OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are the two biggest players in the office productivity market today. OpenOffice is built and maintained by Sun Microsystems and the other, as the name says, is made by Microsoft.
The main difference between the two is the philosophy. Open Office is free of charge, and open source. Sun, and the OpenOffice community have built and maintained their software for the good of computer users, much like the development of Linux. Microsoft on the other hand is completely commercial. The software is created and maintained for money.
While there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it makes a lot of difference to a consumer, or even a business. There is a significant cost involved in using commercial software. The home version of Office 2007 Home costs almost $100, and the full version costing almost $400. That cost is for a single user, and while multiple users won’t pay full price, it is still going to be a significant investment.
On the surface, the two packages look quite similar. OpenOffice is a simpler, less cluttered program, but it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of Office. The Office 2007 ribbon is a new, and frankly, good control panel, and makes using the software very easy.
They each have versions of the same kind of applications:
- Word in Office is Writer in OpenOffice.
- Excel in Office is Calc in OpenOffice.
- Powerpoint in Office is Impress in OpenOffice.
- Paint in Office is Draw in OpenOffice.
- Access in Office is Base in OpenOffice.
Microsoft also has other programs in its package such as Publisher and Groove, which offer extra functionality such as the ability to create brochures and flyers easily or share images with other programs.
OpenOffice is currently the only office package that complies with the International Organization for Standardization. This guarantees it will play nicely with others, and will read other file formats, and allow other file formats to read it.
This highlights another difference between the two packages. OpenOffice can read Office documents, open them, modify them and save them. Office doesn’t even acknowledge OpenOffice documents. For companies that use a diversity of packages, this could be an issue.
Microsoft Office is a good, solid product that offers just about everything a productivity solution should. It looks good, works well and there are plenty of resources to download. It is kept up to date, and security patches are released as and when they are needed. There is also a wide expert base to call on when something goes wrong.
OpenOffice has everything you need if you only need the basics. It doesn’t have all the neat little features like the ribbon or Groove, neither does it look as nice. However, it is solid, interoperable, and has no problem working with other programs. You can use it on any operating system, and freely distribute it.
There aren’t so many technical experts around to help if things go wrong though. There doesn’t need to be, because it doesn’t really go wrong. Neither are there many security updates released for it, because it generally doesn’t need them. Best of all it’s free. There is no single, or per seat licensing, up-front costs for home users or nannying from it to register, or update.
Overall, the case for OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office comes down to what you want from a productivity package.
If you want it to look nice, will use all the added extras, like the Ribbon, feel safe with a well known name, don’t mind the costs involved, then Microsoft Office is for you.
If you have more of a more free spirit, don’t mind sticking to the basics, while having everything you need, like the idea of free and opens source and the philosophy behind it, and prefer having full control over any document type and the system as a whole then OpenOffice should be your choice.