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82 Comments
- rodrigo74, on 05/08/2008, -8/+36Dugg for native Mac version
- NinjaBoy, on 05/08/2008, -3/+23The only thing I want to see is improved speed. OpenOffice is SOO slow when I compare it side by side with office 2k3 or 2k7
- staeiou, on 05/08/2008, -0/+17Disable Java. You don't need it except for a few weird features. Go to Tools, Options, Java menu on the left. Disable the option to use a Java runtime environment.
- linuxmalaysia, on 05/08/2008, -2/+18output from mS2007 is not the same with the standard ooxml ...
- nandasunu, on 05/08/2008, -0/+16so will there be any point/need for neooffice now?
- Acglaphotis, on 05/08/2008, -1/+15A bad version of Office 2004? I couldn't disagree more, OO is perfectly capable of standing up to a "normal" Office users needs. I don't see how you could comndem it's menu-driven GUI, it is familiar to most people and efficient at keeping clutter to a minimum.
- Tenoq, on 05/09/2008, -0/+13Well I imagine if you paid the $400 for the OEM Office Pro you'd be wanting to stay with it. It's extraordinarily unlikely that someone who bought MS Office is going to switch to a free alternative, even if it IS better (not saying it is or isn't). Post-purchase reinforcement. No-one wants to admit they wasted that money. :)
- mcmlxxii, on 05/08/2008, -1/+13Even Office2007 doesn't yet support OOXML. And what's even stupider - Microsoft are a member of Oasis, the body that helped get ODF to ISO standard status. Why oh why can't we choose our software based on how good or bad it is, or how well we like it, and not be forced to use software based on yet another bloody proprietary format? I think Office2007 is easy on the eye, it seems to work well and it has some usability features I like. However it pisses me off no end that it saves files by default in a proprietary format, and worse, Microsoft won't document it properly.
- MikeCerm, on 05/08/2008, -2/+13For real... I don't mind that it takes a little longer to load. What I DO mind is that sometimes Writer can't quite keep up with my typing. I'm not even that fast, and something like displaying text on screen shouldn't take that long.
Oh, and they should drop Java and go native. Unfortunately they never will, because Sun is their largest (only?) contributor. - thevoiceless, on 05/08/2008, -0/+11Don't forget, this is still beta.
- MikeCerm, on 05/08/2008, -0/+10Not really, unless OOo just does a terrible job on the Mac port, which I don't anticipate. The NeoOffice guys might decide to do their own thing, or make a version that's even more Mac-like, but I imagine they'll just close up shop.
- Tenoq, on 05/09/2008, -0/+9About $400 or so.
Wait... - MrViklund, on 05/08/2008, -2/+11Cool. Looking forward to the final version OpenOffice 3.0. Looks like this will be a big one!
- cawpin, on 05/08/2008, -1/+9Absolutely. I'm so glad they finally have it. NeoOffice is great but is several versions behind.
- JasonCox, on 05/08/2008, -2/+10That's because Office 2007 came out *before* OOXML was submitted for review by the standards committees and also before the before mentioned standards committees made a few changes to the the above said standard.
- felderado, on 05/08/2008, -0/+8You should probably be using LaTeX for scientific documents with lots of advanced mathematical equations.
- colinnwn, on 05/08/2008, -0/+7I'll follow and be free.
Microsoft's problem in my not so humble opinion is having to push business pricing to the customer. I paid less than $100 through educational licensing for Office 2003. And because of my limited home use of Word, Excel, and Access, that is about the level of value I get from it; nowhere near the $400 retail cost.
Vista's lackluster performance and high cost pushed me to try Linux, and I am loving Ubuntu 8.04. I also discovered I am completely satisfied with OpenOffice 2.0. I'll be dual booting XP for the foreseeable future. So when Office 2003 no longer meets my needs, I'll try OpenOffice 3.0 first. - aeoo, on 05/08/2008, -0/+7As a college student you should be learning LaTeX anyway. You'll have the rest of your life to learn proprietary software.
- WCL23, on 05/08/2008, -2/+8Well this is just getting tiresome. Reported.
- gu0d, on 05/08/2008, -0/+6It would be interesting to see a OneNote equivalent for open office sometime in the future.
- SSCrow, on 05/08/2008, -2/+8Good job. You could have said "Less and Less Relevant" But no, you obviously went for the "More and More less" instead.
And your username is "AppleMacStud" oh man, you really showed us didn't you? - cloudcity, on 05/09/2008, -0/+6You are going to love this...
http://www.zotero.org/
We had a guy from our history dept. come and and demo this, really good stuff. Should compete with EndNote and it's free!!! - barfooz, on 05/08/2008, -2/+8They finally have a proper Mac menu in the menu bar rather than in the window.
- mcmlxxii, on 05/08/2008, -0/+5ODF is the default format for OpenOffice documents. OOXML is NOT the default format for MSOffice2007. MSOffice doesn't even OPEN odf files for God's sake!
So...my point is that I want a format for Office documents that is open and cross-platform, I want to be able to save it in one word processing program and open it in another without any spurious changes to its formatting etc. The way XHTML works except even better. - chillfaktor, on 05/08/2008, -1/+6For me the lack of a referencing tool capable of automatically generating APA-style references and citations has kept me with Word 2007 so far.
I'd switch over immediately though if this feature was added, as it is the only feature I really rely on and thats missing in OO.org (imho) - mcmlxxii, on 05/08/2008, -0/+5It's possible that the formulas are an embedded object and the format is proprietary.
- cawpin, on 05/08/2008, -0/+4The beta works great on my MBP.
- spyres, on 05/09/2008, -0/+4OO isn't written in Java. It only uses it for the database component and some of the wizards.
- melat0nin, on 05/09/2008, -0/+4I can't help but think that much of the supposed 'innovation' in MS Office in the past few years is akin to the 'innovation' in toothbrushes and razors - they've made it do everything a word processor can conceivably do, and now they're adding the proverbial ultra-sonic vibrations or fifth blade to make it seem new and shiny.
From what I've read from many people, the Ribbon is good, but beyond that it seems that 2k7 offers little real advancement in the word processing world. With that in mind, I'll keep the £100 in my pocket and forego the UI enhancement, while still producing the same document in the end. - str1fe, on 05/09/2008, -0/+4Dugg because the description is actually a description.
- LastDitchHero, on 05/08/2008, -0/+4Pretty solid improvements. I also like the query within a query feature. And of coarse coming along is PDF Edit
- srg13, on 05/09/2008, -0/+4Who really cares that Office 2007 looks better? Sure, I'd like a nicer interface in Open Office (although the tango icons help a lot in that regard), but the functionality is fine for me.
- kreatre2007, on 05/08/2008, -2/+5I love the take that Wired has on this. It's exactly right on the mark too. My question is: Why must Microsoft try to acquire everything? Why can't they just develop something better? The answer is that they can't. They have no creativity and no original thinking. Anything that they try to build to compete would be third rate.
- chillfaktor, on 05/09/2008, -0/+3Sweet! Thanks!
- JosephStalin, on 05/08/2008, -0/+3Probably. Keep in mind the official builds are quite limited. On Linux, for example, every major distro uses a ton a patches to add features and make it integrate better. On WIndows you can get a similar patched version fro go-oo.org, which starts up in half the time, has better icons, vba support, ooxml import filters, the improved solver, no irritating startup wizard, etc.
NeoOffice also adds features above the official OpenOffice in addition to it's glacial user interface. It will probably still be around, just hopefully using OpenOffice's user interface instead. - str1fe, on 05/09/2008, -0/+3Loads just as quickly as MS Office on Windows XP.
- AppleMacStud, on 05/09/2008, -1/+4Thank you English teacher. In the future I'll use "More and More less" more and more less. LOL
- badger500, on 05/08/2008, -2/+5I tried the OO.o 2.4 from the Hardy Heron Live CD. As soon as I put quote marks around a word, a small friendly cartoon light bulb appeared in the right corner, alerting me that OO had changed the quotes to proper quotation marks. That traumatized me. Why must friendly cartoon inanimate objects be in our word processors in 2008? This is Clippy all over again!
Also, why the long list of Arabic sounding font names, and yet they all look precisely the same?
And why must Writer be so slow to load? (though it seems faster than in Gutsy Gibbon).
And they changed the Notes feature, but you still can't highlight a block of text for which the notes correspond, as you can in MS Word. That's not good.
For those who reflexively state that OO.o is making Word irrelevant, have you actually tried using it to write extensively???? There's nothing more I'd enjoy than switching to a free and open source program for writing, but I fear OO.o is not there yet. Too bad. Keep trying, guys. - gr00vy, on 05/08/2008, -16/+19This essentially looks like a bad version of MSOffice 2004, so far. Which is a step up in the world of free, and for those that do not want to pay for the latest and best, this should more than suffice. It is a huge step up for the mac, and while I try and use Bean on my Mac for word documents, the Writer Slice renders better. The drawing program doesn't really do a lot for me, but the freebee presentation program is actually pretty useful for a lot of drawing stuff people need to do most of the time (on top of being a decent presenter), and with built-in PDF generation on the Mac, this is very awesome for free.
However, this only represents a thrust into 2004 functionality. The problem with this, is that this is near the straining point of usability. Now for the target market, this is going to be great. Alot of people will invest quite a bit of effort out of free to make it work for them. I am actually excited to see how this level of functionality will be extended. But... The real problem at this point, is not so much bloat, but how to use the programs for what you need them to be now. And that is different for each user, and it is also somewhat constraining for a user, because it is hard to know what is available and how to make it work.
Many user's hate the Ribbon in the Microsoft products, for the sole reason that they are different. However that difference is precisely where the next level of productivity is going to come from. Menu picking is ok when the product is of a certain size, but at a higher point, it is difficult to support that for every user scenario. The ribbon actually does a much better job of doing that, so long as you don't try and learn the product on an empty page. But if you learn it with content, it actually works really really well.
Overall, good job. It's great that its free. It will serve many peoples needs. But Office is still leading the way (Open Office is still following). So you can follow and be free, or pay and lead. - srg13, on 05/09/2008, -0/+2LaTeX (with BibTex + apacite for automatic reference lists and in-text citation) is the best application possible for writing documents... Basically, all you need to make beautifully typeset documents is a text editor. I use Gedit, which has LaTeX syntax highlighting, automatic spell check, and can open multiple documents in tabs, and that's all you need.
- srg13, on 05/09/2008, -0/+2"what is it writtien in? im pretty sure its java..."
Probably either C or C++ (can't remember). There's an option in the preferences to not use Java at all, and almost everything still works. - Tenoq, on 05/09/2008, -0/+2Which just increases your Windows boot time instead. No thanks, I'll stick to just using OO when I actually need it - not every boot.
- GavinZac, on 05/09/2008, -0/+2OO.o 2.4 is quite a bit slower than 3.0, and especially so from the LiveCD (any LiveCD performance can be reasonably halfed for "real life" usage). Try out the beta, and disable the Java Runtime Environment, you dont really need it and again, removing it halves the load time.
The foreign fonts are there because you're using the LiveCD which carries all the locales (languages and localisations) and therefore the fonts needed to display them. - Cherubim, on 05/09/2008, -1/+3OpenOffice works well for the majority of users and no, it's not slow to load at all. It loads quickly in Hardy Heron and other GNU/Linux distros.
- donsmith, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1NeoOffice has some sort of Java slant if I remember correctly. I don't know of the NeoOffice Early Access Program for 3.x is the same version as OO 3.0, but they have some overly complicated rules for "donations". Check it out: http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/earlyaccess.ph ...
Anyway wish them (NeoOffice folks) the best and many thanks for keeping the OO dream alive when all was forgotten in MacLand. - genuchelu, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1Q: "Who really cares that Office 2007 looks better?"
A: a typical user - Sushubh, on 05/15/2008, -0/+1but failing to save? that's like feature locked shareware!
- armo, on 05/09/2008, -0/+1I'm not so sure about the "long time coming" part. It was only Oct 2005 that 2.0 was released, 3 years between major releases sounds about right to me.
- TheWindBlows, on 05/09/2008, -0/+1i set mine up so that quickstart stays loaded after i run openoffice the first time and not on system boot i got 50 MiB to spare for OpenOffice (thats all it uses on linux on windows it uses like 75MiB)
- Malnilion, on 05/09/2008, -0/+1This looks like a fairly shoddy beta...they should have given it alpha status.
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