Alternatives To Open Office?

[Veazer]

I'm trying to help a local group "break the chain" from MS products to open source alternatives. The biggest challenge has been finding a replacement for Office.

Open Office gets loads of attention, but in usage I generally find it frustrating and the users i am supporting do as well. The supports for styles is very weak, as is the support for document reviewing and collaboration. Search and replace is outright broken in OO, and performance is also lacking. It's also a major resource hog, consuming as much as 4x the amount of memory of Office2003.

The spreadsheet portion of OO (Calc) looks to be usable, it's mostly the Writer app that isn't cutting it. I tried AbiWord as well, and found it a little better than Writer. Search and replace works, but the style functions are still very weak compared to microsoft's 6 year old product...

Any suggestions to try?

[wxpwzrd]

Welcome to open source software. They are the most well known of open source Office alternatives. Good luck. Guess that is why people pay for software.

Edited March 25, 2009 by wxpwzrd

[khundon]

Welcome to open source software. They are the most well known of open source Office alternatives. Good luck. Guess that is why people pay for software.

Some, but not him.

What do they expect for free

[jeffer]

If Open Office and AbiWord aren't good enough then probably nothing is as they're the freeware replacements that are always recommended. I use Jarte as a light MS Word replacement but then I never use even half the features of Word. If OO was exactly the same as Office then no one would still buy Office, if Gimp was the same as Photo Shop, if Foxit was the same as Adobe... you get the idea. In business sometimes the bloated paid for version still winds up being the best choice. 

[Veazer]

Welcome to open source software. They are the most well known of open source Office alternatives. Good luck. Guess that is why people pay for software.

Some, but not him.

What do they expect for free

Excuse me, but what exactly is meant by "some, but not him"? What would you know about how much money i have put out on software?

If Open Office and AbiWord aren't good enough then probably nothing is as they're the freeware replacements that are always recommended. I use Jarte as a light MS Word replacement but then I never use even half the features of Word. If OO was exactly the same as Office then no one would still buy Office, if Gimp was the same as Photo Shop, if Foxit was the same as Adobe... you get the idea. In business sometimes the bloated paid for version still winds up being the best choice.

I would agree that an app like photoshop is far more bloated than the nearest open source alternative like Gimp, but that's just not case with Open Office vs. Office 2003 imho. Office 2K3 uses a fraction of the memory of OO.

As for being not good enough, maybe my expectations were too high. Open Office is at version 3.0 and yet search and replace still doesn't work properly, is that really an "advanced" feature that few people use?

[Thanyaburi Mac]

If Open Office and AbiWord aren't good enough then probably nothing is as they're the freeware replacements that are always recommended. I use Jarte as a light MS Word replacement but then I never use even half the features of Word. If OO was exactly the same as Office then no one would still buy Office, if Gimp was the same as Photo Shop, if Foxit was the same as Adobe... you get the idea. In business sometimes the bloated paid for version still winds up being the best choice. 

I use ABIWord for most word processing stuff, but got to remember to save either in .txt of .doc, not their own .abw format. ABIWord is quick loading and I do like that feature/

I also have Star Office handy, slower loading but covers the bases. Did use Open Office for a spell be dropped it.

Mac

[Veazer]

I use ABIWord for most word processing stuff, but got to remember to save either in .txt of .doc, not their own .abw format. ABIWord is quick loading and I do like that feature/

I also have Star Office handy, slower loading but covers the bases. Did use Open Office for a spell be dropped it.

Mac

Is Star Office much different than Open Office? It looked to be nearly identical, except not free. I was under the assumption that all the packages based on OO would have the same problems, but maybe i should explore this more...

[Plus]

I think OO's biggest problem is that it runs on Java.

I have no issues with it whatsoever, nothing that affects me in any significant way. Find Replace works alright for me, btw.

Maybe it's the case of being in a strange environment for the first time, being homesick, so to speak. This feeling can last for a while.

[Veazer]

EDIT: Don't see images? You need to be logged in...

...Find Replace works alright for me, btw.

Sorry, i misspoke. I meant to say the "Change All" replace feature in the spelling check. Try this...

Create a document with the following repeated phrase (if possible in MS Word, AbiWord and OpenOffice).

Iittle boy blue.

Iittle boy blue.

Iittle boy blue.

Iittle boy blue.

It's seems to be a common OCR error, which is why is used this spelling. I do lots of OCR correction which why this problem showed up immediately with Open Office. Now spell check them. Word will suggest "Little", but let's pretend it didn't for the time being in fairness to OO and Abiword. Instead, highlight the word, change it to Little, and press 'Change All'

Word correctly replaces all occurrences and we're done.

Now do the same in Abiword, only using the provided 'Change to' box instead:

Again, it works fine just like MS Word.

Now try it in Open Office. Correct the word, since the correct word is not an offered suggestion, and press 'Change All'

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. It only replace the first misspelling, and you can't even hit 'change' again because it will use the suggested word instead. The only solution is to manually edit them one by one, or kill the spell check and use find and replace instead. That's ridiculous imho as it defeats the entire purpose of the 'Change all' button. The only time 'Change all' works on OO is if you use a suggested word, and MS Word was the only one to suggest the proper word.

Maybe it's the case of being in a strange environment for the first time, being homesick, so to speak. This feeling can last for a while.

Nope, i felt warm and fuzzy all over due the the familiar open source icon sets like Crystal and Tango. It was the lack of features that sent me looking for something better.

[sensei]

docs.google.com