By Martin Jansen, Owner of Jansen-PCINFO
Happy St. Patty’s Day. Remember the ‘old days’ when software was installed via floppy disk and then by compact disk? The floppy disk was not the ‘good old days’ as the media was unreliable. I remember installing 27 diskettes containing the office suite IBM Lotus Symphony. Unfortunately on the 25th diskette, I received a CRC error and the install was nullified. I was so happy to see compact disks available to install software. Much more reliable (unless the surface was scratched) and all the software was usually installed via one CD.
Today, of course, we want the latest software installed by downloading from the internet. LibreOffice is installed this way unless it is packaged with a distribution like Linux Mint.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft is different. The installation is part cloud and part software on the PC. A subscription based model, you could spend $100 per year for a Microsoft 365 personal license. Microsoft is updated online – you are always using the latest version of the office suite. There is also a family plan that costs more – $130 per year for up to 6 members.
If you want to put up with advertisements, free online versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint (the most commonly used apps) are available through a Microsoft account, like outlook.com. The free version is not full featured, but will do when you need to edit a document on the run.
LibreOffice
The latest version as of this writing is LibreOffice 25.2.1 and is available to download from this Uniform Resource Locator (URL). LibreOffice is full featured with apps that are compatible with Microsoft Office. Writer is like Word, Calc is like Excel, Impress is like PowerPoint, Draw is like Visio and Base is like Access. In addition LibreOffice also contains Math, which is great for budding mathematicians.
And what does LibreOffice cost? Nothing! LibreOffice is licensed through Mozilla 2.0 as freeware. They do accept freewill donations.
While the default file format is open document, LibreOffice does a great job of opening and rendering all types of xml based documents like Microsoft Office files.
Security
LibreOffice likes to bill itself as the “powerful, free and private office suite.” This alludes to the cloud based nature of Microsoft 365 which is inherently less secure. Microsoft also isn’t above advertising its other software especially in the free online version. LibreOffice doesn’t have any advertising at all – nothing to get in the way of your productivity. That said, any updates to LibreOffice must be installed from the internet.
User Interface
Both LibreOffice and Microsoft 365 offer menu systems that are easy to navigate. It’s not until looking for the more obscure commands that you may have to search.
Here’s the LibreOffice Writer menu and shortcuts:
And Microsoft 365, Word offers a ribbon based menu and shortcuts:
Hovering the mouse over the various shortcuts provides more clarity of the commands.
Conclusion
Many people swear by Microsoft Office (365) and will use nothing else, regardless of cost. LibreOffice, however, is very powerful, free, and offers similar capabilities. I, for one, was willing to learn the differences between the office suites and now thrive using LibreOffice.
I switched to Libre Office a short while ago. I like that it iou it is taking me awhile to get use to it. Maybe because I had taken a class on this and I have a book. I don’t know anyone that has Libre office that I could ask questions. I am better off with hands on then trying to look it up on the internet. Do you offer help at all? Thanks for this news letter.
Hi Linda, thanks for reading the article. I volunteer my Tech Help time at the Appleton Public Library, if you are in the area, Tuesdays 1-3 and Thursday 10 am to noon. Otherwise there is LibreOffice help available on a Facebook group as well. Searching the internet for help is easy. Google LibreOffice and the question you have. Like “LibreOffice Create Labels” I hope this helps. Same thing applies to YouTube videos.