By Hunter Kaller
In general, Microsoft Office 2007 and OpenOffice.org v3.1 have similar features and capabilities, and either office package may be recommended to faculty and students with confidence that it will adequately meet their academic needs. However, there are some differences between the products that potential users should be aware of.*
Overall, OpenOffice has the clear advantage of cost between the two products, insofar as it is free to download and use for any purpose, while Office 2007 carries a cost of between $400 and $679 (or approximately $150 $100 with a student discount). Likewise, MS Office 2007 only supports use on Windows and Apple’s OS X, while OpenOffice supports alternative operating systems, such as GNU/Linux, Irix, and Sun’s Solaris, in addition to Windows and OS X.
Similarly, OpenOffice has the advantage of greater support for “open” formats relative to Office 2007, in addition to support for MS’ proprietary office formats (.doc, .docx, etc.). However, this difference will be eliminated in late May 2009 when MS releases its Service Pack 2 for Office 2007, which will introduce support for OpenOffice’s native Open Document Formats. In the meantime, to minimize the risk of file incompatibilities, documents intended for distribution or submission should be saved/exported in established and well-supported formats, such as rich text format (.rtf), portable document format (.pdf), and html, when using either office suite.
One last thing to consider when selecting an office package is familiarity and ease of use. For the most part, MS Office is considered to be the industry standard for office applications and, as such, most users will be familiar with its interface and layout. However, with Office 2007, MS introduced a new interface and menu layout (known as ‘the ribbon’) that some users find awkward to use. These users may prefer the interface and layout of OpenOffice because they more closely resemble those of prior versions of MS Office.
If you would like to learn more about the differences between the two products, follow these links:
http://www.linux.com/feature/119546
http://www.linux.com/feature/118986
http://www.linux.com/feature/119513
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors/PresentationDifferences.pdf
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/0606MG-DifferencesInUseCalcExcel.pdf
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors/TextDocumentDifferences.pdf
*With respect to individual components of the office suites, MS Powerpoint has a number of multimedia functions, such as support for voiceovers and mouseover actions, that are missing from OO.org’s presentation tool Impress, while OO.org’s Writer offers predictive word completion, which is not offered in MS Word (though this is admittedly a minor and little-used feature). In contrast, both office suites’ spreadsheet programs (MS Excel and OO.org’s Calc) have similar functionality for most uses (though Excel may have certain advantages for very advanced users).
Filed under: Content Creation | 2 Comments
Tags: office, open source, OpenOffice, Software
One further advantage for OO – it can export to PDFs natively, without needing any additional software (Adobe Acrobat, etc.). Doesn’t entirely replace Acrobat, but it’s handy for the simple things.
I, for one, thoroughly support OpenOffice.org. I had MS Office very much. That is my opinion, no more, no less.
Kamisamanou Burgess(Future Student)