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Posted on 04/04/2007 9:05:57 AM PDT by N3WBI3
The OpenOffice.org community released version 2.2 on Friday, including updates to OpenOffice's word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and database software.
OpenOffice.org claimed its free software package provides a "real alternative" to Microsoft's Office 2007 product — and an easier upgrade path for existing Microsoft Office users.
The community claims to have addressed security issues in the upgrade, a number of vulnerabilities recently having been discovered in the suite. On 21 March the US Department of Homeland Security reported two critical vulnerabilities — a stack-based buffer overflow was reported in the StarCalc parser in OpenOffice.org, plus a vulnerability that would allow the exploitation of a user's computer through manipulation of shell metacharacters in a prepared link in a crafted document.
Both vulnerabilities required user interaction, and both have been addressed in OpenOffice 2.2, according to a community spokesperson.
"OpenOffice.org 2.2 protects users from newly discovered vulnerabilities, where users' PCs could be open to attack if they opened documents from, or accessed websites set up by, malicious individuals," OpenOffice.org stated.
The organisation said that in version 2.2, users will notice an improvement in the quality of the text display. For example, previously optional support for kerning, a technique to improve the appearance of text written in proportional fonts, is now enabled by default in 2.2.
The founding and principal sponsor for OpenOffice is Sun. Open Document Format (ODF), the standard that supports OpenOffice, was adopted as an ISO (International Organisation of Standardisation) standard in May, effectively making it a global open standard.
However, rival open format Office Open XML, developed by a group of organisations including Microsoft, is also pushing for ISO certification. On Monday Office Open XML moved to the next stage of gaining ISO certification — a five-month ballot by the national members of ISO and standards body the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) to see whether the standard should be awarded.
Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, Toshiba, and the United States Library of Congress all contribute to the Office Open XML project.
OpenOffice has proven popular this month, with French MPs choosing Linux over Windows and California considering following Massachusetts into the use of ODF.
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I’ve started using Open Office—I like it. There’s a small learning curve as the icons, navigation, etc. aren’t the same as MS, but it’s not too painful.
Windows just came out with Office 2007. It’s a total ripoff. I’ll just stick with 2003, thanks.
Using it now - nice. I can’t tell any major differences from 2.1, but it’s not nearly as good as MS Office 2k3. Then again, it’s free and you don’t have to open a vein to prove you own it.
The advantage to Open Office is:
(1) Open Source means that forcing file format changes on the community is difficult. The current default file format is the only one recognized by iso as open.
(2) Supports more document formats than MS Office
(3) Completely portable, Open office provides the exact same experience and document rendering on Windows, OSX, Linux, Solaris, BSD, ...
(4) Free
All that being said would I dump the MS office that came with my desktop for OO? not unless I really needed ODF or had a mixed environment (which I happen to) at home.
Updated, thanks for the heads up.
Open Office is hugely improved over early versions I encountered. And not bloated with millions of features I never use hiding access to the few I do. I dread MS Office "upgrades" at work -- inevitably my productivity ends up being downgraded.
You forgot Cuba.
Yeah, I saw the announcement the other day.
I gave a friend of mine at work the information for this.(and abiword) She was just using wordpad for documentation because she couldn’t afford MS Office.
I should ask if she’s taken the time to download it yet, but it’s good that there’s this kind of alternative available.
I've reinstalled it so many times the CD is almost worn out. I've noticed one difference with newer versions of Office...they produce much larger, bloated files.
The main gripe I have with OpenOffice is that it takes forever to load on slower machines. It works well enough on my own computer under Ubuntu 6.10, but on my wife’s (only slightly older) machine running Ubuntu 6.06, she has to wait forever for the thing to load, and then the whole computer slows down. I have her using AbiWord and Gnumeric instead, as they run much faster and do everything she needs to do.
I won’t use MS any more if I can help it.
It is worth considering getting OO. You’ll be surprised, and you may find that you don’t see any need to spend money going down the MS upgrade path again.
There is a way to set OO to pre-load much of what is required to run it onto your swap partition. It does this by default in SUSE as well as some other distros. So when you go to start it, it opens almost immediately.
What are the disadvantages or advantages of Open office over MS OFfice?
Thanks! I'll look into that.
Honestly, I’m not far enough into Open Office to make a conclusion. All I know now is that is was a helluva lot cheaper ($0) and performs all the MS functions I need (so far).
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