OpenOffice and Microsoft Office

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> My company is 95% windows.  I was planning to install OpenOffice3.2 on
> new desktops.  I was wondering what kind of issues I will get myself
> into:  These are few of my questions:
> Compatibility issues between OpenOffice and Office
> Learning curves for my users that are not to technical savvy.
> Business acceptance of this new product
> User Training, more helpdesk tickets?
> Please let me know if you have implemented something similar in your
> company and if you were successful with this implementation.

Let me put it this way:  There are significant compatibility problems just
between MS Office for Windows, and MS Office for Mac.  If MS can't read
their own files right on the mac, how on earth could you expect some free
open source project to do better?

Every couple of years, I attempt this same migration, and so far have never
been satisfied.  But I will say:  Openoffice is a powerful app, and if your
whole organization standardizes on it, you'll probably do fine.  Until you
need to share files back and forth with some other company or organization
who's using MS.

A lot of the time, it's good enough.  But if you use it day in and day out
on DOC or DOCX files or any other MS format, you will definitely encounter
differences, where MS behaves one way, and OO behaves a different way.