Open Office vs MS Works 8

I dont want to spend 200 bucks on MS Office, so that leaves me with Open Office or MS Works 8. What do you all think?

 

I wouldn't waste a dime on Works 8, you will not have the freedom to do anything.

Go with Open Office. It's not packaged together as Works 8, but it's FREE and gives you more freedom.

 

Open Office because it has more features/apps.

Works only has a word processor, calander app, pp viewer, photo album.

Open office is comparable to Office.

OO has

Works doesnt even come close to what OO has to offer and of course OO is FREE and Open source

 

Open Office, it does a good deal of what MS Office does and is free!

 

sweet, MS Works 8 is also free, but I wanted to make sure about OO first. I will definitely be getting OO then.

 

While I have not been using works for a long time, but I do use Open Office on both my laptop and my desktop. I was in the same situation as you and looked for an alternative, Open Office was just that.

Open Office is certainly different if your used to MS Office, not worse, not better, just different (I would say probably more difficult to figure out how to use in the beginning, but this may just be because I was used to MS office). Some of the features from MS may be lacking, but in my experience (all I do is a few presentations, some spreadsheets and a good deal of essay writing) I haven't really found any of the normal "core" use elements missing.

With regards it to Open Office I find it quite rewarding now, as I keep thinking I haven't had to shell out a small fortune for a basic office suite. I for one would like to recommend Open Office on my personal experience.

Now let's see if someone has some experience with works (Edit: seems I took waay to long to respond to that )

Cheers

 

Works 2001 was pretty good to me. After that forget about it.

 

OpenOffice! I'm writing my dissertation with it. The figures actually can be made to stay put!! I never could manage that w/ MS word.

 

Another mark for Open Office here. For me it does everything that I ever needed MS Office for.

 

MS Works were designed for home users... a basic Calendar, e-mail, word processing, and spreadsheet program. It also has extras. And requires less disk space.

Open Office is more geared towards the MS Office Suites as that's what's it was originally for, a really cheap alternative to the more expensive MS Office.

So for business/students, Open Office would be the choice. If you just write and occasional letter and spreadsheets the Works is fine too. Sometimes the Works' extras are helpful.

 

Open Office, no doubt about it.

Has way more functionality than MS Works. Looks and feels like MS Office, reads and writes MS Office files (.doc, .xls, .ppt). Also runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris so you're not locked in. No 'activation' or product key hassles to deal with either.

For home users and students, Open Office is by far the best solution out there, plus the price is right.

 

I've become so fed up with Microsoft at this point that I decided to install OpenOffice instead of MS Office on my new notebook. Odds are it'll do everything you needed MS Office to do.

Also good: it opens password protected Excel files. I figured that would be asking too much but it worked just fine.

 

Undoubtedly OpenOffice, there is almost no question it is better in every way.

 

I hate to be ignorant, but what is Open Office exactly? Is it a Microsoft product? What comes with it? Can you buy it at Newegg?

Thanks.

 

It's free. Not Microsoft affiliated at all. Download from the site www.openoffice.org

 

You can't even compare any version of MS Works with OpenOffice. Works is just a very limited toy. OpenOffice is a real office suite. The latter is free and very easy to install, so Works really makes no sense anymore. Then there's also AbiWord if all you need is MS Word-compatible word processing. Gnumeric for Windows also works very well for spreadsheets. Neither are as professionally-polished as OpenOffice though (but perfect if you have limited computer resources).

OpenOffice doesn't have a calendar like Outlook, so if you need that, the free version of EssentialPIM will fill that role very well (or you could use Firefox with the Reminderfox add-on).

There's no reason to pay big bucks for software anymore.