Over the past decade, the OpenOffice suite has attracted tremendous popularity and many users are now comparing it to Office 2010. To help with this process, we decided to address the top categories users should evaluate before choosing one suite over the other.

1. OpenOffice.org fits into more budgets, but Office 2010 still reigns supreme among U.S. businesses. The recession has had an effect on most budgets, so it’s not surprising that some people have made the switch to OpenOffice.org because it’s free, open-source software.


(As of this writing, OpenOffice.org’s most current version is 3.2.)

Still, the number of Microsoft Office users far exceeds users of other productivity suites. Whether this matters to you depends on how often you exchange files with other users.

For instance, if you regularly share files and collaborate online, load files on flash drives for use on other computers (such as when you need to edit them while at a client’s office), or perform similar tasks, you’ll notice that in most cases, you need to have access to Microsoft Office so you can exchange files without running into compatibility problems.

If you’re on a tight budget and need to purchase Office 2010, maybe you and/or your organization qualifies for a discount. If you’re a student, teacher, academic staff member, or administer a home-school program, public library, public museum, or other educational institution, see Microsoft’s Volume Licensing For Education Institutions page.

Online retailers also are offering discounts. As of this writing, the current price at Amazon.com for the Office 2010 Home and Student version is $112 (for a 1-user/3-PC download license), a savings of $38 from its $150 list price.

Amazon.com also lowered the price for Office 2010 Home and Business to $208 (for a 1-user/2-PC download license), a $72 decrease from its $280 list price.

For users who want to try out Microsoft Office 2010 before purchasing it, Microsoft offers a free 60-day trial period to Windows users and a free 30-day trial period to Mac users.

2. OpenOffice.org has more compatibility problems than Office 2010 does. Office 2010 is more capable of importing files from other apps, including those originally created in OpenOffice.org. To overcome potential problems, Office 2010 relies on its Compatibility Mode when necessary.

With OpenOffice.org, you’ll likely run into compatibility problems if you try to import WordPerfect files, many Excel spreadsheets (especially those running macros), and formatted files originating from Office 2007 and Office 2010.

Using Office 2010 will ensure you can easily open and edit files containing macros, formatted content, charts and graphs, complex spreadsheets, and other specialized data. But if these types of extras aren’t necessary for your work, perhaps OpenOffice.org will meet your needs just fine.

To bypass formatting and compatibility issues, many users rely on the ability to export their files as PDF (Portable Document Format) files so that recipients can open them (using the free Adobe Reader app) and view them with the formatting preserved exactly as intended. Thankfully, both Office 2010 and OpenOffice.org include the ability to export files as PDF files.

3. OpenOffice.org has a simple interface, whereas Office 2010’s interface includes more power. Office 2007’s dramatic interface changes are what drove some users to OpenOffice.org because of its straightforward design, which reminded them of the Office 2003 interface they’d become comfortable with. But with Office 2010, the interface changes are more flexible while still giving users access to more functionality and variety than OpenOffice.org offers.

For example, Office 2010’s Word app has a built-in grammar tool, and OpenOffice.org’s Writer app requires add-ons that still aren’t as functional as Word’s tool.

Another example is the fact that Office 2010’s Excel program provides the type of conditional formatting commands that give users more control over the way in which their data displays, and OpenOffice.org’s Calc program doesn’t include that level of functionality.

Even so, each user’s decision about which suite’s interface is better depends on which suite includes functions that best meet his/her needs, as well as which one provides a more familiar environment that he/she can learn to use quickly.

4. Office 2010 has more security features, but OpenOffice.org doesn’t seem to need these features. For many users, security is the most important aspect of all, and both suites appear to perform well in this regard.

This category is a bit difficult to gauge, however, because even though Office 2010 clearly has more security features, some industry experts point out that OpenOffice.org doesn’t seem to have the vulnerabilities that require such features—at least no vulnerabilities that are readily apparent as of this writing.

One of the security features Office 2010 includes, Protected View, displays on-screen whenever users try to open a document that Office deems as unsafe, such as an email attachment. Protected View stops these files from running macros, ActiveX controls, and other potentially dangerous apps and prevents users from making changes to such files.

5. Office 2010 has better mobile computing and collaboration tools than OpenOffice.org does. In December 2010, Oracle introduced OpenOffice.org’s version of cloud computing, but as of this writing, it isn’t nearly as functional as Office 2010’s Office Web Apps.

For example, OpenOffice.org doesn’t include similar collaboration tools, the ability to access files from anywhere, and its components’ capabilities are still extremely limited.

Office 2010, on the other hand, has more than 30 million people using Office Web Apps, many of whom regularly use collaboration tools and the cloud-based network that now includes more 190 countries. For more information, see “How Office Web Apps Help Users on the Go.”

Continued in Part 2

For more comparisons between these two suites, see our “Microsoft Office 2010 vs. Oracle OpenOffice.org, Part 2: Productivity Extras or Svelte Options?” article.