Open Office - an assessment

[worker201]

So I've got this Thinkpad with Windows XP on it that I use for school.  Our written assignments are required to be in Microsoft .doc format.  I'd rather not have to deal with Word at any price, so I downloaded Open Office (the free version).  It has really been my first time using it, since it doesn't run on Leopard at all.

Writer - well, if all they wanted to do was copy Word, from top to bottom, obscure feature to major annoyance, they've done a damn fine job.  Seriously, the only difference is that it doesn't say Microsoft Word on the title bar.  Too bad.  I was kinda hoping they would make something that was better than Word.  Like Apple's Pages, for example.  Are there any .doc compatible word processors for Windows that are Lite on features?  I just want something that types, spellchecks, does basic formatting, and looks nice.

Calc - pretty much an Excel clone.  Seems handier in some respects, but chokes on others.  I had a .dbf file that I needed to make some changes to, and Calc would make the changes, and then failed on save - this is a documented bug, and a goddamm travesty, since that's the only thing I've used it for.  I used a copy of Excel 97 on my mom's computer to save the .dbf.

So, although it's free, and not made by Microsoft, it's hard to tell.  Has all the bloat you'd expect from a $300 office suite, and looks exactly the same as that office suite looks.  Naturally, I hate it.  But I don't have much choice.

As an aside, my favorite office suite of all time was Word Perfect 8.  Word Perfect was great, and Quattro is still the best spreadsheet ever released.  I still own it, but it's designed to run on Windows 95.  Of the current officeware out there, I'm partial to Apple's iWork.  It's the same old apps, but instead of holding to some boring bogus business environment standard, they made it cool.  It's not really appropriate for business - but at the same time, Word and Excel were never really appropriate for home users, so it has its niche.  I'd use it for school, but I'm trying to minimize the jumping back and forth between computers, especially while working on an assignment.

[Kintaro]

Now I'm going to also have to make some videos in VMware of Office loading on Vista/Linux 10x faster than OpenOffice, which will also have a comparison video. I could even include boot times and Vista/Office I believe would be the clear winner.

If you want a good, small download, for an office program that is multiplatform I rather like Lotus Symphony which is available from IBM for free. I'm not sure if it's open source though, but I know you aren't a freetard so you shouldn't care too much about that since you like blowing Steve Jobs so hard.

[SiMuLaCrUm]

I like OpenOffice. I don't think it is as bloated as MS Office.

[worker201]

Super.  Except that IBM's push downloading doesn't work on my Mac - the Java applet managed to crash Firefox.  I'll try downloading it from a Windows computer.

[Kintaro]

You don't have to use push downloading.

[Kintaro]

I like OpenOffice. I don't think it is as bloated as MS Office.

Who gives a fuck when hard drive space is so fucking cheap and OpenOffice takes ten times longer to start? Even under Crossover Office or Wine MSOffice will start faster than OpenOffice so don't shit in my mouth about preloaded libaries.

[worker201]

I'm not really concerned with hard drive space, or loading time.  I just want a word processor that stays the fuck out of my way.  The mistake of the modern word processor is that it tries to be everything under one roof for businesses.  There are thousands of programs that are better at making web pages or laying out company newsletters, and the fact that Word tries to be all of them at once is part of the reason I hate it.  Sure, that shit is appealing to corporate customers who have to fork out hundreds of dollars just to get their secretaries a word processor - why wouldn't they want all the useless add-ons "for free"?  But in reality, having generations of people learn how to do things in a word processor that should be done somewhere else has led to buckets of people who think that MS Office is the only program you ever need, which has led Microsoft to get fat without innovation, and generally reduces computer knowledge among the white-collar class.  If every company in America that produced a newsletter had to use Quark XPress or InDesign for layout (as an example), I honestly think that as a computing culture, we would be better off, even if they used a desktop publishing suite made by Microsoft.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I like OpenOffice. I don't think it is as bloated as MS Office.

Who gives a fuck when hard drive space is so fucking cheap and OpenOffice takes ten times longer to start? Even under Crossover Office or Wine MSOffice will start faster than OpenOffice so don't shit in my mouth about preloaded libaries.

I agree.

I think the problem is that when you load one program, the big fuck off soffice.bin gets loaded into memory which takes ages, using quickstarter helps but not as much as it should.

They should really break the suit down into separate programs.

MS Office is the only program you ever need

Isn't that an innovation in itself?

If all you want is a basic word processor then you could try ABIWord. It's much faster than OpenOffice but I don't like it myself, I find it too restrictive and the interface can be a little clumsy - creating  and editing tables can be a pain.

[worker201]

I didn't know AbiWord was available for Windows, have to check that out.  I used to use it in Linux, thought it was great.  Gnumeric was good too, but it crashed every 9 minutes or so, it was dreadfully unstable.

If I want a table in my word processor document, I'll put one in using an appropriate program.

MS Office is the only program you ever need

Isn't that an innovation in itself?

Technically, yes.  An innovation of Microsoft's marketing skills.  Which just doesn't impress me, or make me claim that Microsoft is innovating.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I didn't know AbiWord was available for Windows, have to check that out.

Yes it comes in Windows flavour too.
http://www.abisource.com/download/

If I want a table in my word processor document, I'll put one in using an appropriate program.

How can you do that?

Last time I checked ABIWord doesn't support OLE so you can't unless there's another way I don't know about.

[worker201]

InDesign.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Pay $699?

Just to insert a bloody table!

Fuck that, I'd rather use OpenOffice or even MS Office.

[worker201]

I happen to have legally gotten InDesign (and Photoshop and Acrobat Pro) almost for free when I purchased a CS3 package to get Illustrator.  Special packaging and education discounts stack nicely together, I think.  But you're not seeing the bigger picture.  InDesign is just what I would use.  I am sure there are full-featured layout programs out there that are free (TeX comes to mind), or reasonably priced.  So why would someone want to use a set of barely implemented half-assed layout features that are included with their word processor?  Again, it's part of Microsoft's evil genius in marketing to business.  They know that business owners would rather buy 1 piece of software than 2, or a suite instead of 5 programs.  So they took the bottom 10% of like 15 applications and crammed them into Word.  And for many businesses, this works well enough 80% of the time, so it's a decent investment.  My point is simply that this is bad for everyone in the long run.  People who add tables to Word documents don't learn desktop publishing - they learn to add tables to Word documents.  Doing it in InDesign is fucklots harder, but ultimately more rewarding - you have greater control of your layout, and you learn principles that apply to a wide variety of cases.

To put it another way - to a person who only has a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  Versatility of tools makes for better carpenters.