Original Source
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Zdnet Australia
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OpenOffice.org versus Microsoft Office
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Jack Wallen, Jr., TechRepublic
29 November 2002 10:20 AM
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The OpenOffice.org office suite has come a long way since its inception--so
much so that it's now a viable alternative to Microsoft Office. See how this
open source application fares against the Goliath Microsoft Office suite.
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It's so hard to let go.
Even those IT managers who want to make the break from Microsoft to Linux can't
find the strength to let go of Microsoft Office. They can't imagine something
that could replace it. So they certainly can't imagine that there is a package
out there that can not only replace Microsoft Office but can replace it for
free.
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OpenOffice.org is the powerhouse suite that is raising the ante in the battle for office space. Here's an
overview of this product so that you can judge whether it would work in your enterprise.
What does OpenOffice.org have?
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The OpenOffice.org suite is a set of office tools similar to those in Microsoft
Office. OpenOffice.org is based on Sun's StarOffice code but is not tied to
the proprietary Sun application in any way. The suite consists of a word
processor, spreadsheet application, presentation package, formula editor,
drawing program, data charting application, HTML editor, and file filters that
enable the importing and exporting of various formats. Obviously,
OpenOffice.org contains everything you'd expect in an office suite.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case with the original StarOffice.
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When StarOffice first came to be, it was Linux's only answer to the Microsoft
suite. That was unfortunate because the application was clunky and slow, and
had problems with many file formats. OpenOffice.org isn't weighted down with
any of these issues. No longer is the suite an integrated desktop (as was the
original StarOffice) but a modular set of tools. Now, if you want to open or
create a spreadsheet, you only have to open the spreadsheet application.
Needless to say, the original StarOffice left a rather bad impression on both
Linux and non-Linux users. Since then, both StarOffice and OpenOffice.org have
fought hard to break away from that stigma. They are both finally managing to
do so.
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One other area of major improvement is in file filters. The OpenOffice.org
suite of tools has the ability to work with all the standard Microsoft Office
documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) without the addition of any third-party
add-ons. This makes using OpenOffice.org's office suite a much more viable
option, since it can now easily interact with Microsoft's offering.
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What does OpenOffice.org not have?
Outside of a price tag, OpenOffice.org is missing only one piece from the
office suite toolkit: the database component. If you're looking at this from a
Linux perspective, this omission makes perfect sense. Why add a database
component when Linux has two very good open source database components already?
And if you are a Linux user and you need a database, you will be using either
MySQL or PostgreSQL. In light of that, the OpenOffice.org team opted out of the
database tool.
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How well does OpenOffice.org perform?
I've had the opportunity to work with many different office suites (including
Microsoft Office, WordPerfect Office, Applixware, KOffice, Hancom Office,
StarOffice) and, in my experience, OpenOffice.org performs as well as its
competitors-if not better. And OpenOffice.org is the only suite that is free.
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Let's take a look at some of the issues that any IT administrator or end user will face when deciding
between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office.
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Ease of installation
It's no secret that Linux has come a long way in regards to installation.
OpenOffice.org is no exception to this trend.
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After downloading the 67 MB tar.gz file, installation requires only a few
simple steps:
- Untar the package with the command tar xvzf OOo_1.0.0_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz.
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- Change into the newly created install directory with the command
cd install.
- Run the setup command (as root) to begin the installation process.
The actual installation is completely GUI-based and is, therefore, very simple-albeit a bit slow. The only
hitch might be in the location you choose to install the suite. The size of this application would dictate an
installation in the /opt directory. Because you will be installing into the /opt directory, you will have to be
running the installation as root.
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Running the application
One of the biggest complaints about earlier incarnations of StarOffice was
that, because it was not modular in nature, it took forever to load. Well, not
too much has changed in that respect. OpenOffice.org is still slow to
start-even on a 1.6-GHz processor with 256 MB of RAM, the application took more
than 20 seconds to open. Of course, once any of the applications has opened
(word processor, spreadsheet app, presentation app, drawing app), all the
others open very quickly.
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Opening specific applications from the suite is a bit tricky if you're not used to the process. Below is a list
of the commands you'll need to run to open each of the corresponding applications. These commands
are located in the programs directory within the OpenOffice main directory.
- swriter
The OpenOffice word processor
- scalc
The OpenOffice spreadsheet application
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- smath
The OpenOffice formula editor/creator
- sweb
The OpenOffice HTML editor
- simpress
The OpenOffice presentation package
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There are numerous other commands that actually run subprograms from within the
main applications (for instance, sfax runs the fax editor from within swriter),
but these applications are typically not run on their own.
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For Windows users, the slow startup won't be a major issue. After installing
the application, an icon will appear in the system tray for the quick-start
daemon. This cuts the load time on a Windows machine by a third. In Linux,
you can install the ooqstart application to cut down on the startup time.
Unfortunately, the ooqstart application requires that gnome-core and
gnome-core-devel be installed on the machine. If, like me, you are using the
latest release from Ximian, neither gnome-core nor gnome-core-devel is
installed.
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If you are using a version of GNOME that includes both gnome-core and gnome-core-devel, get
ooqstart, install it, and put the applet on your panel to drastically cut down on OpenOffice.org's startup
time.
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How does it compare?
The OpenOffice.org application suite performs almost identically to StarOffice
6, so it's a good match for Microsoft Word. With the OpenOffice.org suite, I
was able to open and save to the Office 2000/XP file formats and even embed
objects (OLE objects, plug-ins, videos, applets, formulas, and charts).
OpenOffice.org is an outstanding application that would well serve any
enterprise looking to cut costs. As an end-user application, OpenOffice.org is
as simple to use as any other office suite and is as stable as any other-if not
more so. Based on my own experience, I've had far fewer crashes and data loss
with the OpenOffice.org suite than I've had with Microsoft Office, StarOffice,
or Applixware. The issues arise when you attempt to use some of the more
advanced features of an office suite and then share the document with another
suite.
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The first issue is that of fonts. Fonts have been the Achilles' heel of the
Linux desktop for quite some time now. OpenOffice.org hasn't done too much to
fix this problem. Even if you have the latest GNOME or KDE, by using
antialiasing the fonts will remain fairly bitmapped. There are certain fonts
(Alexandria, Arioso, Bookman L, Batang, Century Schoolbook L, and all of the *L
fonts) that do a very good job of antialiasing, but many of these fonts do not
have a Microsoft Word equivalent and will map to the closest equivalent. As
the default font in Microsoft Word, Times New Roman is not horrible in
OpenOffice.org. If you don't mind the bitmapped quality of this font, you will
be fine (it migrates perfectly to Microsoft Word).
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Embedded objects were a bit of a trick with OpenOffice.org. Although they work
perfectly within the application itself (adding an embedded spreadsheet worked
just fine), I was unsuccessful at viewing the embedded object in Microsoft
Word. Although OpenOffice.org could view a document created by Microsoft Word
with an embedded object, if the document were saved in OpenOffice.org, the
object was lost. It is possible to "pull" the embedded spreadsheet out of the
document and save it on its own, but that defeats the purpose of embedding
objects.
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One other glitch involved double quotes. It took me a while to figure out how
to stop OpenOffice.org from replacing double quotes with a question mark. To
fix this, navigate to the AutoFormat tool (through the Format drop-down menu),
click on the Custom Quotes tab, and then uncheck Replace under the Double
Quotes section. After doing this, all double quotes will remain intact.
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One enormous application
OpenOffice.org is the single largest open source application available, and it
is huge. To go through all the available features would require a month's
worth of articles. Suffice it to say that, if you can do it in Microsoft
Office, you can do it in OpenOffice.org-for free!
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From installation to use, OpenOffice.org is a valid stand-in for Microsoft
Office for anyone looking to save a great deal of money. If you're confident
that your users fall into the category of those who use only 5 percent of
Microsoft Office's feature set (a majority of the computing world), making the
switch to OpenOffice.org shouldn't be a problem. If, however, you know you
have users who must exchange embedded objects with Microsoft Office users, your
best bet is to stick with Microsoft Office until the gents at OpenOffice.org
are able to get their suite to play well with Microsoft Object linking and
embedding (OLE).
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