Seriously. Open a recent version of Microsoft Office or Apple iWork and just start writing some letter or presentation. Chances are, it will look quite pleasant, if a bit generic.
Do the same thing in OpenOffice/LibreOffice and it will look like a document in Word Perfect ca. 1995.
This is not to say that OpenOffice is not capable of producing nice-looking documents. Technologically, it is perfectly fine. But the templates are awful and sadly, that is what most people will notice when you give them a document written in OpenOffice.
Also, the GUI could use a bit work. LibreOffice is a step in the right direction, but it still looks a bit boring and clunky compared to its proprietary brothers. Case in point, my mother 'got' iWork Pages and MS Word after a short introduction. She might not know about all features, but she could find them and use them once we pointed out there existence to her. But over the course of about six months, we were unable to get her to use OpenOffice proficiently.
Its templates suck hard.
Seriously. Open a recent version of Microsoft Office or Apple iWork and just start writing some letter or presentation. Chances are, it will look quite pleasant, if a bit generic. Do the same thing in OpenOffice/LibreOffice and it will look like a document in Word Perfect ca. 1995.
This is not to say that OpenOffice is not capable of producing nice-looking documents. Technologically, it is perfectly fine. But the templates are awful and sadly, that is what most people will notice when you give them a document written in OpenOffice.
Also, the GUI could use a bit work. LibreOffice is a step in the right direction, but it still looks a bit boring and clunky compared to its proprietary brothers. Case in point, my mother 'got' iWork Pages and MS Word after a short introduction. She might not know about all features, but she could find them and use them once we pointed out there existence to her. But over the course of about six months, we were unable to get her to use OpenOffice proficiently.