Is OpenOffice as good as Micro$oft OfficeSuite?
 

I mostly use Excel and Word on the office suite but I don't know if I should buy another license of get the freeware Open Office!

buy and microsoft should never be in the same sentence.

may I ask why?

I use OpenOffice at home and it seems ok, although I do very basic word processing and spreadsheeting at home.

No, it's not. Did you expect it to be? They are catching up in terms of features but the program is also getting bloated and the code is inefficient. Google recently lent some programming help to tighten things up (the rationale being that Google uses a lot of open source software and wants to help make the software it uses better).

yes :winkwink:

OpenOffice doesn't have nearly the features that MS Office has.

That said, I've been using OpenOffice for about a year now, after using MS products a long time, and prefer it. OpenOffice has the features I need. For word processing, I typically write one or two page letters or contracts. For spreadsheets, my formulas usually don't go beyond using the basic four mathematical operators. OpenOffice can do a lot more than that, and MS Office can do a lot more than OpenOffice, but OO meets my current needs. OO also runs a lot faster, with less intrusive "help" getting in my way...and I don't have to deal with serial numbers and keeping track of which CDs go with which computer. I'd assess your own personal needs, and if they're not really intense, try OO out for a bit.

The new version of Open Office v2.0 is great! It does everything MS Office does that 99% of users will need.

http://www.OpenOffice.org

Plus the future trend is headed towards all document using the OpenDocument format as the standard.

I've been using it for a while, it's great... not really much different than Ms Office...

Once Google merges with OpenOffice M$ will crumble!

Considering it's free it's definately handy...

They still dominate in the Operating System market

I use it and like it but it does slow down my computer when it runs. However, the price tag makes up for it.

I had issues with it.
I did my thesis with another guy, and he uses MS products and I use openoffice.. the .docs don't match 100% so it was fucking annoying to work on the same project on 2 different programs.

open office = bugs, crashing and lack of functioning auto-recovery

Because wha wha wha AKA Dork Jedi doesn't earn enough to purchase software.

That's because it's written in Java, if I'm not mistaken.

Try AbiWord for a free word processor if you're interested:
http://www.abisource.com/screenshots/

Gnumeric for free spreadsheet software:
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/

Both are for GNOME environment but have Win32 versions/ports.

Anyone used the OO scripting framework?

I doubt I'd ever switch as a I have literally hundreds of thousands of lines of VBA written to automate nearly everything I do in MS Office. It would take me years to recode all the tools I currently use.

Where you using the v2 of Open Office? I get alot of files in Excel and Word and would like to work on them with OO with no problems!