Open Office: is it poo?

[pcolbeck]

This is true OOXML is such a crap standard that no one can actually implement it in software because it leaves such much stuff undefined. Microsoft paid people to pack the standards meetings and it is alleged bribed the chairmen to pass the standard. Once the standard had been fast racked all these people melted away and are no longer interested. The EU is looking into this at the moment.

[ian]

I confess to not being a fan of OO - leastways the Mac version. Clunky, often cryptic, and inclined to invoke the beachball of death at any moment. That said, it's free and the utilitarianism is probably not going to hinder the occasional letter writer.

I like Office, mostly. It's polished and I've never had formatting issues moving between versions (or platforms). I have no issues with paying for software and if there's one good thing that OO has done it's reduced the price for normal mortals to something close to reasonable. That said, Office 2008 for the Mac is a whole load sucky (Excel without pivot tables and VBA, you may as well take it out the back and shoot it). The version of Office 2007 that the mothership beamed onto my work PC is fine. I even quite like the 'ribbons', the old UI was getting labyrinthine.

That said, for non-work use I like iWork. Pages is a breeze to use (my god, graphics stay where you put them), Numbers is a innovative and intuitive approach to spreadsheets (though it lacks anything like Excel's power to crunch through huge piles of unsavoury data), and Keynote laughs in the face of Powerpoint.

[pcolbeck]

Never minded Excel. it's just Word I hate with a passion.

[ian]

I confess to not being a fan of OO - leastways the Mac version. Clunky, often cryptic, and inclined to invoke the beachball of death at any moment. That said, it's free and the utilitarianism is probably not going to hinder the occasional letter writer.

Well, I can't recommend (yet) that you get iWork 09 either... It's quirky and <sometimes> down right annoying (in Pages you can't do a table with two cells that spans more than 1 page...)

Numbers is just backwards sometimes (in 09 it's a bit better), but as if they did it on purpose to NOT be Excel. Why I paid CHF 99.- for a beta, I'll never know... 

Honestly, I find OOo to be the more stable and able to do what I want. While I have OOo 3 for PowerPC, it's not the greatest..

But have you tried Neo Office? It's Mac only and is a lot more stable than OOo back in the 2.x releases.

I always found NeoOffice to be very crashy too. Perhaps it's me or the versions I tinkered with. I abandoned it for the X11 OO, and then the proper Mac version. Can't say I liked either. My wife insists on Office because she likes what she knows, and it keeps her happy being able to move documents from PC to Mac without issue. Excel 2008, to me, is useless without VBA and pivot tables though, so I'll stick with the PC version.

I'd agree that iWork 09 has its quirks, and like all Apple software seems determinably odd at time (I swear they deliberately skip obvious functions and features). For home use, it fits the bill. For horrid work, I stick with Office.

And apologies to pcolbeck, I just remembered the entire dictionaries of invective I've spat at Word over the years. That's a lot, since I started on Word 2 for the Mac.

[pcolbeck]

Office 2007 has destroyed the "cant use Open Office as it's UI is different to MS Office and would require retraining all our staff" argument as Office 2007 is radically different to all previous versions of MS Office. I am undecided as yet on whether the new UI is a good or bad thing.

[Panoramix]

For a student open office can be better in certain cases. If you have a bit of discipline formatting will be consistent (learn to use the styles) also it is quite good at managing references + bibliography. I have written 2 long dissertations one with word98 and the other with openoffice 1.something. Although openoffice was an unfinished product at the time and looking very clunky, productivity was higher with openoffice. I have seen Word destroying so many big documents that only trust it up to 20 pages. For more than this it will either be indesign or openoffice.

[simonp]

If you worry about random formatting errors then export as .pdf which means it's already formatted.  Job done.

[Woofage]

Office (well, Word and Excel mostly) is an excellent suite of products capable of much. I've written long technical documents in Word with proper use of styles, heading hierarchy, cross references etc and it does it all very well. Similarly, I have used Excel for simple mathematical models (even including complex numbers) and it's done pretty much everything I've asked of it.

However, will a school/college age child use any of these features? I doubt it. Not that OOo lacks them, far from it, but why pay out £££ for stuff that isn't needed? Better to pay out £0.00 and just use the stuff you need.

BTW, I work in a "mixed" environment (Mrs W uses M$O, I use OOo). Normal documents interchange perfectly. More complex stuff (eg mail merges, multi-linked spreadsheets) don't.

[Panoramix]

I've written long technical documents in Word with proper use of styles, heading hierarchy, cross references etc and it does it all very well. Similarly, I have used Excel for simple mathematical models (even including complex numbers) and it's done pretty much everything I've asked of it.

You need to teach me how to use word, the beast tend to attack me when I have tight deadlines!

I agree with you on Excel, I have pushed the thing to its limit (60000 lines with lookup + complicated formulae + Pivot tables) and it has never bitten me too hard!!!

[drossall]

I am undecided as yet on whether the new UI is a good or bad thing.

I hate it. It breaks the CUA model horribly. I'm using Classic Menus but that does not fully resolve things.

I know a lot of people like it, but I can't find anything any more and all my keyboard shortcuts are gone 

[Cunobelin]

Yup - I can't really see anyone making much of an effort to support Works. I thought it had been dead for years.


...and was a total pile of crap when it was available.

WOrks is still going strong. I am after a new laptop and several spec Works (v9) as part of the package.

You simply need to think ahead and save in a "Word" format and Open Office will be fine.

[Jaded]

Using Word for a large document requires a head-check.

Orifice 2007 was just weird. What were they trying to do?

Any software that tries to tell me what items I have in my menus depending on what I did most recently calls out for the insertion of the install DVD into the urethra of the interface designer.

[αdαmsκι]

Back to the OP.

I started using Open Office a couple of years ago. It's not the same as MS Office and it took some time to get use to the difference ways that Open Office does some things.  However, I really like it. I find it a lot more stable than MS Office (although that may be because I started using Open Office at the same time as I started using Ubuntu). I've used Open Office Writer for my PhD thesis and it's done everything I could have wished for.  I've also found the Open Office forums very useful in answer various questions.

Forum #1
Forum #2

The main issue I have with Open Office is that the graphs in Calc (Open Office version of Excel) are pretty shoddy. Then again you shouldn't really be using either Calc or Excel for graphing stuff because they aren't graphing programs.

[fred the great]

Like all Microshaft crap, Office is just too ruddy invasive. One recent irritation was I started to write a letter on the 5th but have yet to finish it. Every time I open the file to continue the date gets changed by Gatesy.

Note for the future. Get rid of M$ totally by saving my  files to Open Office.

Anyway, Ubuntu does all I need and is  easy to use.

[David Martin]

   The lack of bomb proof VBA makes Excel a bit useless as well. 

I have never met bomb proof VBA. It just sucks.

Has OO got it's scripting sorted yet?

.d

[Martin109]

The main issue I have with Open Office is that the graphs in Calc (Open Office version of Excel) are pretty shoddy. Then again you shouldn't really be using either Calc or Excel for graphing stuff because they aren't graphing programs.

It's interesting to hear that, as I also find the graph features of OO inferior to those of Excel.  Could you give a bit more detail about the separate graphing programs you're referring to?  (You could PM me, if you like, as my question is a bit OT).

[rae]

I have never met bomb proof VBA. It just sucks. 

Sucks from a coding elegance point of view?  Sure.  Its date handling sucks too.  But for all of that, it is hugely powerful.   Some of us have coded demo trading systems in VBA, mainly because the test data was in excel already, and it was the quickest way of proving a point (about 1 day).   

Then again you shouldn't really be using either Calc or Excel for graphing stuff because they aren't graphing programs. 

If the Calc and Excel graphs work for you, what's the problem?   Most graphs are pretty simple things. 

[αdαmsκι]

Then again you shouldn't really be using either Calc or Excel for graphing stuff because they aren't graphing programs. 

If the Calc and Excel graphs work for you, what's the problem?   Most graphs are pretty simple things.

Nothing "wrong" with that. I simply meant that Calc & Excel are spreadsheets and if it's graphs that you want to create then there are better pieces of software avaiable. If it works for you, tho, then that's great. I just know that Calc graphs don't work for me.

[gonzo]

I picked up a legit office 2007 complete edition for £40 as a student. See if you can do similar.

[Plodder]

I picked up a legit office 2007 complete edition for £40 as a student. See if you can do similar.

If you have an academic email address (e.g. ending in "ac.uk") you can get Office 2007 Ultimate for £38.95 from http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx.

In spite of the cheapness of that deal and because I really hate the new dumber and dumber MS Office interface, I still use OpenOffice (as do 50% of my lecturers). Not had any problems with it.

[fred the great]

The equivalent of 40 quid in Asia represents what some families live on for one month.

Microshaft, as usual, is far too expensive

We should support Linux for a far better future.

[Greenbank]

The equivalent of 40 quid in Asia represents what some families live on for one month.

Microshaft, as usual, is far too expensive

Riiiight. Are they also responsible for the fact that the computer that's needed to run the software costs considerably more than £40?

[fred the great]

They can get the Computer on monthly payments. But let's face it, there is a lot more to a Computer than a bit of software.

And Ubuntu is free and also the software is free. Why pay 40 quid when the latest Ubuntu Desktop is so easy to use and relatively ( perhaps totally) free of bugs and visuses.

In my view Microshaft have been screwing people for far too long and we all fell for it

[gonzo]

And Ubuntu is free and also the software is free. Why pay 40 quid when the latest Ubuntu Desktop is so easy to use and relatively ( perhaps totally) free of bugs and visuses.

They had an article in PC Pro a little while ago about a bloke who was only going to use Ubuntu for a week. The first day was spent getting it to work and the third day he broke and switched back to windows because the system was not stable enough for him to have confidence that his work would not be lost!

[Greenbank]

And Ubuntu is free and also the software is free. Why pay 40 quid when the latest Ubuntu Desktop is so easy to use and relatively ( perhaps totally) free of bugs and visuses.

Ha. Comedy. Keep it coming.

Linux weenie-ism makes a change from boring old boilerplate MS bashing.

P.S. For what it's worth. I'm neither pro- nor anti- Linux/Windows/UNIX or any other operating system (with the exception of HP-UX which is the work of Stan). I write software for UNIX (including Linux) and Windows for my job. I've been running Linux since 1992. I've contributed to various free/oss apps (I even took over maintaining one from Alan Cox) and even had some of my own code in the linux Kernel back in the 1.3 days (it never made it to the 1.4 "stable" branch thankfully). I have both a Linux desktop and a Windows desktop at work. I have a Linux box, a Windows laptop and a MacOS desktop at home. My home Solaris box died (well, it was dying so I took it out the back and shot it).