Posted today on InfoWorld is an interesting article about two competitors to Microsoft Office. (See “Open office dilemma: OpenOffice.org vs. LibreOffice“)
While you have probably heard of OpenOffice.org, or the previous incarnation of it (StarOffice), a new alternative open source office suite is called LibraOffice, and it is being brought to you by the developers OpenOffice.org. Confused? Well, it’s that same old story… People work for a big company (Oracle) and this big company starts doing something they don’t dig, so they jump ship and start their own project. Tah-Dah! LibreOffice is born.
Are either OpenOffice or LibreOffice good candidates to eliminate your dependency on Microsoft Office?
In a nutshell, if your company requires absolute compatibility with all Microsoft Office documents, and you require a standardized interface that new people can come to your business use without any type of learning curve, then you already know what I am going to say. Stick with Microsoft Office!
If you run a small operation, or even a home office, then maybe one of these two offerings can work for you. They do offer the important features of Microsoft Office, such as word processing and spreadsheets, there are versions available for your Microsoft Windows systems, Apple Mac OSX, Linux, etc. And the price is outstanding… Maybe if they don’t offer EVERY feature you need, then you could make the sacrifice.
InfoWorld’s article compares the two offerings and may give you some insight to help you determine if either of them are right for you. Of course, you can always download them both and try them for yourself if you have time to do that.
Should your Greenville / Upstate, SC business require Microsoft Office, we can help you with that! We can sell a single license or hundreds! Call us at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com
Comments 2
I use and have used OpenOffice.org for several years at home. I have to say that the interface is much more closely aligned with the version of MS Office I used for years (pre-ribbon). Sometimes it seems dated, but mostly it looks like an old friend. 😀
Haven’t tried LibreOffice yet. These days, I typically use Google Docs for most of my stuff. I do like the idea of LibreOffice being more flexible in terms of updating features. OO.org has seemed stagnant for several years now.
Thank you for your input Bradley… Google Docs has been very popular with younger people, and especially low-budget home offices and small businesses. We are a reseller for those services as well as Microsoft’s BPOS.
OpenOffice.org is exactly that… stagnant! At least in my opinion. Admittedly, I have not even downloaded LibreOffice yet, just read up on it. If you try it, let me know what you think!