Re: Openoffice disadvantages?

In article <490a702e$0$11590$ba624c82@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Erik Richard Sørensen <NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Batman wrote:
I was wondering: Are many people switching to Openoffice? At first
glance it seems good but it sure would be good to hear from people
regarding its deficiencies compared to Bean and MS Word. That would
help beginning users like myself choose wisely before investing mammoth
amounts of time in the wrong processor. I never print but I realize
that is not common for most people. I'm looking for something whereby I
can control text size easily and has lots of keyboard shortcuts like
Word has. And especially, interfaces with the outside world well, both
in Mac word processors and the PC world, which I suppose is dominated by
Microsoft Word, WordPad and Notepad included in Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

Well... First, - Bean is a good and fast little program, but it also is
all too small for complex writing and editing. Alone the fonts handling
is a mess. No built-in fonts menu/fonts list, but only the ability to
use the built-in FontBook list in the OS X systems. Changing styles and
rulers are something 'out in the wilderness' - i.e. non existing. The
best with Bean is that is is screamingly fast and fully supports ODF format.

When it comes to OpenOffice. - I've been using it from time to time
since the ver. 1.1 along with X11, and since the very first developer
version of the native oS X 3.0 just more and more. and now with the
final release of the ver. 3.0.0 I've only been using that program for
nearly any kind of writing.

OOo 3.0 is so fast and reliable that it very well can replace MSOffice
2004/2008. I have the MsO2008 too, but since OOo 3.0.0rc3 I've only used
Word ONE time! - and that on both my main machines - a MacPro with the
Intel ver. 3.0.0 and on a MDD with the 3.0.0rc4PPC.

Editing and managing text, fonts, sizes and colors are just as easy as
in Word 2004/2008. Hotkeys are for nearly any action, but not all. here
it could be better.

Drag&drop editing inside same doc also could be somewhat easier. - You
have to ensure yourself that spaces are correctly where a dropped text
is inserted. sometimes it misses a space before the insertion, sometimes
not.

Fonts handling is quite a lot better than in MSO. Fx. you can use sizes
made in half points - fx. instead of 12p, you can set it to 12,5p.

There was a problem in the rc2 and rc3/Intel versions, where line
apcaing was larger than the original. I.e. if the original document has
a line height of 15p (fx. Appleworks standard setting), an inserted text
part would give a line height of 17,5p, and instead of the original font
size of fx. 12p, the inserted text would be 13,5p. It seems as if fonts
are sized like the Windows handling, where fx. arial 12p on a Mac is the
same as 11p in windows or said visa-versa - if you copy text from a
virtual run Windows with a font size of 11p, this text inserted into a
Mac document will be 12p. This problem was fixed with the 3.0.0rc4
release and also isn't present in the final releases I've tried.

OOo 3.0 has two irritating problems. The small 'boxes' in the buttom
border are static and not dynamic. this means that these small boxes
don't get smaller or 'compressed' on the line, if / when you resize the
window. and if you resize to just fit A4 in width, the box with teh
zoomfactor is gone. The other problem is that just opening a new
document always open this in screen-centered mode and with the
application background of size of 2 A4 docs if zoomfactor is set to
100%. so that means that there is no 'Remember windows position' feature.

Formatting. Well... when using OOo on both Macs and Windows based
computers, there are no problems with a document opened on one or the
other platform. Also opening Mac-made .odt docs in Staroffice on windows
is just as the original or visa-versa - opening starOffice .odt
documents in Openoffice on a Mac is perfect.

Opening .rtf files from MSWord 97/2000 can give some formatting problems
like loosing italics and bolds, and if a doc is written with more fonts,
font substitution must be enabled on the Mac side, if a doc comes from a
win based machine or visa-versa

Open/Save & export/Import. Until now I haven't found any problems in
saving and/or exporting to/from any of the available formats in OOo 3.0
- neither to or from a windows version of MSWord, staroffice or
OpenOffice. The only smaller thing here is that Openoffice has chosen to
use the 'export' feature for saving into PDF and not a direct 'save as'
function.

The other day, our national TV made a test on how easy and cheap one
could buy or get free software for their computers. They chose three
test persons - all dedicated MSOffice users and replaced their original
computers with models set up only with Openoffice. All three of them
said afterwards that the use of Openoffice was quite similar to
MsOffice, and all of them said that it was easier to get used to
OpenOffice. - they found it more logically built than MSoffice. Also
they sadi that they probably wouldn't upgrade their existing MsOffice
package, but instead switch to only use the Openoffice instead. They
also found that patching and updating was far much easier than with the
MSO...

After this 'test' the TV host had the Danish Microsoft CEO in a
crossfire. - He was simply angry. - he tried to tear down both the
package and the developers behind, claiming that M$ spent more than 20
billion [$20.000.000.000!!!] dollars a year on developing '...the
world's best program package for *any* platform'... - a lie so thick and
obvious that you can carve it with a timberman's axe! - His opponent in
the crossfire, the leader of the Danish Openoffice group simply shook
his head saying nothing....

A fact is that more and more Danish local county administrations are
switching to only use the OpenOffice package. The same also now in other
European countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France etc.etc..

So I think that you should give it a try for yourself, though there of
course will be a learning period. But if you already know the MSOffice
the switching and learning curve won't be too steep. Most of the
shortcuts are the same as in MsO.

cheers, Erik Richard

Erik - you are very helpful today! What a great and informative post.
Just what the doctor ordered. Definitely a post to save and digest.
Many, many thanks.
.