[ShadowAce]

[SmokingJoe]

“The numbers were collected using a novel methodology: Over two hundred thousand international visitors where analysed by the web statistics service FlashCounter. By checking (using Javascript) which fonts where installed on the system, we could identify the installed Office suites.”

Huh?
The methodology and those figures are like the climate change “figures” from the British University of East Anglia. They are as fake as they come.

[GeronL]

OpenOffice is pretty cool. I take online classes and they require Word though, OO won’t do some of the stuff they need.

[Poser]

With the latest releases of Ubuntu, Linux has finally matured into a good desktop for the masses. Even without marketing, it is slowly gaining a share of users. OO will come along with it.

Still, I doubt the market share will go much beyond 2 or 3 percent for the foreseeable future.

[Clock King]

The last version of office I had was MS Office 2000. Since 2004, I’ve been using Open Office at work and home. There’s no sense in paying money for MS Office for features I don’t use, or just to have a “snappy” GUI. Plus, I can export my documents out as PDF.

[DesertSapper]

I've used OpenOffice over MS Office for a couple of years on my home computers. The only reason is price.

I use MS Office 2007 for work (and 2003 on a separate project's system) and OpenOffice3.1 at home daily. The differences are many and obvious.

OO is comparable on many basic functions and missing others (email, calendar) but I cannot think of a single task that OO does better than Office. OpenOffice 3.1 is inferior to even MS Office 2003 and years behind MS Office 2007. If OO cost even $20-$30, I doubt anyone with Office2007 experience would choose it.

But the reality is . . . OO is free!

[zeugma]

I much prefer OoO to the microsoft alternative. Unfortunately, the company I work for bathes in the microsoft kool-aid. One of the things I find to be extraordinarily frustrating is that people with the latest version of ms-office just assume that everyone else has the same version as well. I enjoy taking their documents, converting them to Odf, then sending them back.

[dfwgator]

One thing OO does that Office can’t is convert Excel spreadsheets to PDF files out of the box.

[Still Thinking]

The UK, almost needless to say, turned in a miserable 9% - the same as the US – alongside a massive and sheeplike 80% use of Microsoft Office (75% in the US). Shame.

Treating office suite selection into a moral issue? Weird.

[Cacique]

I use open office and carry it on a thumb drive. There is a portable version that can be downloaded from portableapps.com

That is something you cannot do with office. I keep office on my desktop, but it’s a hog and in some cases slower than molasses. OpenOffice can in most cases do everything that microsoft office does and you can also swap documents between the two..

[rivercat]

ROFL! No.

[Astronaut]

OpenOffice is a joke. Microsoft Office is the gold standard for businesses, and no real company is going to switch over to some open source program that might not be around in a year. Office 2007 is an amazing product, and all indications are that Office 2010 is going to be even better. A perfect complement to the outstanding Windows 7.

[martin_fierro]

OpenOffice is nice.

Another good (free) suite is NeoOffice

[Mr Rogers]

Slightly off topic, but can anyone recommend a good word processor...JUST a word processor?

I didn’t mind MS Word 2003 at the office, but didn’t like Word 2007. OpenOffice takes way too long to load up when I double click on a file. I don’t mind paying for a decent, fast word processor, but I don’t want to buy all of MSOffice.

I don’t use spreadsheets and I use web mail at home.

[Little Ray]

First think I did when I got a new computer was put OpenOffice on it.

[Defiant]

I have three free office programs on my machine: Open Office, Lotus Symphony, and MS Office 2010 beta. All three are great. I don’t know why anyone pays $300 for an office suite.

[Future Snake Eater]

so I'd take the numbers quoted with large doses of NaCl.

What a freakin' nerd.