OpenOffice 3.1 Review Discussion

OpenOffice is the name-brand freeware alternative to Microsoft Office. Is this no-cost productivity suite really a viable replacement for MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, or is that just more open source hyperbole? We break open the other Office to find out in this review.

Read the full content of this Article: OpenOffice 3.1 Review

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well, as you can get word, excel, powerpoint for 20$ if you buy it for 3 persons, it's not 100s of dollars. and the ribbon interface is awesome, and alone worth the 20$ actually.

so personally, i would put "feels like classic ms office" definitely as a CONS.

other than that, nice review.

 

have they added anti-aliasing support for fonts and images?

 

from the screenshots, it looks like it, but no cleartype yet?

actually, only their powerpointclone looks like it, in the screenshot.

 

the bullet points look really pixelated.
i really need this feature cos i often have equations in my docs, without these image enhancements, the equations and formulae are utterly unreadable.

 

yeah i guess so, knowing how formulas can look

well, i guess it's powerpoint with it's cleartype for you, then.. except if the OP could shed some light if they enhanced in that area.

 

I don't think it will replace Word. I've been using Word for years and I love it because it's simple and effective. OpenOffice 3.1 is almost the same as Word but I like to keep things simple. But the program is free and that's a big plus for me, I will try it out. Thanks.

 

Anyone know how good it is with languages other than English? Specifically East Asian Languages such as Japanese?
Thanks!
Bertman

 

I use Openoffice.org 3.1.1 and I think there needs to be a small clarification. For personal use, that is, documents and projects that you wouldn't share across a network of coworkers, it's fine. To type up documents for homework, make a powerpoint on your own, do spreadsheets for home use of say the checkbook, it does that job and then some. However, as the OP noted, it has a tendency to hack up aspects from Microsoft programs (especially office 2007) that according to it, just shouldn't work. While many basic controls do the same thing, such as find, and some improve on Microsoft's design, in a business setting, or even in group presentations for academic purposes, you want your project to work the first time, every time. Such is why I think the 2 programs work well together, and since O is free, all it costs is a bit of storage space. I find that Office 2007, which is becoming the standard of Office Apps is too flashy, lacks the toolbar, etc., that has existed in previous incarnations for over a decade. If you don't know what the buttons do, don't have the requirements to actually incorporate Office's prettiness into the computer, etc., then what use is it to have excess where you can't even have it? Even if OpenOffice follows an older style motif (think Office 2003 and much earlier), the button images are known because of their use by Microsoft, and it's a less flashy, easier to use interface.

As far as having to fix spreadsheets and .xls documents and whatnot, I think it should be noted that the "Microsoft-based" formats aren't the native formats for open-source programs. I would be willing to bet that if there was a conversion to the "open-source" variant before opening (ie: like converting a .doc to an .odt), it would fix itself up to an extent, or become completely unusable, depending on how well-thought up the actual spreadsheet is. Of course it would demolish a poorly done spreadsheet, even if it's .xls from office to .xls from OO calc. That's just b/c the work wasn't done right. What I want to know is what would happen if one converted the spreadsheet to O 's format before actually opening it, the same for presentations and databases... would the sheets be usable, or would they be completely devastated? The .doc's that I convert to .odt usually are ok, unless I do some wild text art or photo insertions into a document. OpenOffice could have decided to be completely incompatible with anything microsoft and taken a "holier than thou" stance, however the people who based it off StarOffice were at least wise enough to make it workable with the "Big company", whereas you don't see Microsoft reaching out to those using O . It's not required, but it'd be nice to be able to open .odt files or other open-formats on MS without an add-on... (Note: MS's OOXML formats and other open formats are NOT compatible with O 3.1.1 and probably why it's unworkable at this point.)

I wouldn't call Openoffice.org a full-out replacement for MS Office and its variants, Office is a FAR better professional-level tool for office use, and it commands its price for a reason. There is no other program that has the overall horsepower of Office (in particular its professional and ultimate incarnations), however some people either find that the entry price of $129 is too steep, or they're college kids and don't have the funds, but don't want to pirate (especially in the USA where we have so many agencies watching it's absurd), or as in my case, found MS Office to be buggy and prone to self-corruption. For personal use on work, or even in a group environment where others have O , I would use OpenOffice without reservation, it's easier to use, less flashy, less buggy, and less of a resource hog for me. However, if you have professional applications, I will say that MS's product is far easier to use in a group, more universal, and more robust. I guess then it comes down to what environment your computer and the application is going to be seeing most.

 

While I love OSS, it's kind of pathetic that the best office OSS on offer is still trying and failing to mimic a version of MS Office that has since been surpassed.

 

I been using OpenOffice since back when it was called StarOffice. I'm using Office on my notebook now because I got free copy and it opens so fast in Vista. I think for most people, including me, OpenOffice is a viable alternative. We just type up the occasional letter/article/paper, presentation or spreadsheet without using the myriad of options offered in Office. For us OpenOffice is a viable option cause we don't need anything fancy. There are some who use some of those extras that Office offers, but I think they're in the minority. It always puzzled me why more people don't use OpenOffice as it's free and a good alternative. There's an interesting article in the USA Today about how more people are using Google Docs and Microsoft is taking note.

 

I've tried OpenOffice 3.0 and previous versions, but each time I try to get it to use an English(UK) dictionary (I'm Australian) it screws up. I.e. it doesn't do any spell checking and worse, it doesn't inform you that it has stopped working. Using MS Office for years may have made me lazy because I now absentmindedly rely on its spell checking and automatic typo-correction features. OpenOffice's spelling/grammar feature is pre-alpha and writes the whole suite off for me.

 

Did you try downloading the dictionary add-on, and following O 's instructions for instaling a dictionary? Sometimes it forgets to open one up, or if you download from an FTP, it'll give you the wrong dictionary. (Mine gave me a French Dictionary, but I dl'd the correct one, and it worked fine). O 's help explains how to do it, and 3.1.1 gives you the full instructions to do so.

Jason

 

I've used OpenOffice plenty in Vista, XP, OSX and Ubuntu. It's a decent alternative for free software, but I find it less stable and less efficient to use than Office in a Windows environment. I recently gave it another go in Vista64 and found a similar experience as before. I don't recall having stability issues with OpenOffice in Ubuntu or OSX, however.

 

I used OpenOffice as a primary office suite, without any Microsoft Office, for about a month earlier this year. At first it seemed nice and reasonably intuitive, at least in Write. But the longer I ran it, the less impressed I was. Impress failed impressively at correctly opening complex .ppt files (not .pptx), and its interface isn't as intuitive of that of Office 2000, 2007, or IBM Lotus Symphony. Trying to write mathematical notation in Write didn't work half as well as in Office 2007, either (granted, I'm not sure Office 2003 was anywhere near Office 2007 in that respect, either, but Office 2007 is the standard now). For simple Word documents and spreadsheets it would have been fine, but Impress didn't do what its name implied, and for mathematical works, Write doesn't do well, either. Word 2007 does well enough that LaTeX or other technical programs aren't necessary, Open Office Write does not.

I believe it was version 3.0.1, not 3.1, that I was using in April, and some of these issues may have been ameliorated, but OpenOffice didn't leave me hurrying to try it again. I'd use it if I had to use Linux, but I'd rather run Microsoft Office on Windows, even if Windows and Office cost money.

As for ClearType being off, recall that in XP, ClearType is off by default, with Standard font smoothing being enabled. Thus, ClearType should be off, assuming default settings - it's not user-friendly when programs override default settings such as ClearType, a la IE7/8. If OpenOffice were to force-enabled ClearType, that would definitely put off some customers - I for one can't stand ClearType on my LCD, and manually disabled it on IE8 before I downgraded to IE6 for other reasons.

 

the word processor is called "writer" not "write" as in the review, amirite?

 

A nice preview for me as my organisation uses only Open Office. The initial days were frustrating as I has used only MS Office till now. But now I have got used to it. Rep to OP for working hard on a well written review.

 

I actually am really fond of Open Office 3.1 and put it on every machine we have in. One thing I like best about it is it's ability to open lots of different files....

We are in printing and publishing; I can't tell you how many times someone sends us a file and we can't open the thing up.... Open Office is able to open it almost 95% of the time.

 

OpenOffice is more than adequate for working on large multi-chapter documents with dozens of figures and equations, cross-references and bibliographic citations, and is my primary everyday office suite.

A feature that was not mentioned in the review is that it is possible to create bibliographies in OpenOffice with BUILT-IN features, no need for EndNote as used by MS Office people. This is especially useful for students/academics.

OpenOffice also supports excellent 'track changes' functionality, that's good when collaborating with others.

Collaboratively editing a Word document using OOo (with others using MSO) is possible, but will give you problems if you are using 'track changes'. All other normal stuff works pretty well in my experience. But hey, it's an impressive result, and one that was never achieved by any of the competing commercial packages, right?

 

For most non-professionals, OpenOffice is satisfactory. MS Office certainly has its pluses, but as we've just discovered (XML), MS is up to its old tricks again - using (a polite word) another company's code. For this historical reason alone, I support OpenOffice and its derivatives.

 

I am using OpenOffice 3.1 after being an Office 2007 user, since my I cant install 2007 again for now, so far I have no complaints, but the paid Office is superior IMHO.

 

Impress and Power Point just don't get along. This is a royal pain in the neck because some of the people I work with use one and some use the other so when we all have to do a presentation together, there are always compatibility issues. I don't know whom to blame for it though.

Maybe if you're only using it for the really basic stuff. For the work that I do (physics), both Open Office and Office 2007 (I've got the Ultimate version) are utterly inadequate as far as writing papers goes -- everyone here uses LaTeX.

 

Powerpoint Viewer 2007 is completely free. I personally use Impress for creating presentations but keep PPT Viewer for showing other peoples presentations on my pc.

And yes LaTeX is sweet.

 

Does Open Office include an Outlook functioning product?

The most used component of MS Office for me is Outlook. I use the email; calendar; address book all the time, everyday, so if I go with Open Office then what do I do about the Outlook fuctions?

i have a free 2010 Office professional beta and I really don't want to have to buy this product!

Thanks

 

I'm in the same situation, New laptop, need some office software, but want full integration. Does OpenOffice have a component such as Outlook. Thanks