Office Suites – Best Option?
Long have I been a supporter of the open source code project known as Open Office in the past. More recently though, largely because of Oracle and the general lack of direction, I had jumped on the offshoot and fork project know as Libre Office. Historically of course I have used the assumed standard office suite, at least since Microsoft Office bumped off the Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Perfect back sometime ago. Interestingly enough, I ran into some major issues with Libre Office recently and in that constant evolutionary process, have turned to yet a different player in the arena – Google Docs. So a quick rundown of the approach at reaching the choice is in order.
Microsoft Office Suite – Lets face it, is the measuring stick, at least for now. And do not get me wrong, I love the products in the suite, even if some of them are bit bloated. I used to teach certification courses in the four major products, though very few ever followed up and got certifications in anything but Word and Excel. I could do without of a few of the wizards for some tasks in the latest iteration of things – mail-merge for instance is now more complex that it was before nor needs to be, in my opinion anyway.
That being said, the product is extremely stable, not to prone to attacks – especially if you use some common sense regarding macros and it just works. So what is the problem? Go price the suite. Retail is two hundred seventy-nine dollars – that is a little steep for occasional home usage. Even a smaller office is quickly cost prohibitive at that mark.
Open Office – Done by a group of contributors a few years ago, I jumped on this bandwagon personally and whenever allowed, professionally some time ago. It does the big three office tasks in the suite – and does them very well. I always hear about things not working, but my experience does not support that, outside of the presentation management software, and I do a lot of advanced stuff in the other two. Merges to pivot tables, it handles them. The slide-show component that emulates Power Point does a good job if it is not to complex or originates within. Honestly though, often when Power Point does not translate well – close inspection says the user did something that is against recommended practices back in Power Point. Best off all, the price is free due to its licensing?
Why did I switch a few months back? Open Office, though some process I still do not get, Oracle become the holder of the source code. As if I did not really understand how a private company could get ownership of the code, they also were planning to set it on a shelf and do no updates. It was also becoming increasingly harder to actually find a legit and known good downloadable copy. After much complaining, some folks in the Open Source community had decided enough was enough…
Libre Office - This is what I switched my platform to for using the typical suite components. I had read good things about it, found out it was actually forked from the same core code for Open Office and was actually being updated on a somewhat regularly basis. Further, it was easy to find and get it installed on multiple platforms. I made the plunge and was working along happily for the most basic of spreadsheet and word processing needs that I had without any issue. Then I had a really large spreadsheet with lots of advanced things in it, including protected cells (really not that advanced) and pivot tables. The crash, my dismay, and the general inability to complete the task at hand came all at once. Specifically, some rather large spreadsheets left me hung or crashed almost immediately upon opening the data, I was unable to use any cells that were protected due to the inability to unlock them, and pivot tables did not work at all. What really irks me is that this functions work in the last Open Office version – at least letting your work if not doing protection 100%. Odd that it suppose to fork from that version, so it should, in theory work in Libre Office – but it does not.
Google Docs – Enter Google Docs, which I had been meaning to explore for sometime. I thought I would give it a try for some of my more simple needs at home, especially since as a business it looks like my company is moving in this direction. I was pleasantly surprised at just what all the platform has been able to handle. Granted I have not tried pivot tables as of yet, but I really have no complaints on the platform in general. And it is kind of nice to be able to share documents with any other Google user, on the rare occasion I want to do that. Also nice is the fact that everything is cloud based and stored in the cloud – meaning I can run the apps where ever I have internet access and my documents are always there when I log in. I am definitely going to have stress it some and see how that goes.
Apache and Open Office – Interestingly enough, just this week Oracle is turning over the code for Open Office to the folks at Apache. Clearly they know how to do open source software. There have already been announcements from the folks at Apache of plans to update the code base and get it current. Clearly if I have any heavy lifting that Google Docs can not handle, this will be the fallback position.
** – Image is a Google Docs Logo.
