Which Office software?

[HAND]

I'm trying to decide which Office software to get and would be interested in your thoughts on the subject.

Lotus Smartsuite 9.5-
very cheap therefore attractive, but unstable?(going by forum accounts)

OpenOffice-
Dont much about this but my friends keep mumbling about it! plus its free(download)? Maybe unstable?

StarOffice 6.0-
Cheaper than MS Office by far but has problems with full MS compatiblity Ive heard.. a very good cheap alternative to MS Office.

MS Office
Solid as a rock apperently, but way too expensive... even Office 2000.

I'll probably be using the Office software in question for power point presentations and all the other formats for my degree work so i don't want any last minute suprises! Is MS Office really worth the cash?
Thanks for any info

 

[Turner]

I use OpenOffice at home. It's free, and fairly stable. And it appears to be pretty compatible with MS Office. But honestly, I haven't used it enough to run into any incompatibilites.

I use MS office at work and at school.

I will be buying MS Office next term, as some of our classes require MS Office in class.

Degree work? So you're in school? You can get a Stripped down office version for pretty cheap. Outlook, Word, Excel, and PP. Maybe $120(us). .

I would look at the market share in your area, and go with the more popular.

But if you want a simple office-type program for personal use at home, I'd go with Open Office. Since you're using it for schoolwork, I might go with MS Office.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

MS Office is perhaps the one program(well, group of actually) that MS haters even like(for the most part). They do, of course, complain that it's high priced so therefore it must be part of some microsoft plan make money for bill gates' chopper invasion he's planning in the year 2020.......

The fact is that it IS the greatest office suite out there, but it IS also the highest priced. It is completely compatible with windows and will run as solid as a rock. The newest version of course comes with a manual that is a couple hundred pages long and you'll want to read it so you can disable all the features you don't want, but you'll only need to do that once. Personally I'm so used to MS Office I couldn't consider anything else. If you have the money, get yourself MS Office. Also, if you have to take any work to school for anything you'll want MS Office, because bringing in work that will be incompatible on your professor's computer probably won't earn you a good grade I'm not sure if the others are supposed to be compatible with ms office programs, if they are then that's definately a bonus, but i'd have to test it for myself. I'd go ahead and get ms office, or if you have a fast connection you could try out openoffice for a week or so before making a decision.

If anything here has confused you in anyway, just take turner's advice

 

[Jeratain]

Personally the most important thing to me is compatibility. That is the main reason I use MS Office. It's the industry standard.

 

[Zwelgje]

I've tried OpenOffice and I liked it but went back to MS Office again because I found OpenOffice to be extremely slow on my computer. Both opening and closing programs took ages. Also I was afraid that stuff wouldn't be compatible with MS Office I use at work.

If at school you have to use MS Office I would go for that, try to get it cheap: a stripped down version if available (I've never seen it, but I didn't look for it either. ) and maybe you can get it with a huge discount from school? At the university I work at I can get MS Office 2000 for 22 euro.

But if you want to try OpenOffice, just go ahead, it's free and it's easy to use, many functions are the same as in MS Office so you shouldn't have many problems working with it. (you can save documents as MS documents: .doc .xls etc)

 

[Sodapop]

Originally posted by Jeratain
Personally the most important thing to me is compatibility. That is the main reason I use MS Office. It's the industry standard.

Standard shmandard... MS Office is all but standard, trying to create incompatibility in file format... And actually, the industry standard would be to save the files in xml format, and MS office doesn't do that... The next version is supposed to though.

Personally, I prefer to use OpenOffice over MS office, although I have both installed on my computer. OpenOffice opens and save MS office format. It's a bit slow, but I'd say it's worth the wait. Besides, version 1.1 beta is quite faster than the 1.0.x serie. I only use MS Office when I need to do something really quickly, as I've used it more than OpenOffice, but I'm getting quite used to it, therefore I use MS office less and less

Anyway, it's definitely not a serious problem for you. Try openoffice, it's free. If it doesn't suit you well, get something else.

BTW, I wouldn't suggest StarOffice, as it's mostly the same as OpenOffice (OpenOffice being the open source version of Sun's StarOffice), just with a few more programs, like a database program. So if you don't need that, StarOffice is useless...

 

[CornMaster]

Openoffice all the way!!

But does no one use word perfect any more??

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Standard shmandard... MS Office is all but standard, trying to create incompatibility in file format... And actually, the industry standard would be to save the files in xml format, and MS office doesn't do that... The next version is supposed to though.

When you're used by millions more than your nearest competitor, you ARE the standard........

Perhaps we could even throw in the words monopoly, and evil......

 

[HAND]

Thanks for the feedback guys, ill probably go for Openoffice since its free.
I might go for MS Office if Openoffice doesn't work out(not sure about the cost though)...Any thoughts on Lotus? Pros/Cons?

 

[nihilistic]

For compatibility/standard: MS Office

For free/or if you just don't like MS Office: Open Office

For professional papers: TeX

BTW, can somebody explain to me their reasoning of buying Lotus when it is neither a standard nor free?

 

[Turner]

Well, if it's not free, you have to buy it, right?

Seriously. . . IBM ships their computers with Lotus Notes. I think they might sell it a bit cheaper than Office. You know how well IBM and MS get along, right? My wife usedta work at Farmers Insurance, and they all used Lotus there. No MS to be seen, except for the OS. So I guess there's enough people out there that use it. Although I never would.

Like I said in my previous post, I'll be buying MS Office this fall. Primarily because I like Outlook. It'll be nice having Word and Excel there too that open up faster than Open Office, and also my wife will be taking classes specifically for Office. If it wasn't for the last point, I'd stick with Open Office. . . Yeah, it's a bit slower, but when someone posts a .xls file, or I get a .doc file in email, it's nice to read it for free and not have to bring it to work.

 

[CornMaster]

It's the "defacto" standard.....actually it's not even that.....cause we wouldn't be having this conversation if it was.....truly.

I'd go with OpenOffice. Cause you still have the compatibility with the evil monopolistic defacto standard.

 

[Sodapop]

Originally posted by gonzo_for_civ


When you're used by millions more than your nearest competitor, you ARE the standard........

Perhaps we could even throw in the words monopoly, and evil......

Well, I still consider that a file format that is opened by only one single (non-free) program cannot be considered standard. Yes, it is the most used, but standard sounds like something that is used by every programs more than by everyone in my mind... Anyway, .txt is my personnal standard... That and swx from openoffice...

And I do agree with the parts on monopoly and evil... Hundreds to pay for an office suite, and people working on a free program on their free time are achieving the same result... You do not get what you pay for (IMO). Sure it's efficient, but dangit, here it costs around 600 bucks to buy office, and with the taxes, it goes up to more than 700... Quite a lot to save files in .doc if you ask me

 

[Turner]

US - I can and have on several occasions used free software to open MS office documents. Both word and excel files. Open Office not only can load them, but can save them too.

Also, in the past it was not uncommon for Word Perfect to open files in the Word format. and vise verse. But saving was a different matter. . .

 

[Sodapop]

Originally posted by Turner_727
US - I can and have on several occasions used free software to open MS office documents. Both word and excel files. Open Office not only can load them, but can save them too.

Also, in the past it was not uncommon for Word Perfect to open files in the Word format. and vise verse. But saving was a different matter. . .

Yep I know that, being a user of openoffice (don't have much choice other than that on linux). However, and it's not really a complaint, the compatibility is not perfect. Some things I did in MS office were broken in openoffice, and the other way around. Btw, openoffice calc doesn't support macros from MS excel. Just to show one example of broken compatibility...

Format use in MS office are considered closed format... Personally, I really don't care about open source or closed source as long as they work... But I do care about the file format being open. If they are not, you end up forced to use paid software (like most are forced to use MS office to open .doc). *cough* monopoly *cough*

 

[Turner]

Originally posted by Unknown soldier
*cough* monopoly *cough*

That is, after all, the american way. You should know that by now!

But seriously, you're right. I've found that somethings don't work the same, which is a big part of the reason I'm going to buy MS Office in the fall. I'm not happy about it, but what can one do?

I do know that MS is trying to get rid of the open source market. I don't remember how they're trying to do that, but I recall reading about it somewhere. This of course means that if they succed in shutting it down, then people will be forced to use their software. Unless StarOffice ends up being so much better and cheaper than MS Office. But like someone said, who uses word perfect any more? They used to be bigger than word. I remember in the early 90's hating getting used to word, cuz the University changed over from word perfect to office. . .

 

[Sodapop]

Originally posted by Turner_727


That is, after all, the american way. You should know that by now!

But seriously, you're right. I've found that somethings don't work the same, which is a big part of the reason I'm going to buy MS Office in the fall. I'm not happy about it, but what can one do?

I do know that MS is trying to get rid of the open source market. I don't remember how they're trying to do that, but I recall reading about it somewhere. This of course means that if they succed in shutting it down, then people will be forced to use their software. Unless StarOffice ends up being so much better and cheaper than MS Office. But like someone said, who uses word perfect any more? They used to be bigger than word. I remember in the early 90's hating getting used to word, cuz the University changed over from word perfect to office. . .

What can you do??? Well, you can wait for office 2003 (or whatever the name will be) to come out, and hope that the savefiles become compliant and open xml format, and not only a more closed and complicated format that won't be readable by other software, and will take months if not years to decrypt and make useable to other pieces of sotware...

And StarOffice is really the same thing as OpenOffice... The only differences are that Star has a database utility, and Sun is giving support to users directly, something Open can't do... But that's mostly the only differences... Even the releases are planned on the same roadmap... Star is doing beta 6.1 (IIRC) and Open is doing beta 1.1... And neither of them has plans to support macros, which are the most incompatible part of the compatibility with MS office...

 

[Perfection]

Open office on my LINUX box, MS on my windows machine.

 

[Sodapop]

Originally posted by Perfection
Open office on my LINUX box, MS on my windows machine.

Both on both... Using crossover office... I just don't have the time to switch to windows to complete my work, so I can do it all in linux or windows

 

[Turner]

See, with out macro support, they're useless.

And I was going with StarOffice if MS was able to successfully stop the open source campain. But to be honest, I have no idea how they would do that. One of the way is to keep their format incompatible with thier software. Reverse engineering is a trademark violation, isn't it? Or maybe copyright, I don't remember.