Thread: Open Office v Google Docs

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

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.