Microsoft Office 12 Beta Compared to Open Office

I was given a copy of Microsoft Office 12 Beta to try the other day. I plan to compare it to Open Office.

The update on Open Office so far goes like this. Open Office Draw is not impressive at all. I enjoyed using Open Office Writer and Calc. They feel almost exactly like Microsoft Word and Excel. I liked the ability to save documents as PDF. One thing I find off is that there is a media player built into the program. Why would I need a media player? Does it take so long for me to run formulas that I will want to watch a movie?

Here are a few things on Office 12. Instead of the older menu interfaces, Microsoft Office 12 uses a new interface based on tabs that organize sets of functions under headings such as “Write,” “Page Layout,” and “Review”. It will take some getting used to but this might turn out to be more intuitive. Everything is XML based but the XML schema that is used just works with Microsoft apps. I really do not have much to say yet because I have not had time with it yet. I will post updates.