MS Office Ultimate vs OpenOffice, best for performance?

I read the Ultimate Steal Promotion from Microsoft (Ultimate Office for $60) and was wondering whether to fall for it. For the past 2 months after a clean install, I have Open Office instead and it's worked like a charm. Not as aesthetically pleasing as MS Office but I don't see much of a system performace impact b.c of it. However, reading the new promotion I'm tempted to revert back to MS..

If you had to choose only word processor/spreadsheet software but also want to maintain ideal/clean system performance as much as possible, would you give up Open Office for Office Ultimate (currently $680 retail)?

hp dv6500t notebook
2 GHz T7300
128MB nVidia 8400m GS
2GB RAM

 

lol dude hands down ms office ultimate 2007. open office no chance. uve got 2gb of ram and your worried about performance? thats really too much xD go ms office ultimate. ive got the student edition but its all i need

 

if it is true, then it is a good investment

agree with day-to-day use, OO is more than enough to support daily documents works. It is compact.

not really, but for 60$, i might jump on it

cheers ...

 

Open office is less bloated, so performance wise it is better. Plus it is developed for different OSes, even Linux LIVE includes it. (Those OSes with running Linux off only CD)

 

I'd pay full price for office 2007 before going back to oo 2 or even the new oo 3 beta....

Integration is so much smoother with office 07 in the suite and with other programs... working with documents is much faster in office 07.... the templates can't be beat.

IMO, it is not even a contest... you get what you pay for.

 

I purchased Office 2007 Ultimate from MS for $60 via theultimatesteal.com and let me tell you, it is worth every dollar.

IMO, Office 2007 is a great improvement over previous version. Sure, the ribbon interface takes a while to get used to, but after you're familiar with it, you'll find it's much easier to navigate than previous Office versions.

The features you get with Office far outshine what you get with OpenOffice. As far as performance goes, Office 2007 is light on resources and I've never had any performance issues with it.

Honestly, for $60, it'll be one of the best investments you make.

But you need to hurry because the offer ends on May 16 (sorry that sounds like spam )

 

I'm a long time user of OOo, and it covers my needs 100%. The only reason I would go with MS Office is if I had to because everyone at work would be using this, and their could be interoperability issues.

I really don't get it when people say MS has way more features than OOo (but always fail to specify exactly what they mean). What features? Ribbon buttons? Come on.

Office software like MS or OOo is so mature now, they both have a very hard time thinking about any new real features to add without giving users a headache of finding stuff in the menus. I mean pretty much any office software has everything an average user would ever want.

If OOo fits your needs now, spend your money elsewhere. Remember, MS has to compete with free stuff like OOo, hence the ultimate steal deals. If you're unhappy with OOo, then sure, $60 is a very good deal. It's your choice.

 

I don't like Office 2007 (especially look).
OpenOffice is great but is slower in work than Office, but what the heck - it's free !
Transliteration in Office 2003 (Cyrillic - Latin) is a way too slow. In OO is immediate.

 

office 2007, if your a student then you can get it for suppperrr cheap

 

I too got in on the Ultimate Steal deal. I was using OO before and, honestly, I prefer Office 07 a lot more. It just looks and feel a lot more refined than OO. The ribbon interface is great. I had no problems with it at all, taking me just a few minutes to figure where everything was at. As far as performance goes, it seems fine to me. It doesn't slow my computer down much, if at all. Also Onenote is a fantastic program. Overall it was a $60 well spent.

 

Count me as one more who "stole" Ultimate for $60. I'm never going back to OO. However, whenever my friends/family/relatives look for an office suite, I recommend OO.

 

I fully agree with you on this. Personally i am an advocate of FOSS so i use OOo.

 

Yup, this is basically my problem. Not everybody uses MS Office, but some people (e.g. my immediate superiors) do and Open Office sometimes messes up the fancier PowerPoint files when it tries to convert them.

To the OP: thanks for telling me about this. I wasn't going to buy MS Office because the occasional hassle of repairing a botched conversion is not worth $100+ ($600 is beyond the realms of the laughable and into "What have they been smoking?" territory), but $60 is just about worth it.

 

Well, I'm an old Linux user as well, BUT, to me it's the quality of the software in question that matters most. No matter the license, if the software is good, it's good. If it's lousy, I won't use it, GPL or not.

GIMP is no match for Photoshop (no proper CMYK support, for one thing), although it's getting better. OOo, however, has so much packed into it, I really don't care for MS Office, even if it cost me $0.

 

The key part there is your needs. MS Office does indeed have a lot of features, and those are not typically used be people who just write articles or school papers. There is a lot of advanced stuff in Word that I have not seen in O rg.

O rg can fit many people's basic needs, but it doesn't hold up to the needs of advanced users. Many of the features in MS office only appeal to a small subset of users, BUT each of those subsets requires different combinations of all of the features.

As for the OP, I've got MSO 2007, and I think it's one of the best MS Office versions so far. Just stay away from the new "docx" formats and use the old doc format.

 

Like what? You are doing exactly what he said people do: say "MS Office has a lot more features", but fail to specify exactly what they are. I am actually curious about the differences between MS Office 2007 and Open Office -- so far the only ones I've seen is that MS Office has a flashier interface, but requires you to install a plug-in (which in turn requires you to download a verification executable just to get it) before you can create PDFs.

 

One feature, which I use all the time, is the Outline View mode. This is not the same as the typical "1. 2. 3. a. b. c. i. ii. iii". style outlining. There's also the significant feature of "everyone else has MS Office".

I'm sure if you were to talk to a book publisher or professional writer, they would be able to tell you more. Part of the point here is that there's advanced stuff that many people don't even know exists.

Outlook 2007, which is part of MS Office, also has so many features that are not matched anywhere else. You may be able to use a bunch of separate programs to get the same functions, but they are not all integrated. If you think Outlook is only for email, think again. The todo list, calendar, notepad, etc..., all of which sync with a Palm or PPC, are killer features.

 

Unless you are talking about something other than what comes up in MS Office Help when you input "Outline View", the same exact feature exists in Open Office. I just checked it for PowerPoint vs. Impress and the only difference is that in one the outline is on the right and in the other it's on the left.

That's not true. In fact, some of my co-workers use Open Office so I have to have both of them installed.

If I don't know it exists, its probably not very useful to me or I would have found it when trying to do something. But to be honest, I'm not sure that this is actually the case -- like Icewalker said, this is mature software and if it is useful to someone, it will probably exist in both.

To be honest, I've never seen much of a point for todo lists, calendars and the like. Maybe it will be useful when I get old and my memory starts to go, but for now I'm perfectly fine without it. I use Thunderbird for email and I like it a lot -- there's no way I'm giving it up unless somebody comes up with a better program that works both in Linux and in Windows.

 

No, it's not. This is in Word. Open Word and go to "View / Outline". Most people have never heard of this feature, but it's one I use all the time. A similar tool can be found here: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/ Writer has nothing similar. Granted, it's only one feature of many, but it's an example.

That fact does not invalidate my statement, and it's irrelevant anyway. The fact that you have both only upholds the fact that "everyone" has MS Office (that's the colloquial "everyone").

Good for you. Again, irrelevant. All you are talking about is your needs (a good cue is the number of times you write "I" and "me"), not the needs of everyone. OO is great if it meets your needs, but there are many for whom it does not, which is my point.

Again, good for you. No one really cares if you personally see the point in todo lists and calendars, and frankly it's quite a naive remark. Obviously there is a huge market for these tools as there are multiple open source projects, google calendar, and a myriad of other software that does this, so in that respect the market has spoken, and shows that many, if not most people use these kinds of tools.

I suspect you are still in school, or maybe an entry-level job where life is simple and everything is pretty much laid out for you. As soon as you take on more responsibility and have more things to do, you will find that you need some sort of tool to help organize yourself. If you don't, you will only be holding yourself back in both your personal life and career. If you want to plan for the future, I suggest learning how to use these tools now, and also reading up on "Getting Things Done" for ideas on how to best organize yourself. The attitude that a calendar is "just for old people" is quite obviously absurd.

One of the best skills you can learn is to be able to see things from other's point of view. A good indicator that you need to work on this skill is if you are often dismissive towards ideas you don't agree with, or have the attitude that "if I don't have a need for it, then obviously no one else does either".


Now that we're officially off topic, please reply to me in private if you wish to continue this.

 

huge +1 orev

Those who say OO is the exact same as MS Office arent doing anything more than writing papers and wont even notice the difference between the two. Does OO have anything like Groove which has been a great addition for me and rest of our office? No it doesnt.

If basic word editing and spreadsheets are all you need then OO is fine

 

I'll have to fully agree with you on this one again. Great points.

 

I never like OO interface maybe it's too bland for me. On the other one, Ultimate 2007 are all eye-candy, that's just not so good especially when you load a 15 MB spreadsheet with Excel 2007.. Seriously, I would suggest you back to 2003 or XP rather than that dumb-cosmetized 2007

 

I'd say get Office 2007, you can't beat it at $60. The ribbon interface is great too, I really like it over Office 2003. Also Open Office has a lot of formatting quirks that I didn't like when I used it with Excel.

 

I think that OOo is pretty good, but I decided to go for the Microsoft promotion for two reasons:

1. I really wanted to try taking notes on my laptop in college, Office Ultimate includes OneNote which is an awesome program, BTW

2. I need a grammar checker (yes, I know that you can add-in various grammar checkers to OOo, but I wanted something that I could be confident in out of the box.)

As for performance, it seems that Office 07 starts very sluggishly compared to Office 2003. I'll start Word 03 on my other computer and you barely see the splash screen before the document opens. In Word 07, it takes a bit longer to start, very annoying when you want to open something quickly.

I thought OOo was a bit slow compared to Office 03, but now with Office 07, they are about the same.

 

I am a user of both OO and MSO2003. I use MS for work and OO for home. Since I have a work laptop, I have no need for MSO at home. OO for addresses and expenses and letters is about all I need it for. Even if I could pay $60 for the Student version, I wouldn't.

 

OpenOffice is ok I suppose - but it was extremely bloated, clumsy, and slow. Also, impress is just garbage - I've tried to use it several times, and given up in despair.
I'm on winXP with a sempron 3000+ and 1gb of ram. OO's performance is very bad.