Free Office software
Rating: 8 out of 10
January 18, 2019
CB
Vetted Review
Verified User
1 year of experience
The Apache Open Office suite is seen in our organization as a replacement for Microsoft Office that will be used across all departments. Right now it is not, however, I have been evaluating it for a while now in order to present the replacement proposal to higher management. The biggest business problem that this will solve is reducing cost while addressing the needs covered currently by Microsoft Office.
- The best thing that OpenOffice does is being free. The cost of Microsoft Office is high and smaller shops can't afford it.
- OpenOffice has similar features with Microsoft Office and that is a lot, given that the Office team at Microsoft is huge and this product goes through all cycles of marketing, product planning&requirements, development, testing, rollout, and production maintenance.
- In terms of performance, I have seen OpenOffice run as well as or even better than Microsoft Office.
- It is cross-platform, one of the key strengths of OpenOffice.
- Provides compatibility of the generated files with Microsoft Office - this will make the transition to OpenOffice for any company smoother.
Cons
- The look & feel in general of OpenOffice is outdated and it doesn't match with the one from Microsoft.
- The usability of the menus can use a little improvement; sometimes it is harder to find what you need in a reasonable time.
- Some incompatibilities with .docx and macros in Excel .xlsx files are present. If you have complex macros and formulas in Excel files you may find it won't work in other tools.