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Is Open Office (at the time, 3.0) better than Microsoft Office (at the time, 2007)?

In short, and in my opinion, No.
But, consider a few things first…

Cons and Pros of OpenOffice over Microsoft Office

• Pros:
  • Its free. Microsoft Office can be a very expensive program, depending on what specific versions you choose.
    • I should note, students can get Microsoft Office Standard for around $80 in the USA
  • Its formats are completely open source. Other word processors should be able to open OpenOffice documents fine, as long as the programmers included support for OpenOffice
    • It comes with everything in one download, that being:
    • Writer (like Word)
    • Impress (like Powerpoint)
    • Base (Database program, like Access)
    • Math (advanced computation program)
    • Calc (Like Excel)
  • Comes with basic templates, but, Microsoft Office does as well (though, Microsoft does have more…)
  • Highly supported on the major operating systems: Windows, Linux, MacOS 10

• Cons:
  • It does not have a program with the same function as Outlook, so it lacks a calendar, reminder, and email client.
  • It can be extremely slow on some computers
  • It requires the Java Platform. I personally cringe when I see “Java Required”, since Java has far too many updates, and Java alone takes an extremely long time to install.

Pros and Cons of Microsoft Office over Open Office:

• Pros:
  • Faster than OpenOffice
  • Requires nothing but Windows
  • Comes with Outlook, featuring email, calendar, and tasklist
    • This is especially useful in medium to large business places running off domain servers, as you can easily send calendar events to others on the same network using the Exchange server
• Cons:
  • The number one Con: EXPENSIVE! Expect to pay over $100, but, most people who do office work find it worthwhile, not to mention, Office isnt easily outdated for at least a few years

Cons and Pros that both share:

• Pro: Both are updated frequently, squishing bugs and managing security.
• Con: Both have failed to perfect their abilities to open other document types from other word processors, which can cause you to loose important formatting. EDIT: In the last year, these issues with formats on major competitors have been largely resolved.

Just a few of the things.

“Living in the Plastic Age” – The Buggles
“Burning Down the House” – The Talking Heads

EDIT: A few things changed. Originally published on January 2, 2009 at 12:17 am, updated at 8:16PM on February 23rd, 2010.