| Author | Message | ||
     Toona |
I seem to remember a while back about someone posting a thread about a Microsoft Office substitute. A quick Google search pulled up Openoffice.org. But I can't for the life of me remember if that was the one referenced on the BadWeB or not. Anyone use this program? Or is there another program I should check out. This will primarily be used on my daughter's laptop for high school. I know I can get the Student/Teacher edition for around $130, but if I can save the cashola, that'll give me some more Homecoming moola. | ||
| M1combat |
That's probably the one. Make sure she knows to save as a word format. | ||
| Lost_in_ohio |
openoffice is the ticket. It is much more powerful than office. You can save spreadsheets and documents in almost any format available. Plus your not feeding the microsoft empire. The only thing I recommend is to be attentive during the install they want to install google tool bars and such. (Message edited by lost_in_ohio on April 02, 2008) | ||
| Old_man |
I have it and I like the Google tool bar. | ||
| M1combat |
Please don't like the google toolbar  . | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
My wife let loose with the computer a couple of years ago & when I got home I had hardly any screen left there was a Yahoo toolbar & a google toolbar & a couple of others too. Cleanup time. Now got a 19" flat panel monitor, I thought hey big screen I'll leave the toolbar, wrong! It just means I sit further away from the screen. | ||
| Mbsween |
Open OfFice is a great replacement, it will even let you convert a doc into PDF all for the low cost of nothing. Microsoft of course, is changing document formats to keep a stranglehold on its money maker product so there may be a hicup supporting office 2008 documents for awhile. You can write to any of the Microsoft 2007 formats. And yes you get the complete suite. http://www.openoffice.org It's the first step in moving away from the windows "addiction" | ||
| Corporatemonkey |
Openoffice is great for the PC Neooffice is its Mac (OSX) counter part. http://www.neooffice.org | ||
| Spike |
+1 for Open Office. Only hitch to it is making sure you select the correct file type when saving, as it'll let you pick what file format you'd like to use when saving files. It'll default to saving in its own format, but I switch it over to MS Office formats for compatibility. | ||
| Xb12mel |
+1 OpenOffice.org Same stuff non of the fluff! | ||
| Staindus |
Open Office came from Star Office and are different projects, both are available freely as Open Source. Corel Word Perfect Office and Lotus Suite are M$ Commercial competitors. I use Open Office and it works great for my needs. Just my 2 cents. | ||
| Ratyson |
Open Office is great. I use it with my Portable apps on my USB drive. Anything that gets us away from Microsoft is good. | ||
| Jackbequick |
+ 1 - Been using StarOffice and then OpenOffice for about ten years and never have any trouble opening docs, spreadsheets, and presentations from the M$ kinkdom. Visualize it as Sun's effort to give M$ the finger for where they went with Word and Office. I occasionally find a glitch on the sound track in presentations or some minor formatting issues from fonts or styles but, as I understand it, that is something that happens to Office users too because of the complexity of people trying to use various versions of Office. The only alternative is to have everyone get the latest version of Office every time M$ decides to put one out and I ain't going there. As an aside, I can't believe people that would send Word documents to friends and acquaintances on the assumption that everyone has it and uses it. I show people the courtesy of sending text or rich text at the most. One of my sisters used to send me emails with colored backgrounds, 26 different animated fonts, running bunnies, etc., so I started replying with the same stuff, then backing it up with the same reply in text format. She quickly "got it" and went to text or very simple formats. She even thanked me for doing it (that was back in the old dial up days) because it saved so much time on sending and receiving emails. Jack | ||
| Toona |
Thanks to all who responded. I downloaded it on my work computer and will try it out for a few days before installing it on the laptop. I used it once yesterday to open a word doc, it worked just like it opened with Word. I didn't try to edit it or anything, yet. | ||
| Blake |
"Anything that gets us away from Microsoft is good." Why? I don't understand the hatred for Microsoft? Just like to hate the big successful company?  Lots of folks, Americans work there you know. Better if a foreign based software innovator were to fill that position? I'm ALL in favor of open source software and don't much care for the entire software industry's pseudo scam of periodic new versions and planned obsolescense, but I wonder if security is up to par with the free stuff? | ||
| Froggy |
Open source software tends to be more insecure, but because its open source it tends to get fixed faster. No corporate red tape to delay patches. I personally hate OpenOffice's interface. I have gotten so used to the ribbon setup in the new Office that everything else feels clunky and old. |
