NicolasV  | 2007-06-19
Now a real alternative to MS Office
I switched from MS Office to openoffice 3 months ago, and it works just fine. Both openoffice Calc (spreadsheet) and Writer (word processor) are great products, full features and reliable. I was less happy with Openoffice Impress (presentation). It worked well opening and saving ppt file, but the UI is often surprising or even buggy.

SarunasB  | 2007-01-04
Great alternative to MS Office
Just the same layout and functionnality as the omnipresent Microsoft Office suite, -almost- fully compatible (except for some seldomly used features), and free to use (can be downloaded on its web site). A great alternative to those who don't want to pay the full price for the widespread MS version, and don't care about the few (marginal) limitations. There are some scalability issues, as OpenOffice Writer (for e.g.) may have trouble handling large .doc files, or running vocabulary checks. I also miss the language detection feature (guess it's coming in some next version). Besides that, everything really works great, and some layout features are even better than those of the alternatives. Strange that so few people know and/or use it, really, as it is one of the best efforts for providing viable open source software alternatives to the general public.

Cosmin  | 2007-06-13
Good software
I mainly use Writer and for day to day use it has all the functionality you may need. I find it well organized and easy to use once you get used to it. The other applications in the suite need a bit more work on user friendliness, but they have enough functionality.

Iterator  | 2007-08-27
Good software getting better..
Open Office is a very good office software and it is getting better. I like its open document formats and the fact that it is open-source. This secures that I will be able to access and re-use my Open Office documents in the future.

Ramona  | 2007-07-29
A nice surogate for MS Office
Open Office is a modern fit of engineering - process wise. When we get right down to it, the quality of the product leaves room for hope. It is great to use if you don't like the MS Office 2007, because it shares some of the old version's enchanting life experiences, like poor document recovery that really "brightness up" your week. It also has an added bonus of not being compatible with the MS product. While using it I actually resorted to asking friends that use MS Office to check my documents for distorted formatting before I sent them further on. Took up some time, especially since they usually found something wrong with the documents. I would strongly recommend it to a friend, for home use - it really is the best alternative there is. However, I've given up doing business presentations using Open Office. Painfull as it may be to admit this, Microsoft still runs this market.