Home ›

OpenOffice.org vs. Microsoft Office

Issue 190

From Issue #190
February 2010

Feb 01, 2010  By Bruce Byfield
 in
Nobody disputes that Microsoft Office is king of the hill in office suites, but if you put marketing and market share aside, how does OpenOffice.org compare?
The Outcome

The fact that OpenOffice.org is free software predisposes me to prefer it. However, until I completed the analysis, I had no idea what the results would be. They ended (if you haven't been keeping score) with OOo and MSO in a tie for general interface and spreadsheets, OOo in the lead in word processors, and MSO ahead in slide presentations. What these results suggest, I think, is that both office suites are mature products. Given a moment's thought, that shouldn't be surprising, since OOo's development goes back more than 20 years. But we tend to think of OOo as a recent development, so the closeness of the comparison may come as a bit of a surprise.

This is the fourth time I have compared the two office suites. Each time, the differences between them have gotten smaller. Now, they are less than ever before. For those of us in the Free Software community, the latest results help to prove what we have known all along: opting for free software does not mean being satisfied with inferior tools. Of course, you might disagree with my conclusions, depending on your needs and expertise. But what they emphasize, more than anything else is that today free productivity apps can stand toe to toe with their proprietary equivalents, and win as often as they lose.

Bruce Byfield is a computer journalist who covers free and open-source software. He has been a contributing editor at Maximum Linux and Linux.com, and he currently is doing a column and a blog for Linux Pro Magazine. His articles appear regularly on such sites as Datamation, Linux Journal and Linux Planet. His article, “11 tips for moving to OpenOffice.org” was the cover story for the March 2004 issue of Linux Journal.

______________________

-- Bruce Byfield (nanday)

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Not always.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 11:04.

I've been writing code on various platforms for 30 years, but I still find spreadsheets to be useful for quick and dirty solutions.

I certainly wouldn't use one to create an application as such, but they can be very good for doing things like generating ad hoc graphs, or doing personal finance stuff.

If I want to generate graphs on a regular basis, I usually do it with a mix of bash scripts, gnuplot, and image magick. But not one-offs.

Calc != Excel

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 09:44.

For anyone who uses Excel on a regular basis, Calc just makes them angry. Little things count.

The contrary is also true.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 10:19.

The contrary is also true.

contrary

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 13:03.

Count things little? Big things count? ;-)

Try large spreadsheets with

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 02/20/2010 - 03:01.

Try large spreadsheets with multi thousand formulas and autocalc switched on in excel and calc...
Till Calc uses more than one cpu, it will be something for the netbook users to create their household accounts. Calc is just not ready for the technical world yet - those who rely on the power of spreadsheets.

Webcast
More Resources
How to Build an Optimal Hadoop Cluster to Store and Maintain Unlimited Amounts of Data Using Microservers

Realizing the promise of Apache® Hadoop® requires the effective deployment of compute, memory, storage and networking to achieve optimal results. With its flexibility and multitude of options, it is easy to over or under provision the server infrastructure, resulting in poor performance and high TCO. Join us for an in depth, technical discussion with industry experts from leading Hadoop and server companies who will provide insights into the key considerations for designing and deploying an optimal Hadoop cluster.

Learn More

Sponsored by AMD

White Paper
More Resources
Red Hat White Paper: Using an Open Source Framework to Catch the Bad Guy

Built-in forensics, incident response, and security with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Every security policy provides guidance and requirements for ensuring adequate protection of information and data, as well as high-level technical and administrative security requirements for a system in a given environment. Traditionally, providing security for a system focuses on the confidentiality of the information on it. However, protecting the data integrity and system and data availability is just as important. For example, when processing United States intelligence information, there are three attributes that require protection: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Learn more about catching the bad guy in this free white paper.

Learn More

Sponsored by DLT Solutions