Entered CNET Catalog: 12/01/2005
SKU: CNETOPENOFFICE2.ORG
Manufacturer: Sun Microsystems Inc.
User opinions
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User Rating: 
6/10
Interface is not intuitive; help function disorganized
Pros: It is free. It's a work in progress with a lot of promise. The suite is comprehensive and far outshines Microsoft Works. The word processing program has an impressive roster of features, though they're not logically arranged.
Cons: I do not like some of the menu arrangements. Although MS WORD is not necessarily the gold standard, OpenOffice strays from the good things about WORD. Seems to be making an effort to be different, just to be different.
User Rating: 
2/10
Basic Package
Pros: Nothing was good
Cons: Everything sucked, the user interface, the design themes, BLEH
User Rating: 
10/10
Works great and it's free
Pros: I was gonna buy iWork for my mac, for the word processor function. Mac's don't come with Apple Works any more. You have to buy iWork to use Pages. Well save your money. Open Office is here and works great. The new update seems to run a little faster.
Cons: There are none.
User Rating: 10/10
Beautiful and professional interface
Pros: The best alternative to greedy Microstink software ******. Version 3.0 is the best and it is continually updated and more stable than MS junk.
Cons: That it hasn't crushed Microsoft yet, but its coming.
User Rating: 
9/10
Very good spreadsheet and word processor
Pros: I am able to do all the word processing and spreadsheet activities. Look and feel is excellent. I am able to save to MS office format and able to open them as well. Best of all its FREE :-)
Cons: Wish it had email tool.
User Rating: 6/10
Constantly improving, but not quite there yet
Pros: Free, Does many basic things well
Cons: Still lacks important features
User Rating: 
8/10
Can't open office 2007 files.
Pros: Basic looking but powerfull free Office suit. Open's most office files.
Cons: Can't Open office 2007 files. Lakes good database support with Office Acsess.
User Rating: 
3/10
Not quite ready for Prime Time
Pros: It's Free -& has nice features
Cons: Spell chack does not work in Spanish, difficult to find working plugins
User Rating: 9/10
Great alternative to MS Office. Good support for MS Office formats (not 2007 yet). One click to PDF
Pros: OpenSource (free), growing popularity world wide. Version 2.4 is out now with significant enhancements. http://www.openoffice.org/
Cons: No MS Office 2007 support (except Access) yet. Drawing tools still limited in my opinion, particularly in Writer.
No MS Office 2007 support (except Access) yet (should be available in version 3 later this year), but MS Word 2007 (docx) is already available in the Oxygen Office Professional flavor (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop/)
User Rating: 
5/10
Can't blow a candle
Pros: Auto Replace is nice
Cons: Clumsy & difficult to move around in
User Rating: 9/10
C'mon, CNet reviewers! Get real.
Pros: It's stable, featured, and FREE.
Cons: None to speak of.
C'mon, guys...we know that Open Office isn't ever going to bring you revenue like the boys at Microsoft, but even you have to admit that this is a great, FREE suite of applications.
User Rating: 10/10
IT'S SO MUCH WORTHY
Pros: IT'S SO MUCH WORTHY
Cons: MS OFFICE 07 INCOMPATIBILTY
User Rating: 10/10
Not sure what CNET is rating......
Pros: Completely functional office suite for home office users, school kids, small business users, and medium size businesses. And it is free!!
Cons: It is not a fully functional enterprise system for 1,000+ users and does not compare favorably with a custom designed SAP system.....
Do you have any idea what it costs to have a software tech "walk in" to help you out with a problem? Around $125/hour! Excuse me, but can we start a list of average CNET members who consider that a plus? And, unfortunately, when you have a moderate to serious problems in MS 2003 you need to spend that kind of money to fix it.
I don't understand how that comparison is relevant or useful to the average CNET member.
The problem, I believe, is that Enterprise software companies spend money advertising and freeware folks do not. I am sorry to have to be so cynical. But it is unfair to compare the capabilities of OO to an Enterprise system. When was the last time Cons. Reports compared the towing capacity of a Ford Taures to a Ford F-350? The computing power of Cray to a PDA? They are just designed for different primary uses.
My review of this review is: Lazy and severely off topic.
I have been using OO for 2 months and it does EVERYTHING I need to do at my home office. I interfaces well with 2003 at work. The only problem I have is certain sections on my companies SAP system will not automatically open with Write or Calc. So I save them to my desktop and open them from there. No problem.
I rate this FREE program a great public service and appreciate folks who remember that the little guy can't afford to spend more money on a bloated software package than they did on their computer. BTW, I wonder how many kids in less affluent homes are benefiting from the kindness of strangers. Anybody care to review that?
Thanks..Steve
User Rating: 5/10
Not bad but still buggy
Pros: It's free and open source so room for improvement
Cons: memory hog on my toshiba laptop
but found by the end of the day, laptop ran out of memory, switched back to msoffice, have used for 6 months now absolutely no prob, and nothing else was altered.
User Rating: 
7/10
Matur tools
Pros: Functional working, stable
Cons: Havent found anything zet
I can accept the fact that MS Office it better than OpenOffice, although I have my problems with it, especially the price vs. for free.
But when I saw the Google Doc Rating I was really astonished and just went and tried to create a presentation (first time). I did not see something to create diagrams, graphics or anything like that.
Still I think the google stuff is cool...but sorry, they are in Beta state and to rate that significantly higher than fully operationl office suite...sorry ladies and gentlemen....that does not sound like a fair rating!
User Rating: 10/10
Free yourself from the chains of Microsoft
Pros: free software! what could be better?
Cons: haven't found any
Linux is here to stay. What a shame that the average person off the street will find the whole download / installation task too challenging to move away from M/S.
Our friends at CNET appear to be in M/S pocket though - 6 out of 10? unfair.... 11 out of 10. Its faster, cake to maintain.
User Rating: 8/10
Excellent freebie
Pros: Almost a clone of MS Office
Cons: haven't found any serious one's
User Rating: 9/10
Excellent for Home user
Pros: Does all the normal home user requires and its free.
Cons: Cannot really think of any except that Macros may be a problem
It translates MS Office docs etc faultlessly exzcept if macros are used. But most home users never use macro anyway.
User Rating: 9/10
Fantastic.
Pros: FREE! Easy to use, regular updates, supports xls & doc & ppt, extendable, easy to use, has a quick-start function.
Cons: Could do with a database and a publishing program, and also opens ALL of the MS office formats.
The communtiy support can be a lot better than normal support sometimes, and you get the views of more than one person.
This software is brilliant, everyone shoulld be using it.
User Rating: 6/10
Where is abiword?
Pros: free of charge
Cons: no incoming for our friend Bill!
User Rating: 10/10
Very nice alternative to MS Office 2007
Pros: Easy to use, can't beat the price.
Cons: Not sure yet
Microsoft made a big blunder with Office 2007. It is very difficult to use. We are looking to convert our entire company over to OpenOffice.
Anyway, I found OpenOffice to be more familiar to the old MS Office, than the new MS Office was to the old MS Office.
I'm glad we found OpenOffice, and I think it will be the future install at our company. We are going to save a mountain of cash too!
User Rating: 3/10
PRESUMPTIOUS: OpenOffice2 destroys WORD.docs
Pros: The program seems good
Cons: All my WORD.docs were converted without permission
User Rating: 9/10
Everything I need in an office suite
Pros: Free, lots of community support, good compatibility, leaner than MS Office
Cons: Could be leaner, slow load times
On the few occasions that I needed to do something and I didn't know how (like set default file types to MS-compatible), help was a few clicks away on their forums or Google.
Slow load times keep me from giving it a 10, but this is a great suite. If you just need a word processor, you might check out AbiWord, which is faster.
User Rating: 9/10
One of best pieces of FLOSS software out there.
Pros: Gratis (0,00 ?), Easy to use
Cons: No PIM (Outlook) or desktop publisher (Publisher)
Back in the early noughties, OOo 1.0 was clunky, slow, a huge download (around 160 MB, compared to today's 65MB, not good with a slow broadband connection) and it made frequent interlope problems with MS Office. Plus, you couldn't do a ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence) with it, as it no Access equivalent.
Now, it has Base, Quickstart to cope with the speed problem and very few problems with MS Office.
I am seriously surprised why it isn't used or talked about more often, certainly compared to FireFox.
User Rating: 
1/10
What a Joke. Except that it isnt meant to be
Pros: Ummmmmm - the price?
Cons: Poor functionality, years out of date, compatibility, ease of use, appearance, support
As a regular Office 2007 user I thought I would take a look at the 'Free' alternative. Granted Open Source almost always ends up costing more when you look at the TCO, but still I decided to take a look anyway.
This software is complete crud. It is just not comparible with Microsoft Office in anyway. Its like a poor poor copy of Office 95 with half the functionality broken or ripped out.
Just to put that in perspective - since Microsoft Office 95 we have had Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003 and now Office 2007. So its like going back 5 generations of software. Except that its even worse than that.
As they say, you get what you pay for. Dont waste your time - get the real thing.
User Rating: 9/10
Multi-platform, open source, and free
Pros: I have been using OpenOffice since early version 1 on Windows and Linux. It simply works great, outstanding MS Office compatibility. 2.0 and 2.1 have great downloadable documentation as well.
Cons: Could work better with Powerpoint and Access databases
The documentation is good, and can be downloaded as a pdf and printed. The community is vibrant and helpful.
I use this at my lab and don't have to worry about worms, viruses and the like and can still send files to those in the dark ages of MS Office without worrying.
It's free too!
User Rating: 9/10
It's Free And Replaces Microsoft Office
Pros: Is Free
Cons: none really
User Rating: 9/10
Excellent solution fueled by collaboration.
Pros: Runs on Linux. Strong peer support.
Cons: Not as well known. Deserves way more recognition by mainstream media.
CNet should really pay more attention to many open-source projects such as Ubuntu and Open-Office. But again, since CNet's business model is ad-supported, I understand as being otherwise.
I've tested a lot of open-source software throughout the years, and it came a long long way from being geeky-ish to being world-class quality. I am currently building a Microsoft-free system, fault-tolerant, system and OpenOffice.org will be an integral part of it. I have a successful desktop computer that is virtually "Microsoftless" based out of Ubuntu Linux. With some minor and easy tweaks, I had that thing running for ages... Well you get the point. And if a truck driver can figure it, anyone with a brain can run Ubuntu Linux.
At first, I wanted Microsoft Office. I tried OpenOffice 1.1 and it was downright drabby. Then came along version 2.x. A real difference!
I really love the PDF functionality. While it's not top-notch like Adobe Acrobat or its ilks, it's perfect for generating presentation-quality documents.
OpenOffice.org 2 is an excellent office suite. For those that says it lacks a decent email program, you can always try Mozilla Thunderbird.
And whereas CNet said that peer support is a bad thing? Microsoft's tech live support which is 80$ or something like that, is less than helpful. Old-fashioned peer support is better than live script-monkey support. (Microsoft makes a lot of profit from tech-support anyways.)
User Rating: 8/10
Why don't you find it from online merchants? Its FREE!
Pros: Compatible file formats, ability publish to pdf, cost
Cons: Some features may be difficult to understand how to execute. No Email Client Program. Lack of templates in a centralized database.
User Rating: 9/10
Great product and GREAT price- Free
Pros: Same as MS office
Cons: not as many features as office but i dont need all of them and the price of MS office
User Rating: 7/10
A real great office suite
Pros: Powerful free alterative to Microsoft Office easy to use and great for budget users.
Cons: Not many but probably doesnâ??t have an e-mail client.
I would recommend this to anyone on a budget or a small business that can't afford an office suite.
Overall I would use this as my primary office suite.
User Rating: 9/10
CNET are you kidding?
Pros: great alternative to MS Office, compatible with MS Office
Cons: Not as many feature, but most users don't use those extra features only available in MS Office
Edit: And how could I forget? It doesn't try to guess what you want! And there are no annoying talking paperclips!
User Rating: 9/10
My favorite office software.
Pros: Tons of tools and useful features, stable, powerful, and FREE.
Cons: Few templates included, almost no "wizards."
However, that doesn't mean I'm ponying up the cash to buy MS Office. I admit I didn't have an attack of conscience, nor did the software nazis break down my door and blow up my PC. I just finally discovered OpenOffice, and actually prefer it.
For my purposes, OOo Writer is a better fit than is Word (and I always liked Word). It makes better use of text, paragraph, and page styles, and I like being able to export directly to PDF, with links and bookmarks intact. PDF forms are even possible.
For my own use, I keep my files in OOo's native ODF formats, but I have had no trouble sharing DOC, XLS, and PPT files with MS Office users. With a little careful attention to the program setup, all my documents have ported to and from MS Office completely intact, even some rather complex legal documents with tracked changes. There _are_ limits to OOo's compatibility with MS Office (macros don't translate, for example), but my guess is that most users will have few or no problems.
In terms of raw "power", I'm told Calc and Impress are a little behind they're Office counterparts (Excel and PowerPoint, respectively), but you couldn't prove it by me. Both applications do all I need them to do and more, and again, I have been able to read and write files in MS Office formats without problems.
I can't make a meaningful judgment of Base, since my database skills are rudimentary at best. All I've done with it was a couple of simple reports, and it worked well enough.
Draw is sort of a cross between MS Paint and Visio. I've used it a little to make some simple flow charts and diagrams. Like the rest of the bundle, it's easy to integrate Draw graphics into other OOo documents.
OpenOffice has a low learning curve, but unlike MS Office or Star Office, it includes very few templates and almost no "wizards." If you've been depending on those, you won't find the transition as easy as I did.
Customizing the program is also a little more involved than it is with MS Office. Sometimes you have to drill down farther in the menus to do things like defining keyboard shortcuts or default settings.
There are really only two types of users to which I wouldn't recommend OpenOffice: rank PC novices and corporate users who have invested a fortune on, and are locked-in to, all the MS back-end stuff like SharePoint. To the novices I say use something like MS Works. To the corporate users, all I can say is I'm sorry you got taken. Everybody else can use OOo and enjoy.
User Rating: 7/10
Complete But Lacking
Pros: Free, Stable, Document recovery
Cons: Lack of pre built templates/clipart, spell checks suggests to many words
User Rating: 9/10
The Price is Right!
Pros: Can't ask for much more at this price.
Cons: Doesn't do e-mail or desktop publishing, but those aren't important in the overall scheme.
User Rating: 9/10
OpenOffice is all grown up now.
Pros: Flexible, compatible, powerful office suite for free.
Cons: Not as many templates or "wizards" as some commercial software provides
Jeff Bertolucci of CNet states that OOo lacks the admin tools and support available with MS Office, and that's true, but the fact is that Microsoft's ?support? doesn't come for free. Only those businesses that subscribe to those services, or those who have signed large enterprise license agreements get that kind of help. As for the administration tools, I've dealt with companies who licensed as many as 40,000 desktops for MS Office, and I have yet to see any of them take full advantage of Microsoft's admin or collaboration tools. For small to medium sized companies, and obviously individual users, those options are a non-issue. I would even go as far as to say one might even get better advice and help from some of the online OpenOffice forums than one gets from Microsoft or WordPerfect, depending on the issue.
OpenOffice is not perfect, no software is, and I will admit MS Office has it beat in terms of conveniences. Office has more and better ?wizards? for those who use them, and tasks like assigning shortcut keys to paragraph or text styles is faster and easier. OpenOffice has plenty of attributes of its own, however. Creating and using templates is easier and more flexible, files can be exported directly to PDF or Flash, and its word processor (Writer) makes better use of page and text styles.
Compatibility with MS Office is not perfect, but it is close, particularly when it comes to Word documents. I've opened, edited, saved, and shared some rather complex Word files with fewer problems than some of my associates experienced using differing versions of Word itself. Tables, indexes, frames, graphics, and even tracked changes have translated from one program to the other without any unpleasant surprises.
Oh, yeah. And OpenOffice is free. Whether you need a single copy or a thousand, it costs nothing. Nada. Zilch, zero, bupkus. What's not to like?
User Rating: 9/10
You get more than you pay for ...... which is nothing
Pros: This latest version is less liable to crash on you compared to earlier versions. No problems reading documents created by MSOffice. One item missed out by reviewers is the HTML editor within write.
Cons: Still crashable. The HTML editor can do with more refinement.
I did not rate 10 simply because of one crash without permanent damage and improvements needed for its HTML editor functions. Sure, it is nice to have a email client and more clipart & background presentation options but how many use or require so many options?
User Rating: 9/10
Excellent Alternative
Pros: Free. Does everything a basic user needs.
Cons: Crashed a couple of time on me.
I might not use it if you do very fancy stuff but the simple business owner using a basic software, it is an undeniable value!
rg
User Rating: 9/10
Much improved compatibility with MS file formats
Pros: At this price, it must be value for money!
Cons: Label printing could be much improved
User Rating: 9/10
Excellent Product
Pros: Price and Compatability
Cons: No substitute for Outlook
User Rating: 9/10
great MS Office substitute, especially for old/slow computers
Pros: error and crash-free; great integration between suite programs; works great with Win98
Cons: slow boot-up; problems converting files with embedded graphics;
User Rating: 9/10
Doesn't crash as much as MS office.
Pros: It is FREE
Cons: I have none
User Rating: 9/10
ideal office suite for an office
Pros: Multifuntional office suite
Cons: a bit memory hungry on old pc's
User Rating: 9/10
The best MS OFFICE compatible suite there is
Pros: Free download. Comes with a database.
Cons: Printing envelopes is not intuitive.
User Rating: 8/10
Viable Option
Pros: Easy to use, Powerful
Cons: No Email Editor
User Rating: 9/10
Great product, get it now!
Pros: FREE but worth 100 dollars
Cons: The dictionary isn't as good as MS-WORD,
I switched to Open Office about a year or so ago. I agree it is a very good program, and you can't beat the price! (Free). MS Office is a superior product, but hardly worth the money! I am impressed with Open Office! Get it! What have you got to loose?
User Rating: 9/10
Spectacular value.
Pros: Do YOU want to pay $400 for an office suite without PDF creation?
Cons: No e-mail client, no photo editor.
It's reassuring to see somebody challenge Microsoft, and it's even nicer to get it for free.
In its earlier days, I wasn't able to rely on StarOffice. When OpenOffice debuted, it was darn good but not quite there yet. Now the ugly duckling has grown into a beautiful swan.
The biggest improvement in my book over the previous version of OpenOffice: the new Impress. It's now more intuitive and user-friendly.
And let's not forget PDF creation. That's a huge benefit Microsoft Office can't touch, and it costs hundreds.
I'll probably never delete my copy of Microsoft Word, but I might just never open it.
User Rating: 10/10
Perfect office suite!
Pros: Nice interface, word compatability, export to adobe pdf, nice features, good community, open source, and much more!
Cons: A pretty big download file, pretty slow start up.
The conclusion is if you have microsoft office xp or any earlier version upgrade to this free, full featured office suite, to tell the truth this is not as good as microsoft office 2003 but what do you expect for free?
User Rating: 7/10
Different, but just as good
Pros: Will do almost anything MS Office can
Cons: color sorting issues
Also, there's no Outlook alternative, but you can use free Palm-Desktop and free Thunderbird to fill the gap.
I'd say that if you really need to save money and you are open to small changes, go with OOo and take a break from Microsoft.
My full opinion is here: http://www.the-vu.com/vacation_from_Microsoft.htm
User Rating: 9/10
Requirement to any serious install
Pros: Free, opens and saves most formats, ISO-compliant native format, ease of use, excellent document recovery on crashes
Cons: It actually does crash... rarely. Some features could be more detailed.
User Rating: 9/10
Wonderful !
Pros: Free ! Easy to use, easy to learn, works almost identical to MS Office
Cons: Couple of little differences, like the spreadsheet program
Bottom line, we are all programmed to do things Microsoft's way and we have been using their software for years. OpenOffice does a pretty darn good job of doing pretty similar. It's not an exact clone so if you are expecting that, you will be disappointed. But give yourself a few minutes to learn some of the differences and you will start to like OpenOffice better. Some of the ways they do things actually make more sense.
Try it ! You'll like it! And did I mention it is FREE ! (and runs on lots of platforms!)
User Rating: 7/10
Good For What It's Intended For
Pros: Stability; Cross-platform availability; Better compatibility with most Word and Excel documents; No need for constant updates.
Cons: May have trouble opening documents using power tools in MS Office; UI seems a bit dated.
Only Writer and Calc are used on my system, and documents create in those apps work surprisingly well with Word and Excel. Those using some of the special features of MS Office may run into problems. There's no real need for an E-mail client (especially since Thunderbird fills the bill nicely).
Overall, OpenOffice 2.0 should meet the expectations of most average users.
