the document map functionality, Office Update, speed, etc. etc.
People don't generally use something like Word because it's a good word processor - there are cheaper solutions for that. Word is good because it's part of a complete integrated solution. Otherwise you can get something cheaper or more specialized [wikipedia.org].
Flawed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it's also somewhat amusing that OO has "won" the author's three comparisons in 02, 05, and 07, given his obvious predilection for Linux, and the fact that the article is published on linux.com. I wonder if it would have been published had he said that Word 2007 was superior?
Re:What about Mail Merge? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, now, if you start mentioning the myriad of problems OO has, then the score could go the other way and Linux.com might have to announce a Microsoft product the winner.
Remember, suckiness is in the mouth of blower.
Bias? (Score:4, Insightful)
If Microsoft wrote a review / comparison this we'd have 200 comments here screaming FUD.
I'm sure Open Office is a great match for Word now, but if the writer wants to make that point, he needs to use some specific metrics.
Re:NO bias at all evidently..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Horribly hard... 5 different categories...+ a dropdown with about 6 different choices. That's 5*6=30 different views of styles. Also using the dropdown and button/tab in combination forces you to move the pointer nearly the height of oowriter window (Great in maximized mode!). Greatly eases comfort.... Stupid...
By default oowriter also includes at least 30 differentstyles.. stuff like the very important "List 1,List 2,List 3,List 4,List 5" Must have those!!!!
I mean... i could easily see myself need a "List 3" in this post!
And you can't delete them in the UI!!!
Styles/Content formatting should be a first class citizen in any word processor.
Just like latex
A bit harsh...
Ironic, in this case (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that Microsoft has spread FUD about re-training costs for Linux in the past makes it only more funny
Missing from Open Office. (Score:1, Insightful)
The only way in which 2007 is "worse" than either 2003 or OOo in terms of interface is that its not the same as one would expect from prior versions of Office (which have been fairly constant back at least to Office 95)
How about the $400 per seat price tag? Is that still there? Do you want:
Take your time deciding, there's no rush to buy.
What a biased review! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:We should give this test some additional criter (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a biased review! (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, Office 2007 wins by default (Score:3, Insightful)
OpenOffice 2.3 won't install until I uninstall OpenOffice 2.2. OpenOffice 2.2 won't uninstall until I present the original OpenOffice 2.2 installer, which I deleted right after I installed it, and probably isn't widely available anymore.
And this isn't the first time I've had uninstall problems with Windows Installer either. It's just a bloated, buggy mess. The most annoying part is that the OpenOffice installer seems to use NSIS. From experience in using programs that use both, I find NSIS far superior. I've never had an NSIS uninstaller fail on me, and when an NSIS installer failed it was because of some amateurish mistake of the person who made the install script, not because of NSIS itself, and they were isolated incidents. I don't see why OOo doesn't just use NSIS instead of using a Windows Installer packed inside an NSIS self-extracting archive... that just seems dumb.
Re:2007...uhggg (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you.
Re:What a biased review! (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't have any Karma to burn anyways
I do think the UI in 2007 is an improvement over 2003/XP/2000, but that's really anything's an improvement over that.
Not much useful content at all, either (Score:5, Insightful)
Any series of articles that thinks OpenOffice Writer has been better than Word in the past is dead before it starts. Only the most OSS-loving evangelist would make such a claim. Of course, the claim is only made because Writer won (according to the reviewer) in more categories (arbitrarily selected by the reviewer, and having equal weight).
In this case, it's interesting that he pans the ribbons in Office 2007. It's only as anecdotal as his claim, but I personally haven't yet found anyone who's given Office 2007 a fair try and didn't prefer the ribbons after a period of getting used to them. Microsoft's usability people seem to have done their job well on this one. Word certainly isn't perfect as far as usability goes, but it's hardly the disaster this guy makes out.
On the styles count, he pans Word 2007 for not having page and frame styles, but frankly, I have never used those features in OO Writer. I use styles and templates a lot, but if I'm doing something with enough flash to be using styles like that, I'll probably be using a DTP program anyway, and neither Word nor OO Writer is really up to that kind of page layout. Meanwhile, has OO Writer got shortcut keys for styles (and for removing them) that actually work yet?
On page layout, apparently the only thing Writer lacks is the ability to link text frames. I imagine that will be of great concern to the DTP big boys! Or not, unless a whole bunch of other stuff has been added since 2.2, and a whole load of bugs fixed. (I can't tell, since only 2.2.1 appears to be available for download so far.)
The comments about templates are only about those supplied with the packages, which unless you're Joe 12-year-old doing a high school project are utterly irrelevant. Professional organisations will generally set up their own, if they use them at all, which means the tools for setting up and modifying templates are far more important than the page layout equivalent of clip-art.
On numbered/bulleted lists, Writer apparently has little room for improvement over 2.2. I imagine anyone who's suffered the pain of trying to get multi-level lists to lay out properly and struggled through the ludicrously overcomplicated numbering architecture will disagree. Lists suck in Word, but they suck even more in Writer. Neither has a feature worthy of a serious word processor.
On headers and footers, the review criticises Word for its limited flexibility. When Writer can even put the most recent heading in the header automatically, get back to us.
On the footnotes and endnotes thing, calling Word's facilities basic in comparison to Writer is rather harsh. There are one or two nice tweaks in Writer that Word doesn't have (at least, I haven't found them yet if they were added in 2007, and it didn't before). Most people will never use these features.
On the subjects of cross-references, both Word and Writer suck beyond the point of being usable. They just suck in different ways. Someone should introduce them to LaTeX, which uses the stunningly complicated system of naming a place you might want to refer to later, and then referring to it by name elsewhere. When the word processors here have bookmarking facilities that do this, reliably, and without a tendency to corruption, they can claim to even have a useful cross-reference facility, but until then, it's just not true.
On indices and tables of contents, the reviewer apparently confuses his own stylistic preferences with faulty design — unfortunate, considering that almost any professional typesetter is likely to disagree with him on that one. In any case, again neither program really shines in this area, though. Simple things (in terms of the kind of documents where you'd care about these things) like having both a table of chapters and a detailed table of contents are bizarrely awkward if they work at all. Again, without better support for pulling these things in and actually getting them to work (there's no point being able to generate both tables if you can't get
Re:Open Office Allows Free PDF Generation! (Score:2, Insightful)
Once a month my consulting invoices are output as PDFs using enscript, a tiny shell script pulls the data from sqlite (previously Berkeley DB), converts to PDF and emails the client.
Is having a save as PDF button really a big deal?
LaTeX vs. Word vs. Writer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Curious... (Score:4, Insightful)
I hear ya! I STILL use WP 5.1, god it rocks and the macro facility is second to none. Now THAT is a word processor!
Re:What a biased review! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Who uses word processors? (Score:3, Insightful)
I trust Apple to eventually surpass Office with their app suite though.
Re:2007...uhggg (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, it takes like 10 minutes to learn, and once you learn it, it's simply much, much better than the old rats nest of menus, dialogs, and toolbars.
Microsoft isn't full of morons; they wouldn't have put their flagship product out there with the ribbon interface unless they could prove statistically, via testing, that the interface is plain better. Hell, even if you totally hate Microsoft, you have to admire their willingness to change things in an effort to improve the stagnant usability computers have had over the last decade-- it's more than Apple is willing to do anymore.
Re:Who uses word processors? (Score:3, Insightful)
Mostly, I think Office is a good enough tool for many jobs. Many, perhaps most, of those jobs have better narrowly-specialized (and, for the commercial alternatives, often far more expensive than Office, though in some cases there are good Free choices) tools available, but if you don't spend enough time on any one of the jobs, you are better off using a good-enough common tool rather than trying to learn and transition between the specialized tools for each.
(This is largely true of the whole idea of an "office suite" application, not really specific to MS Office.)
Re:Does this come as a surprise? (Score:2, Insightful)
No contest on the freebie.
Rather hypocritical to call it FUD then (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of MS's efforts against Linux adoption have been aimed at the server market, where the difference between Linux and Windows are major - arguably more so than the difference between MS Office 2007 and OO.o (any version). The fact that people are switching to OO.o because Office 2007 is too unusual for them is a strong indication that switching to Linux would have MASSIVE retraining costs.
(Office 2007 isn't that different; have you ever used it? The ribbon is basically a merge of the toolbars and the menus, and the hotkeys haven't changed - I personally found it easier to find many the features I was used to in 2007's interface than in OO.o's, even when I had already found them once before in OO.o and had only installed 2007 a few days ago. YMMV of course but I've never liked OO.o's interface and KOffice isn't really any better.)
Re:Missing from Open Office. (Score:3, Insightful)
My organization pays something like $50 per year per seat for full versions of Office and Windows workstation upgrades. Until recently, Visual Studio was included as well. That seems reasonable to me. Full microsoft compatibility is important enough to my user base to justify $50 per year.
Also, one important distinction between a migration to OO and a migration to Office 2007 is that, for my user base, 2007 migration issues would be largely MICROSOFT's fault and OO migration problems would be mostly MY fault.
Re:Curious... (Score:3, Insightful)
... vs LaTeX! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Interfaces: N/A or, choose between vi, emacs, kyle, lyx, pico, notepad,
Styles:\section, \begin{quote},
Page Layout: Er... Well, you can ultimately place a box anywhere you wish with a picture environment. It can be painful, but can force it. Winner: None!
Templates:\documentclass
Outlining:No idea what that is. LaTeX doesn't do it anyhow. Winner: word (according to TFA).
Bulleted and numbered lists:\begin{enumerate} or itemize Just Works. Impossible to screw up. Winner: LaTeX!
Tables:Ye gods. Well, there's super table (nice) and longtable for those long ones, but that doesn't work with supertable... But basic tables Just Work. No formulae, buy you can always \input a mechanically generated table file, and (if you use makefiles) have it automatically update whatever you use to generate it. Winner: Really, it's down to personal choice on this one.
Headers and Footers: They're part of your template. But you can arbitrarily customize your own. Winner: LaTeX!
Footnotes and endnotes:I try to avoid these as a matter of preference. Winner: I don't know since I avoid them.
Cross-references:Winner: LaTeX, by a very, very long way.
Indexes, tables of content, and bibliographies: See templates and cross references. There's a BST file for any job out there. Winner: LaTeX!
Master documents: \input FTW! That said, I challenge you to find a real document which is too large for vim on my computer even without \input. Winner: LaTeX!
Drawing tools: Er..., well, xfig can output latex code... er... Winner: Not LaTeX.
Unique features:Split pane view? Well, there's diff, or xdiff or gvimdiff or your editor has. Version tracking? Well, it works with CVS, SVN, git,
Conclusion:
1. Use LaTeX.
2. It's nice to seperate editing, presentation and content.
3. Then you can go the way of the UNIX and use the most suitable tool for every step.
Re:What a biased review! (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree the word processors are horrible, but I think that is because the concept is flaws. What we need is something like Lyx, but a lot more polished: what Lyx would be if it had received the same resources as Open Office.
For the Love of God (Score:2, Insightful)
On the flip side - my household will not be purchasing another copy of Office anytime soon. If cost is part of the equation, then OO is the only choice for a fully integrated office suite.
-CF
Re:Curious... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why ODF is so important.
If we had a standard document format (which Microsoft supported instead of attacked), minimalist document writers that worked like WP5.1 could be developed and would interoperate freely with MS and Open Office.
People wouldn't be forced to use these bloated great office packages if they didn't want to.
Re:Curious... (Score:2, Insightful)
In a program where typing is the whole damn point?
Re:Flawed. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: X vs My predetermined favourite! (Score:3, Insightful)
Completely serious
Some fairly basic functionality only available via a text interface: ed is a complete bitch to use, so my ability to use it for really basic layout strokes my ego. Winner: my predetermined favourite!
Some functionality that I never use and don't understand: Who cares? Winner: Whatever he said.
Something my predetermined favourite sucks at: Ummm, well yknow, stuff and such. Winner: It really depends on your personal tastes.
Conclusion:
1. Use my personal favourite obscure UNIX utility. That means you, 53 year old mother of seven who learned to use a computer two years ago.
2. Noone needs to see what they are doing as they do it. Quit whining.
3. Then you can use a technical propeller head environment for your low skilled admin job!
4. Oh and I nearly forgot. STFU,RTFM&quit being a PITA!!!
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Funnily enough, my biasometer gave an identical reading for your post, my post and TFA!