Googling would show that any number of users run into issues with OO/LO file corruption, often from power interruption during saves. The applications seem to handle that in a suboptimal way, and maintainers are unwilling to address it. My suspicion is that their unspoken contention is that the problem is with Windows, not OO/LO.
I recommend backing up to a general file type simply because it's less likely to open in the offending application by default, if the user ever needs to access it.
It does, but I also found forum posts discussing similar issues with LO back when I had the original issue. I won't risk it; I would rather use applications without a hint of these problems. I've also dropped Evernote after it ate a few of my notes. It's almost impossible to get that user trust back without excising every bit of the concern, and then some, and unfortunately, the LO development community (like many FOSS communities, as well as many proprietary developers) is too self-involved to do that sort of thing.
Googling would show that any number of users run into issues with OO/LO file corruption, often from power interruption during saves. The applications seem to handle that in a suboptimal way, and maintainers are unwilling to address it. My suspicion is that their unspoken contention is that the problem is with Windows, not OO/LO.
I recommend backing up to a general file type simply because it's less likely to open in the offending application by default, if the user ever needs to access it.