LibreOffice 7.2 review - A turning point?

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

My recent testing of Windows 11, as well as my overall satisfaction with Office 2016 (compared to 2010) are a constant remind of how urgently I need to break away from this cycle of technological dependency. Alas, I cannot. I am compelled by my personal and business needs. In the office space, they cannot be fully satisfied with LibreOffice. Cling to Microsoft Office, I must.

With LibreOffice 7.2 freshly out of the oven, my testing appetite has once again opened up, but I'm trying to be cool about it. I ain't too hopeful, I ain't too gloomy. Cautious and skeptical. After all, I've tried every single version of this free, open-source suite in the past decade or so, and I've experienced every emotion on the spectrum. The results seesawed widely. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a perfect LibreOffice release? Of course it would! Is 7.2 that release? Ah, let's check out.

Conclusion
What can I say? LibreOffice 7.2 feels better than its predecessor, but then, it feels like an entirely self-made situation. You have a sub-par release, with lots of bugs and problems, so when these get fixed in a new version, one can perceive these as progress or improvement. Which is true, but it also doesn't take away from the fact none of these issues should have existed in the first place.

The new suite does bring some goodies to the table - better Microsoft format support, more visual consistency. However, it's also significantly more sluggish, and the support for the non-native formats is average at best. You may be lucky and get a file to display correctly, after a while, or it may look totally messed up. These aren't strong selling points, I must say. Do they give me the functionality I need, and thus independence from Microsoft Office? Nope. Quite the opposite. Overall, LibreOffice 7.2 is okay, and I'd like to hope it will be an upward trajectory from here on. But the road to where it needs to be - providing an ubiquitous solution to everyday office requirements - is long and twisty. And thus we conclude this article.

LibreOffice 7.2 review - A turning point?

Review of LibreOffice 7.2, a free, cross-platform office suite, including installation, visual and functional improvements, Microsoft format support, native templates, styles, EPUB and PDF export, digital signatures, performances and responsiveness, various problems, and more

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[Chuck57]

On my 2015 HP 355G2 8G RAM machine with Win 8.1 Pro, LibreOffice installed in about 6 minutes. I can only speak for the word processor and Presentations. Both are much faster than version 7.1.5. In fact, the word processor in LO 7.2 opens almost as fast on this laptop as Atlantis word processor, which is saying a lot.

I can also add that the fonts I use are a bit more clear and sharp than before. Overall, a big improvement over the prior version, in my estimation.