Post by Brian GregoryWhat's the attraction of Kingsoft Office over something free like
OpenOffice.org or LIbreOffice ?
For one, it loads/opens a hell of a lot faster. While Open/LibreOffice
have slowly improved their load time, it is still slow. If you leave
the program loaded all the time then you won't noticed the load time but
who leave a word processor open all the time? I also don't leave
hanging in the background processes that are running all the time in
trying to compensate for a slow-loading program. I have better uses for
my system memory. Even what users consider a bloated suite with MS
Office loads much faster than Open/LibreOffice.
I wish I could remember the function that I was trying to accomplish in
OpenOffice (can't search Google Groups anymore since Google destroyed
its searchs for that Usenet archive) but required a rather ridiculous
workaround. It was doable but clumsy and non-intuitive (I had to
research how others did it). In MS Office and Kingsoft, it was a menu
entry so easy to do.
Kingsoft Office has a GUI far more reminiscent to Office 2003 than
Open/LibreOffice who decided to go their own way with what they thought
was a good GUI. If you're used to using pre-2007 versions of Windows
then Kingsoft is familiar. You don't spend a lot of time trying to
learn the program versus actually using it. Even if you continue using
MS Office pre-2007, you might want to have a free program that looks
like it at home to work at home on work docs.
I have MS Office 2010 on my home PC but just recently migrated from
Office 2003. There is no bang for the buck to MS Office 2010 for me but
I got it free as an OEM version that came on a used computer that I got
for free because it was broke and I had to fix it (replace PSU, use
software to override a bad thermal sensor, replace the video card,
replace CD/DVD_RW drive that could no longer read DVDs, and replace a
dead hard disk). I got Windows 7 and MS Office 2010 as OEMs with the
hardware. Yet I've use pre-2007 versions of MS Office for a long time
and need to get work done, not waste time trying to find the same
features somewhere else in the GUI. Instead of losing all of what MS
Office could do, I installed the add-on to give me back the classic
menus. If I spend more than 5 seconds clicking around the ribbon (seems
like I click a lot more with the ribbon than with menus), I use the
classic menus (http://addintools.com/office2010/menutoolbar/index.html,
free only for the Home & Student edition which I have). Because I
didn't care to spend more money for licenses of MS Office but wanted a
similar GUI, I put Kingsoft on my laptop. My sister's kids computer
broke so I sent them my laptop and the kids, who were used to MS Office
XP, were using Kingsoft immediately. No learning curve. My aunt, who
is MS Office certified, wanted something on her laptop and netbook but
wasn't going to buy more MS Office licenses. She was up to speed on
Kingsoft in half an hour (mostly because she wanted to play around with
the program) and said it does everything she needs to do at home (she's
retired).
I haven't played with Softmaker's FreeOffice to know how similar or
dissimilar is its GUI to pre-2007 versions of MS Office but it does look
to have a few more features than Kingsoft's Office. If I get some time
and the inclination, I'll play with FreeOffice to see if is is any
better. There is not much difference between the freeware and payware
versions of Kingsoft hence not a lot of impetus by its users to upgrade
to the payware version. Not a lot of end users care about macros
(http://kingsoftstore.com/windows/professional-office-difference) in
trying to make one product work like it's something else, like making
Word into an accounting & inventory system frontend. Most of what I've
seen written for macros by end users is for convenience. FreeOffice, on
the other hand, has enough additional features in the payware versions
(http://www.softmaker.net/down/officecomparison_en.pdf) that its
freeware users may get lured into buying the payware version.
I trialed OpenOffice and LibreOffice. I didn't care for them. For a
freebie, I went with Kingsoft on my other hosts. So I looked at both
and chose Kingsoft. Have you trialed more than just Open/LibreOffice to
know for yourself that your initial and limited choice of Open/Libre
Office was the right one for you? No, I'm not done trialing
alternatives to MS Office but, at least, I have trialed a few and not
just stuck on the first one that gotten bigger publicity.