My trial version of M/S Office Home / School 2007 has expired. Rather than purchase the M/S product, is the Open Office Program that can be downloaded for free a good option?
Open Office Program
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Originally Posted By: mckennaiii
My trial version of M/S Office Home / School 2007 has expired. Rather than purchase the M/S product, is the Open Office Program that can be downloaded for free a good option?
It is a *very* good option, with the caveat that OpenOffice may not support some of the more advanced features and/ or formats of MS Office. Think of the 80/20 rule: 80% of users use only 20% of the features.
Having said that, I and many, many, many others have been MS Office-free for years with nary a hiccup!
My trial version of M/S Office Home / School 2007 has expired. Rather than purchase the M/S product, is the Open Office Program that can be downloaded for free a good option?
It is a *very* good option, with the caveat that OpenOffice may not support some of the more advanced features and/ or formats of MS Office. Think of the 80/20 rule: 80% of users use only 20% of the features.
Having said that, I and many, many, many others have been MS Office-free for years with nary a hiccup!
It's very good. Give it a try but save all your new work in MS Office format until you are sure it's right for you. That way if you decide to go back to MS Orifice, you won't have to convert your files from OO format to MS format.
MS has free readers that allow you to read MS format files. You might want to have those on your machine in case you do have problem reading an incoming MS file with OO.
MS has free readers that allow you to read MS format files. You might want to have those on your machine in case you do have problem reading an incoming MS file with OO.
I suppose like anything, it has a learning curve. If you've been using MS Office for years, don't expect to just jump into OO and feel right at home.
I also remember installing it briefly last year when I got my new PC, thinking I'll give it a try. I uninstalled it the next day and went back to MS Office (2000).
I also remember installing it briefly last year when I got my new PC, thinking I'll give it a try. I uninstalled it the next day and went back to MS Office (2000).
I love it. I can use it on my Mac, my Linux box, and my old Windows laptop, all for free.
Originally Posted By: crw
I love it. I can use it on my Mac, my Linux box, and my old Windows laptop, all for free.
+1!
I love it. I can use it on my Mac, my Linux box, and my old Windows laptop, all for free.
+1!
It's good. I used it for a year before getting a copy of MS Office 2003, later 2007, from my old university.
Originally Posted By: mckennaiii
My trial version of M/S Office Home / School 2007 has expired. Rather than purchase the M/S product, is the Open Office Program that can be downloaded for free a good option?
I use NOTHING BUT OPEN OFFICE. Good stuff.
My trial version of M/S Office Home / School 2007 has expired. Rather than purchase the M/S product, is the Open Office Program that can be downloaded for free a good option?
I use NOTHING BUT OPEN OFFICE. Good stuff.
I'm actually using StarOffice 9 now, and it DOES support the DOCX formats of Office 2007. I dunno when that will find it's way into OpenOffice.
For most documents, something open like RTF is usually sufficient.
For most documents, something open like RTF is usually sufficient.
Originally Posted By: javacontour
I'm actually using StarOffice 9 now, and it DOES support the DOCX formats of Office 2007. I dunno when that will find it's way into OpenOffice.
OO 3.0 reads the x files... docx etc, but it won't write them. I don't find that a serious limitation because anyone with an MS docx using program can read .doc format.
Strangely, I can't get MS docx add-in for Office 2000 to work on the latest reincarnation of my desktop, so I am using OO more now because of docx.
I'm actually using StarOffice 9 now, and it DOES support the DOCX formats of Office 2007. I dunno when that will find it's way into OpenOffice.
OO 3.0 reads the x files... docx etc, but it won't write them. I don't find that a serious limitation because anyone with an MS docx using program can read .doc format.
Strangely, I can't get MS docx add-in for Office 2000 to work on the latest reincarnation of my desktop, so I am using OO more now because of docx.
OpenOffice is great. I prefer OO to Staroffice, but they're both very high quality. Don't be scared, the rumors of a learning curve are greatly exaggerated. It's almost identical unless you get into the advanced features (and I can never remember where those things are in either program, anyway). There is a large amount of support documentation available. Remember, this isn't some freeware a hacker cooked up in his basement, Sun Microsystems stands behind it and they don't play around.
If you're just looking for a good word processor that won't eat up alot of memory and space (older laptop, etc) AbiWord is very good.
If you're just looking for a good word processor that won't eat up alot of memory and space (older laptop, etc) AbiWord is very good.
We encourage our Franchise Owners to download and use it because it is FREE and does such a great job. It opens all of our MS-Excel spreadsheets we send them as long as they don't have Visual Basic Macros in them. 99% of them don't
I program in Visual Basic various Macro functions in Excel, so I'm like you and have to use it, but for the spreadsheets I release to my Franchise Owners etc. I let them use OpenOffice
Novell's version of OpenOffice has the Office 2007 filters included:
http://www.novell.com/products/openofficewindows/
The download is free, you do have to login to their site to download it though.
http://www.novell.com/products/openofficewindows/
The download is free, you do have to login to their site to download it though.
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
Novell's version of OpenOffice has the Office 2007 filters included:
http://www.novell.com/products/openofficewindows/
The download is free, you do have to login to their site to download it though.
This underscores the *real* meaning of free: Not necessarily free as in "no cost", but free as in "freedom to modify and redistribute". This is the real strength of the open source model.
Novell's version of OpenOffice has the Office 2007 filters included:
http://www.novell.com/products/openofficewindows/
The download is free, you do have to login to their site to download it though.
This underscores the *real* meaning of free: Not necessarily free as in "no cost", but free as in "freedom to modify and redistribute". This is the real strength of the open source model.
Thankx for everyone's post. I downloaded Open Office and it's plenty good for me.
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