Re: OT: OpenOffice not 100% compatible?

On Mon, 08 May 2006 20:15:19 GMT, Joerg <notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Hello Jeff,


I tried OpenOffice after some fellow newsgroupers suggested it
but so far I am not enthused.
It takes many times longer [than] Word (!) to load the Writer program,
it has no file preview AFAICT
and gobbles up a huge amount of RAM resources.

All that you have said is true.
Now compare the relative ages of the packages from the 2 vendors. [1]


So, newer means not-so-good? I have three versions of Word. One is
around 6 years old but muffled in order not to use and of the "new and
improved" features. The next is about 10 years old, and another is over
15 years old. The 15 year old one is the most stable :-)

Hah! I must be in the same time-warped category as you. I ran WinWord 6.x for
years under WfWg and then 98SE. Finally, on a newer box, I installed WinWord97
as my Office2000Pro set didn't want to properly install.

Where I worked a while back, they upgraded the entire outfit to WinWord2000. I
often did drawings in '6 and '97. I did one set of drawings in '2000 at work
and emailed them home to do more work with them, only to find they were
"scrambled" when I looked at them in '97.

No, but I thought a *** with only one drawing on there and no other
text ain't all that complicated.

I suspect MicroShaft's main problem is thinking that new features are what
distinguishes their product from any competition, or simply the need to add
features because they want to put a later label on the product. Backward
compatibility isn't on their radar.

(snip)

[5] Which everyone in the know realizes
is only a "standard" IF YOU SPECIFY A VERSION NUMBER.


Now here is the puzzler. MS seems not to be able to maintain backward
compatibility with their MS-Word line. However, another group, the
creators of MS-Works do a much better job. I am using Works for my
business books and the reason is simple: I can still read files that I
created in 1889 with any version. I can even create a new file in the
latest version and have it stored in a format that is understood by the
old DOS-Works. I have tried it and to my amazement it really worked.
Also, no matter how hard I pounded on it Works never froze up on me once
in 17 years. Word (and OO as well) freeze all the time. No idea why but
I believe there could be a distinct difference in design quality between
those two groups in Redmond. I always felt that difference, even in DOS
days. Word did crash on occasion while the Works word processor never
did. Then they began shipping Works bundled with Word and sure enough
that WP reliability ended for me.

.