Nate DeSimone wrote: [snip: OO.o uses more VM then Office]
Anyway my point is I personally still see good reason to stick with Office, and I hope that the open product becomes up to par in the future.
Yes, it is a bit hoggish. I am looking forward to the reduction in its run-time consumption requirements, too, but it's well-to-do enough that I use it for *everything*. While there are some people that have Microsoft's Office, I do not have it; I simply cannot afford to purchase it. I use OpenOffice for everything that I do outside of work and most things that I do *at* work. The only things that I don't use OO.o for are the sheets and documents at work that we use that require the use of VBScript, which isn't terribly often, and I'm working on porting those documents over when I have the time, as well. We can save loads on licensing fees if we use OpenOffice, and they have vastly improved its capability to read documents written by other suites (such as Microsoft's Office). It's not perfect when reading from other suites, but when used to save something in MS Word or MS Excel format, the person on the other end sees what you've wrote, and it's just fine.
Add to that, the fact that it is portable, and all of a sudden, we don't see a need to use Windows in the environments that are moving to more and more standards-compliant web based applications. And there are more license fees to be saved.
All of that aside, it's only partially relevant to this conversation. This is an open project; it only makes sense to use an open format to document it. Many of those who use free, open, software do not have the ability to license programs from others due to financial constraints. If they can't afford a license to run Windows, what makes you think that they're going to afford a license to use MS Office? Why not just stick to what is supported? Everyone can legally obtain and use OpenOffice.org, but not everyone can legally obtain and use Microsoft Office.
It sounds like maybe there need to be some standards created within the project to clearly define what is and is not acceptable in the way of document formats? That's just an idea.