Office v OpenOffice Help and advice on software, hardware, configuration and general computing issues and problems

[ericmark]

Why do people use Office rather that openoffice. I do because I was also given office free of charge and I was taught on Office not OpenOffice and also Word has a maths equation editor.
But I am sure if I had needed to pay for it I would have been happy to use OpenOffice instead.
Any comments please.

[plumbbob]

Simply because Microsoft Office was the first, or rather Word was. When computers first appeared in the workplace, there were few other word processor programmes available and Office became the "industry standard" just as Photoshop and Macs have for artwork.

Open Office is "Open Source" and was written recently and given away free simply to break Microsoft's monopoly and allow everyone access to Word and Excel (etc) documents, just in the same way as Firefox competes with Explorer. MSO is a professional product, and will always dominate the workplace.

[ericmark]

Thank you for your reply. I think I should lay cards on table my wife is doing a University thing on open source and although we can guess we don't really know why people pay out so much money for Office. I have both Office 2003 and OpenOffice3 on my PC and both have some advantages OpenOffice has built in calculator and instead of having to calculate 3000/230 I can let OpenOffice do it for me. But can't find a maths equation editor so when I need to write formula into a document Office word works better and I got my student edition for free when doing my degree.
Also when using Mempis one of the many Linux operating systems I can't use Office only OpenOffice will work.
When playing with networking Linux is King but installing some programs is a real pain although with the synaptic manager really easy. And for amateur radio really very good.
But I know why I use open source and why I don't according to what I am doing what I want to know is why anyone else pays the extra for Micro Soft
Eric

[plumbbob]

Wheras the cost for you and me to purchase MSO is fairly hefty, for industry, it is not their main consideration if a consideration at all. Just as Windows XP Pro is the only operating system, the same applies for other software. All artwork is done on Apple Mac's running Adobe Photoshop, design software in Quark Express and all downloadable brochure type documents are created using Adobe Acrobat. All very expensive software especially considering there are cheap or free alternatives available.

Businesses will not risk using software that might be incompatible with existing files and they must be sure any received from third parties can be read and processed without errors. Walk into any office anywhere, and pretty much anyone can immediately start work without having to retrain and learn how to use new software. It is as I say, the "Industry Standard". Third party software is seen as "amateur" compared to the Office suite, and any competition has not been round long enough yet to provide a serious challenge to the existing setup.

[ericmark]

I have also tried other forums although tried this one first.
Slightly different wording I asked:-
I need to write a report on why we should pay out for the Microsoft Office package. Some programs within the package are easy like Access which is not directly compatible with Base so all existing programs would need re-writing and Outlook as this is the only email and address book program which will synchronise with Microsoft Activesync to the PDA's however Word, Excel and Power Point are fully covered by what Write, Calc, and Impress do plus use less hard drive space and are multi platform. Plus they have some extras like exporting to PDF and Flash files.

Can anyone give me any valid reasons why one should buy Word, Excel and Power Point?

Or give me any report as to why one should or should not use Open Source products?

Also how easy would it be to get staff re-trained with Open Source products? Is there are equivalent to the EDCL for Open Source products?

Although I can see the point in retaining Office 2003 on machines where it is already loaded on I can't see any point in loading up Office 2007 with all the compatibility issues rather than Open Office which will view any documents both written in Word 2003 and 2007 and can convert into many formats including HTML without adding reams of control lines.

One answer very like your own saying know one gets fired for buying IBM and same applies to software.

Although I can see this may be the case with some firms with the greater use of PDF and Flash on web sites and with Writer having PDF built in and Impress having Flash built in I would have expected the package to be used a lot more than it is?

I hope some people will be honest and say "I use word because xxxxx" If I am honest I used word as it was provided as part of my dyslexic package together with Dragon Naturally Speaking which would not work with Writer. I wonder how much to do with bundled software and schools and colleges training people with Microsoft?

Any comments will help the more the better all to do with my Wife's University studies.

Please comment even if only to say never thought about it.

Thank you for any replies Eric