Since I'm testing the viability of running Ubuntu on a number of platforms, and paving the way to shift from Internet Explorer to Firefox 3.0, I might as well take a look at the viability of abandoning Microsoft Office and making the leap to OpenOffice.org.
Check out the OpenOffice.org gallery.
Now, I'm a firm believer that the OpenOffice.org (OO.o) suite offers far more functionality than the average user needs or wants. However, an area of prime concern to me is backward compatibility with Microsoft Office. This is important to me for two reasons:
With that in mind I downloaded OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta and loaded it into a VMware test machine for experimentation. [See gallery for a close-up view.]
Here are some thoughts from the download and install process:
Once I had the application suite installed, I decided to have a look around.
OK, but what about compatibility?
Word document compatibility
For this test I created three Word documents in .docx Word 2007 format:
OpenOffice.org Writer beta handled the first two documents just fine with hardly any format differences (nothing that mattered at any rate).
The third document was a different matter. The formatting on the drop cap was wrong, the SmartArt didn't show up and the Word Shape was rendered incorrectly.
I then tool the three documents as displayed in Writer and saved them in the Word 97/2000/XP .doc format and tried opening these in Word 2007. All three files worked fine in Word 2007, although the two page document containing drop caps, SmartArt and Shapes was no longer formatted correctly.
Conclusion: Since I don't do much with drop caps, SmartArt and Shapes, I think I could live with Writer instead of Word.
Page 2 -->
Excel document compatibilityNext I created a test Excel document in Excel 2007 .xslx format that contained several examples of formulae (sum, average, count number, min and max), and a couple of charts (I use Excel charts a lot).
The file opened in OpenOffice.org Calc beta and all the formulae seemed to work fine, but the charts were as good. They were accurate in terms of the information, but they were a stylistic nightmare.
Saving the file in Calc into Excel 97/2000/XP .xls format just mangled the charts further when the output was opened in Excel 2007.
Conclusion: The way Calc handles charts for me is, at present, a deal-breaker. Maybe things will get better as the beta program progresses.
PowerPoint document compatibility
I created a couple of sample PowerPoint document in PowerPoint 2007 .pptx format based on built-in templates.
So, how did OpenOffice.org Impress beta handle these files? Well, to put it bluntly, the output was an unmitigated disaster.
Conclusion: Impress totally fails to impress me.
Closing thoughts
It's early days for OO.o 3.0 Beta and things could get a lot better between now and release, but what I'm seeing now doesn't give me much hope that I'll be able to replace Microsoft Office 2007 with OO.o 3.0.
Thoughts?
<< Home >>