PeteF
04-05-2006, 08:58 PM
Everyone,
I decided to try out OpenOffice v2.0.2, the FREE Open Source
alternative to MS Office. In one day of testing, I'm impressed
in some respects, but overall, largely disappointed. Keep in mind
I'm using MS Office97 Professional version as my reference point
in evaluating OpenOffice.
OpenOffice v2 Evaluation & Review
OpenOffice is an Alternative to MS Office
CONTENTS
~~~~~~~~~
* OpenOffice - Download & Installation
* Review - Impress (alternative to MS PowerPoint)
* Bottom line on Impress...
* Review - CALC (alternative to MS EXCEL)
* MS EXCEL is still the BEST!
OpenOffice - Download & Installation
Starting at the link below, downloading was easy.
The file is huge at about 107mb. They do offer it on CD.
http://www.openoffice.org/index.html
Installation was straight forward except for one major problem.
I chose the CUSTOM install and before I knew it, it had proceeded
to install to folder.. c:\Program Files\OpenOffice.. when I wanted
it installed to a different location.. f:\OpenOffice..
Maybe I missed something, but this was the first annoyance.
Most good installers will pause to allow you to verify
the installation options before proceeding to install.
Review - Impress (alternative to MS PowerPoint)
Impress was my first application to test as I was looking for
a solution to some shortcomings in PowerPoint97 where I could
not send my presentation to a friend and still have the
background music playing during the presentation.
First thing I noticed about Impress is that the UI (user
interface) was very similar to PowerPoint. At least I felt
comfortable with the top menu bar choices. Below that, the
UI was dramatically different from PowerPoint but the
features & options were about the same. Quite acceptable.
I was able to open my PowerPoint presentation which was a
simple 5 frame Happy Birthday presentation to my GF Iris,
with some guitar music playing in the background that I
had recorded to a *.wav file and inserted in frame 1 and
set to play continuously. I had to describe that in detail
because it's the music issue that I'm trying to solve and
this same exact issue will likely come up with many people
wanting to use Impress.
Impress was not able to play the music file past frame 1.
I tried the built-in HELP system to see how to do it, but
the HELP system is structured such that it simply defines
what specific controls do and does not offer much in way
of instruction. Next, I went online the OpenOffice Forum
to seek help from other users.. http://www.oooforum.org/
I soon found that many other users had posted requests
asking how to get Impress to play music across multiple
frames, same as I was looking for. Bottom line.. Impress
can only play sound per frame and NOT across multiple frames.
At least not without applying some very sophisticated
techniques. So this was the deal breaker for me. Office97
still beats out OpenOffice 2.0.2 in this respect because
it can play a sound file continuously across multiple
frames; Office97 just doesn't distribute well to others
when a sound file is involved.
I played around with Impress and found it harder to use
than PowerPoint97. Even the presentation playback is
substandard by the way the objects sweep across the screen
in a non-linear fashion. You have to see it to get what
I mean. It's just not smooth as PowerPoint. Don't get me
wrong, Impress is quite functional and has most of the
required options to make a nice presentation but it is
still second class as compared to PowerPoint97.
Bottom line on Impress...
Impress is impressive if you don't need music playing
across multi-frames and you don't have PowerPoint97.
But even the 9 year old PowerPoint97 still outperforms
Impress in many ways. However, where Impress beats out
PowerPoint97 is it's ability to save & export to various
formats such as export to FLASH or PDF format, and to
save to so many different formats I can't list them all
here. I say give it a shot if any of the shortcomings
I outlined above are not a deal breaker for you.
Next....
Review - CALC (alternative to MS EXCEL)
Understand that I'm a power user with MS EXCEL and most
of my really useful Excel workbooks have custom VBA
(Visual Basic for Applications) code that allows me to
do amazing things with Excel. Therefore, this evaluation
is going to be a real challenge for CALC.
Again, the top menu is very similar to it's MS counter
part, MS EXCEL, and below that, the UI is dramatically
different but has many of the same options as EXCEL.
However, many important options offered in EXCEL are
missing in CALC.
I started by loading one of my most simplest workbooks
that contains multiple sheets of various calculations
and a menu sheet that allows me to easily navigate
amongst each of the 35 sheets via VBA code. CALC does
seem to support MACROS because it recognized my workbook
as having macros (VBA code) and allowed me to enable
Macros. Unfortunately none of my macros worked in CALC.
I can't even see my list of VBA macros in the Run
Macro area so it looks to me like it will not support
my VBA code at all. This is a deal breaker because 90%
of my 1000 or so excel workbooks utilize VBA.
Ok, let's move forward and put the VBA issue aside
to see how CALC performs otherwise.
Sticking with the same workbook as above, I notice that
many of my text entries have red underlines under the
fonts which were not in the original EXCEL rendered
version. I also notice that I can see all the gridlines
which I had turned off on many of my sheets. I tried to
figure out why some text had underlines but could not
fix it. I also checked under Tools -> Options, to see if
I could shut off the grid lines but it seems there is
no option to do that. I can make the gridlines the
same color as the cell color to achieve the same effect,
but it's nearly impossible to match the gridline to
the cell color on some of my sheets, given the limited
color choices of gridline colors in the Impress options.
BAD NEWS! I just discovered that gridline changes affect all
sheets in a workbook and you can't customize it to individual
sheets. This is a deal breaker for me!!! I have way too many
workbooks that are customized to the point where you'd never
know you were in EXCEL because they appear to be custom
applications. I do that largely via cell color & grid
modifications on individual sheets.
I don't need to see anymore.
I'm done with this CALC application.
MS EXCEL is still the BEST!
In my opinion, MS Excel is the best program ever written
because it is so versatile if you also have command of the
VBA code. Using the options in EXCEL and the VBA code, I can
transform EXCEL into so many different applications. It
can be a word processor on one sheet for providing text
instructions or information, it can be a simple spreadsheet
on another sheet with no gridlines made to appear as a custom
application using formatted output on a blank background.
I can make EXCEL calculate & draw my vegetable garden plots
and insert blocks allocating space for each plant in my garden.
EXCEL can be an address/contact database and even print address
labels. I can go on and on with all the things I have done with
EXCEL. It's the best program on earth!
Microsoft has nothing to worry about with CALC as it's
competitor to EXCEL when it comes to the POWER USER.
However, I'm willing to bet that CALC would very useful
to the newbie or novice user that only needs the basic
features of a spreadsheet and has no desire to write
VBA macros. Anyone who is already an Excel junkie like
me will probably not like CALC.
Please let me know if you found this useful and
I'll be encouraged to write more of the same.
Thanks!
---pete---
I decided to try out OpenOffice v2.0.2, the FREE Open Source
alternative to MS Office. In one day of testing, I'm impressed
in some respects, but overall, largely disappointed. Keep in mind
I'm using MS Office97 Professional version as my reference point
in evaluating OpenOffice.
OpenOffice v2 Evaluation & Review
OpenOffice is an Alternative to MS Office
CONTENTS
~~~~~~~~~
* OpenOffice - Download & Installation
* Review - Impress (alternative to MS PowerPoint)
* Bottom line on Impress...
* Review - CALC (alternative to MS EXCEL)
* MS EXCEL is still the BEST!
OpenOffice - Download & Installation
Starting at the link below, downloading was easy.
The file is huge at about 107mb. They do offer it on CD.
http://www.openoffice.org/index.html
Installation was straight forward except for one major problem.
I chose the CUSTOM install and before I knew it, it had proceeded
to install to folder.. c:\Program Files\OpenOffice.. when I wanted
it installed to a different location.. f:\OpenOffice..
Maybe I missed something, but this was the first annoyance.
Most good installers will pause to allow you to verify
the installation options before proceeding to install.
Review - Impress (alternative to MS PowerPoint)
Impress was my first application to test as I was looking for
a solution to some shortcomings in PowerPoint97 where I could
not send my presentation to a friend and still have the
background music playing during the presentation.
First thing I noticed about Impress is that the UI (user
interface) was very similar to PowerPoint. At least I felt
comfortable with the top menu bar choices. Below that, the
UI was dramatically different from PowerPoint but the
features & options were about the same. Quite acceptable.
I was able to open my PowerPoint presentation which was a
simple 5 frame Happy Birthday presentation to my GF Iris,
with some guitar music playing in the background that I
had recorded to a *.wav file and inserted in frame 1 and
set to play continuously. I had to describe that in detail
because it's the music issue that I'm trying to solve and
this same exact issue will likely come up with many people
wanting to use Impress.
Impress was not able to play the music file past frame 1.
I tried the built-in HELP system to see how to do it, but
the HELP system is structured such that it simply defines
what specific controls do and does not offer much in way
of instruction. Next, I went online the OpenOffice Forum
to seek help from other users.. http://www.oooforum.org/
I soon found that many other users had posted requests
asking how to get Impress to play music across multiple
frames, same as I was looking for. Bottom line.. Impress
can only play sound per frame and NOT across multiple frames.
At least not without applying some very sophisticated
techniques. So this was the deal breaker for me. Office97
still beats out OpenOffice 2.0.2 in this respect because
it can play a sound file continuously across multiple
frames; Office97 just doesn't distribute well to others
when a sound file is involved.
I played around with Impress and found it harder to use
than PowerPoint97. Even the presentation playback is
substandard by the way the objects sweep across the screen
in a non-linear fashion. You have to see it to get what
I mean. It's just not smooth as PowerPoint. Don't get me
wrong, Impress is quite functional and has most of the
required options to make a nice presentation but it is
still second class as compared to PowerPoint97.
Bottom line on Impress...
Impress is impressive if you don't need music playing
across multi-frames and you don't have PowerPoint97.
But even the 9 year old PowerPoint97 still outperforms
Impress in many ways. However, where Impress beats out
PowerPoint97 is it's ability to save & export to various
formats such as export to FLASH or PDF format, and to
save to so many different formats I can't list them all
here. I say give it a shot if any of the shortcomings
I outlined above are not a deal breaker for you.
Next....
Review - CALC (alternative to MS EXCEL)
Understand that I'm a power user with MS EXCEL and most
of my really useful Excel workbooks have custom VBA
(Visual Basic for Applications) code that allows me to
do amazing things with Excel. Therefore, this evaluation
is going to be a real challenge for CALC.
Again, the top menu is very similar to it's MS counter
part, MS EXCEL, and below that, the UI is dramatically
different but has many of the same options as EXCEL.
However, many important options offered in EXCEL are
missing in CALC.
I started by loading one of my most simplest workbooks
that contains multiple sheets of various calculations
and a menu sheet that allows me to easily navigate
amongst each of the 35 sheets via VBA code. CALC does
seem to support MACROS because it recognized my workbook
as having macros (VBA code) and allowed me to enable
Macros. Unfortunately none of my macros worked in CALC.
I can't even see my list of VBA macros in the Run
Macro area so it looks to me like it will not support
my VBA code at all. This is a deal breaker because 90%
of my 1000 or so excel workbooks utilize VBA.
Ok, let's move forward and put the VBA issue aside
to see how CALC performs otherwise.
Sticking with the same workbook as above, I notice that
many of my text entries have red underlines under the
fonts which were not in the original EXCEL rendered
version. I also notice that I can see all the gridlines
which I had turned off on many of my sheets. I tried to
figure out why some text had underlines but could not
fix it. I also checked under Tools -> Options, to see if
I could shut off the grid lines but it seems there is
no option to do that. I can make the gridlines the
same color as the cell color to achieve the same effect,
but it's nearly impossible to match the gridline to
the cell color on some of my sheets, given the limited
color choices of gridline colors in the Impress options.
BAD NEWS! I just discovered that gridline changes affect all
sheets in a workbook and you can't customize it to individual
sheets. This is a deal breaker for me!!! I have way too many
workbooks that are customized to the point where you'd never
know you were in EXCEL because they appear to be custom
applications. I do that largely via cell color & grid
modifications on individual sheets.
I don't need to see anymore.
I'm done with this CALC application.
MS EXCEL is still the BEST!
In my opinion, MS Excel is the best program ever written
because it is so versatile if you also have command of the
VBA code. Using the options in EXCEL and the VBA code, I can
transform EXCEL into so many different applications. It
can be a word processor on one sheet for providing text
instructions or information, it can be a simple spreadsheet
on another sheet with no gridlines made to appear as a custom
application using formatted output on a blank background.
I can make EXCEL calculate & draw my vegetable garden plots
and insert blocks allocating space for each plant in my garden.
EXCEL can be an address/contact database and even print address
labels. I can go on and on with all the things I have done with
EXCEL. It's the best program on earth!
Microsoft has nothing to worry about with CALC as it's
competitor to EXCEL when it comes to the POWER USER.
However, I'm willing to bet that CALC would very useful
to the newbie or novice user that only needs the basic
features of a spreadsheet and has no desire to write
VBA macros. Anyone who is already an Excel junkie like
me will probably not like CALC.
Please let me know if you found this useful and
I'll be encouraged to write more of the same.
Thanks!
---pete---