

Review LibreOffice 3.6 Vs OpenOffice 3.4 Vs MsOffice Vs iWorks - fiendsan
http://www.hostcult.com/2012/08/libreoffice-36-vs-openoffice34-vs-msoffice-vs-iworks.html

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mahrain
How can I trust the content of this article when they get one of the reviewed
products' names wrong in the headline? (it's "iWork" without the "S".)

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lloeki
Also it's "Microsoft Office" (I could have gone for "MS Office", but
"MsOffice" looks like a LibreOffice spinoff).

Why mention versions of LO/OO (3.6 and 3.4) in the title when he also tests LO
3.5.2 at some point? He tests Office 2003 (hardly the current version) on Win7
and 2008 on OSX.

I don't even begin to mention the entirely dubious methodology (one-time runs,
no averages) and irrelevant benchmarks.

Not to mention:

> Why no OpenDocument (.odf or .od) or Office Open XML (.docx or .xlsx)? Well
> cause 90% of our files are .xls or .doc

which is baffling in itself, since LO will convert the file between doc and
its internal representation (which is of course very close to ODT) _every
single time_ it's loaded/saved.

> and normally when we receive in any other format, we convert it to .xls or
> .doc

Dude, you're converting it to doc because you use Word. For fsck's sake if you
receive ODT and you intent to use LO, keep it as ODT!

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huskyr
This is not what i would call a 'review'. It's a performance comparison
between these four packages and nothing else. If the only thing that matters
to you is how fast your .doc opens it's fine, but i guess for most people
things like compatibility and UI are more important...

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mrmagooey
Not sure that RAM or CPU usage are ever going to be at top of my list when it
comes to evaluating a word processing package. I don't even care as long as
it's below 1gb ram and uses less than a whole core, the embarrassment of
riches in the average computer today makes it a non-issue.

~~~
macavity23
Agreed. In terms of word processor features, performance probably doesn't make
it into my top five.

LO still has enough compatibility problems to stop it being a mainstream
replacement for MSO. It is _much_ better than it used to be, particularly for
.docs, but there are still major issues with .docxs that are showstoppers for
most businesses.

If you can keep to .docs or mandate LO/OO use in your organization, then I
think LO is actually BETTER than MSO for your average user - MSO '97 was the
high point IMHO, every release since then has just added bloat. For most
places, however, dealing with .docxs is mandatory.

I certainly don't blame the LO developers for this, as the 'OpenXML' (LOL)
standards are completely hideous and clearly designed expressly to PREVENT
anyone making a decently-compatible MSO replacement - but the situation is
what it is.

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lloeki
FWIW Office 2010 happily reads+writes ODT (with varying results) and even
offers to set it up as the _default format_ on startup.

[0] [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/support-for-
the-...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/support-for-the-
opendocument-format-in-microsoft-office-2010-HA101878944.aspx)

~~~
jeltz
They have to due to requirements form various government agencies.

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Camillo
You can tell an article is going to be worthless when it begins with a
pleonastic "so".

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jeffehobbs
The newest version of MS Office for Mac OS X is Office 2011, not Office 2008.

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jasonlotito
> features are not as important since all of the software here has the
> features we want and used for years!

No. No it does not. LibreOffice/OpenOffice still lack essential basics, the
big one for me being style sheets (I believe iWorks fails at this as well).
Yes, they have basic support for styles, but beyond the basics, they lack
quite a bit. Maybe it's changed in the last year, but I've yet to see anyone
note better support for styles.

At the same time, iWorks pales in comparison to Office 2011 for Mac. Take
Word's full screen mode compared to Pages: Word is dramatically better.

~~~
arrrg
What do you mean with “style sheets”?

iWork very clearly has paragraph styles (plus character and list styles), just
like Office. I really can’t imagine LibreOffice not having styles. That’s such
a basic and central feature, something an office application absolutely has to
get right.

I personally find Word to be inflexible and inelegant. It has a byzantine and
bizarre UI. The newer versions improved that somewhat but not much. It may
have many more features than iWork (though that’s kind of irrelevant if those
features are only nice to have and not definitely needed) but I’m simply in
love with the straightforward simpleness of iWork.

If you absolutely need a feature iWork doesn’t have you are obviously screwed
and have to use something else – but if not I find iWork vastly superior,
especially Keynote but also Pages. (Numbers is excluded from that – it’s slow
and annoying.) I think the developers of iWork were mostly able to strike the
right balance about which features to in- and exclude and made many sensible
choices. Your pet feature might not be there – but that’s just how it is.
Great software will never be able to please everyone.

Office certainly tries to please everyone and I would argue also succeeds at
that – but it’s also not great software.

I agree with you, though, that the emphasis this comparison puts on
performance is terribly misguided. Features and how they are executed do
matter so much more than performance in most cases.

~~~
jasonlotito
> That’s such a basic and central feature, something an office application
> absolutely has to get right.

You are correct. And I'm talking about that very thing. OpenOffice style
sheets are limited, last time I checked (same with Libre). For example, it
doesn't support style sheets for Table styles. I remember having to deal with
this specific problem. The mechanism they have in place is a mockery. In my
eyes, if it can be styled, it should be styled using style sheets. That is
essential, in my books (and I don't think it's too much to ask).

I also don't remember iWork having it, either. There are other issues, but
that one stands out in my mind.

> but I’m simply in love with the straightforward simpleness of iWork.

I keep hoping they'll update iWork, but again, the features it's missing are
important to me. This is mostly in reference to Pages vs Word. I mean, even
when you look at the full screen features of Word vs Pages, Word just destroys
Pages in terms of attention to detail. This is more about the UI though, so
its purely my personal opinion.

Anyways, my point was simply that there are some essential features (such as
complete styling support) that hinder usage. I'm not asking for new features,
rather that they support the features they currently have in a common, well-
established way.

Note: Things may have changed since I last used these products. If they have,
yay!

