On September 7, 2008 I wrote part 1 of this post, although at the time I did not anticipate there would be a part 2. As a quick recap, I had been a diehard OpenOffice (OO) user for a couple years but because more and more teachers at my school, including one that I had to work closely with this year, were using MS Office 2007 and it’s wonderful XML formatted documents, I began using Microsoft’s product again. Because I rarely do anything halfway, I began solely using it to “reacquaint” myself with its features. Now that OpenOffice 3.0 has been released, and I downloaded it the day of release, I decided to revisit my decision.
First of all, I have really grown to like the ribbon menu in MS Office as compared to the toolbar in OpenOffice. Below is a screenshot of part of the bar in MS Word:
And for comparison, part of the toolbar from OpenOffice Writer:
Clearly the OO Writer toolbar is a much more traditional toolbar, and for the most part it is not that MS Word does all that much more than OO Writer, but I tend to be a visual thinker, and the MS Word menu “feels” right to me. If you don’t care, then OO Writer is nearly as good. One issue that I had when I first moved to OO was its commenting tool. I had just begun using this feature in my old version of MS Word, and I really liked its ease of use and, again, the visual aesthetic. OO Writer had an opportunity to input notes, but I could not easily find a way to have them show up next to the text the way that it did in MS Word. In addition, when commenting in MS Word you could select a word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph and the comment would be clearly seen as referring to whatever you selected. In OO Writer all it would do is leave a little mark at the beginning of what you were referencing. MS Word 2007 did not improve on their features in this area, but OO Writer did at least put the comment next to the text. You can see a comparison in the next two images:
Commenting in MS Office 2007
Commenting in OpenOffice Writer 3.0
In both cases I selected exactly the same text, but you can see that in MS Word it is clear what exactly my comment is referring to, but not so in OO Writer. Is it that big of a deal? Probably not. It certainly is not a deal-breaker for me, or I would not have switched from MS Office XP to OpenOffice 2.2 in the first case. But I do like the commenting in MS Word better.
Another thing that I like in MS Word that is not supported in OO Writer is the inking capabilities. Since I have a Tablet PC it is nice to be able to comment on student papers that were sent to me and send them back with written comments. However, I probably do not use this enough for it to be that big of a deal. In fact, recent developments may be leading me away from a Tablet PC anyway, but that is probably another blog post.
This brings me to the main reason I made the switch from OO to MS Office at the beginning of the semester. Too many people could not handle Microsoft’s new XML document standard. They did not know how to regularly save their documents in the old .doc (or .xls) format, and that meant I could not open them until I emailed them back, often explaining how they could go about saving it in a way I could look at, and then wait for it to come back. OpenOffice 3.0 has taken care of this!!!! You cannot save OO documents in the XML format, but you can open them, and then save them in just about any other format except for XML. So when working with someone who is using MS Office 2007 you can still use OO 3.0 and open their documents and share them. I am very excited that OpenOffice made this update, although I am disappointed that it did not happen earlier.
So the question becomes whether or not I plan on switching back over to exclusive use of OpenOffice now that my main reason for switching to MS Office 2007 has been dealt with. Well, if you have been reading carefully you will probably realize that I like a number of the aesthetic features in MS Office, and since the school has made its choice to waste money, er… use MS Office I will continue to do so. However, I plan on continuing to advocate having the school switch to OpenOffice. More teachers and members of the IT department seem to be open to the idea than they were before, so possibly when Microsoft comes out with its new Office program we can finally make the break. I will gladly switch back fulltime to OpenOffice then (and secretly hope that they improve the commenting in Writer!). I should mention that I will probably be buying my own personal laptop again this year, as opposed to the school one I have now, and I will definitely choose OpenOffice 3.0 for the primary reason that it is free. I like MS Office, but not that much more to pay my own money for it.
Have fun!
3 November 2008 at 11:47 am |
Unfortunately, Microsoft Office is extremely bloated and expensive. OpenOffice supports the open source community and is non-profit.
With that said, I use both programs.
4 April 2009 at 8:33 am |
I read both your posts about Word 2007 Vs OOo Writer and I have to agree with you.
I’ve tried to like OOo Writer for the past few years and while OOo 3.0 made certain advances it’s still far behind in many areas; however, many of these areas most users will never notice. The biggest problem I have with OOo Writer is the number of steps it often takes to do, what should be easy, tasks. Sure, it has the features but implementing them at times is very cumbersome and other times down right difficult.
Just look at the find/search. Try and search for a paragraph mark! There are a lot of little things like that in OOo that make you want to pull your hair out. Certainly Word 2007 has things that make you think for a second but then the options are just a click or two away where in OOo Writer it’s often only accessible via another menu–they often don’t tie things together very well.
Now, if you would have asked me about Word 2007 a few days I go I would have firmly said it was a bloated POS and you ought to stay with Word 2003 or OOo Writer; however, like you I spent some time with it and getting to know the new UI and Word 2007 has stepped into a new league. There’s a lot going on that most users will never realize or probably use but there is a lot the average user will use especially the newbie who doesn’t want to remember shortcut keys or odd programming language entries.
Now that all frustrates me because I want to move to Linux–NO way am I using Vista! And Word 2007, other than the poor pdf export and inability to customize the ribbon, is pretty damn good.
HOWEVER. . .
The reality is this, what features do you really use most of the time and what program offers those features? And what program are those features the most comfortable for you to use? And finally will it support the document format of your choice or imprison you?
What I’ve learned over the years using Word (since ‘95) is this, know the end goal of your project and make absolutely certain that your word processor can get you there, don’t think a third party add-in will do the trick, it probably won’t. Word could never get my documents into PDF with all the info even with acrobat. The links always had problems and even Word 2007 is poor in this area–no support for forms, no security options, and older documents often break links on export.
So, it may be the case that OOo Writer is better because it can get your document into the end product you need. . . or even some of the alternatives like SoftMaker Office (TextMaker), EIOffice, or Kingsoft, etc. . .
While Word 2007 is great in many ways it may also imprison your document. You don’t want to rely on import/export to other programs to finish the project. That often doesn’t work that well and will cause more headaches.
Just some food for thought
4 April 2009 at 1:44 pm |
CS, you are right. One thing that continues to weigh heavily in OpenOffice’s favor is the cost. I agree that some of the things in OO are less intuitive and take more time, but when you factor in cost, they are, at best I think, minor annoyances.
4 April 2009 at 2:23 pm |
I’ll disagree if you don’t mind.
Since I only use the word processor the cost for MS Word is ~80 and often you can find the home/student Office suite for that price (Word, Excel, and Power point). Average that out over 3 to 4 years for the live of the software before the next version and you are talking very little for something you may use a lot.
The $80 is made up in my time if the program is easier to use. I just got done checking OOo Writer blog post vs Word 2007’s. . . not even close. Word will post and upload graphics with clean code. OOo will only post text and adds lots of bad code. And graphics in Word 2007 are pretty nice.
Now I have a few sites and I’m sure you will agree that being able to upload everything pre-formatted would save some time
The free argument is overused in my opinion. The price really shows up for people/companies that need the full blown enterprise solution and that’s why many major companies are moving to Linux+OOo (Check out Siemens). We are talking 10K+ computers at a time. My little $80 is laughable.
However, my big issue with MS Office isn’t the cost but more how it invades my computer and isn’t available on Linux
AND most importantly I disagree with Microsoft’s ethics. I don’t believe Microsoft should be big brother on my computer but that’s what Vista is, plus other issues.
$80. . . that’s a night drinking with your buddies
Trapped documents in proprietary formats. . . that’s a bigger issue and one heck of a stronger selling point for OOo, in my opinion. . . not that many people get it. Not to mention breaking a near monopoly. For me those are the reasons I support OOo and still use it. And other software Vs Office.
Like you, Word 2007 was just available for me. I personally didn’t pay a dime for access to it.
And honestly I would NOT pay for it. Not because of the price. I’ve purchased other word processing programs recently and would be happy to pay $80 for a really good one. I wouldn’t pay because I don’t want to support Microsoft’s current business practices! A little competition is good for the market and us end users and we vote via our dollars. Without OOo/ODF Microsoft would never have opened up the DOCX source code. And that is a move in the right direction. . . even though it’s 6,000+ pages lol
Support OOo and even give them a buck or two. Sun Microsystems is in trouble. IBM may purchase them.
Ok. . . down off my soapbox now
Have a great weekend!