Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice / LibreOffice. Watch the second episode of my new Revision3 OS.ALT show to hear my opinion on how Microsoft Office 2010 compares to. Professional vs Open Source Video Editing. For a while, nonprofit organizations' choice of office suites was limited to Microsoft Office or. Microsoft Office. But in the last couple of years, a viable open-source option has emerged: OpenOffice.org. Should you. Comparing Microsoft Office to Open Source Alternatives. How do open source productivity suites compare to Office 2. Microsoft? We compare three toolsets on philosophy, price, and features to help you decide.. For a long time, nonprofit organizations had a choice of two office productivity suites: Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office. The dominant market offering, Office eventually yielded some popularity when a viable open source competitor, Open. Office, emerged, followed by another open source option, Libre. Office. How do these open source suites differ from Microsoft Office? Should your office consider one of them, and will they make sense for your users and infrastructure? To help you decide, we compared key features of the latest version of Microsoft’s suite, the Office 2. Professional edition, to Apache Open. Office 4. 0 and Libre. Office 4. 1, both released in July 2. Both open source suites offer a tool called “Base” that’s similar to Microsoft Access, a tool called Draw similar to Microsoft Visio, and an equation editor called Math, while Microsoft Office includes the desktop publishing application Publisher, but for the purposes of this article we’ll look at the word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. Open Source vs. Commercial. Before we look at specific features of the competing suites, it may be helpful to take a step back and compare the philosophical differences between the three packages and how they might affect how you purchase and use the suites. Commercially licensed software like Microsoft Office is developed by a single vendor—sales help fund product- testing and development, marketing and sales, and salaries and shareholder dividends. In contrast, open source software is developed collaboratively, often by volunteers, and distributed freely to allow anyone to use, redistribute, adapt, or improve the code free of charge. The open source philosophy is not just limited to software, and can attract loyal adherents who believe that information should be shared. The flipside is that some consumers are more comfortable with a for- profit model they feel rewards ingenuity and innovation. If you have deep a conviction in either direction, it’s not likely that we’ll change your mind—for the rest of you, each model has tangible advantages and disadvantages that we’ll look at in closer detail. First, the cost: Open source applications often cost nothing—Open. Office and Libre. Office are both free, and who doesn’t love a bargain? Microsoft Office 2. U. S.- based nonprofits and libraries for a minimal fee ($2. Tech. Soup at. color: black; "> http: //www. Updates to the latest- and- greatest versions of the open source applications are also free, but the same is not always true for Office 2. Users have to buy new versions of the software—Office 2. Office 2. 01. 3 have to pay for the new edition, for example—but smaller updates between major releases are free. If you currently hold a valid license of Office with Software Assurance (http: //www. In the pricing area, licensing is another advantage—because of the open source suites’ looser licensing requirements, you don’t have to worry about installing unlimited copies around the office or at home. You can download and install the software on as many machines as you like. However, when you buy or receive a version of Office 2. Another advantage of open source code is that you can do what you like with it. You can study Open. Office or Libre. Office and customize them to your needs, improve them any way you see fit, or use the code to create something completely new and release your changes to the public. If this is important to you, Microsoft doesn't offer anything comparable. Commercially licensed software has its advantages, too—it comes with all the benefits of the company behind the code. Microsoft relies on the sales of Office and other software applications to remain profitable, giving it a strong incentive to offer the features, support, and interface that will make its software attractive to users and competitive in the market. Microsoft has built a vast pool of talented developers, a mature platform, and polished user interfaces, and the success of Office has provided it with a large user- and support base. The mandates for open source applications are fuzzier than for commercially licensed software. The tools tend to be driven by tech- savvy programmers, a practice that can result in somewhat less- polished interfaces and limited documentation. But because their source code is available to all, Open. Compare Office 365 to OpenOffice. With Microsoft, you get all of the tools you need to get work done and build value—without cutting corners.Office and Libre. Office are not solely dependent on their current crop of developers and corporate sponsors—even if all those people supporting the project were to disappear, the code would still exist, and other people could pick up where they left off. The same is not always true for commercial projects. That said, it doesn't appear that Microsoft is in any danger of going bankrupt in the foreseeable future. Comparing Suites. Microsoft Store. Discover, achieve, and create with best-in-class technology. Microsoft suggests. Office Apps Microsoft Lumia Apps Internet Explorer Values. Diversity and inclusion. Open Source vs. Commercial. In Office 2013, Microsoft continues the web collaboration features it introduced in Office. There are strong arguments to be made for Microsoft Office and the open source alternatives alike. Whether open source or commercial, how does each of the three suites compare against the others? First, a little about the two open source tools: Open. Office and Libre. Office are very similar products, both built upon the same source code. When Sun Microsystems purchased Open. Office, and was subsequently taken over by Oracle, the community split and Libre. Office was created in parallel. The Open. Office project has since been handed over to the Apache Foundation.) In a practical sense, users won’t see much of a difference between the two tools, and deciding between them will likely come down to personal preference or word of mouth rather than features. Usability and Interface. Microsoft Office is nearly ubiquitous in office settings these days, making its interface the de- facto standard for how office suites operate. Office 2. 01. 3 keeps the ribbon toolbar interface first introduced to some controversy in Office 2. File menu to the tool bar to make it easier for users to find the controls to open and save documents. The pretty, modern interface lends additional polish. Open. Office and Libre. Office, on the other hand, lack the ribbon toolbar and instead offer a more traditional interface—which makes them intriguing options for Office 2. Anyone who has used Word or Excel 2. Write and Calc, while those familiar with newer versions of Office will find it somewhat retro. System Requirements. Open. Office, Libre. Office, and Microsoft Office 2. Open. Office and Libre. Office better- suited than Office 2. For instance, Office 2. GB RAM for 3. 2- bit computers (2. GB for 6. 4- bit machines), while both Libre. Office 4. 0 and Open Office 4. MB of RAM—although both recommend 5. MB—but need Java installed to take advantage of certain features. Office 2. 01. 3 also requires Windows 7 or 8 to run fully, while both Libre. Office and Open. Office will run on older Windows versions, including XP or Vista, and Open. Office can even run on Windows 2. In addition, both open source suites will run on most Mac computers running OS X 1. Tiger) or higher—in order to run the new Microsoft Office on a Mac, you’ll need to subscribe to Office 3. Home Premium, a subscriber- based version of Office that offers additional online functionality (for more information read Comparing Microsoft Office 2. Office 3. 65). What's more, Open. Office and Libre. Office will run on a Linux system—and Linux runs much more effectively than Windows 7 or XP on older computers, making Linux and Open. Office a practical combination even on older computers, especially those that require additional applications (such as those that as you might find in a public computer lab setting). Support. If your IT team is small—or nonexistent—you can expect to need occasional support from other sources. Thanks to Microsoft’s vastness, there's more support for Office than anyone could possibly take advantage of: official support from Microsoft, authorized support from licensed vendors and consultants, professional call centers, as well as dozens of books and countless websites offering tips and guides for modifying, configuring, and using Office software. However, some users report difficulty getting support for Office 2. Microsoft appears to be encouraging consumers to switch to the subscription- based Office 3. Some free resources specifically for nonprofits exist, but expect such tailored support to cost more. Support for Open. Office and Libre. Office is community- driven, and generally free, and includes documentation projects and volunteer- led discussion forums. With these open source projects, common issues and bugs are often addressed through updates. In general, Libre. Office’s development community tends to address these issues more quickly and release updates more frequently than the Open. Office community. Users more familiar with Microsoft’s ecosystem may find this support model unfamiliar, and may feel more comfortable with training and support for Microsoft Office. Document Sharing. In general, files created by all three suites can be read by the others, though there are caveats. In the case of Office 2. Microsoft has established de facto file standards such as . DOC and . DOCX for Word documents and . XLS and . XLSX for Excel. If you need to share files with anyone running Office 2. Microsoft offers a free utility to do this. Apache Open. Office and Libre. Office, on the other hand, use open standards for their native files, but can read and write files using Microsoft's format. In fact, users can choose to automatically save files in . DOC or . DOCX formats by default. The open source community has invested a lot of effort in ensuring that Writer, Calc, and Impress users can share documents with Microsoft users, and has succeeded in all but a few specific cases. If you’ve created Word documents that make extensive use of columns, header formats, and embedded images, the file is likely to show up in Writer with minor formatting issues that have to be adjusted manually.
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