Better alternative to MS Office?

AJUK said:
It all depends on what you 'need' to do with the suite. I bet my mortgage that all those singing the praises of Office 2007 (which I have used by the way) never use all of the functionality. Therefore, OpenOffice with Thunderbird or Evolution is more than adequate for 99% of the people on this planet, the other 1% percent need to get out more.

As for Outlook, it is without doubt the most appalling example of software ever written. Just simply horrible. :)
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Why do you say that? Outlook 2007 looks brilliant, To-Do bar for one is amazing, and Thunderbird looks like an email client from 1999, i.e. minimal featureset with a bland interface. You're right aout most the peple only needing a basic client, but the "other 1%" need more than basic functionality, for one the ease of VBA and to create macros to interface with all Office programs is one, but if you are saying people need to get out more, you should perhaps witness the profileration of Office in front offices, you would be surprised how many traders rely on Excel for their blotters. I and many other businesses etc would be taking about 1000 steps back if we replaced Office with one of the "opensource" alternatives.

There is no rival to Outlook 2007 as a complete e-mail client and Office 207 as a complete suite. If all you do is write emails to your friends, obsess over plain text email etc, then Thunderbird's your client.
 
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willhub said:
Is there a better alternative to MS Office and all of its apps or is MS Office the best?
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Simple answer - no.
There are plenty of alternatives out there but in my opinion there is nothing better.
And this is my opinion as an IT Manager encouraged to save money where possible.

With the price of Office 2007 Home (so OK, you don't get Outlook) so low it is an absolute bargain.
 
I hated Office 2007's interface and went back to office 2003.

I use office 2003 for windows

neoffice on my macbook

openoffice on my linux mint partition
 
I use Office 2007 for everything except email, where I use Thunderbird. Outlook just doesn't play nicely with IMAP.
 
To be perfectly honest, with the amount of resources and the user base surrounding MS Office you'll be hard pressed to find a real alternative. From the ones I have used it is by far the best for functionality, features and user-friendliness. That is not to say it is perfect -- far from infact, but it is the best for most people out there.

I have used Open Office (the closest rival in my opinion), but it's simply not in the same league. Trying to do the most simple things such as auto contents, smart figures, titles, styles and even page numbering weren't as simple and logical as others and the features just weren't as well planned and executed.

However, on a final note, if you are looking for a replacement email client only and not a full blown work, calendar etc etc to replace Outlook, then Thunderbird is awesome - for my needs as a student it's sufficient.
 
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I use it for both home and corporate wise.

There is no 'best alternative'. Office has had billions of pounds of research pushed into it and none of the competitors get anywhere close.

For AOL just check the settings are right - it does work with AOL and it's down to a setting you haven't made (as one of the previous posters suggests enabling outbound security will probably fix that).

I do use a lot of functionality including Access (I have a massive cheat relational database) and Excel but mainly use Word as I'm doing a lot of documents at the moment for various projects and find the ease of use and just open and get to work second to none.

If you have a licence for it then there is no reaon what so ever to use anything else. The cost might be too much for some but it is the best and with being the best it is going to cost.



M.
 
Phil2008 said:
Plus thunderbird will let you have multiple accounts
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So does Outlook. Outlook works fine with IMAP accounts, but in a different league with an Exchange server.

Anyway, Office is the best suite out there by far. People will turn around and dispute this perhaps for SharePoint Designer, but this was built to help bring out more features in MOSS than create fancy websites, and for that purpose it is great.
 
Oxy said:
I hated Office 2007's interface and went back to office 2003.

I use office 2003 for windows

neoffice on my macbook

openoffice on my linux mint partition
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I did hate Office 2007's interface at first, but when you start using it you realise it is miles ahead, it makes most functions so much quicker to find (1,2 clicks rather than many for some) and Excel's ribbon is the poster child of how good it is - filtering, formatting tables, graphs, linking to external data etc is a league ahead of 2003.
 
For multiple accounts check out Mail in control panel. You can have zillions of accounts the only thing that does annoy me about Office is theres no news reader (and thats being completley honest and critical).



M.
 
Office 2007's Ribbon Toolbar grows on you then you wonder how the hell you could have got on without it. ;)

Also MS make more money out of Office than they do from Windows (due to Corps).

Because some peep needs something basic to send mail and do a few Doc's (as said above), use Outlook Express or Webmail Clients (IMO crap) and use Notepad or Wordpad. :p

You could simply buy Word and at least you can do some Doc's or use that Open Office.

I don't follow the part about Office and resources, if your not running any of its APP's its doing nothing, not like its running in the background while you game.

Office basically killed off Lotus Works due to MS giving every buyer of Win98 (AFAIR, could be wrong about year) a free copy of Word.

I would guess 90%+ of the World's Corps use MS Office.
 
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Outlook is a horrendous email client under anything other than Exchange. Under IMAP it is horrifically slow and inefficient. In fact until the latest version (2007) it automatically stored your Sent Mail locally with no working option to configure it's behaviour. It's saving grace is that the whole calendaring/ notes/ tasks interface is excellent and is the industry standard so will sync with just about anything else (PDAs, phones etc). Oh and no matter how bad it's IMAP code is it has some way to go to be as bad as it's little brother Outlook Express which spawns a separate IMAP connection for EVERY folder in your account.

IMO Thunderbird is an excellent mail client- it's basic but it provides all the functionality you are likely to need and most other functionality is available in the form of plugins or if you know a bit of Javascript you could knock a plugin together yourself. My favourite client is Apple Mail though although it doesn't really offer anything extra than Thunderbird
 
Where did the OP say he needed IMAP support ? (He did not). ;)

I use SMTP and use Windows Mail (formally Outlook Express) daily as I do not need full blown Outlook and most peeps will not but its good for businesses.

If I was working every day running a business with lots of mail then I would use Outlook.
 
Whiskas said:
Outlook is a horrendous email client under anything other than Exchange. Under IMAP it is horrifically slow and inefficient. In fact until the latest version (2007) it automatically stored your Sent Mail locally with no working option to configure it's behaviour. It's saving grace is that the whole calendaring/ notes/ tasks interface is excellent and is the industry standard so will sync with just about anything else (PDAs, phones etc). Oh and no matter how bad it's IMAP code is it has some way to go to be as bad as it's little brother Outlook Express which spawns a separate IMAP connection for EVERY folder in your account.

IMO Thunderbird is an excellent mail client- it's basic but it provides all the functionality you are likely to need and most other functionality is available in the form of plugins or if you know a bit of Javascript you could knock a plugin together yourself. My favourite client is Apple Mail though although it doesn't really offer anything extra than Thunderbird
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A) Outlook can store your sent email in whatever folder you wish
B) Outlook was never designed for people who send basic emails, if all you do with Outlook 2003/2007 is send emails then you are not even scratching the base of its capabilities
C) Outlook as a corporate e-mail client (i.e. its target user base) is akin to comparing the 0-60 of a Veryon (Outlook) against the 0-60 of a turtle riding a tricycle (thunderbird etc)

Outlook's "saving grace" is that it is embraced heavily where it counts - the desks of workers all over. I have never seen an installation of "Thunderbird" etc here in the city.
 
THanks for that, this post has brought a glimmer of mirth to anotherwise dull day

rafster said:
A) Outlook can store your sent email in whatever folder you wish
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Correction- Outlook 2007 can. Versions previous to this only offer the option to "Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder" or not. You can work around this glaring in flaw in basic functionality by disabling this default behaviour and setting up a rule to copy any messages to the folder of your choice on sending but this is what us people who have been in the industry for longer than 5 minutes would refer to as "a hack" :)

rafster said:
B) Outlook was never designed for people who send basic emails, if all you do with Outlook 2003/2007 is send emails then you are not even scratching the base of its capabilities
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Surely the bread and butter of an email client is to, err send email? I can get Thunderbird and Apple Mail to send email, configure multiple signatures, create distribution lists, even look up the Global Address List via LDAP. So what functionality (as an email client) does Outlook offer over and above this? I'll admit to having used the calendar function fairly extensively for time management/ arranging meetings.

C) Outlook as a corporate e-mail client (i.e. its target user base) is akin to comparing the 0-60 of a Veryon (Outlook) against the 0-60 of a turtle riding a tricycle (thunderbird etc)
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I think a more apt comparison would be to call Outlook a BMW X3 or a Porsche Cayenne- a lumbering, bloated behemoth which can probably do everything you'd ever want and a hundred things you don't really want providing you can find the appropriate option in the UI. Assuming it doesn't break down while performing a relatively simple task of course.

Outlook's "saving grace" is that it is embraced heavily where it counts - the desks of workers all over. I have never seen an installation of "Thunderbird" etc here in the city.
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Thank God I don't work in the City then :) You'll find that in other fields with a history of using UNIX servers there's a slightly different attitude to these things, rightly or wrongly.
 
Whiskas said:
THanks for that, this post has brought a glimmer of mirth to anotherwise dull day



Correction- Outlook 2007 can. Versions previous to this only offer the option to "Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder" or not. You can work around this glaring in flaw in basic functionality by disabling this default behaviour and setting up a rule to copy any messages to the folder of your choice on sending but this is what us people who have been in the industry for longer than 5 minutes would refer to as "a hack" :)


Surely the bread and butter of an email client is to, err send email? I can get Thunderbird and Apple Mail to send email, configure multiple signatures, create distribution lists, even look up the Global Address List via LDAP. So what functionality (as an email client) does Outlook offer over and above this? I'll admit to having used the calendar function fairly extensively for time management/ arranging meetings.


I think a more apt comparison would be to call Outlook a BMW X3 or a Porsche Cayenne- a lumbering, bloated behemoth which can probably do everything you'd ever want and a hundred things you don't really want providing you can find the appropriate option in the UI. Assuming it doesn't break down while performing a relatively simple task of course.


Thank God I don't work in the City then :) You'll find that in other fields with a history of using UNIX servers there's a slightly different attitude to these things, rightly or wrongly.
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I am glad it gave you a "glimmer of mirth", just telling you how it is on this side.

Glaring flaw in functionality? Outlook was designed as a client end for an Exchange server. Above beyond other clients, well in case you didn't notice Outlook is integrated perfectly with Office, and since the vast majority of documents that get banded around offices are Office formats makes it so damn easy to paste bits in etc. What about VBA? You can do some fantastic things with VBA in conjunction with other Office applications. All the exchange server functionality? Outlook 2003/2007 was never aimed at home users, it's a corporate e-mail client which can be used for personal e-mails, however is overkill (which was my point). Then you have MOSS 3.0, again so many corporates use this and Outlook 2007 integrates perfectly. I can access document lists, discussion forums etc all in Outlook (and it's not a HTML page like it was in Outlook 2003, it's a subfolder)

I want to log into Outlook in the morning and see what is happening in one snapshot (ie the To do bar at the right) I want my day's plan in one place etc, and everything I enter in here is automatically pushed to my WM device. As does everyone else around me now.

I work in an industry (like most) where no one cares about years old "text only e-mail", IMAP support or the coolness factor of Mozilla. Fact remains, there is a massive profileration of Excel etc in my area and this is due massively to the fact that anyone can pick up MS Office and produce slick documents in 2 minutes (especially with 2007)

We're not talking about idealisms here, you cannot change the fact that people who come out of uni, training whatever will be able to pick up Office far faster than making them use OpenOffice whatever to create a phantom belief that they are saving on costs.
 
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