Erwin's StarOffice Tango

Erwin's StarOffice Tango
Erwin Tenhumberg's Insights into Open Source and Dancing
... or why Open Competition matters

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Donnerstag Mai 15, 2008

Cool OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta Feedback
I just came across the following OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta feedback:

"I've been using the beta version of Open Office 3 for a week now and am quite impressed. It is a Mac-native build that doesn't require X11. It seems quite stable and noticeably faster than NeoOffice and Office 2008. There's no Entourage equivalent but an interesting database component. The spreadsheet and presentation components seem more or less equivalent to Office. And OO does have a pretty robust macro system built in.

The database component isn't really a complete db in and of itself, rather a front end that connects to database servers like MySQL. As such it requires a bit more technical savvy than the average user is likely to have, but opens interesting possibilities for custom database management.

Import and export of OO and Office files is very good. I'm worked with some heavily formatted Word files and a reasonably complex Excel spreadsheet. OO maintained the formatting and formulas better than iWork 08.

OO has a seemingly deep built in help system that provides on-hover pop up boxes that explain extra functionality.

As an open source project the fit and finish are not up to Microsoft standards let alone Apple's, but OO is not butt ugly either.

My biggest quibble is that scrolling with a scroll wheel is slow, even on 5 page Writer documents. Also the conversion between Windows/Linux conventions isn't complete. When mousing over an embedded hyperlink, OO instructed me to "Ctrl-click" on the link to open it in my browser. Oops. With a Mac that's Cmd (command)-click. (I did submit a bug ticket)

Still, I'm very impressed with the first public release beta of OO for OS X. It is both faster and more stable than the Office 08 demo I tried out. Since I'm not working in a corporate setting and don't need absolute compatibility with Microsoft, I see no reason to purchase Office 2008 for an Intel native office suite. The presentation module isn't near as slick as Keynote but the word processing and spreadsheets are more capable than Pages and Numbers. If you need that extra functionality then give OO a try."

Pretty cool! I found the feedback on this page.
( Mai 15 2008, 12:38:32 AM CEST ) Permalink

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