4 ms·

Out of curiosity, where does HN stand on Office suites? I use iWork for most of my work, but if I need to work on something quickly on any computer I use Google

Out of curiosity, where does HN stand on Office suites? I use iWork for most of my work, but if I need to work on something quickly on any computer I use Google. What do the rest of you use? Does anyone prefer Office?

k-mcgrady 13y ago
I don't use office suites much in my work but I usually work on long documents in Pages + presentations in Keynote. Shorter documents and spreadsheets I do on Google.
therobot24 13y ago
if i'm not using latex (MS word replacement), i'm using office. Google's Spreadsheets are nice for collaborative work, but i'm not just impressed with word/presentation/drawing/etc. I actually do a lot of drawing with MS PowerPoint (figures for papers/presentations/hw/recitations/etc), and love OneNote + Skydrive syncing (just so easy to organize, add different media, and access). If i did more with spreadsheets (as opposed to just loading batches of numbers into Matlab), i might do more with Google Docs....but i don't see that happening anytime soon.
acgourley 13y ago
I use google docs, and feel like everyone I know professionally in the sfbay tech world does too.
- outside1234 13y ago
  That's because you are in the startup ecosystem (I'm guessing - which is totally valid) - it is a totally different story once you are talking Enterprise and everything that comes with it (Sarbanes Oxley etc.). It will also be interesting to see how this shifts now that Google is charging everyone to use Google Apps from the get go.
- emn13 13y ago
  I do get the feeling that this is mostly because it's free however: The UI and feature set are pretty poor, especially compared to office. I sometimes get the impression that the product has just a little bit too much "techdemo" feel. - sure you can collaboratively edit, but not very well: edits to the top of the document will cause repages that make any other editors editing the bottom seesick. There isn't really a good track-changes implementation either - not something you could use to discuss whether changes are good. - You can do some styling, but again it comes across as not really practical for continual extensive use. Word doesn't do a brilliant job of keeping themes/styles consistent throughout the document, but google docs doesn't even try. Just using a different font consistently requires vigilance - there's no defaults you can change. Also, the styling features are really limited in the first place. - Practical tools for writing are sparse. You'd think with their unrivalled big-data text analysis capabilities gdocs would have best-of-the-best spelling/grammar checkers, but they're just basic. The editor view enforces a paged layout, even if you're not writing pages (and when you are, it's not necessarily good for productivity to have it so in your face the whole time). It's html-based, but html export is rudimentary, and css support essentially absent. Frankly, I don't think Gdocs has limited takeup due to poor document interop, I think it has poor takeup because it's just not a very good rich text editor. And it's crucial selling points - always online, cheap, hassle-free synchronization - just aren't that unique anymore, nor executed all that well.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    I don't care that it's free - I'd happily pay for a good office suite. But it'd need to run on Linux and OS X. And it'd need to be available remotely. And support collaborative edits. Unlike you I've never run into problems with the collaborative editing. The relative lack of features is not a hindrance for me either, and in some way it's a benefit - less UI clutter. It does certainly lack features, though, and things like the spreadsheet suffers from performance problems (a spreadsheet with more than a couple of hundred rows is total agony), but for me it's still meeting more requirements than Office.
DanBC 13y ago
There are people who say that they have to do some things that can only be done by Excel, or Word, or whatever. There are other people who say that some office suite is what everyone else is using and they can't cope with the constant demands for compatibility help if they use something else. I love Abiword, and Gnumeric, and LibreOffice. I recognise that general people hate computers and can't understand them, and they want something very familiar. One of the (many) things I'd do if I had the money is create excellent quality documentation for these projects, in a variety of formats, and pay for them to hire researchers / designers. EDIT: I'm not comfortable using Google products. Partly for the privacy stuff, but mostly because of the online need.
larrik 13y ago
LibreOffice. I can download it and install it faster than Microsoft Office, even if the Office disc is in the drive. (I use Office stuff rarely enough where that actually matters.) Plus, LibreOffice is kind of the only option on Linux. I don't use my Mac for anything serious outside of XCode.
- Shorel 13y ago
  LibreOffice and Kingsoft are the two alternatives I'm running right now. So far I have sent .doc files to my boss without issues.
- jff 13y ago
  LibreOffice is goddamn awful. They should just scrap the whole thing and start over, because I have never not been screwed by LibreOffice. Make a presentation within L.O., save it to the native L.O. format, then when I open it again later, things have moved and fonts are different. Any form the company sends me will be displayed incorrectly. Maybe fields won't be fillable, or only some of the checkboxes will check. Maybe the 2 page form will magically spread to 3 pages. Maybe it won't print at all.
outside1234 13y ago
I have done all three in the past three years and honestly prefer Office. Powerpoint is just a hundred times better than Keynote and Presently (Google Apps). Probably the only thing I'd like to have is a "Office for Dummies" mode that turns off all the complicated bits of the suite and just gives me the stuff that 90% of people use.
Wilya 13y ago
I don't get the hate against Office. It works fine. It's ridiculously easy to make things that look business-y. I don't need much more. OpenOffice failed me on the compatibility front every time I tried it. Google Docs are terribly slow, and I find the general UX unfriendly.
fournm 13y ago
I prefer Office. Libre/Open Office compatibility always fails me in some strange way and they've still got certain settings buried deep in strange locations. Google Apps are okay in a pinch and I don't mind using them for smaller documents, but they also don't play 100% nicely with Pentadactyl/Vimperator.
_random_ 13y ago
I use Microsoft Office 2013. IMHO it's the state of the art.
danmaz74 13y ago
I use Google Docs and OpenOffice since I switched to Ubuntu for Ruby development.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

I don't use office suites much in my work but I usually work on long documents in Pages + presentations in Keynote. Shorter documents and spreadsheets I do on Google.

therobot24 13y ago

if i'm not using latex (MS word replacement), i'm using office. Google's Spreadsheets are nice for collaborative work, but i'm not just impressed with word/presentation/drawing/etc. I actually do a lot of drawing with MS PowerPoint (figures for papers/presentations/hw/recitations/etc), and love OneNote + Skydrive syncing (just so easy to organize, add different media, and access). If i did more with spreadsheets (as opposed to just loading batches of numbers into Matlab), i might do more with Google Docs....but i don't see that happening anytime soon.

acgourley 13y ago

I use google docs, and feel like everyone I know professionally in the sfbay tech world does too.

outside1234 13y ago
That's because you are in the startup ecosystem (I'm guessing - which is totally valid) - it is a totally different story once you are talking Enterprise and everything that comes with it (Sarbanes Oxley etc.). It will also be interesting to see how this shifts now that Google is charging everyone to use Google Apps from the get go.
emn13 13y ago
I do get the feeling that this is mostly because it's free however: The UI and feature set are pretty poor, especially compared to office. I sometimes get the impression that the product has just a little bit too much "techdemo" feel. - sure you can collaboratively edit, but not very well: edits to the top of the document will cause repages that make any other editors editing the bottom seesick. There isn't really a good track-changes implementation either - not something you could use to discuss whether changes are good. - You can do some styling, but again it comes across as not really practical for continual extensive use. Word doesn't do a brilliant job of keeping themes/styles consistent throughout the document, but google docs doesn't even try. Just using a different font consistently requires vigilance - there's no defaults you can change. Also, the styling features are really limited in the first place. - Practical tools for writing are sparse. You'd think with their unrivalled big-data text analysis capabilities gdocs would have best-of-the-best spelling/grammar checkers, but they're just basic. The editor view enforces a paged layout, even if you're not writing pages (and when you are, it's not necessarily good for productivity to have it so in your face the whole time). It's html-based, but html export is rudimentary, and css support essentially absent. Frankly, I don't think Gdocs has limited takeup due to poor document interop, I think it has poor takeup because it's just not a very good rich text editor. And it's crucial selling points - always online, cheap, hassle-free synchronization - just aren't that unique anymore, nor executed all that well.
- vidarh 13y ago
  I don't care that it's free - I'd happily pay for a good office suite. But it'd need to run on Linux and OS X. And it'd need to be available remotely. And support collaborative edits. Unlike you I've never run into problems with the collaborative editing. The relative lack of features is not a hindrance for me either, and in some way it's a benefit - less UI clutter. It does certainly lack features, though, and things like the spreadsheet suffers from performance problems (a spreadsheet with more than a couple of hundred rows is total agony), but for me it's still meeting more requirements than Office.

DanBC 13y ago

There are people who say that they have to do some things that can only be done by Excel, or Word, or whatever. There are other people who say that some office suite is what everyone else is using and they can't cope with the constant demands for compatibility help if they use something else. I love Abiword, and Gnumeric, and LibreOffice. I recognise that general people hate computers and can't understand them, and they want something very familiar. One of the (many) things I'd do if I had the money is create excellent quality documentation for these projects, in a variety of formats, and pay for them to hire researchers / designers. EDIT: I'm not comfortable using Google products. Partly for the privacy stuff, but mostly because of the online need.

larrik 13y ago

LibreOffice. I can download it and install it faster than Microsoft Office, even if the Office disc is in the drive. (I use Office stuff rarely enough where that actually matters.) Plus, LibreOffice is kind of the only option on Linux. I don't use my Mac for anything serious outside of XCode.

Shorel 13y ago
LibreOffice and Kingsoft are the two alternatives I'm running right now. So far I have sent .doc files to my boss without issues.
jff 13y ago
LibreOffice is goddamn awful. They should just scrap the whole thing and start over, because I have never not been screwed by LibreOffice. Make a presentation within L.O., save it to the native L.O. format, then when I open it again later, things have moved and fonts are different. Any form the company sends me will be displayed incorrectly. Maybe fields won't be fillable, or only some of the checkboxes will check. Maybe the 2 page form will magically spread to 3 pages. Maybe it won't print at all.

outside1234 13y ago

I have done all three in the past three years and honestly prefer Office. Powerpoint is just a hundred times better than Keynote and Presently (Google Apps). Probably the only thing I'd like to have is a "Office for Dummies" mode that turns off all the complicated bits of the suite and just gives me the stuff that 90% of people use.

Wilya 13y ago

I don't get the hate against Office. It works fine. It's ridiculously easy to make things that look business-y. I don't need much more. OpenOffice failed me on the compatibility front every time I tried it. Google Docs are terribly slow, and I find the general UX unfriendly.

fournm 13y ago

I prefer Office. Libre/Open Office compatibility always fails me in some strange way and they've still got certain settings buried deep in strange locations. Google Apps are okay in a pinch and I don't mind using them for smaller documents, but they also don't play 100% nicely with Pentadactyl/Vimperator.

_random_ 13y ago

I use Microsoft Office 2013. IMHO it's the state of the art.

danmaz74 13y ago

I use Google Docs and OpenOffice since I switched to Ubuntu for Ruby development.