LibreOffice beats MS Office at its own game
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| 420Penguin Aug 19, 2014 10:08 PM EDT |
The author in the CNET article extols the virtues of LibreOffice, how it's compatibility with MS Office is flawless except for VBS macros. He states how Office 2007 doesn't do a great job of opening OpenDocument Format files, but is this a LibreOffice problem or an Office 2007 problem? As a matter of fact, Office 2013 is much better at ODF compatibility, and isn't that a matter of waiting for Microsoft to catch up to an International (ISO) standard? Even Microsoft's Office Open XML formats are only being handled correctly in Office 2013, the preceding Office versions using a transitional OOXML format. Microsoft wasn't even compatible with its own standard until last year! The author goes on to "review" the presentation, drawing, and database components by at least being honest enough to admit that he does not do presentations or create or use databases. LibreOffice's Base component is not just a database, but an interface that can be used to access a number of popular, enterprise class database offerings, which MS Access does not. He says Draw is not like MS Paint, but is really for flowcharting. To my mind, that is a plus not a minus. In the matter of LibreOffice not being cloud-capable the author admits that he uses Google Apps when he needs cloud capabilities. There's nothing stopping anyone who uses LibreOffice from using Google Apps, too. He also neglects to mention that with LibreOffice you get this all for free, whether you use it for personal or business use, whereas Office 365 cost s $99.95 a year for Personal or $5 to $12.50 per user/per month for Office 365 Business. Plus LibreOffice will open all your old, now non-supported MS Office docs, and even WordPerfect and MS Publisher files! |
| cr Aug 20, 2014 1:01 AM EDT |
Plus, if for some reason you need to move your drives from one machine to another (a recent storm-related power fault at the parents' house necessitated this), LibreOffice doesn't wake up on the new machine and immediately announce that you're in piracy-doesn't-pay lockout mode until you search through all your stuff for installation media (Word 2003 in this case), it just works. |
| cr Aug 20, 2014 1:28 AM EDT |
> Plus LibreOffice will open all your old, now non-supported MS Office docs, and even WordPerfect and MS Publisher files! Within limits. LO4.x drops some old formats which LO3.x supports. https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.0#Feature... If you expect to work with ancient files in, for example, Word6 / Word95 format (a favorite of contract agency resume systems as of a few years back), hold onto your LibreOffice-3.x setup. The *.deb format install-package will comfortably install alongside 4.x on Debian-based systems, and show up in the menus in parallel; I haven't cared to try it on other package systems. Then getting your precious document into LO4 is a two-step process: first, into LO3, saving in its native format, thence into LO4 to take advantage of its latest-and-greatest tooling. Edit: my mistake, LO4 will read them but won't write them. So, hold onto LO3 if you expect to deal with such formats on other than a convert-only basis. |
| me1010 Aug 20, 2014 9:37 AM EDT |
I really don't understand how anyone still pays for MS Office. I've used LibreOffice since its first release and OO before that. I've written several 100+ page technical documents in LibreOffice... no problems... it was great to have the built-in equation editor which allowed easy control over the symbols and positioning without paging through a crazy slow symbol matrix. I find LibreOffice far easier to use than MS Office. I hardly ever search through menus looking for settings. It just flows very well. Whenever someone asks for help in styling an MS Office document, it seems really complicated within MS Office. I usually just tell them to send me the document... Then I do everything in LibreOffice in 1/5th the expected time, and send it back in an older version of MS doc. About the only thing that's a problem is MS Office's total failure in dealing with frame objects. So, I generally use a 2x2 table to put pictures with captions... MS Office is ridiculously difficult... And expensive... I really don't understand people. |
| gus3 Aug 20, 2014 11:59 AM EDT |
me1010, it's simple: corporate policy. |
| jdixon Aug 20, 2014 12:17 PM EDT |
> I really don't understand how anyone still pays for MS Office If your company has an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, it only costs about $10 under their home use plan. See http://www.microsofthup.com/hupus/home.aspx?dialect_id=en-US... |
| me1010 Aug 20, 2014 12:45 PM EDT |
@gus3
I guess that's it... sadly... @jdixon The $10 could be used to buy two nice coffees at Starbucks while writing a report in LibreOffice in 1/5th the time the MS Office user consumes doing the same thing. So, IMO, using MS Office at any non-zero upfront cost is silly... while using it at even a zero upfront cost is expensive in time management and ease of use. However, that's just my experience of course... |
| jdixon Aug 20, 2014 3:01 PM EDT |
> The $10 could be used ... There are lots of thing I can use $10 for that are better than buying Microsoft Office, I agree. However, most people don't seem to feel that way. |
| gus3 Aug 20, 2014 4:08 PM EDT |
$10? Microsoft charges so little to handcuff someone? I thought that stuff was for, like, $250/hr. |
| jdixon Aug 20, 2014 4:28 PM EDT |
> Microsoft charges so little to handcuff someone? If the company you work for has already agreed to the handcuffs, yes. |
| seatex Aug 20, 2014 5:45 PM EDT |
I would not even give 10 bucks to Microsoft. But I do give $50 to the Document Foundation each year to support LibreOffice. So, it's not about being cheap (for me). It's ALL about supporting good over evil. ;-) |
| gary_newell Aug 21, 2014 3:31 AM EDT |
At the very least the bullets and numbering work properly in LibreOffice. I always feel that bullets and numbering is a random feature in Microsoft Word. You never know whether it is going to suddenly indent, change the numbering system or change the font on the fly. |
| jdixon Aug 21, 2014 6:05 AM EDT |
> You never know whether it is going to ... That been my experience with everything Microsoft makes. One minute it'll be working exactly as expected and documented. The next it'll do something completely off the wall that you've never seen it do before. |
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