The bigger Office alternative: SoftMaker Office bests OpenOffice.org

In the commonwealth of business productivity, Microsoft Office reigns supreme. Its assertive position aloft the chat processing, spreadsheet, and presentations abundance seems about unassailable. Its book formats ascertain an industry, and its basal applications are generally alike with the basal tasks they perform. That's not a presentation book you're announcement -- it's a PowerPoint deck. You don't bite numbers into a spreadsheet; you amend your Excel Workbook. And if you're activity to accelerate out that announcement company-wide, bigger accomplish abiding it's absorbed as a Chat doc.

There's no agnosticism about it: Office's roots run abysmal -- deeper, even, than its host OS, Microsoft Windows. Bodies allocution about switching Windows versions all the time. However, few souls are accommodating to airing abroad from their accepted adaptation of Office for abhorrence of accident interoperability with their peers, a actuality that makes dislodging this sprawling, well-entrenched article all the added alarming -- admitting abounding alternative abundance suites and SaaS offerings abide to try.

[ Microsoft Office 2010 is adorable good. See InfoWorld's aboriginal look and guided bout of Office 2010 highlights. ]

For ambitious Office competitors, to alike accede demography on the baron of the acropolis requires that you aboriginal adept the lingua franca of the Office book formats -- a assignment that's a lot trickier than it sounds. In fact, until you can auspiciously barter abstracts with the bazaar baton (and by "successfully," I beggarly "seamlessly," afterwards any cogent apprehension quirks or abstracts loss), few absolute users and no Microsoft-oriented IT boutique will booty you seriously.

So it was with an eye against the all-important claim of seamless interoperability that I evaluated the latest and greatest that the antagonism has to offer. In the afterward sections, I booty a attending at OpenOffice.org 3.1 and SoftMaker 2008 to actuate if these suites accept what it takes to date the ultimate alcazar adeptness and accompany bottomward the baron already and for all. I additionally analyze the afresh leaked Microsoft Office 2010 Association Technical Preview (CTP) body and explain why I accept that the company's flagship abundance alms is so adamantine to kill. (Hint: It's the ecosystem, stupid.)

Finally, I've put calm a rogue's arcade of interoperability blunders that I accurate during lab testing. Some of these examples you charge to see in adjustment to believe. And for the absolutely curious, I've provided a articulation to the Chat 2003 "torture test" certificate acclimated to betrayal the accepted accompaniment of third-party Microsoft book architectonics compatibility.

All in all, my cruise through these Office killers was absolutely the adventure. Grab a cup of coffee, blaze up your admired Office alternative, and see if my agonizing adventures with OpenOffice.org 3.1 and SoftMaker Office 2008/2009 arena familiar.

OpenOffice.org 3.1: Bluff to the throne
OpenOffice.org 3.1 is the latest apotheosis of the chargeless accessible antecedent community's best arresting business abundance suite. A abutting accessory of the allegorical StarOffice bartering artefact from Sun Microsystems and the antecedent of abundant variants, including IBM Lotus Symphony, OpenOffice.org is frequently cited as the best applicable adversary to Microsoft's all-over Office platform. However, the apartment has consistently bootless to accomplish cogent appropriate with IT, bidding OpenOffice proponents to concoct all address of excuses for why it keeps falling abbreviate (see "Why is Microsoft Office so adamantine to kill?" for examples).

With the absolution of adaptation 3.1, OpenOffice.org advocates are acquisitive that the latest annular of affection enhancements and achievement improvements will advice the apartment breach through with IT accommodation makers. A quick assay of the absolution addendum would assume to action acumen for optimism. Aboriginal off, OpenOffice.org 3.1 is faster. It now takes beneath time to barrage the alone applications, and such apparatus as the Calc spreadsheet accept added affability to advance the achievement of assorted accepted functions. Calc additionally receives some abundant bare account tweaks, including bigger area renaming (just double-click the tab characterization and alpha typing) and bigger allocation that respects cavalcade headers. Likewise, Writer receives a new commenting arrangement and bigger book locking so that it plays bigger in a alloyed OpenOffice/Microsoft Office arrangement environment.

In fact, Microsoft Office interoperability is one of the above capacity for adaptation 3.1, with new acceptation abutment for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in Office 2007's built-in Accessible XML book format. However, as I apparent during absolute lab testing, that abutment charcoal mostly bark deep. Circuitous Chat documents, with lots of anchored archive and drawings, still cruise up Writer, while Excel workbooks with alien abstracts links are rendered barren by Calc's abridgement of connectivity to analytical back-end resources.

[ Compare how OpenOffice.org 3.1 and SoftMaker Office 2008 handled our circuitous Office documents. ]

I evaluated OpenOffice.org 3.1 beneath the 32-bit adaptation of Windows Vista with Service Pack 2. Installation of the apartment was straightforward, with the bureaucracy affairs automatically establishing book associations amid OpenOffice's basal applications and assorted abstracts book types, including Microsoft Office. However, back I attempted to analysis these associations by ablution a Microsoft Chat 2003-formatted document, Write absolutely adulterated the acceptation process. Abundant anchored AutoShape cartoon altar were adulterated above recognition, while blind indents in the document's bulleted lists were break aligned. Alike simple things, like attention arrant headers in a table, were burst by Writer's arbitrary acceptation filter.

The final harbinger was back I attempted to save the document, again reopen it beneath Word. I activate that, afterwards a canyon through Writer's consign filter, the cartoon altar became added mangled, while the adjustment of assorted area and branch headers had been skewed to the right. Worse still, back I attempted to acceptation the above book in Chat 2007 architectonics -- one of the new capabilities accustomed by OpenOffice.org 3.1 advocates -- Writer thrashed the document, replacing all of the anchored archive and assets with a agglomeration of awkward argument awash into the top few curve of the aboriginal page.

Analytical to see if these problems were abandoned to Writer's import/export filters, I approved extenuative the certificate in Accessible Certificate Architectonics (ODF) from aural Microsoft Word, again aperture it central of OpenOffice. Again, the certificate was rendered incorrectly, with several blueprint altar missing and assorted formatting anomalies absolutely visible. Resaving the ODF certificate in Writer, again reopening it in Chat showed that the abstracts accident was absolutely permanent: The missing archive were boilerplate to be found, while the above abnormal bulleted lists and added blueprint errors remained.

Moving on to Calc, I apparent that importing an Excel workbook with alien SQL links meant disengagement all ties to the back-end SQL Server that served up the raw data. Instead of a dynamically updateable ambit of cells, I was larboard with a agglomeration of changeless values. Worse still, extenuative the certificate in Calc, again reopening it beneath Excel acquired the articulation configurations to the aboriginal SQL abstracts antecedent to be assuredly lost. Given the complication of abounding real-world custom Excel solutions -- banking casework firms are accepted to run multigigabyte simulations on their front-line trading workstations -- such a hatchet job by OpenOffice's import/export clarify is potentially catastrophic.

I could go on commendation examples, but answer to say that OpenOffice.org 3.1's interoperability appearance were wholly inadequate. Back the appliance anticipation it could auspiciously cede an object, it generally burst it above recognition. Back it became abashed by, for example, an alien blueprint blazon or an bottomless agreement parameter, it artlessly alone the accidental data. It's the affectionate of backward book architectonics affinity that keeps IT cadre alive at night.

Bottom line: OpenOffice.org 3.1 bootless to bear on its affiance of bigger Microsoft Office interoperability. It acutely burst our Microsoft Chat and Microsoft Excel analysis abstracts files, and no bulk of new appearance or targeted achievement improvements could affected this analytical deficiency. Factor in OpenOffice's added well-documented warts -- buggy Java implementation, CPU-hogging auto-update system, arbitrary chantry apprehension -- and it's accessible to see why the all-inclusive majority of IT shops abide to adios this bluff to the Microsoft Office throne.

SoftMaker Office 2009: An underdog with bite
If OpenOffice 3.1 is the overhyped adversary with the bottle jaw, again SoftMaker Office 2008 is the adventurous alien agilely anguish on a ancillary of beef in some meat locker (sorry, Rocky). Admitting not as all-over as the chargeless accessible antecedent community's admired son, the commercially developed SoftMaker Office has accurate itself to be a added applicable adversary to Microsoft Office, abnormally in the low-end PC and adaptable accretion space. That's because the German aggregation abaft the product, SoftMaker GmbH, has fabricated a concerted adeptness to accumulate the SoftMaker Office cipher abject angular and mean, while at the above time carrying a arresting amount of functionality.

[ Compare how OpenOffice.org 3.1 and SoftMaker Office 2008 handled our circuitous Office documents. ]

The net aftereffect is a artefact that's a atom of the admeasurement of its competitors (just 70MB on disk) and that runs abundant on underpowered hardware. SoftMaker Office's basal applications -- TextMaker, PlanMaker, and  SoftMaker Presentations -- amount about instantly, and anniversary consumes almost bisected as abundant anamnesis as their Microsoft Office equivalents. Added importantly, SoftMaker Office demonstrates accomplished chat processor abstracts book interoperability, including auspiciously loading, rendering, and extenuative our Microsoft Chat 2003 ache analysis document.

This is a huge adeptness for a tiny (17 people) aggregation with bound resources. With its TextMaker application, SoftMaker has accomplished what the accumulated armament of Sun Microsystems and the accomplished of the chargeless accessible antecedent association could not: anxiously exchanging abstracts files with Microsoft Word. Sadly, the suite's interoperability accomplishment doesn't extend to Microsoft Excel workbooks. Aloof as OpenOffice.org 3.1 bootless to bottle the circuitous SQL affiliation accouterments that was acclimated to drive my analysis workbook's alien abstracts links, SoftMaker's spreadsheet component, PlanMaker, additionally bare out all of the articulation parameters. The consistent spreadsheet, admitting structurally intact, was about a accumulating of changeless cells. And as with OpenOffice's Calc, any consecutive save operation from aural PlanMaker meant that those affiliation ambit were absent for good.

I belabor this point because, admitting the countless whizz-bang appearance and chic timesavers that accomplish up a avant-garde spreadsheet application, it is ultimately a product's adeptness to admission and dispense business-critical abstracts sets that defines its utility. And in the case of cardinal crunching beneath Windows, Microsoft has set the bar absolutely aerial by accumulation all-encompassing abstracts affiliation appearance and auspicious barter to body anytime added circuitous applications that affection Excel as the advanced end (see "Why is Microsoft Office is so adamantine to kill?" for added on this).

The SoftMaker association say they're acquainted of this and are alive to aggrandize PlanMaker's connectivity with approaching releases. In the meantime, SoftMaker Office 2008 charcoal an adorable product, abnormally for IT shops with bound use of alien data. Its failing architectonics and active achievement on low-end systems accomplish it a acceptable another to Microsoft Office in adaptable environments. And the admittance of BasicMaker -- a scripting agent accordant with Visual Basal for Applications (VBA) -- agency it's accessible for centralized developers to drift at atomic some of their custom solutions to the SoftMaker platform. Add to this a bashful amount point of $79.95 per bench and you activate to see why I accept SoftMaker Office is the hidden gem of the abundance apartment category.

As of this writing, SoftMaker was advancing its next-generation suite, SoftMaker Office 2009. The artefact was still in beta at columnist time, but my bound acquaintance with an aboriginal body larboard me afflicted by the development direction. For starters, SoftMaker Office 2009 will abutment importing abstracts files from Office 2007 in its built-in Accessible XML format. And from what I could accumulate while experimenting with the beta code, the action works far bigger than beneath OpenOffice.

For example, TextMaker 2009, which auspiciously alien and rendered my Chat 2007 analysis document, included about all of the inline archive and drawings. SoftMaker affairs to accommodate agnate abutment for Microsoft Excel 2007 workbooks (but still no alien abstracts access) and PowerPoint 2007 presentations, in accession to introducing its aboriginal attack into the applicant database class with its new DataMaker 2009 product, about a Microsoft Admission work-alike.

[ See the sidebars to this review: Office-compatibility ache test | The abounding faces of OpenOffice | Why is Microsoft Office so adamantine to kill? ]

Bottom line: SoftMaker Office shows that acceptable things generally still appear in baby packages. The product's bunched brand and low aerial accomplish it ideal for underpowered systems, and its accomplished affinity with Office 2003 book formats agency it's a safe best for amalgamate environments area alien abstracts admission isn't a priority. With a able beta absolution aloof about the corner, SoftMaker's brilliant is absolutely on the rise.

King of the hill
Microsoft Office has been baron of the desktop abundance acropolis for decades now, and its administration shows no assurance of advancing an end (see my preview of Microsoft Office 2010). For users who charge alone the best basal affinity with Office formats, a cardinal of offerings (SaaS apps from Google and Zoho, as able-bodied as IBM Lotus Symphony, and added OpenOffice variants, and OpenOffice.org and SoftMaker Office of course) may do the trick. But for shops defective added affinity with Microsoft Office -- to abutment circuitous documents, macros, and back-end links -- there's still no substitute.

Frankly, from Microsoft's perspective, the crisis may accept been overstated. Admitting the chargeless accessible antecedent army talks a acceptable fight, the accuracy is that they accumulate missing the absolute target. Instead of advance in new appearance that cipher will use, the aggregation abaft OpenOffice should booty a folio from the SoftMaker playbook and focus on interoperability first. Until OpenOffice works out its import/export clarify issues, it'll never be taken actively as a Microsoft alternative.

Added adverse (for Microsoft) is the claiming from the SoftMaker camp. These association accept gotten the file-format affinity affair licked, and this gives them the abandon to focus on architecture out their product's already admirable affection set. I wouldn't be afraid if SoftMaker got gobbled up by a above action amateur in the near, appropriately creating a applicable third way for IT shops gluttonous to bang the Redmond habit.

In the meantime, Microsoft's position aloft the desktop abundance abundance charcoal secure. If anything, OpenOffice's latest abortion bolsters the behemoth's acutely incontestable position. And now we accept Office 2010 authoritative an appearance (albeit unofficially), and it seems to accept addressed abounding of the actual account and affiliation complaints. Add it all up and it translates into what should be a long, ceaseless administration for the aristocratic Redmondians.