Like all of KDE, the interface of each KOffice application is really slick and gorgeous. The available functions are easy to use. The KOffice developers have again demonstrated their canny ability to make the transition from other office suites as easily as possible, but making improvements and innovating where appropriate.

The feature set is probably adequate for the great majority of users (and the price tag can't be beat!). For example, KPresentation is great and has many useful and snazzy features, but lacks layers and the ability to easily reproduce layers across selected pages. KWord is easily up to the task of generating nice letters, letterheads, memos, faxes and papers, but lacks hyphenation, mail merge (or any database integration) and endnotes/footnotes. Similar stories for the other applications.

But, with all due respect to the diligent work of the filter developers, the biggest obstacle to KOffice right now is the filters for MS Office documents. So while I will make KOffice my primary office suite, someone who (1) has a repository of .doc files; and/or (2) receives many .doc files by email; and/or (3) needs to collaborate on document production with someone tied to non-KOffice formats, and/or (4) has unusually demanding office needs, will likely not be happy with KOffice as their exclusive Office Suite (yet -- things are improving quickly!). I hope all the Open Source office developers (Abiword/etc., KOffice, Open Office) can collaborate on writing filters for the extremely complex and poorly-documented proprietary formats into an intermediate, standard-based XML format).

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