Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Video IM, Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and various bits of hardware new and old.
Friday 15 August 2008, 1:41 PM
Open Office vs. MS Office - the Other Key to Windows/Linux Transition
As I have been going around alternately prodding my friends and family to try Linux, or asking them if they thought it would be possible, one thing I have heard repeatedly is that a lot of people use Microsoft Office and are concerned about their Office documents on Linux. I should also mention that a lot of them are very angry that Microsoft has changed the default document format in Office 2007 (again), such that it is incompatible with previous Office versions. Yes, of course, I know there are converters and such, but it's just one more thing for users to have to worry about - and in general they aren't confronted with it, or sometimes even aware of it, until they send a critical document to a colleague and discover that the colleague can't open it...
Anyway, the point of all this is that all of the versions of Linux I have been testing come with OpenOffice.org included. For those who are not familiar with it, OpenOffice.org is a "free and open productivity suite" (to quote their web page), with programs which are the equivalent of the Microsoft Office suite. It includes:
- Write (Word Processing)
- Calc (Spreadsheet)
- Impress (Presentations)
- Draw (Graphics)
- Base (Database management)
- Math (Equation and Foruma)
Each of these programs is able to open files from the MS Office equivalent EXCEPT, currently, the new Office 2007 format. So if you are using Office 2003 or earlier, you can just open your document with OpenOffice, and off you go. If you are using Office 2007, you can either save your document in Office 2003 format, or you can pick up one of several (free) Office 2007 format converters. The next version of OpenOffice (3.0), due out this fall, will be able to read Office 2007 documents, of course.
Should you ever need to go back to MS Office, or need to send your documents to someone still using MS Office, OpenOffice has the ability to save documents in Office 2003 format (and lots of others).
I could go on and on telling you how good OpenOffice is. I have a number of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets which I use to track my work. I simply transferred those files to my Linux system, and started working on them with OpenOffice. Of course there are differences in tool bars, buttons, menus and the like. But it takes an absolute minimum of effort to learn your way around Open Office - certainly no more effort than it takes every time Microsoft comes out with a new release of Office, and a heck of a lot less than it took to learn Office 2007!
The best news of all is that OpenOffice.org runs just fine on Windows as well, both XP and Vista. So you don't have to take my word for it, and you don't have to take the Linux plunge to find out if you will be able to work with your documents. If you want to find out, just go to www.openoffice.org, download and install the latest release, and give it a try! I think you will be very pleasantly surprised, I certainly was.
So, if your excuse for not giving Linux a try was that you needed to be able to work with your Office documents... well, you just ran out of excuses. Think of what you will gain, too! No more suffering through all the gratuitous menu/toolbar/button changes that Microsoft makes in every new Office release. No more suffering through incompatible file formats between releases, which Microsoft seems to do every two or three releases - this is the second time it has happened that I can recall, and I assume that the recent OOXML debacle means that there is another change coming in the next Office release. Best of all, no more having to pay to upgrade to the new version every time Microsoft sees fit.
jw 15/8/2008
- 11 comments |
- Post a comment |
- TrackBack |
- Clip Link
- | Viewed 4129 times
PreviousComments on this post
Nice entry Jamie
There are many good things to be said for Open office and it's not too unfamiliar to anyone that has used any sort of office software in recent years.
I have used this product on my windows desktop for many years now I've had to learn some different bits and bobs but on the whole there isn't one piece of functionality that I require that isn't present in this software.
You can also throw Google "office" Docs into the mix, with the offline functionality that have recently been delivered by Google Gears means that you don't need an internet connection to edit existing synchronised documents.
@welshtroll, Thanks for reading and commenting, as always.
Since writing that blog entry, I have thought of several other things I should also mention:
- As you said, there is a long list of file formats that OpenOffice.org can read and write.
- You can install OpenOffice.org on an existing Windows system with Microsoft Office without "disturbing" anything. During the installation process it will ask you if you want OpenOffice to be the default for opening MS Office documents; if you answer "no", you can then continue to work as normal, and use OpenOffice "on the side" to see how you like it.
- When I recently reloaded Windows Vista Business on my Fujitsu Lifebook S6510, I didn't even bother to reload MS Office 2007, I only loaded OpenOffice. I don't miss it...
Thanks again.
jw
Jamie, I completely agree with you. I have been using MS Word for over a decade. In fact, my version is so old, Office 1997, that I have taken advantage of the MS Office 2007 free three month trial. I have to say that the changes to Word over a period of ten years are, not suprisingly, vast. Actually it was like having to learn a new package and I wasn't comfortable with it at all. I then gave Open Office a try, admittedly I have only used Write but I must say that for me the Package is far easier to use than Word and I'm quite sure for my modest uses it's easily as powerful as Word.
If you are using OpenOffice in an office environment, the best utility or feature in OO is the "export as PDF" function. We use PDF for sales documents, user documentation, process descriptions etc. OO is perfect for that and the PDF export function appears flawless.
My daughter has been given assignments to create PowerPoint presentations by her Middle school (5th and 6th grades) and lately her Junior High teachers (7th and 8th grades). I was so mad I could spit! Back in Middle School she wanted me to go buy MS Office for her. I said no. It pissed me off that the tax-paid school teachers are operating as surrogate sales proxies for Microsoft.
I showed her how to use Impress the PowerPoint equivalent in OO. She asked me to help her and I said; "I'm sorry. I've never made a power point presentation. Impress is just like Power Point". She picked it up and started using it IMMEDIATELY, no coaching from me at all. She exported her presentation as a ppt and since that day we have been a MS Office-free zone and will stay that way.
@Xwindowsjunkie - Spot on, as always. For anyone who needs to produce PDF format documents, OpenOffice is a dream. I first started producing PDF quite some years ago, working with a world-wide charitable organization, and the only way to prodcue it was to buy Adobe Acrobat - and that wasn't (and still isn't) cheap! Then, just a few years ago, my partner needed to produce PDF documents for her professional society, and at least we were able to find much lower-priced alternatives for converting to PDF, but we still had to buy something. Perhaps today it is possible to get free PDF converters, but that no longer interests me, because OpenOffice does it just fine.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw 18/8/2008
MS Office is an anomaly. For anyone buying a low-end laptop (which could be the largest sector of the market now, units-wise), the asking price is now on a par with the whole laptop including operating system.
And still, people are surprised they need to buy it at all. The whole "need" to buy office software just takes them by surprise: "I have Windows, so I can open Microsoft documents can't I?"
My daughters came to me about a month after we had our new laptop saying, "Office has stopped working." That was the end of the free trial they'd started - I just pointed them to OpenOffice, already installed, and didn't need to say any more. That was their first time on Office 2007, and they didn't like it, overmuch.
I don't know if they're now locked out of any documents, but they haven't said anything....
Another excellent point, Peter. I can't tell you how many times my friends and family have come to me and said "I just bought a new PC, it has Windows on it, but where is Word?" (or Excel). My "standard procedure" now sounds just like yours. Load OpenOffice, show them, they say "Ah, there it is..." and off they go, happy as a clam.
I'm 99% certain that the expiration of the Office free trial doesn't actually lock other applications out of documents created with it. I would be very shocked if that were the case - but if anyone has any direct evidence of it, I'm sure that everyone here would be anxious to hear about it. I have no direct experience with that, because I don't even bother activating the free trials of Office (or Symantec, or whatever) any more.
Microsoft is obviously feeling some of the heat from this, as they have finally started to cut the price for some versions of Office - particularly the "Home and Student" version of Office 2007. But it is far too little, and far too late. Besides, the obnoxious "Not for Commercial Use" that always shows in the title bar of that version gets irritating after a while, it's sort of like Microsoft is accusing you of stealing it in advance...
Thanks for reading and commenting, as always.
jw 18/8/2008
When I put vista back on my laptop I removed Microsoft Office and downloaded OO. I have a friend who still uses win 98 and he is always sending me something that XP can't open, but OO can. No way I'm going to shell out big bucks to MS when I can get more functionality out of OO. I learned to do presentations on OO and to me it is easier than MS, may not have all the eye candy ,but it is sufficient.
This is the transition method for businesses. Browser defaults to Firefox, office suite becomes OpenOffice. All new line of business applications are web-based (standards compliant web applications only!). At the end of the process most businesses could lose Windows and the associated running costs, maybe with a few specialist application users remaining on Windows.
On OpenOffice compatibility question: it is OpenOffice, not Microsoft Office, that is compatible as OpenOffice default file format is compliant with Open Document Format; Microsoft Office catches up with the next service pack and becomes standards compliant for the first time in its history.
I love Open Office but can anyone tell me if there is a way of using a grammar checker in Write? I type shockingly and its important that my clients can make sense of what I am saying.
@putt1ck - Yes, I fully agree, but not only for businesses. That is the sequence that I am following for converting my partner from Windows to Linux, and if that works out well, which it is so far, I'll do the same for other friends and family members. There certainly are very good alternatives on Linux for browsers, mail programs and such, but by sticking to Firefox, Thunderbird and such during the transition period, there is a reassuring familiarity to the most important parts of the environment. Don't underestimate the positive effect of that kind of reassurance, either. For someone making the switch, having at least those parts be familiar can give them a lot more courage to explore and learn the new parts.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw 2/9/2008
