My Journey into Office Suites

Office Suite

Now, the journey of OS is almost over, as I have frozen on Fedora and the only job left for me is to create a Fedora Remix. Hence the next journey is to explore Office Suites. The Below Office Suites are tried by me so far.

1) MS Office:

I have been using MS Office 1997, MS Office XP, MS Office 2000, MS Office 2003, MS Office Professional 2007 and MS Office Professional 2010. We all know about and with MS-Excel all our accounting and reporting functions are being done. This is the world class product and I feel any other office suite can just near it and can't excel it. I am 100% satisfied and given an option will not move from it. However, I have to search for an alternative because -

a) When I am purchasing systems, I am not able to afford to the cost of MS Office.

b) I am on Linux - Fedora, MS Office can’t be installed and even if installed, it is not looking nice.

While trying alternatives, I found MS Word & MS Projects are well replaced.

However the Excel, Powerpoint, Access & Publisher are not well replaced.

2) Star Office:

The interface is similar to MS Office XP. However Excel & Powerpoint do not perform like MS Office. Like MS Office it is also a proprietary one and is not given for free. This was first produced by Sun and then procured by Oracle. This available mainly for Windows and Linux Versions are also available

3) IBM's Lotus 123

The interface is similar to MS Office 2000. It can perfectly replace MS Office. However Templates are very limited and is not as good as MS does. This is also a proprietary one and is not given for free.

4) Open Office:

I used Open Office and Open Projects to some extent. I am happy with its performance. This is also available for both Windows and Linux OS. The issues are -

a) I am not able to read certain MS Power-Point Files clearly. Many times the animations are not working

b) I am not able to use Pivoting Function as I used to do as I did in MS Excel

c) Printing Excel Sheets is a nightmare. It is very tough

4) Gnome Office Suite:

This is actually a misleading word. Actually Gnome do not have an office suite, but certain individual applications which if combinedly used can makes an office suite. The details of the applications are given below:

S. No	Name	Function
1	Abhi-Words	A word processor with the ability to import Microsoft Word documents. This is much more than MS Office “Word”
2	Gnumeric	A spreadsheet program, though it can read MS Excel, we would not be able to create an Excel File out of it. I am happy with the accuracy aspect of Statistical Calculations. Mant Carlo Simulaton can be better done in Gnumeric than in Excel
3	Ease	The most simplest and easy to use presentation program. This has no MS Office Compatibility. That is reading MS Office PPTs are not possible through this
4	Evince	A Document viewer - replaces MS Picture & Image Viewer and also acts like PDF Reader.
5	Evolution	A Groupware and Email application - similar to MS Outlook and does much more than that.
6	Karbon	A vector graphics editor, formerly known as Karbon
7	Inkscape	A Vector Graphics and Presentation Creations - MS Equation Editor’s replacement.
8	Planner	A project management application that can create Gantt charts.
9	Gnucash	Personal Accounting Software, replaces MS Money in a very much better way.

5) Koffice & Calligra:

Similar to Gnome, KDE Guys have developed their own office suite. Unlike Gnome Guys, they have bundled it and offered it as a suite than as individual applications. However these guys have some problem in 2010 and hence Calligra was created as a result of the split between KDE Guys.

KOffice is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X. It contains a word processor (KWord), a spreadsheet application (KCells), a vector graphics-based drawing tool KOffice Artwork, a presentation program (KOffice Showcase), a database - Kexi, a project planner called Kplato and a personal accounting software called Kmoney.

Calligra has the below app set

S. No	Name	Function
1	Words	A word processor with the ability to import Microsoft Word documents.
2	Sheets	A spreadsheet program, formerly known as KSpread and Calligra Tables.
3	Stage	A presentation program, formerly known as Kpresenter. This reads all MS PPT files wonderfully unlike Open-Office or Libre-Office.
4	Kexi	A database management program, similar to Microsoft Access. A Report Designer to replace Kugar is included. It has limited compatibility with the Access file format.
5	Flow	A programmable flowchart drawing program with dynamically loadable stencils. Formerly known as Kivio.
6	Karbon	A vector graphics editor, formerly known as Karbon
7	Krita	A digital painting program with some image editing features. Formerly known as Krayon and KImageshop.
8	Plan	A project management application that can create Gantt charts. Formerly known as KPlato.
9	Braindump	A notetaking and mindmapping application

The interface is superb, they are pretty fast compared to Open Office. The level of reading MS Office Documents is amazing and 100% it looks & feels like MS Office. However we can't save files in the MS Office Format.

6) Libre-Office:

Open Office was re-engineered to provide a better graphical look and interface compared with Open Office. The look & feel are like MS Office Professional 2000. The same issues of Open Office are present in Libre Office.

7) Google Docs:

This is better than all office suites, but it require internet connection. However the issue is editing a file created by others. This almost 90% replaces MS Office.

8) Soft-Maker:

This is an open source as well as proprietary package. I could not fully use it and test it. However the interface is like MS Office XP which I did not liked. Hence, I could not apply my mind on it.

9) Kingsoft's suite

This is both free and for money. Free is similar to MS Office Student Edition. It is for windows mainly. It is almost similar to MS Office in interface and function. I used it very long back, I am not clear as to its performance. You may try the free version by clicking of the below link:

http://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html

10) Other Office Suites:

I planned to try Zoho Office Suite in 2005 when it was launched, however did not do due to my pre-occupation. This is like Google Docs, an on-line office suite. I feel it may be the first web-based office suite.Today Zoho is offering lot of apps for Google Domain free of cost.

Same way in 2007 when I was in Freudenberg, I heard about ZCubes & Feng Office online office suites. But never attempted to know about it much. If you guys can see for it and tell me some comments it would be good.

Recently towards the end of 2010, some one told me about Team-Lab by Ascensio Systems which is also an on-line office suite.

Decision Parameter:
The first & foremost decision parameter would be whether it is better to use a Platform Based Office Suite or Go for On-Line Office Suite.

I feel the answer would be difficult as without internet no computer is available and we do not have internet all the time. Hence, we have to analyze how we use the system and also our on-line presence to comment on this.

I feel as of now Calligra is the best MS Office Replacement, however it can create only Open-Office Format. Then the same has to be opened by Libre-Office and converted for MS Office Format. Thus we may need two free apps – Calligra & Libre Office to replace MS office as on date.

Yours

V. Narayanan