Micro$oft office vs. OpenOffice

[TransformX]

From: Newsforge
Micro$oft has published a OpenOffice 1.1 Competitive Guide to which a response has been written on NewsForge.

A little quote from one of the comments:

A couple of ironic points to make here:

1) The document is in pdf format -- not Billy format
2) Apparently Billy office does not export pdf natively,
a third party app is required.
3) The document it turns out was written using
quark express on a mac.
4) They couldn't use Billy office format for their
pitch, because (contrary to their pitch), acquiring
Billy office is rather expensive for Joe user, and
thus Joe user couldn't read this document in Billy office.
5) If they had nevertheless pushed it out in Billy office
format, folks would have had to download open office,
to read their Billy office formatted paper that explains
why folks shouldn't use open office to read Billy office
documents.

[borat]

"According to the Microsoft document, the basic system requirements for OpenOffice are:

* Windows (98, NT, 2000, XP) -- Pentium-compatible PC, 64 MB RAM, 130 MB HD; or
"

So basically, whereas microsoft quotes usable figures of a recommended pentium 3 and 128 meg of ram to run XP with anything office related, OO apparently can be run on a P75 with 64 meg of ram! I'd like to see somebody use that and get any work done.

[TransformX]

Speaking for myself here, I used a Pentium 150 with 32MB, windows 95 and Office97 quite successfully so I don't see a reason why a P75 with 64MB won't let you be productive.

[tonny]

Microsoft does have a point with the easy of use. I like Openoffice but the menus are way too cluttered and it's a bit more complicated to use. Maybe because I am used to MS Office, but still...
And as for compatibility, MS Office files aren't fully compatible even between their versions (i have lots of documents made under word 97 that look good under word 2000 but are screwed under xp and 2003 - especially drawings).

[Dilitante1]

eesh, how much horsepower does it take to do word processing? The way the M$ bloatware is going you will need a P4 just for the office apps

[tonny]

From my experience OpenOffice eats more resources that MS Office. Also try to open a 30mb, 200 pages document in OpenOffice. It will take you about 2-3mins. In Word it takes about 3-4 secs to open it and another 10-15 to load all the pages.

edit: a bit off topic: Has any of you experienced occasional lock-ups with Word 2003? Sometimes the computer works incredibly slow, as if all the proc is taken up with a high priority task but if I manage to kill Word, everythings goes back to normal. I have all the latest updates installed for both Windows 2000 and Office 2003 - maybe this is the problem .

[UtwigMU]

Open Office is a resource hog - it was quite sluggish on 1.7 Celerons I tried it on.

Yes, 1.7 Celerons are dogs, but the Office is no UT either.

I'm waiting for Sasq to chime in with his view.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

but OO is free and more multiplatform...

and distribution is more flexable

[tonny]

Originally posted by Chrono_Wanderer
but OO is free and more multiplatform...

and distribution is more flexable

but unfortunately it has one MAJOR drawback... no Clippit

[Ribbit]

I've been using OO (Windows version) on a 400MHz K6-III. Startup time could be a lot better, though it's certainly not much worse than Word97 on the same machine. In use it runs just fine, with no perceptible slowness (also true of Word97). And I like the fact that it doesn't try to be overly "helpful".

[az]

What I don't like in OOo is its text rendering. Somehow, it doesn't get the space between characters right, and I often think I've accidentally hit space when in fact there's nothing between characters (only a few too many blank pixels). This is on XP with ClearType.

AZ

[K6-III]

I also like Abiword as a good alternative to Word.

[TnT]

I used to use OO.org on my Celeron 466. Now that I have a faster processor I use Abiword and Gnumeric.

[borat]

Originally posted by TransformX
Speaking for myself here, I used a Pentium 150 with 32MB, windows 95 and Office97 quite successfully so I don't see a reason why a P75 with 64MB won't let you be productive.

my point was that if your running xp, then the OS alone will need 128meg to wrok properly, so running anything on top of this with 64meg is plain wishful thinking. I dont like it when people condem microsoft for their minimum specs. When you buy microsoft it usually works damned well on their minimum specs, and also whats the big thing in saying "but this open source app can work on a P100"?i never use anything less than a gig these days, and most people will be in the same boat, simply because i threw out my P166 ages ago because it was painfull to use. I upgrade once every 2 years, not that often really, so im not pone of these junkies who needs new kit every month. Fact is you know when you buy MS software it will work 99.99% of the time how you want it to and if it doesnt you have somebody to moan to. Can the same be said about OO?

[TransformX]

Most people I know still have a Pentium III 500-933 with 64MB ram.
Most schools etc. have older computers like P-II 266 with 32mb ram which they still use with their old educational software.
Such computers can easily run OpenSource software, especially since many schools/community centers don't have the budget for a new computer room.