Office 2007 vs Openoffice

superscaper

I've just bought Office 2007 Ultimate (downloading as I type). Does anyone with experience of Office 2007 and Openoffice find one better than the other? I know I'm asking after the fact but I couldn't pass up the £38 offer for students. Was it worth me buying or did I just waste my money?

Bongedone

I use Office 2007 and find it excellent. It is very different to Office XP but once you get used to it then its much easier. The new file formats are a lot smaller as well. When I tried Open Office I found it to slow to open.

superscaper

Bongedone wrote: »

I use Office 2007 and find it excellent. It is very different to Office XP but once you get used to it then its much easier. The new file formats are a lot smaller as well. When I tried Open Office I found it to slow to open.

Well I'm currently using Office 2003 and I have used open office a bit. I just don't have any experience of 2007. (lucky I'm still only just registered as a student )

Bongedone

You will like it but you will also find it annoying looking for things to start with. I downloaded a piece of software to overlay the old menu system. It was only a trial for 30 days whilst I got used to it.

Bongedone

In case your interested: -

http://www.addintools.com/

Psychofly

Any version of Office is only worth buying if you're a heavy user or require to transfer data from home to work if your work uses Office.

Some of the file format copyrights which Microsoft hold mean that opening Excel or Word documents using certain advanced features can have problems in OpenOffice. If all you require is standard word processing and spreadsheet functionality (which in truth would do 90% of people if not more - no matter what they say) then OpenOffice is the way to go. i.e. Free.

However saying that Office for that price is hardly a waste of money.

Bongedone

Psychofly wrote: »

Any version of Office is only worth buying if you're a heavy user or require to transfer data from home to work if your work uses Office.

Some of the file format copyrights which Microsoft hold mean that opening Excel or Word documents using certain advanced features can have problems in OpenOffice. If all you require is standard word processing and spreadsheet functionality (which in truth would do 90% of people if not more - no matter what they say) then OpenOffice is the way to go. i.e. Free.

However saying that Office for that price is hardly a waste of money.

This is true. If it was not for the fact that I did not pay for Office 2007 then I would not have it.

C_Ronaldo

I use office 07, its good, theyve moved some icons around so i had to get used to the changes as i used 03 before

superscaper

So probably worth me getting then. Obviously I would never even have considered anywhere near retail price for it. And it is all the apps in Ultimate which is quite a bit more than open office. Probably is a bargain then. I'll just have to get used to the new interface and this "Ribbon" thing.

wolfman

It's excellent. Light, fast and it does have a new layout which takes some getting used to, but once you do you'll probably prefer it.

OpenOffice is great, especially for free. But Office 2007 is excellent, maybe not needed by everyone, but at that price you'll be happy.

Phantom_Flan_Flinger

From what I remember reading, the latest OpenOffice is comparable to Office 2003 in terms of features, functionality and usability.

Office 2007 has obviously moved ahead, but as mentioned above, whether you need or would use all the bells and whistles, who knows.

Mind you, getting the Ultimate edition for £38 certainly is no waste of money, considering it's around £500 full retail price.

For that price, I think a lot of people would be interested.
Didn't I read somewhere that you don't need to be a student yourself to get the discount. As long as you have a student in the family, you can get it, but it was something that Microsoft didn't publicise?
Don't quote me on this though.