Don't Pay use Open Source (Part 2)

MS Office vs Open Office

Hello again! Today I will write about open office, the counter program of the well know microsoft office, or even the counter part of apple iWorks.

Again I have seen a lot of people to just download a pirated copy of MS office, just to type a couple of pages in word. As I said in the preview post, this is not legal, neither safe, because you have no idea what else you may download with the pirated version of office.
Even the mac users who we are generally virus free, are in danger. Let me recall the incident where a pirated version of iWorks 09 infected some macs with (a rare to be honest) virus.

So again, you do not have to pay to get an office suite, you just need to go and download Open Office Suite, or if you are a mac user, the Neo Office. It is exactly the same program, just native on mac, so from that point on, I will reference to open office, but remember all of the following applies as well at neo office.

http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

MS Office is faster, we have to write that. It also have some abilities that Open Office, does not have, but honestly if you need that stuff you will be buying an original copy of ms office anyway.

What a user needs from an office suite?

Word processing, presentations, spreadsheet, databases.
This is almost what most users will ever ask from an office suite.

So all these are what you get from MS Office, and from Open Office as well!
So since you can get it free, why to bother with pirated software?

You need to write a couple of pages? You can do it in Open Office, and there are spell check extensions you can download as well, for example I got the Greek spelling extension and it works just fine.
Also if you want to make a book from your writings, open office writer have a few abilities from paging programs, like quark express or inDesign, so it can come in hand. Of course you can open ms word docs but there is no guaranteeing that it will be ok, you may notice some images misplaces. Files from open office to open office will be fine!

You need to make a presentation for your college? Open Office can handle that again! You don't need power point! It can also open power point presentations, most of them with no problem, but I will not lie to you, some of them may not operate well, you may see some image disorientation or other compatibility problems.
However from open office to open office, there will be no problem!


Same goes for the spreadsheet and the databases, you will be able to open some ms office documents but there are still problems. However MS have announced that it will use open document format in their office suite, so we can expect a brighter future.

However I use Open Office (and Neo on my macbook) for almost 2 years now, and I never got any problems, all of my files from open office works fine in MS, I can't say that this is vice versa for all files, but I got problem at just 1 out of 10 ms office files, while trying to open in open office. So I guess it is not a big problem.


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