This is a good analysis. Don't listen to the guys below who are just saying YES RAH RAH OPEN SOURCE and who have never worked in IT or had to deal with managers howling at them when a 10 year old document won't open correctly in a new software package.
I love open source too, but let's be realistic here.
I think I am realistic. As is often the case, there is no one answer that will be correct. OOo is a little different from Msoffice. Just as each version of Msoffice is a little different from the one before. We are using OOo 2.4.
We have 20 or so desktops running linux and have been using OOo for the past 6 years. We routinely exchange documents with clients, but in circumstances where we usually run the master. Where it is necessary, for others to edit the digital file we just save to word format and send it off.
The real answer to your question depends upon how you use MS Office. If your people use every formatting and macro that is available, you are more likely to have problems in exchanging documents with others â" even in Msword. If your documents are relatively simple there will be few problems. A key point is that you can get a version of OOo and try it to see how the documents actually in use fare with it.
If most of your documents are for internal use in digital form you will have few issues in changing. If most off your documents are not subject to being reviewed and changed by others your people will fall in love with the save to pdf feature that OOo has. We send out in pdf whenever we can.
We use the spreadsheet, drawing and presentation features, but mainly for internal use, not for exchange with others. They do all that we require, but the bulk of our work is documents.
FWIW many of our documents are large, typically >30 pages; we extensively track changes; we work in two languages â" English and Chinese, and we have relatively few issues. Anyone familiar with using Msword will know that on large documents like ours, it will tend to fail to a corrupted binary file. The most recent versions may be different, but I have used it from the days of Word 5 in dos.
Don't think about changing everyone all at once. Change the easy ones and the key users. Once you get traction the rest will follow.
