[Karastorm]

Any one else love Open office as much as I do? I made windows delete Word completely ( yes it can be done it's just a pain in the backside)so I can have the joy of Office. Reasons I love it so much It's free,I can save my work in a Word format for University reasons. It get's plenty of updates still, it's easy to use and did I mention it's free XD.

Any how for what it is and how it works I would love to see it be an official option for pc's instead of the bog standard programs they make you use. I have it for both my Windows laptop and my Umbuntu desktop. It's that Universal for me.

[Coda]

I used to like OpenOffice. It wasn't great, it didn't always do a great job of converting Microsoft documents, and it managed to be even more slow than Microsoft Office (and it took me two solid weeks to compile the first time I built it from source). But it was free, and it worked well for creating new content, and it worked on non-Windows computers.

Then Google bought Writely.

Google Docs is now head and shoulders better than OpenOffice for most things that you'll need to care about. It has all of the benefits you listed, plus it loads faster and runs faster, has better compatibility with Microsoft documents, and has a nicer user interface (in my opinion) -- plus you never have to worry about losing your files or transferring them from place to place, because you can always just log on from any web browser to get your work.

Sheets is better than Calc ever was, and has been since it launched. Admittedly Calc was FASTER than Sheets for a long time just because browsers weren't able to keep up with it back in the day, but that's no longer the case with modern browsers.

Slides blows Impress out of the water.

I'll grant that OpenOffice Draw is currently better than Google Drawings, and that there's no Drive equivalent to OpenOffice Base. But speaking as the kind of user who would actually make use of Base... the sweet spot where Base is more useful than a spreadsheet but easier to use than something more powerful is... really small.

So... Give Drive a try! :P

(Full disclosure: I work for Google, but I held these opinions before I ever applied here.)

[Lucid:]

I used Open Office a little bit during university, but in the end, I have to agree with Coda (and I don't work for Google :P ). I made the switch to drive because it's so much easier to use. I don't have any office software on my computer at all anymore because I use Drive so much. I do have Adobe InDesign that I use for any documents that need to be laid out fancy; but, I found layouts hard to do on any standard word processor, including Microsoft Word and even Publisher. For any basic need, and especially for spreadsheets, I like Drive the best.

[Karastorm]

Opens perfect for me as both machines are quite eldrly (as in they just about run). Whilt Google drive would be fun to try I'd need to program it to my spelling and grammer problems. With traditional software like Office I can do that easier. Yeah I'm lazy but meh I like to make things easyer for on the fly document fixing. Never had a problem with office saving in word format either.

[Coda]

Oh, sure, OpenOffice can EXPORT Microsoft formats just fine. It's the import process that's less-than-perfect. Drive does a better job of the import, but even that's not perfect.

Google Docs has spelling and grammar checks. What did you customize in OOo?

[Karastorm]

Spellings f the word Colour so it's British, and programmed it to pick up on words I might mean instead of suggestions as my Dyslexia can kick me in the ass a lot hen writhing stuff. So take the word Relevant for starters word always corrects that to Revert or something silly like that. I made it so it makes suggestions as I type and if it's the word I want I just press space. Easy peasy I need to really try google drive out one of these days (If I ever get another laptop or tower)

[Filthgrinder]

It's alright, but I mostly use Google Docs to type things and do stuff for projects and whatnot.