Journal

OpenOffice 2.0 Review

13 December 2005 › 30 comments

By now you have probably heard that Internet Explorer is junk. My referral logs show that 56% of the visitors to my site use Firefox. It was rumored that NASA recently ditched IE in favor of Firefox, and NYU does not allow their employees to use IE for sensitive material. On a related note, the state government of Massachusetts ditched MS Office in September, due to it not being compliant with OASIS guidelines.

Personally, I find this amusing: Microsoft was taken to court some years ago for anti-trust issues, but nowadays it’s open source that’s chipping away at their dominance. In other words, they sat complacent for so long that other products are simply better, and people are starting to take notice.

If you have a computer of any kind, chances are you’ve used some form of Microsoft Office. If you’re anything like me, you use the basic features to get your work done, but could care less about any of the new bells and whistles added with each release. Microsoft themselves admit that 80% of Office users need only 20% of the features.

That being said, I would propose the next time you find yourself setting up a computer, perhaps a hand-me-down for a friend or relative: Rather than force them to buy MS Office, or being lame and using a pirated copy, hook them up with OpenOffice and see if they don’t like it just as much. Okay, so maybe you need a little more proof, fair enough. I’ll go over areas in which OpenOffice beats MS Office, but also be clear about where it falls short.

Marketing Idiocy

First of all, consider how Microsoft has chosen to market their current version of Office. Rather than try to sell you on the features, or show that it is somehow a better product, their initial pitch is: If you are not using the newest Microsoft Office products, then you need to evolve. This is both insulting to the consumer, and shows a complete lack of consideration for presenting their product in the best possible light. The safe assumption: There aren’t significant reasons to upgrade. Here is an example of their marketing:

Are You Working in a Bygone Era?

This attitude is extremely ironic, because if you work in web development, you are well aware that it is Microsoft which exists in a bygone era, having not made any significant improvements to Internet Explorer since 1998, other than bug fixes and security patches. If anyone is holding back the evolution of technology, they are. They seem to be clamoring lately just to keep up with the progression of Yahoo and Google in “Web 2.0” technologies, and are losing ground in the desktop market to Apple OSX and OpenOffice. Let’s take a look at why OpenOffice puts Microsoft on their heels…

Writer vs. Word

For the most part, these two applications function pretty much identically. The interface of Writer and the rest of the OpenOffice suite closely resembles that of MS Office XP. I tried opening a few older papers I wrote in Word, that contain funky Greek and Hebrew fonts used in seminary, and Writer handled them just fine. The one significant omission in Writer is the lack of a grammar checker. It has full spell check, but won’t hold your hand like Word does regarding sentence structure. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been fond of those green underlines anyway.

Calc vs. Excel

In previous verions of OpenOffice, Calc was criticized for being under-powered compared to Excel, due to it capping off data rows at 32000. In version 2.0, Calc now supports the full 65536 that Excel is designed to handle. This means users can import very large spreadsheets, without significant risk of data loss. In fact, a major accountancy firm in London recently dumped Excel in favor of Calc – (Source).

Impress vs. PowerPoint

I was impressed, pun intended, to find that Impress handles every single slide transition animation that PowerPoint can throw at it. I tested it out with a 35mb presentation I did for a seminary class, which contained embedded WMV and MP3 files for an opening video and closing music slideshow. I was disappointed to find that the video did not play, but I was not entirely surprised, since it is a proprietary Microsoft format. After some tweaking, the MP3 played just fine, and the music slideshow went without a hitch.

If you are a web guru, you might also want to consider Eric Meyer’s S5 method, as it only requires only a web browser to make presentations. Along those same lines, Robert Nyman has released Ajax-S, which is also very nice. I have also seen some very nice presentations done in Apple Keynote. Quite frankly, PowerPoint is not the only, nor is it the best, presentational tool.

Base vs. Access

Although I don’t do a whole lot of localized database work, from what I can tell Base is a pretty robust program, supporting common formats such as MySQL, Oracle and Access. It can also read / modify a variety of address books such as Mozilla, MS Outlook and Thunderbird. It should be noted that you will need the Sun JRE installed to use Base, but that’s a free download.

Draw vs. Visio

This might be a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but MS Visio is the program that Draw most closely resembles. I spent some time tinkering around, and found it to be a surprisingly featured program. You can create all the custom shapes you’d be accustomed to for producing complex workflows, and can even apply 3D perspective transformations on various objects. The drawback would be that you can’t save or open Visio files, nor does Draw come with the ability to make mockups of the Windows UI, such as the default blue XP interface or radio buttons. To me, Visio seems like a poor choice for high quality graphical mockups in the first place, so it’s a mute point.

Math vs. ??

As far as I can tell, there is no comparable MS rival to the OpenOffice Math application. This program is pretty amazing, because it allows you to illustrate and perform complex mathematical equations in a point and click environment. What’s cooler still is that it saves files directly as MathML, a subset of XML, which is compatible with XHTML 1.1 when served as content-type application/xhtml+xml. This means that mathematicians and physicists can more efficiently use the web for sharing their research.

Bleak Outlook

You’ll notice that OpenOffice does not contain a rival program to Microsoft Outlook. I dare say this is because they don’t need to. In my opinion, Mozilla Thunderbird already does a far better job handling email, and Mozilla Sunbird looks to be an up and coming contender to rival Outlook’s calendar handling features. Let’s not forget Gmail which is by far the best web-based email available, bar none. The “Send As” feature lets me send email with any address, not just ones ending in @gmail.com. If it weren’t required at my job, I would just use Gmail exclusively, and never touch Outlook again.

Summary

Drawbacks:

You might have to re-program some of your precious macros, as OpenOffice is not compatible with MS Office in that respect. I consider this to actually be a good thing, because it decreases the likelihood of viruses. Smart Tags are also not available in OpenOffice. In case you need a reminder, they are the little dotted underlines that indicate an address or contact. If you didn’t know what they were when I mentioned them, you don’t need them. I never once have actually used a smart tag, let alone bemoaned not having them.

Strengths:

It’s cross-platform. It works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris and BSD. No matter what OS your friends are using, these open-source formats will be readable by a wide variety of people, and secure from proprietary ties. This way, your documents are not shackled to one company or their licensing restrictions. Also, there’s no reason to worry about document appearance.

An added benefit to all OpenOffice applications is the ability to create a PDF directly from the source, and not having to use Acrobat, which is a huge savings over purchasing both MS Office, $399 and Adobe Acrobat, $449. With $848 dollars to spare, you could buy a second computer! Look, do yourself a favor and set aside the natural skepticism that comes with trying something new. You’ll thank me later. After all, 49 million downloads can’t be wrong.

Update: For more reviews and articles on OpenOffice:

Discussion + Dissension

#1 Michael Kjeldsen

I’ve been using OOo since the release of v1.4, and I’ve never looked back.

The only thing that I still find a little weak, is the way the rules of styling the pages, is handled. It’s just too messy and unpredictable :-(
#2 Brent O'Connor

Thanks for the extensive write up comparing Office and OpenOffice! I think you make some interesting points and your comparisons are right on. I’m always looking for ways to get out from under Microsoft’s oppressive thumb. I was really excited about the new 2.0 version because I was looking for Access equivalent for my PowerBook so that I would have database for taking down prayer requests when I was at my Bible study. The new base program looks very promising. However, I must say that installing OpenOffice on the Mac isn’t near as easy as installing it on a Windows XP machine. The problem I had was trying to find the right version of OpenOffice to download for the Mac. You basically have two choices either OOo.org for the Mac that uses X11 and not the native Aqua windows manager or you can use NeoOffice/J which has better integration with the OSX environment. The NeoOffice/J wasn’t even an option since it seems to be a little behind in its versions and doesn’t have a version that comes with Base (the Database Program).

So I finally downloaded OOo.org 2.0 that uses X11 and installed on my PowerBook and was excited that I could setup my database. But what I discovered instead was that OOo.org for the Mac seems very slow and while I was working on setting up my database, Base crashed at least two times. So needless to say, I’m not as confident about using OOo.org on the Mac because it seems slower and not as reliable. However, I will continue to keep an open mind and try using it here and there because believe me I want to like it because I hate being dependent on Microsoft products!
#3 Daniel VanMilligan

I had looked at OpenOffice 2.0 when it was first released and thought about switching to it. But before I did, I did some research into it. So, I thought I would throw this out there because there is a “camp” of people who think that OpenOffice2.0 is a memory hog. George Ou of ZDNet did a comparison between Calc and Excel. Some agree that Microsoft Office has better performance.

Personally, I fall into the price category. I prefer a ‘free’ price tag. I also have a heart for Open Source software. So, Open Office is the way I want to go. Right now though, I am getting Microsoft Office for free through the university I am currently attending, so I am going to stick with that for now.
#4 Ryan Heneise

I’m a big fan of Apple Pages and Keynote as another alternative to Word and Powerpoint. I have not opened MS Word (except by accidentally double-clicking a .doc file) since I got Pages. Pages takes a little getting used to, but after I figured it out I’m really happy with it. For presentations, Keynote is FAR superior to Powerpoint. I haven’t tried Impress, but I would indeed be very impressed if it turned out to be better than Keynote. Keynote helps me to feel confident and in control of my presentations, and it looks fantastic.
#5 Nathan Smith

Thanks for the feedback guys. I’m of course not telling people to throw MS Office out the window, especially if you already own it. I agree too, that Keynote is an excellent product. On Macs, it sounds like iWork is the way to go until OpenOffice catches up with its Windows counterpart. While it might be a bit more sluggish than MS Office, that’s to be expected since it’s a case of MS software running on an MS operating system. I’d say that in the next few versions, OO will probably be a serious contender in features and speed.
#6 chris

thanks for your last two posts. you inspired me to create holiday icons for my wife for her browser at home (they’re not very good, but she’s easily impressed).

i downloaded OO when 2.0 came out. i really like it, even though i use it only about half the time. i was given MSO through my university as well.

i did notice one thing about OO. a coworker had made a newspaper ad in word (i know, but it was just clip art and letters), which he wanted in a PDF. i thought i’d just convert it to writer and save it as a PDF (since writer is cool like that). i’m not exactly sure how it was laid out but it didn’t convert over to OO. the clip arts were our of place and, in one spot, the lettering changed colors.

that’s my only complaint about OO. oh, and more people don’t use it.
#7 Nathan Smith

Chris: You’re welcome. I’m glad you find my writing helpful and/or inspirational. As far as OpenOffice goes, hang in there. It will only get better with passing time and gradual incrimental upgrades.

I remember using the 0.8 beta version of Firefox, and heralding it as the best browser ever, but hardly any of my friends believed me. And what browser do they use now? Exactly.

Times are changing my friend, and we’re aware of it already. With all this open-source craziness, and Windows Vista still being vaporware, I think Microsoft is going to see some tough times ahead in the next decade.
#8 Julianne

Hi Nathan!

I just recently got Open Office and put it on my Computer and so far I like it. However, I was wondering do they have any programs comparable to MS Publisher? I am looking to use a program like that and don’t want to spend the money on MS.

Thanks.
#9 Lance Willett

Nathan,
I’ve using OpenOffice for my business for about 8 months, and it’s the best!

I still keep versions of MS Office running on another machine, though, just in case I need to send a file in DOC file format to a client or something.

The PDF support is really one of the biggest reasons I switched, and I use it every day.
#10 Shawn Grimes

Nathan,

I’m not sure what it is but it seems every time I am considering a particular piece of software to use/try you come in with a great write up on it giving me the info I need before pushing forward. Great job.

I have been going through the OO site for a couple of days doing some reading and looking at screenshots and such because I want to install it on my laptop that has no office software on it currently. Now I will for sure be downloading it tonight and giving it a go. Thanks again for the great write up.
#11 David Hemphill

I own a Mac and with it came the Office 2004 Test Drive. After that ran out, I had to look for something else to use. Sure, I had my Mac preloaded with the iWork suite, but I had been wanting to try OO for a while anyways. Bottome line, it has a real chance or replacing Office on my other PC. However, I do have a few things I don’t like about it.

1. It’s slow. On my Mac, it takes nearly two minutes to load. Dang!
2. The interface. Maybe I’m ~~accustomed~~ brainwashed to the way MSOffice works, but the interface is in need of some refinement. I’m sure this will come with newer versions though.
3. It’s unstable. But heck, so is MSOffice.

Overall, OpenOffice is a great product. You can’t beat the price and it’s packed with the features I use most. Plus exporting to PDF is just cool.
#12 Yannick

Very nice write up Nathan. I haven’t yet had the time to go through OO as much as you have, but so far I know I like what I see. I use MSO on the windows side but on linux, well hehe I use OO (of course there is no MSO on linux).

I have noticed something similar to Chris where sometimes certain objects used and aligned in MSO get shifted when opened in OO. Hopefully OO will get it sorted out in their next update. I’m also not sure if it will happen the other way around, where things done in OO might get shifted when switched over to MSO.

For now I’ll be sticking with MSO on the windows side, but you can be sure that I’ll be pointing OO to anyone who doesn’t already have MSO.

Thanks for the writeup.
#13 Nathan Smith

Julianne: I’m not aware of free alternatives that rival Publisher in quality the way that OpenOffice does. However, after some persistent Google searching, I found this list: Alternatives to MS Publisher, which includes a good listing. Gobe Productive seems to be viable option.

Lance: I agree, PDF is a huge benefit, and I’m not sure why more office suites don’t offer it. Obviously it’s not expensive, so maybe Adobe pays other companies (Microsoft) to keep quiet and leave it out? Who knows.

Shawn: I suppose we’re both just late adopters of technology, that’s why. I just happen to try it right before you do, and for some reason feel the need to share my opinion with the world. You know more about WordPress though!

David: I’m sure the Mac support will get better. Unfortunately, that seems like an afterthought for most software developers, who mainly gun for the big market of Windows users. This will change in the next few years though, now that OSX is clearly so much better than Windows XP. I’m curious, how do you like iWorks compared to MS Office or OpenOffice?
#14 Beth

I love OpenOffice, I use it at home. However, I downloaded the last release before 2, and it was quite a memory hog, more so than MS Office. Additionally, I found it crashing on me frequently. I assume if you’re giving this such a thumbs up it’s stable, but is it still really slow?
#15 Nathan Smith

Beth: I’ve got a 2.4Ghz Athlon 64 laptop, with 1.25GB of ram and it works fine for me. I would say that other than importing other file formats, it works just as fast for me as the comparable MS Office programs. What’s really nice about OpenOffice is that all of the sub-programs can be launched from within the main “shell.” Meaning, if I’m in Writer and I close a document, I can go to File » New and create a new Impress file. That’s something that MS Office can’t boast, full interoperability within the suite.
#16 Yannick

Also I wanted to note that I think OO would be a good solution for Churches looking to not spend a lot of money on software. The money they would spend buying MSO, they could use for something else more meaningful. Just a thought. :)
#17 Nathan Smith

Yannick: That’s a great point. If a church is running a computer lab, they could get a geeky, tech-savvy volunteer to go purchase the necessary hardware, assemble it, throw Ubuntu on them instead of Windows, and use OpenOffice instead of MS Office. With the money saved right there, the church could probably get one or even two extra computers for their money. Then people who used the lab could put “Familiarity with Linux” on their résumés!
#18 Julianne

Thanks for doing my research for me. Much appreciated!
#19 Yannick

Yeah linux would be another good option when it comes to saving money. The only problem with linux is, though it’s FREE, it can be a bit difficult to use when it comes to installing things and configuring some things. They would have to learn all of that and that might be a bit much for some, especially those who are accustomed to Windows.
#20 Wesley Walser

Yeah, I liked the extensive writeup. Not normal forte for a standards/God blog. Nice.
#21 Nathan Smith

Actually, there are quite a few blogs out there that emphasize web standards, and consistently do very extensive writeups on a variety of subjects. And, as far as a “God blog” goes, this review didn’t necessarily pertain to the subject of religion. I get what you mean though, that typically blogs are not used for in-depth articles. Those aren’t the types I like to read either.
#22 David Hemphill

Hey Nathan, just remembered I forgot to tell you nice writeup as well. Good work.

Comparing iWork to their OpenOffice equivelents is difficult thing to do. Pages (the word processor) is really simple in the way it functions, but I have yet to find something I can’t do with it (that I really care to anyway). Don’t try typing out complicated mathmatical equations on it but for a powerful yet simple word processor, it does the job. It can also export compatible MS formats.

Keynote has certain advantages over its Mac competition. It’s transitions are way better and the tools just feel more sophisticated. You can also make kiosk like presentations that run by themselves. To me, Keynote is a superior product to all the competition. Oh yeah, it exports MS formats as well.
#23 Beppo Verde

It is to be noted that (outside of some Microsoft-partnered CS departments), when you go down to your university bookstore to get a free copy of Microsoft software, it’s not free!

You end up paying (from estimates I’ve heard) between USD30 and USD70 dollars per semester, and it’s taken from your campus privilege fees. So really, you are getting royally screwed, considering existing academic prices (and the fact that you probably already have software that works just fine!).

It’s a great deal for Microsoft, though. Peoples’ software is subscription-based (the only way you get to keep the software is by graduating—if your school discontinues it while you’re in, or you’re kicked out or you leave the university for a while, you have to give it back. Additionally, the Windows copy you get is an upgrade version (not that it actually checks on install, but it’s in the contract; check your agreement!), so it’s only good if you have a computer that’s not running whatever the current version of Windows is, but have a computer capable of running the newest version, but which already has an upgrade-eligible copy of Windows on it! What’s more, whatever software you’re using (Windows aside) has gotten you along well thus far, and so you’d probably not buy a fresh copy of Office (or the other software) anyway; you’d just continue to use the software you got with your PC or which you already got. The only exception is Visual Studio (and maybe Publisher, which are very cheap academically. VS is usually of limited interest and most people don’t buy Publisher in the first place; there are alternatives and people can use other things (e.g. word processing) for what they need.

Finally, college is usually where people are exposed to Microsoft alternatives—there are many, many more Mac, Unix, Linux, and other systems there than in most corporations, homes, and even schools! So they look like the good guy (Microsoft is giving is free software!) and get much more money than they would otherwise, and keep people off of any alternatives at the same time!

Great arrangement—provided you’re Microsoft.
#24 Nathan Smith

David: I agree, Keynote is a very slick and stylish program. I’ve seen some really great stuff done with it in the past, and I’m assuming that it’s become even more streamlined in the more recent versions.

Bebbo: Yep, that’s how they work. Microsoft gets people hooked on their software, and then gradually jacks up the price. It’s kind of like boiling a frog. If you put it in boiling water, it will jump out, but if you raise the temperature gradually to a boil, it will just sit there and die, oblivious to what’s going on around it. That’s how far too many consumers are when it comes to Microsoft products: Just too ignorant to see what other options are out there.
#25 Maarten Docter

There’s nothing wrong with a standards / God blog. And especially not with this one. Keep up the good work Nathan! Great article!
#26 Nathan Smith

Thanks Maarten. It’s encouraging to get that kind of feedback. Sometimes I wonder where the fine line is between trying to write topics that people will find helpful and entertaining, and just selling out to try to get site visits and RSS subscribers. I do write about my thoughts on Christianity semi-regularly though, so hopefully I’m maintaining a healthy balance of content on this site.
#27 Maarten Docter

Nathan, your site is correctly balanced. It’s attractive for visitors with different interrests (clients or web/design or theology) and those sections are clearly seperated. Your articles are regulary composed with great care and dedication, so the quality and quantity are also in balance. Maybe some folks are just jealous…
#28 Viktor

Very good review, saved me alot of time. Hope they make it backcompatible.
#29 Solveig Haugland

Hi,

I agree with the review—glad you noted Draw, which is underpublicized and an excellent program. I do nearly all my artwork, including book covers and web graphics, in Draw. It’s also possible to do UML in Draw if you’re willing to do some setup work first. Use the Gallery to create a library of frequently used graphics.

I’m not familiar with the Microsoft equation features but did you fiddle around with OpenOffice.org’s equation editor much?
“As far as I can tell, there is no comparable MS rival to the OpenOffice Math application.”
OpenOffice.org isn’t a drag-and-drop interface but it’s got a very logical set of typable commands, like “over” and “sqrt” that don’t take much time to figure out. The online help has an excellent guide to the commands, so especially anyone who loves vi or command lines over mouse will like it. I’m a major mouse user but still find it pretty slick and simple.

Base is pretty good. The database is built in in 2.0, of course, a big advantage. The table relations are easy to set up, the wizards for tables, reports, views, and queries are pretty good. You have to know what you’re doing a bit, but that’s to be expected with databases. Reports crash a bit but I like to think that’ll be improved upon in a dot release. I’m still working on the calculated field aspect (how do you print out a total of all your invoices on a report) but I’ve gotta think there’s a way to do that.

Final notes—the Export to PDF feature in all the programs is a huge advantage, and the file sizes are far smaller than Microsoft Office.
#30 Nathan Smith

Maarten: Thanks for your kind and thoughtful evaluation of my site. It certainly means a lot to me, seeing people not only make use of the topics I write about, but also taking the time to give constructive feedback.

Viktor: Hey, you're welcome. I'm glad it helped save you some time. Efficiency is always a welcome attribute for me, and I love finding cool tips and tricks that help save me time. I'm glad I could do the same for you. I like your website design, by the way. Too bad I only read English!

Solveig: Wow, thanks for those excellent tips. I see that you’re something of an OpenOffice celebrity / authority, even writing books on the subject! Alas, I am just a lowly end-user and don’t know the ins and outs of it like you do. From what I could tell at a glance though, OO is something that I’ll be making regular use of, instead of MS Office. You’re right, Draw doesn’t get a fair shake, because most reviews center around Writer. The whole package is very solid, and will continue to gain market share with future releases.

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