[Bush2000]

The big thing that OpenOffice lacks is ...

In all frankness, you have a meager understanding of what's in MS Office if you think the only thing wrong with OpenOffice is the fact that it lacks Visual Basic. It's missing a ton of other features. What you see when you boot up OpenOffice looks a lot like MS Office; however, after you spend a few minutes navigating the various menus, you realize that not only is there significant functionality missing but it's also buggy!

[Strider]

In all frankness, you have a meager understanding of what's in MS Office if you think the only thing wrong with OpenOffice is the fact that it lacks Visual Basic.

Visual Basic for Applications is a crucial part of MS Office.

Any "Office" solution that does not have a comparable programming language will not make a dent in the business market.

Even if they fix the bugs in the Open Source Office software, if you can't program it, it's not going to be able to compete in the business market.

[glorgau]

you have a meager understanding of what's in MS Office

You mischaracterized what I said from big thing to meager understanding.

I was trying to do the "PowerPoint slide executive summary" description. Visual Basic is the glue that is used most often to tie MS Office to other applications. I agree that OpenOffice is lacking in functionality.

[N3WBI3]

WOuld you care to mention any of those missing functions? I use both MS office and Open-Office on the same documents between two different computers..