office 2013 alternative: what do you use?

with the news of office 2013 being locked to a single system a lot of people have been turned away myself included even though i have technet i asked ms about that and still have yet to get a very clear answer regarding my teschnet lic's.

so in the light of that announcement what do you use aside from ms products?

and with OO now in the hands of apache and libre seems to be doing well better than i think many expected what are your opinions on one compared to the other as far as future's of them and future advancements etc?? with ibm dropping symphony and donating the code to the apache side will that give them a advantage over LO??

just some thoughts i was having this morning.

 

I'd like to know what their response is, if you get one. I have been a TechNet subscriber for about 5 years but this one may be the last.

 

i was told they are locked also but i have someone else verifying this for me directly at ms. i will keep you posted

 

I suppose Office 2010.

 

I've used OpenOffice for years & don't need MS Office. It has some decent extensions & is more or less compatible with Office. I only really use Writer & Impress however. I think Apache will make a success of OO. If all you need is a decent word processor I would also recommend AbiWord.

 

I found Lotus Symphony to be quite good.

 

Regarding the main alternatives:

I keep a close eye on the development of the Document Foundation's LibreOffice - but it is still somewhat far from the quality of Microsoft Office IMO.

One thing I sincerely appreciate is the fact that the Document Foundation helps PortableApps.com maintain a complete portable version of LibreOffice for Windows. For this fact alone, they deserve my respect.

As for Apache OpenOffice, I will certainly test it when PortableApps.com receive proper authorization, assistance and finally finalize the creation of a complete portable version of latest Apache OpenOffice.

I also tested Kingsoft Office (all of its flavors) some months ago, but as all the others, they suffer from incomplete compatibility with OOXML in practice - so it isn't viable for me as a real replacement for Microsoft Office.

Regarding specific alternatives to Word, the same can be said. AbiWord for example is a nice and fast program, but it doesn't offer (in practice) complete compatibility with OOXML.

So, for me at least, the future still points to Microsoft Office. I plan to buy a subscription for Microsoft Office 365 soon. The "University" edition/deal looks very nice.

 

I basically agree with this.. if your needs are fairly simple, then LibreOffice may be all you need, but for more complex needs, MS Office is still the real deal and only way to go IMO.

 

LibreOffice 4 was my choice.
I needed an office suite that would provide me a interface that would behave the same in windows, mac and linux enviroments. Libreoffice 4 has made huge steps forward and IMO is FINALLY a decent suite.

If one comes from MS office and do advanced tasks in Excel and/or Access should expect some rough edges and a big learning curve (about 3-5 days and extensive use of the help).
But once you "master" it you won't miss MS Office anymore. (I can't say the same for 3.6... everytime that I tried to work with it I felt the need to through the machine/s through the window and ended to go back to MS).

Panagiotis

 

I have used Kingsoft Office free for a few years now. The free version is quite complete and it appears to be a clone of MS Office.

I started using Kingsoft office before OpenOffice was improved to where it is today...also now LibreOffice. Its my understanding that LibreOffice is now much less bloated and works very well.

 

IMO Libre and Apache Open Office are excellent alternatives to Ms Office – not at the same level of course - but then they're what Ms Office isn't.........free!

I've been using both over the past several years and prefer Apache Office (inbuilt Help) whereas Libre's Help is online.

 

Well, nitpicking aside, I've used AbiWord for over five years & never had any real problems with it. I just save most files in .doc format though. No one yet has ever complained that they couldn't either open or read a file I have sent via email (or otherwise) with AbiWord. Well, except for when I forget to save the file in a Microsoft format. I am interested in what incomplete compatibilities AbiWord actually has in practise with OOXML.

 

@Dave
I saw multiple problems when opening with AbiWord some docx (and even some doc & rtf) files created/edited with latest versions of MS Word. Add some small complexity (like bullet lists) to docx files when creating them with MS Word - and they won't open 100% correctly with AbiWord in my experience.

 

That wouldn't surprise me.

 

Thanks for bringing Kingsoft Office to my attention. I was looking for an app and Kingsoft seems to fit my needs very well. I appreciate your help.

 

Yeah, same here, thanks. I might give this one a try also...

 

I've used abiword but unfortunately it did not run well on my set up...a couple crashes prevented me from using it further. How does Kingsoft handle docx ? I have used kingsoft's android office suite and it is as good or better than any paid android office app.

 

My main problem with non-MS Office suites is insufficient compatibility with MS Office. All the people I work with or correspond with use MS Office so I need to use it too otherwise office files we exchange or share may look or work a little different at our respective ends, and I just don't want to deal with that hassle.

That said, LibreOffice is excellent and getting better with each update - I have the portable version installed for occasional use.

 

This is pretty much my experience too... and why I stick with MS Office. If I could find one with near 100% compatibility, then I might use it instead. But until then....

 

Been using SoftMaker Office on the laptop and it seems to be doing very well.

 

i personally dont care but i wish one of these suites would offer a free version with a comparable "ribbon" interface. i know some hate this but its pretty much the norm now and when i show libre or open to anyone they think its archaic and ask how old is that program lol. the point is SO MANY people now are just 100% accustomed to that ribbon interface its a hard sell to get people to use something that looks like office 2003 or prior..kingsoft has a okay styled ribbon but for its price for the pro version people that i have asked would just assume find a copy of office 2010 still out there..i am liking libre office myself. it does lack some things that ms office has though. i hope they continue on the right track and maybe this will be The free one to use sooner than later now that ms office 2013 has these new tos...

 

zfactor, I would agree with what you said (regarding Ribbon) - if the guys behind LibreOffice and OpenOffice had a comparable amount of resources to those of Microsoft. As they don't, I just wish they concentrate all they can in perfecting the compatibility with OOXML and other popular formats.

 

than allow us to create skins.... and add a feature to allow use of skins to it, this would be awesome. no work for them except adding the use of skins. they already allow the firefox themes i dont think it would be that hard imo to add a skins feature. let them continue to work on it and the users could create skins...

 

Another vote for Kingsoft Office free. I only use 'Writer' and 'Presentation' and they seem to be very similar to MS Office.

 

Just how popular is OOXML? Virtually all of the word processing files sent to me are usually .doc.