Open Office v Google Docs

[Tusker]

Any preference, or any know glitches?

This is for occasional home use. Not worth buying / stealing MS Office.

TIA

Max P

[incisor]

open office is my preference by a country mile.

[It'sNotWorthComplaining!]

Any preference, or any know glitches?

This is for occasional home use. Not worth buying / stealing MS Office.

TIA

Max P

I use OO all the time, but then I use Linux also 99.9 % of the time.
I support open source

[kaa45]

Open Office. End of story! ;)

[Hastykiwi]

Open office. Have found there is a new version of MSOffice who's files cannot be opened by the previous version of MSoffice (2003 or something), but OO will open all. And its Free!.

cheers
Nick

[austastar]

I use Open Office on Ubuntu, there are some issues opening MS Office documents, mostly fonts and spacing etc from users who don't know how to make a document with robust formatting.
I haven't been able to open .docx files, which may be a nuisance to some users, but you can always down load the free MS Word reader and copy and paste if you want.
cheers

[disco2hse]

IBM Symphony.

By the way, Google docs has a long way to go before I'd change over to it.

Alan

[Hastykiwi]

I use Open Office on Ubuntu, there are some issues opening MS Office documents, mostly fonts and spacing etc from users who don't know how to make a document with robust formatting.
I haven't been able to open .docx files, which may be a nuisance to some users, but you can always down load the free MS Word reader and copy and paste if you want.
cheers


I've not had any problem opening docx spreadsheets with OO.

cheers
Nick

[Grumbles]

I've been using Open Office for a week or so now. Only changed from MS Word as it corrupted itself so the PC tech told me. The only glitch with OO was when it initially refused to let me use Spell Check but the PC tech fixed that. No other problems except that it is different and just takes time to get used to it.

[dmdigital]

Isn't Google Doc's an online app. This means you must be online to use it.

I use iWork but was using OO when I had Windows. My wife wanted MSOffice and I could get a deal from work for ... $28:eek: So she has MSOffice 2008 for Mac, its the only 32 bit apps running on her MacBook Pro. Doesn't seem to bad.

As for Office 2007 you can download an add-in from MS for Office 2003 that lets it read 2007 files. Yes its a PITA people saving as docx and xlsm and such like but the problem is not Office 2007 rather it's the preceding version. The markup language of 2007 files is more open, hence the ability of other apps to read it. Previous versions of Office were more proprietary.

[Panya]

Not tried Google Docs but Open Office is excellent. Just a matter of learning it but all very intuitive and straightforward

[JDNSW]

I am not familiar with Google Docs, but OOo would work perfectly well for your purpose. Like MS Office it is a very large package, and does pretty much the same, although it is a bit different to use, so there is a bit of a learning process for someone very familiar with MS Office.

John

[LoveMyV8County]

I am a user and fan of both OpenOffice and Google Docs. Both have their place.

In terms of functionality and power, OO is far superior. Document editing is reasonably comparable to Word, and the user interface is pretty similar. The spreadsheet app in GoogleDocs has such limited functionality it is not suited to serious modelling but OO is pretty full-featured (though imho not of the same standard as Excel).

GoogleDocs is great if you use different computers all the time. If you can browse the Internet, you can work on your documents. At home I use Mac / PC / Linux depending which is left after children / spouse have set themselves up on at any given moment. I also get to my docs from work, and it's backed up for me. (For some reason I find editing a big laggy on the Mac even on the same network as the other machines). No need to carry around USB drives. Don't expect the full range of formatting features.

There is an "offline" feature in GoogleDocs that enables you to do all your normal editing etc even when you are not on the Internet, and then to synchronise the changes into the online version when next connected.

Both will output to PDF.

[Tusker]

Thanks for all the feedback

Seems we have a clear winner!

Regards
Max P