LibreOffice/OpenOffice : A Comparison, with a follow-up on Google Docs/SkyDrive

  Well what a sweet set of suites.  Just think what the business professional (or any professional or anybody for that matter) of yesteryear would think.  Those were the days of scissors, straight edges and scotch tape. And as few mistakes as possible.  Well, those days are gone and here we are with LibreOffice and OpenOffice.
  Actually, this post is mislabeled because these office suites have way, way more in common than not.  In fact, it would be futile to try to list their common traits. There is little difference in their control panels.  I admittedly have limited experience with Office of any brand, so what I notice may be rudimentary.  I'll spot what I can.
  I thought I had found a significant difference with OpenOffice having the sidebar, but I was digging around and found one in Libre in the advanced options.
  Word : I couldn't detect any noticeable differences.  Both handled Word documents very well for my range in experience.  I loaded docs I already had and downloaded a few just to see.  Easy to create new ones.  I do like the way OpenOffice kind of walks through the opening steps.  Good for those not that skillled in these suites.
  Excel : Again, no noticeable difference.  OpenOffice maybe just a hair quicker at loading?  Seemed maybe.  Both programs handled the documents I tested equally well.  Again, easy to create new forms or such.
  PowerPoint : Both have the right stuff for setting up your slide shows or such, and options aplenty.  OpenOffice has the little walk-through, which is nice, but Libre's kicker is the ability to break PDFs back down into templates (It may be possible to somehow do this with the document converter wizard, but I couldn't figure it out).  That is very handy.  So..........
  These office suites are so similar they had to be born from the same mother.  OpenOffice may be better for the novice user, but Libre is more functional, especially because of the PDF conversion.
 

  Now moving on, we'll look at SkyDrive and Google Docs.
  Well, Skydrive is Microsoft, Windows is Microsoft, so...... get it.  They integrate.  And if somethings not right, they're gonna make it right.  There is a conversion factor involved for Google.  HTML, DOCX, etc, are Microsoft stuff, so points go to SkyDrive.  And Skydrive gives you 7GB free storage over Google's 5GB.
  On the other side though, Google has been at it awhile, and their seamless integration is priceless.  The user interface is excellent, and the functionality of Docs is much greater than SkyDrive's.  With it's format download choices and the fact that it is a fully functional office suite, Google Docs is hands down the better application.