<p>Is it necessary to shell out the extortion-level prices for Microsoft Office, or can I get by with Libreoffice 4.0? Using past versions of Libreoffice, the compatibility with MS Office file formats was not that great. My operating system is Windows 8. Thanks!</p>
<p>Get Office</p>
<p>Your college should offer a discounted price for Microsoft Office (and probably a whole suite of required software for your classes).</p>
<p>I definitely don’t think Office is worth the price, even with a university discount. With the advances in LibreOffice, I don’t feel like Office has a huge edge, at least not for the types of things I use it for. You can definitely get by perfectly fine with just LibreOffice. I have managed fine for 3 years of college without Office. If you desparately need to open some specific file with the stupid .docx format and it doesn’t cooperate with LibreOffice, you can always go to a university computer and export it to a PDF or change the file format. I’ve had to do that about 3 times in 3 years.</p>
<p>^What if I told you that I can’t get 4 years of the new offices for only $75 at discounted prices? I mean you can’t get any cheaper for something that good imo. </p>
<p>But of course you don’t need office. There are way more choices like google docs.</p>
<p>That is a pretty good deal, but I still probably wouldn’t go for it, personally. Part of it has become an aversion to Microsoft in general and a preference for the open source philosophy. I have been using Linux since I got my first computer in high school and will never go back. Once you get used to something, you tend to stick with it because it’s familiar. I am quite satisfied with LibreOffice on my linux box, so I see no reason to change or pay.</p>
<p>Depending on your University, you <em>MAY</em> be able to get Office for free…</p>
<p>Yeah, my school had an offer to get Office for free as well. LibreOffice is good enough in a pinch, and it’s nice that it’s free. Office is also more trusted and compatible e.g. if you need to share files with folks.</p>
<p>Speaking of sharing files with people, has that ever been an issue for those of you that use LO? (for example, when submitting files to the teacher)</p>
<p>FWIW, I’m a HS student at the moment, but have been using LO lately because I’m fed up with Microsoft’s push toward a subscription model, and their monopoly position. The only issue is that Microsoft Office seems to garble the formatting on OpenDocument files sometimes, even though it can supposedly read them (I’ve only been using 2007+, and have LO set to 1.0/1.1 mode for compatibility). Come on, why should I have to save in their proprietary file format just to make the file work properly?</p>
<p>As a long-time Linux and Libreoffice user, it is possible to use this program instead of Microsoft Office. This is particularly true if you work on your own documents primarily. In fact, the Libreoffice interface is probably more familiar that the newest Microsoft Office interface (although my colleagues tell me that it is good once you get used to it).</p>
<p>The real problem comes when you have to collaborate with others who use Microsoft Office. Even though Libreoffice does a pretty good job of reading these files, they are never quite right, particularly the newest formats. It is possible to work around but you nave to decide whether it is worth the trouble compared to the cost of Microsoft Office.</p>
<p>I actually prefer the ribbon in Office - but like the FOSS idea. Lately, we’ve been using shared Google Docs to collaborate in classes.</p>
<p>The ribbon/tab thing in Office does the same thing that Microsoft has done with all of their products: make clearly visible the stuff that they think should be important to you and try to hide everything else or shove off it to the side. It’s fine if you actually do the things they think you want to do, but otherwise it’s frustrating (at least for me).</p>
<p>And yes, Office is a disaster when it comes to reading open document formats. It’s stupid. When I have to submit things I pretty much always do it as a PDF. Occasionally they’ll insist on an editable format so they can add notes in the way they’re used to, in which case I will reluctantly use .doc. Why did they even create the .docx format?</p>
<p>I have been using Libre Office on Linux for the past several months and it serves my needs just fine. I was never a power user of MS Office and the only MS program I miss is Visio.</p>
<p>What’s the difference between .doc and .docx?</p>
<p>I believe .doc is a binary format, while .docx is XML-based (as is OpenDocument .odt).</p>