Like already mentioned, just one word: LaTeX.

OOo of course.

'Page setup' is under 'Format' where it belongs. Only MS would put 'Page setup' under 'File'.

Since I have several machines that I personally use, OO is the best choice for me from a money standpoint. I need an Office suite on all my machines. OO Writer does have a few incompatibility issues with MS Word as long as the MS Word users don't get carried away with all the whiz bang formatting options in Word, I can exchange .docs without any problems. OO Calc is just a little more difficult when going between MS Excel and OO Calc, I can live with it. I have lots of MS Access databases that I'm beginning to move to OO Base mainly because I have so much time invested in the forms or frontends on all these databases. As far as OO Impress and MS Powerpoint go, I don't use them. I'm the only person that has ever done a "Powerpoint" presentation using MS Notepad !

well i have used both. over the years i have come to like MS Office less and less. Office 2000 was the last vs I liked at all. All of the newer vs. have bits of spyware that make me not feel safe using. Not to mention the way MS Office ties so deeply into the kernel of the OS and all of the viruses out there for it are only second to IE.

When i first started using OOo it was NOT as good as MS Office, but now it is as good if not better depending on what you use it for.

all i use office for is basic spread sheet work (invoices and that kind of very light work) and word processing. my wife plays around a bit with presentations, but i just build fliers and what not for my business and for that i use a combination of CS2 and OOs. Nothing can beat PageMaker IMHO, but as that is no longer supported and Illustrator is the replacement I am learning that. Not as easy, but is much more powerful once you get the hang of it.

Few things I want to point out that have not been mentioned here yet.

1. OOo vs 1 and vs 2 both have SMALLER file size then anything produced by MS Office.
2. OOo has FREE built in convert directly to PDF. for MS office to do that you must pay for Acrobat Pro. that is a $450 - $750 program depending on what vs you purchase. top that off with the cost of MS Office Pro for $750 and you just spent well over $1000 just to make a simple little PDF file. ONLY MS does it cost this kind of money to make a PDF. Linux, BSD, OSx all are FREE to produce PDF files, MS world, unless the user is savoy enough, or has friends, to install OOo on their system, they are FU**CKED.
3. OOo files are even SMALLER then the PDF files they create.

To me OOo is extreemly capable production suite and is what i am using. as for neoOffice, i have been using it and until their is an OOo 2.x for OSx native i will continue to use neoOffice on my mac.

FYI big note: if you do not save the file format under OOo vs 2.x for the OLDER 1.x line you will not be able to OPEN the document in OOo 1 if it was saved in the default for OOo 2. just thought i would point that out. but if you create a document in OOo 1.x you can open it with zero hassles in OOo 2.x

I have also heard great things about StarOffice, but have never used it personally.

Latex for word processing anything bigger than a shopping list. OOo for spreadsheats.

This is supposed to be a Linux forum.

MS Office isn't available for Linux. Any comparison between OOo and MSO is irrelevant to Linux, since Linux users don't have the choice between them anyway!

At the risk of giving offense (and none is intended) you couldn't be more wrong. If Linux is to be useful in the business world, it has to be able to co-exist with what is already out there, and when it comes to business documents, that means MS Office. Every single day I have to share .doc and .ppt files with people who, because of their own corporate decisions, can't use .odt or .odp files. So I either have to use OpenOffice (and deal with the compatibility issues being discussed in this thread) or I have to figure out how to run MS Office under WINE. Or (horrors) I have to dump Linux and use Windows.

So yes, this is a perfectly appropriate topic for a Linux forum.

To hand of faith,
Most of my work associates use MS exclusively for many reasons known only to them. I purposely choose and am allowed by my management to run Linux and Linux apps because I believe in Linux. At this point in time, I'm odd man out on this decision but more and more people come to me and ask about Linux and apps available, particularly when it comes to having to shell out the money for Windows apps. I still have a laptop with XP on it that I use in a have to situation, but my work machine, my bread and butter machine is Linux.
BTW, we all need to pay attention to what is going on with MS and Novell, this could have a domino effect I'm afraid.
Scott Nash

You could use the FREE pdfcreator under Windows, I use it and it works just as well as anything Acrobat has to offer.

pdfcreator

and to read pdfs use Foxit Reader

Since I cut the umbilical cord and seperated myself from M$ (windos, office, etc.), I keep finding reasons to prefer OpenOffice.org in particular, and Linux in general.

For instance, I don't have to pay a ton of money for the office suite, nor for each succeeding upgrade. In fact, I get the OS, the office suite, and a whole lot more just by suffering through the download and installation (sometimes involving burning a cd or dvd to assist).

I'm not spending money for a whole lot of features I may never use. I have the options of addons/extensions/plugins to add features I need. I have the additional feature of the OpenOffice.org SDK to try to build my own extensions if I can't find what I need.

You can't do that with M$office without spending a whole lot more money for the version that allows you to compile your own, and you still don't have the source code to work with.

And the day that M$ offers it's source code in toto to the world to see what it can do with it, and return improvements to M$ for incorporation into it's product is probably the day the world will end. It just ain't in their money-grabbing hands and hearts to do such a thing.

I use Office because I think it is slightly prettier looking. I might try to find a skin for OpenOffice someday, but Microsoft Office is on there now, so why mess with it?

Using UBUNTU at home and XP at work, OO is a must have for me to share documents. No major compatible issues since I set the defaults the same - particularly in date fields, fonts and formats. I also clearly type =date(y;m;d) for dates in OO.

Apart from the tendancy to compare every product with MS, there are not many usability issues in OO.

End

Hi all,

I bought a laptop running Windows a few months ago that did not come with any office-type software so I installed Open Office 2.0 rather than pay for MS Office. So far, it has worked very well for me and has been compatible with MS Office on my desktop computer and, of course, Open Office in Linux on the desktop. So far, so good.

However, I still think that MS Office, and even Word Perfect Office, are better and more mature products. There are a few basic features that I miss from those products when I use Open Office. But, for being the new kid on the block, Open Office is very full, feature-rich office suite with good compatibility.

Regards,

-Drew

OOo every time. If I never have to swear and curse at Words bullet point handling ever again it'll be too soon. MS Office is a buggy pile of shite. Anyone noticing a trend here?

I see and hear a lot of people move away from MS Office to OpenOffice. For me personally OpenOffice.org is the choice because of its support for ISO 26300 document format (ODF).

I support the movement with "Plan-B for OpenOffice.org" a new professional support service for non-technical users.