Open Office vs Office 2007 compatibility and features

The debate over superiority rages on.  Mircosoft Office 2007 (MSO) stands tall and strong in one corner, and OpenOffice.org (OOo) holds a respectable following in the other.  Both claim to be the champion office suite, but which one really comes out on top in an overall comparison?  Let’s take a look at a few of the major likes and dislikes users of both have reported in the MSO Word and OOo Writer applications.

MSO’s ribbons tend to be more more annoying to Word users.  This implementation takes the place of pop-up context menus in Writer, and are regrded as unnecessary fanfare by most intermiate or expert users.  The ribbons might be better accepted, if they were more context sensitive, but MS has apparently given arbitrary status to some standard commands, and completely ignored the need for others.  Writer uses popup menus in a way that have become the standard, and was largely made that way by Microsoft.  For ordinary usability, OOo Writer is a clear winner.

MSO, however, is a clear winner in the category of unique features.  By adding such long-awaited features as built-in gammar checking, Mircosoft provides greater efficiency and control to authors and copywriters alike.  Add to this the ability to compare documents, and MSO pulls out ahead of OOo.

Both word processing applications contain templates.  MSO includes a large assortment in its initial setup, while OOo only provides a few.  Both, though, offer easily accessible add-on templates free of charge on the Internet.  MSO gets the prize for the most included templates, leaving OOo some catching up to do, perhaps by simply including many of the add-on templates into the installation of the program.

OOo provides far more options and modifications to the use of bulleted and numbered lists.  MSO has done a lot of catching up with their latest incarnation, but it is still a far cry from the moving and editing that can be easily accomplished using the OpenSource equivalent.  Even an expert user prefers the task to be as simplified as possible, and OOo makes this possible with its popup bullets menu, allowing for greater control and editing ability.

In all, OpenOffice comes out ahead in the comparison.  Add to the overall usability of the application the unavoidable fact that it is free to use, and MSO simply falls off to the side.  OpenOffice provides almost every function available in MSO, adds in a few that are only available in OOo, and then sweetens the deal with a free edition that is both more stable and faster loading than Microsoft’s leading product.

Article written by MyComputerAid.com