Office of the future?
Compare the various office software solutions with this helpful CNET chart.
(Credit: CNET Networks)For most everyone working in the U.S. corporate world, Microsoft Office is a must: Outlook for e-mail/calendar; Word for word processing; Excel for spreadsheets; and PowerPoint for presentations. The 2007 release has been covered extensively on CNET Reviews.
However, a recent rise in free office suites has given end users much more choice in productivity software than they've had in many years. Just two weeks ago, IBM announced a free version of Lotus Symphony. Though it's still in beta release, the freeware includes serviceable word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software, all of which support Microsoft Office file formats.
The best known Office alternative is still OpenOffice.org, which also includes word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, but it also throws a database application (Base), a vector-graphics program (Draw), and a mathematical formula tool (Math) into the mix. The open-source productivity suite is based on StarOffice, now owned by Sun Microsystems.
Curiously, Sun recently made StarOffice (listed for $69.95 on its Web site) available for free via a partnership with Google Pack.
Speaking of Google, the online giant hopes to give Microsoft a run for its office money by providing free Web-based tools that anyone with a browser can access. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is much more limited than Word and Excel, but the collaboration features are mighty attractive. Also, online software such as Zoho Virtual Office is even more advanced than Google's offering.
For a comparison of alternative office software, be sure to check out Elsa Wenzel's recent roundup of competitors to Microsoft Office.
What do you think? Do you still rely on your trusty Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications, or have you moved on to an alternative. How many of you have tried online word processors or spreadsheets? Tell me about it in the comments.
The only cons are that you must save documents in the correct format for others to be able to view them (that is, if the people you're sending them to don't have OO). My wife uses OO on her laptop with Vista . . . no problems. My other friend has been using OO for the last two years and would never return to MS Office.
It's definitely a viable alternative and will save you lots of $$ in the long run . . . GET IT!
Eric
I've been using OOo since version 1.0 and I would never return to Microsoft Office. I find OOo more intuitive than MS Office ever was. I actively look forward to each new version, it just keeps getting better and better.
From my experience, I had a problem - uninstalling - Open office, because I didn't have the original install file. The original install file was large... if I remember 300 mb or something.. so I trashed it... after all I could just download it again if I needed it...right?!!
So, when I decided to uninstall Open office it asked for the original install file. I thought I would just download it and that would help me with the "uninstall" process. No luck. Luckly, I had this on a laptop that I had a backup of and just ended up wiping the drive (due to other reasons - not because of Open office). I'm not sure if this was just for earlier versions of Open Office...but I have not tried it on their current version regarding the uninstalling issue. Hopefully they got this problem fixed.
Other than that "Open Office" is every bit as good, in my opinion. The only reason I'm not using it is it's lack of integration with "Outlook". Outlook Express is fine for mail, but lacks the other aforementioned items.
And those who claim lack of a good email program get Thunderbird
JIM
I have been using OOo now for a couple of years and have not regretted it for the word processor, spreadsheet or presentation package. Its DBMS is still weak compared to MS Access, likely due to time that it has existed.
It's ability now to produce PDF's and enhanced ability to import make it a no-brainer.
Unless anyone specifically needs MS... why on EARTH would anyone bother to purchase it with a free version of OOo? or even if one wants to donate money to the cause...
MS will have to either come up with a reasonable consumer option or look to other ways of defeating office suites like OOo. They lost me a LONG time ago though.
Cheers
Jim
Some years ago I swapped but OOO made an absolute mess of my Spreadsheets then I found I couldn't open them in Excel.
As I move around a lot I need access to different computers which normally have only Excel.
Have you experienced any problems like this with the newer versions.
Nev
Even then, students can buy this for $60 on the web by taking Microsoft's special offer through spring 2008 - not a student and teacher version, not Office Basic, the same ULTIMATE package in retail form. When you consider that anyone can register at a local community college and take a 1-unit class for about $20, this is a ridiculous bargain.
Most of the Office Imitators are pretty junky, painful to deal with, and/or not full-featured for power users. Yeah they'll "sorta" work but for the genuine article pony up and buy the real deal. I gotta say it's worth it, especially when you consider all the deals out there.
While the "Open" office suites do a fine enough job of replacing the legacy Microsoft sludge, they still don't break free of the 1980's mindset that still pervades the genre -- at least not yet. Thankfully, tools like iWork offer genuine innovation, true ease of use, adherence to open standards, and great tools for compelling end results -- and a reasonable cost point to boot.
As far as Outlook / Entourage etc. you have got to be kidding right? Talk about tools only an IT geek could love (to impose). No human being would choose such ugly, counter-intuitive, counter-productive communication monstrosities.
On the bright side, it does appear that Microsoft is happy enough to see their second profitable business stagnate and become irrelevant: probably the smart thing to do, as saving this dinosaur from extinction would require a radical rethink that is obviously not within the sandbox of Seattle. With Vista in full-on flop mode, and Office in equally dire straights, maybe we will see a renaissance in micro-computing, returning some of the promise that has been so sadly failed upon by vendors over the past decade.
At that time Lotus and Wordperfect had 90+ percent of the business market.
It wasn't long after Excel and Word hit the market that Lotus, Wordperfect, Dr. Wang's processor, Supercalc and all the granddaddy Visicalc dried up and sank.
The reason was two fold. First, the calculations in Lotus were based on imperfect binary math, which gave slighly incorrect answers to calculations like 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = .99999999. Second, the many financial formulas built in were either simplistic, gave inaccurate Boolean replies, or were just not available.
There was a third problem in that Lotus, Wordperfect et al were DOS oriented and never quite got the WYSIWYG beauty of Windows down to the user's satisfaction.
As for Databases, MS Acess so outdistanced the competition (DBII, IBM's Database, and Symphony's spreadsheet data handler) that there was just no comparison.
Regards, Texian13
When I started, Lotus commanded the spreadsheet market, Wordperfect the word processing, and DBII the small database market.
As soon as MS Word, Access and Excel hit the market, all the above pieces of software began to unravel and die.
There were sound reasons this happened, and those reasons persist to this day.
First, the software before the MS offerings were based in DOS and that caused two problems. One fundamental flaw was that calculations in DOS programs were done in Binary math and that caused subtle but none the less errors in certain calculations. For example, a SUM of 1 divided by 3 in three seperate cells came out to be .99999999 instead of 1.
Therefore a boolean such as IF(Cell1 + Cell 2 +Cell 3 = 1, do this, ELSE do that) would react incorrectly.
Second, Lotus, Word Perfect, DBII, Supercalc and grandaddy Visicalc were not able to match the WYSIWYG preciseness and flexibility to rearrange that WORD, Access, Excel, pardon the pun excelled at. They tried to make the switch to Windows, but it was too little too late and they just faded away (rather quickly).
I have just finished trying to use the Google "Office" download. It is amateurish looking and works in a less that intuitive manner. Looking to HELP (there is no manual) is an adventure in some of the most vague hard to understand instructions I have ever seen.
My conclusion is that no professional organization is going to accept this crap, and very few casual users are going to be able to master the mechanics and techniques needed for even simple tasks.
regards, Texian13
I'll give you a hint why. Microsoft gave away Word/Excel to undermine there competitors (Small Buisness Edition).
Potential customers figured at the time 'Why buy Lotus when Excel is 'free'. This was the effect Microsoft was looking for, and it drove there competitors out of buisness.
Off course, Microsoft is now on the receiving end, where users are now examining Open Office and others and saying 'Why pay for MS Office when I can get OO for free?'.
I whish them (MS) nothing but pain.
I would be very happy if OpenOffice took over the market, but for now I will keep saving in .doc format and pdf-ing all my documents before they are sent via e-mail.
I would love to see what the creators of OpenOffice and StarOffice could do with an e-mail program!!
Microsoft has gotten very tough on backward compatibility--less on Vista than ever. Ugly.
So any avoidance of Microsoft preserves your peace of mind, investment in your software products, and helps the "other guys" so Microsoft doesn't get even tougher.
Mac only, it has the features I want, not the features Microsoft _thinks_ I want,
and it's cheap (under $80). Worth a look.
www.marinersoftware.com
- virus with Lotus Symphony download from IBM
- by mgsheinin October 2, 2007 10:22 PM PDT
- McAfee found the following virus when I attempted to download Lotus Symphony from IBM via the link from download.com: W32/Nuwar.dam.
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