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Open Office - an assessment

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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.

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