office suites- Open Office vs Easy Office

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dansheen

I am looking for an alternative to Microsoft. I'd like to know which of
these programs you prefer. I downloaded open office yesterday and it seems
pretty good although a little slow. How does it compare to the other
program?
Thanks in advance.
 
I am looking for an alternative to Microsoft. I'd like to know which of
these programs you prefer. I downloaded open office yesterday and it seems
pretty good although a little slow. How does it compare to the other
program?
Click to expand...

Open Office is better, IMHO. Easy Office (use to have) a nag screen to remind
not to use it for commercail stuff etc...

Open office is still regularly being developed and is open source, and I
personally think the filters are better with compatibility (though again Easy
Office may be better now)

As for the speed factor, on my system they were the same... (But will admitt
I have a pretty grunty system)

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I am looking for an alternative to Microsoft. I'd like to know which of
these programs you prefer. I downloaded open office yesterday and it seems
pretty good although a little slow. How does it compare to the other
program?
Click to expand...

If you are looking for a complete office suite with full functionality
including access to databases, OpenOffice is far superior to EasyOffice, in my
opinion.
It does load slowly, but there is an icon you can put in your system tray that
speeds up the opening process considerably.
I just wish they'd get a Word Perfect filter.
Connie
 
I got a free version of Star Office at a convention.

(Star Office is just Open Office with user support added from Sun, and some
useful conversion filters where the rights to use them have to be paid for.
Minor stuff mostly The idea is to create a product that will make corporate
buyers comfortable.)

I also consider myself to be quite knowledgeable about Microsoft Office and
WordPerfect Suite, and I consider myself comfortable with IBM's Lotus
SmartSuite. I'm also quite fond of Microsoft Works, an under-rated contender
for the small office/home business, IMHO.

To sum up my findings, it's a mixed bag of goodies.

From what I can tell, the word processor and spreadsheet are quite good.
Easily the equal of anything on the market today. They are a bit sluggish
compared the big three (Well, the big One and the medium sized two), but my
understanding is that Open Office is interpreted Java source, so the speed
is good, considering. At any rate, they were fast enough not to cause me
any frustration and that's all that counts. From an operational POV,I would
give them a grade of A-, it would have been higher if the speed were equal
to WordPerfect and QuattroPro.

I didn't use the presentation software. But I don't know why that is
considered a part of a basic office suite anyway. In my opinion that is
specialized software.

There is no PIM included. No Outlook, no Lotus Calendar (the best there is,
I think), or even a miserable version of Corel's PIM (Sorry, the name
escapes me). Grade of F for not even trying, A well integrated PIM is an
important part of a serious office suite if you intend to use it for
business.

The database element is just miserable. From the documentation, my
understanding is that Open Office dropped the database portion of the suite
for a front end application that allows you to connect to third party
database engines. StarOffice added a crippled version of ADABAS. I
couldn't get either one to work (that's pretty crippled IMO), and I consider
myself rather knowledgeable about databases, I'm a Certified Teradata
Professional, and I've worked professionally with DB/2, Teradata, Oracle,
Progress, MS Access, and Paradox. After 3 or 4 days, I gave up in
frustration. And I had tried to connect to Access and Paradox using the
front end. The database is NOT ready for the office. For the office, stuff
needs to work right out of the box with no time wasted. Grade: Don't even
bother.

On the whole, the suite is NOT ready to run a business with, though I think
Sun is on the right track by adding the little extra stuff to Open Office
that have to be there to make a viable office suite. But if all you need is
a good word processor and/or spreadsheet, you should seriously consider this
suite. I think somebody already said, 'The price is right!"
 
If you are looking for a complete office suite with full functionality
including access to databases, OpenOffice is far superior to EasyOffice, in my
opinion.
It does load slowly, but there is an icon you can put in your system tray that
speeds up the opening process considerably.
I just wish they'd get a Word Perfect filter.
Connie
Click to expand...

It does speed OO up considerably to have it in the sytem tray. I
started that way, and did the same with Mozilla...then I looked at the
load of those two .exe's in task manager/processes, and stopped
running them that way. Now they're both pretty doggy on my Athlon
1800 with 512MB SDRAM. I'll definetly DL OO 1.1. I was using
Firebird, which was much quicker to load, but had some problems with
it freezing.
 
Hello, JunkMonkey!
You wrote on Sun, 05 Oct 2003 15:40:33 GMT:

J> (Star Office is just Open Office with user support added from Sun, and
J> some useful conversion filters where the rights to use them have to be
J> paid for. Minor stuff mostly The idea is to create a product that will
J> make corporate buyers comfortable.)

J> I also consider myself to be quite knowledgeable about Microsoft Office
J> and WordPerfect Suite, and I consider myself comfortable with IBM's
J> Lotus SmartSuite. I'm also quite fond of Microsoft Works, an under-rated
J> contender for the small office/home business, IMHO.

J> To sum up my findings, it's a mixed bag of goodies.

J> From what I can tell, the word processor and spreadsheet are quite good.
J> Easily the equal of anything on the market today. They are a bit
J> sluggish compared the big three (Well, the big One and the medium sized
J> two), but my understanding is that Open Office is interpreted Java
J> source, so the speed is good, considering. At any rate, they were fast
J> enough not to cause me any frustration and that's all that counts. From
J> an operational POV,I would give them a grade of A-, it would have been
J> higher if the speed were equal to WordPerfect and QuattroPro.

J> I didn't use the presentation software. But I don't know why that is
J> considered a part of a basic office suite anyway. In my opinion that is
J> specialized software.

J> There is no PIM included. No Outlook, no Lotus Calendar (the best there
J> is, I think), or even a miserable version of Corel's PIM (Sorry, the
J> name escapes me). Grade of F for not even trying, A well integrated PIM
J> is an important part of a serious office suite if you intend to use it
J> for business.

J> The database element is just miserable. From the documentation, my
J> understanding is that Open Office dropped the database portion of the
J> suite for a front end application that allows you to connect to third
J> party database engines. StarOffice added a crippled version of ADABAS.
J> I couldn't get either one to work (that's pretty crippled IMO), and I
J> consider myself rather knowledgeable about databases, I'm a Certified
J> Teradata Professional, and I've worked professionally with DB/2,
J> Teradata, Oracle, Progress, MS Access, and Paradox. After 3 or 4 days,
J> I gave up in frustration. And I had tried to connect to Access and
J> Paradox using the front end. The database is NOT ready for the office.
J> For the office, stuff needs to work right out of the box with no time
J> wasted. Grade: Don't even bother.

J> On the whole, the suite is NOT ready to run a business with, though I
J> think Sun is on the right track by adding the little extra stuff to Open
J> Office that have to be there to make a viable office suite. But if all
J> you need is a good word processor and/or spreadsheet, you should
J> seriously consider this suite. I think somebody already said, 'The
J> price is right!"

J> ??>> I am looking for an alternative to Microsoft. I'd like to know which
??>> of these programs you prefer. I downloaded open office yesterday and
??>> it
J> seems
??>> pretty good although a little slow. How does it compare to the other
??>> program?
??>> Thanks in advance.
??>>
To add some comments by someone who has used both and gotten feedback from a
client:

OpenOffice just barely beat out Easy Office on my "Best of Freeware" site
(shameless plug) http://home.wi.rr.com/johnhood/freeware/ because of a
larger range of compatability, and ease of use. The presenter in EasyOffice
is NOT something I'd use for business presentations. EasyOffice does not
have a PIM per se. but does have a built in contacts manager with history.
There is also a database componant with wizard. EasyOffice's tech support
is very good, the spreadsheet program has rebuilt reports for cash flow, AP
and AR, etc.Even if OO is better all around. EasyOffice is a
"First-runner-up".

With best regards, John H.. E-mail: (e-mail address removed)
 
The database element is just miserable. From the documentation,
my
J> understanding is that Open Office dropped the database portion
of the J> suite for a front end application that allows you to
connect to third J> party database engines. StarOffice added a
crippled version of ADABAS. J> I couldn't get either one to work
(that's pretty crippled IMO), and I J> consider myself rather
knowledgeable about databases, I'm a Certified J> Teradata
Professional, and I've worked professionally with DB/2, J>
Teradata, Oracle, Progress, MS Access, and Paradox. After 3 or 4
days, J> I gave up in frustration. And I had tried to connect to
Access and J> Paradox using the front end. The database is NOT
ready for the office. J> For the office, stuff needs to work
right out of the box with no time J> wasted. Grade: Don't even
bother.
Click to expand...

While I'm not in a position to dispute this, I will say that there are
lot of users working hard at improving OOo's usefulness as a database
front-end, particularly with MySQL and Access. Templates and examples
have been written and made available, and it is one area that is
receiving much attention. I would recommend checking out oooforums.org
and ooodocs.org to monitor progress in upgrading OOos undeniably weak
database support.
 
As a software developer myself, I know that it is darn hard to produce even
bad software and producing good software is even harder. I commend those
involved in this effort. Since I couldn't get any part of the database
programs to work, I can't comment on the quality of the programs themselves.

One area that needs help for sure is documentation. And here I fault Sun as
much as anyone else since their goal is to get a viable competitor to MS
Office developed on the cheap. There was one Sun document that related to
the installation of the database tools, and I found it murky, confusing and
obtuse. There was absolutely NO help on the ADABAS database from either Sun
OR ADABAS.
 
I like Easy Office but admit I really only use Word most of the time (came
with the computer). I also found a clearance CD copy of easy office for
about five bucks so there's no nag screen!
 
I am looking for an alternative to Microsoft. I'd like to know which of
<snip>

[re: OpenOffice apps]
I didn't use the presentation software. But I don't know why that is
considered a part of a basic office suite anyway. In my opinion that is
specialized software.
Click to expand...

So is a PIM for that matter.
There is no PIM included. No Outlook, no Lotus Calendar (the best there is,
I think), or even a miserable version of Corel's PIM (Sorry, the name
escapes me). Grade of F for not even trying, A well integrated PIM is an
important part of a serious office suite if you intend to use it for
business.
Click to expand...

Depending on your business needs a good presentation program could be
more important than a PIM. BTW, OpenOffice converts PowerPoint
presentation files...adequately, if they're static. But you will lose
some of the PPT customized amimations and features.
The database element is just miserable. From the documentation, my
understanding is that Open Office dropped the database portion of the suite
for a front end application that allows you to connect to third party
database engines. StarOffice added a crippled version of ADABAS. I
couldn't get either one to work (that's pretty crippled IMO), and I consider
myself rather knowledgeable about databases, I'm a Certified Teradata
Professional, and I've worked professionally with DB/2, Teradata, Oracle,
Progress, MS Access, and Paradox. After 3 or 4 days, I gave up in
frustration. And I had tried to connect to Access and Paradox using the
front end. The database is NOT ready for the office. For the office, stuff
needs to work right out of the box with no time wasted. Grade: Don't even
bother.
Click to expand...

I haven't used it but I've read here that there is a freeware
standalone relational database app available called dbworx. Have you
tried that one?
On the whole, the suite is NOT ready to run a business with, though I think
Sun is on the right track by adding the little extra stuff to Open Office
that have to be there to make a viable office suite. But if all you need is
a good word processor and/or spreadsheet, you should seriously consider this
suite. I think somebody already said, 'The price is right!"
Click to expand...

And the presentation app isn't bad either. But I wish it came with
more templates, though downloading those from Microsoft and converting
them in OpenOffice works to a degree.
 
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