Office & productivity software forum: Poll: Which word-processing software do you use?

For a home office or for personal use, OpenOffice is OK. But for those sorts of applications, almost anything is OK. However, if you have to exchange professional documents (i.e. with any place in the corporate world where MS Word is the standard), it's marginal compatibility with MS Word (and even worse Excel compatibility) just doesn't cut it. This is especially evident when working with outline documents (or spreadsheets with graphs).

At one time or another I've played with just about every other word processing package out there. My business is such that I have to have MS Word compatibility, and none of them worked well in that roll. Then, while searching for something to use under Linux, I stumbled across SoftMaker Office. Its Excel compatibility is excellent and its Word compatibility is even better. I bought several licenses for my Linux machines and my dual boot (Kubuntu & WinXP) notebook. I also got a copy for my wife. The Windows only version is $70 and a CD-ROM with both Windows and Linux versions is $100. Not free like OpenOffice, but a lot cheaper than MS Office.

The SoftMaker Office 2008 beta is now available on their web site (http://www.softmaker.com/english/index_en.htm). In addition to its Excel and Word clones, it now includes a compatible PowerPoint clone.

Strongly recommended by this satisfied customer...

I'm using Open Office, I started with Version 1.1, I have no problems with it.

I was reading other postings here, someone said: "I use what my clients use", not bad idea, but if you try Open Office it will convince you, not 100% compatible but maybe 99.99%

Oh, I didn't mention, I'm running it on Debian Linux. Every .doc, .xls, .ppt or .pps y receive by mail, I can read them, modify them, save them, forward them without trouble for me or for my friends, relatives or clients.

Hi folks

For those who take a look at my - few - other posts will see that I call myself a Macboy. And Macboy's don't like Microsoft. I would even go a step further and use the acronym I once saw on forum like these and call myself a ABM user (Any But Microsoft), but .... I use Office nearly everywhere: on my new and shiny iMac, on my old eMac, at the office, etc ... and - I must admit - generally it works (yep even if there are some funny bugs like the recently spotted "display" error http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YYSKSICcME ).

I am even an advocate of OpenOffice and believe that it is a worthy alternative. And guess what, I installed it no later than two days ago on my new iMac, opened my xls files and started even converting them into the osd format. But I could not update the data in my charts and was loosing quite a lot of time in finding a solution, which I didn't found and I went back to my old Office from the Mactopia team.

About iWork, yes it seems quite good, but I still have to pay for it and don't get as much as I need.

For other alternatives I am still too afraid about compatibility issues.

At the end, being a Macboy and ABM user doesn't help to get rid of the Office package. Let's wait for a better open alternative .

PS: My preferred text authoring tool is still and will probably always LaTeX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX), but that's for good looking and easy documents, not a replacement for the Office suite.

I won't use MS Office. My main reason is the price. That in itself would put any person off. They could have given me the full version and kept all the garbage they put on my computer and I would have been very happy. But since I have a 90 trial version that expired a LONG time ago, I have used Google Docs and OpenOffice. Now I know of a few others I may want to look at.

Its is a combination Word Processing, Desktop Publishing and Web Publishing program in one (You create in one and with one click the DTP becomes a web page.
It does everything Word does and in fact you can export to Word. Compatibility is a goofy non issue today. It exports in RTF and PDF and unless you're doing something incredibly complex that is nota problem.
Most importantly its supremely easier to use, with a huge amount of
control over unusual placement, sizing and compatiablity of text. It cost about $80.
I've used it in business (advertising agency) for the entire computer age and never had a compatiblity problem and best of all, they have free phone support.
I have never needed to buy a Microsoft program, except for Windows and we all know how well every version of that worked. LOL, It is still beyond me why people pay a fortune for Microsoft programs which are bulky, buggy, not state of the art and difficult to use when perfectly good alternatives are there. Course thats why Larry Elison is a billionaire.

My first word processor was Borland's now long defunct Sprint for DOS, my first spreadsheet programme was Borland's Quattro Pro ver. 1 for DOS and my first database management programme was Borland's Paradox ver 2 for DOS.

Today I use Corel Wordperfect for word processing, Quattro Pro as my spreadsheet and I still use Paradox. I use Opera (my browser of choice - superior functionality to Firefox) for presentations.

My wife and children use Open Office.

I have had to use MS Office as a one time employer insisted on it. Unfortunately I found it counter intuitive and it had real compatability problems with other wordprocessors and spreadsheets. While Lotus, Corel and Open Office make a good to very good stab at importing Micrsoft documents, I found Microsoft products were very poor at importing documents in other formats. Using MS Office I found myself in the embarrassing position of telling non Microsoft Office users that they would have to convert to Microsoft if they were to do business with me. MS Word's tools for handling long documents (something that is important to me) were very flaky. I also badly missed Corel's reveal codes.

I presume that people who find non Microsoft products less intuitive do so only because they have 'grown up' on Microsoft and are so used to Microsoft ways that they feel anything else is not quite right.

And of course Corel products are cheaper to purchase. Open Office costs, hmmmmm ... how much? Wow, nothing at all?

I am constantly baffled by the fact that given Microsoft Office products are so expensive in comparision to the opposition and that Microsoft expends so much resources in developing their products why they are not so much better from the point of the large majority of users than the opposition. With Microsoft's resources really there should not be any opposition at all.

i use think 3 for all my word processing because it is easy to use and no software is downloaded to system thus saving on space.

i have used think3 numerous times and would rate it as excellent.

think 3 has other software as well.

FYI: Apple has discontinued development of AppleWorks. Take a look at iWork if you haven't already.

Ever since I got my first computer in 2001, I've used Office 2000 most of the time. It's simple and it's easy to get used to. However, while getting my computer fixed once, I borrowed a PC from a friend that's a computer tech. He loaned me the computer which had all of the basic stuff I needed on it. It, however, contained Office XP. Office XP had its new features and its differences from Office 2000, but after a while, I was using it like a pro. But overall, Office 2000 is still the best. I read the story in Lee's mass email about the butchering of Office 2007, and it makes me even more unlikely to upgrade.

Being Tech savvy and value driven makes a difference in whether one uses word of some other word processing solution. Here is why I don't buy MS Word/Office for personal or business use.

1. Cost of MS Word/Office relative to the total cost is high. Most PC manufacture don't include MS Word/Office as a standard install because of cost.

2. I don't use 95% of the features of MS Word.

3. Many more viable alternative that allow for better collaboration and these programs are free or cost a faction of MS Word.

I believe I will eventually get used to the new interface of Word 2007. However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go back to Word 2003 simply because 2007 does not support Twain.

I used to "insert" from my scanner for many reasons and save the Word docs with my maps, pictures, etc.

What an improvement ??????????

Mike

I use Word now - but some features were much better in WordPerfect. Word is a sheer horror for long documents! If I could, I'd rather use PageMaker !

I used to use Microsoft Word when I had a PC and liked it very much; in fact, I cut my teeth on it, so to speak. I chiefly used the programs for correspondence and writing stories. However, I switched to Mac and frankly did not care for either of the Apple programs.

I then discovered Neo-Office. Neo-Office, I understand is an offshoot of Open Office. It has served my purposes admirably on the Mac. I use it now to the exclusion of any other program.

In my opinion Wordperfect is a slick intuitive program compared to kludgy Word and only Microsofts monopoly has kept Word afloat all these years. I've always used and upgraded Wordperfect and will continue to do so as long as it's available. When I bring files into Wordperfect from Word, and look at the internal codes, it's immediately apparant that the user had no idea what they were doing when they produced them and were simply guessing at what formatting commands to use! Its fundemental file architecture is Macintosh adapted to the PC.

Excel, I'll admit, is an excellent program and I was overjoyed many years back when I got out of my corporate environment and could drop Lotus like a hot potato. It's use of the mouse in intuitive which Lotus never understood. I now use Quatro Pro and like it even better than Excel.

Although I prefer to use the WordPerfect Office X3 suite of programs, like others who have posted comments, I must also have Office 2003 to maintain compatibility with most of the rest of the world. More than half of your members probably cannot remember when WordPerfect had a virtual monopoly on the PC platform for word processing under DOS, but they were left behind when Microsoft introduced Windows and kept WordPerfect Corporation in the dark about its development. By the time WordPerfect was able to catch up with a version for the new Windows operating system, Microsoft had already developed unstoppable momentum with MS Office. Another Microsoft advantage is that they can bundle Office with Windows in the enterprise environment, virtually forcing large institutions to standardize. Because of this, many WordPerfect users were forced to switch to MS Office and MS Word by their large employers. Although the current version of WordPerfect has many powerful editing and layout features that you would need both MS Word and MS Publisher to equal, Corel can no longer get a major market share as is evidenced by your poll. Another great feature included in the Corel WordPerfect Office X3 suite, that is lacking in MS Office 2003, is its ability to publish directly to an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). Web pages published by the WordPerfect suite are written in a standard html format that do not require any MS Offices to view. Those features, alone, often make the WordPerfect Office X3 Suite worth the purchase price.