[ubuntu-uk] MS vs. OO

[Gordon Burgess-Parker]

  On 17/09/2010 12:16, Glen Mehn wrote:
>
>
> Word wins out over Writer, I think, for the following reasons:
> - Track Changes is just easier to use.
> - Comments make more sense-- you highlight a section to comment, rather
> than picking a point, so when there's a long comment or a tricky bit of
> comprehension, it helps. A lot. Especially when you're
> co-writing/editing a 50pp+ document with people speaking different
> languages in six timezones.
> - Writer's styles&  formatting is just inconsistent. Sometimes styles
> get applied, sometimes they don't. Sometimes styles change (revert to
> default) between iterations of the same document on the same OS on the
> same install of OOO.
>

Interestingly I have both Office 2007 and OO 3.2.1 and I would make the 
following observations.
Word has the ability to print several pages on one sheet whereas OO does 
not. (Same machine, Windows 7, same printer).
However, the "print booklet" function in Word 2007 is well and truly 
broken (whether they have fixed that in 2010 I don't know, and as it's 
extremely unlikely that I shall upgrade to 2010 given the excellence of 
the current OO version, I probably will never find out!) - the OO 
version (print brochure) is very good.
The Ribbon I find pretty good. It doesn't take too long to find 
everything, but I also like the menus and icons of OO as well.
The MAJOR problem I have with Word 2007 is that if you use the default 
OOXML format, then to send a document to a non-2007 (or 2010) user, you 
HAVE to do a Save-As into .doc format, which means that you then have 
TWO versions of the document. In OO all you need to do is 
File-Send-Email Document as Microsoft Word and it automatically converts 
ODF to ,doc IN THE EMAIL, so you effectively only have ONE version of 
the document on your HDD.