Open Office - Free MS Office Alternative.

[Lebkuecher]

About three months ago I activated my MS office software on my laptop because I needed MS Word. The trail period is now over so MS Office no longer works and have several documents now in MS Word that I need to change and send to people. While I was surfing on the net I came across a completely free software suite called Open Office

Apparently Open Office is like Lynx, it is free to everyone but they do ask for donations. The site mentions Open Office is compatible with MS Office but I am concerned about sending documents saved in a MS Word format that are created in Open Office or MS Documents that are altered by Open Office. It is critical the documents I send are compatible with MS Office and look professional when the documents are open.

Any thoughts and experiences you have with this software would be greatly appreciated.

BTW I have sent Bill Gates a lot of money over the years so it is good to see people create alternatives to MS.

 

[gadget_lover]

Open Office works pretty well. I've been using it for years. If used on Linux there are sometimes issues with getting the fonts that are equal to MSsoft, but it's not a deal breaker.

I keep a copy of Word on at least one system to check the documents I create.

Daniel

 

[paulr]

I've used OO for a long time, and for the average user it's fine. There are some differences between OO and the M$ stuff in the fancy features that advanced users might care about. But probably 90% of the stuff in M$ Office is used by only 2% of the users.

 

[Zigzago]

Pretty much what Paulr said. I use OO at home on my Linux system, but they also have a version for Windows. It does everything I need for word processing and spreadsheets.

When you save files you have the option of saving them in the OO format or in Microsoft-compatible format. I've never had problems opening an OO document in Word as long as I save it in the "doc" format.

Oddly enough, OO was able to open some old circa 1992 MS-Word files that the current version of Word doesn't recognize.

 

[bitslammer]

+1 for OpenOffice. I love being able to turn my docs into PDFs and assure they arenot copied as easily.

Aside from the text editor I might use the spreadsheet app. a littel but I'm by no means a power user.

 

[Knifemaster]

I have been using it on Winblows for year and no problems here. I don't even know why people shell out $700 for MS office:goodjob:

 

[Diesel_Bomber]

My wife uses OO for her college papers here at home, and is able to open them on the MS word machines at her college just fine. Go for it.

 

[tebore]

There's also Sun's Star Office.

 

[3rd_shift]

I was using Open Office to write and edit some of my security reports with when I worked security in an office building last year.
For the most part it worked just fine, even on Windows 98 1st edition.
It wasn't really bloated, not was it a resource hog.
It just did what I needed it to do with no grief. :thumbsup:

 

[Mike Painter]

I have been using it on Winblows for year and no problems here. I don't even know why people shell out $700 for MS office:goodjob:

I don't know why either since I don't think the list price for the full version is close to this.
Office is far more than just Word and Excel, both of which can be had for a lot less money. It's still a good value compared with what $500.00 would buy 20 years ago (dBase with $5.00 left over)
Powerpoint is hard to beat and nothing comes close to Access for simple to powerful database applications. Thats where I made a good bit of mony over the years.

The new file format for most of their applications, OpenXML is going to see a huge market develop for add ins and as with just about every iteration of MSFT applications, it reduces the need for high priced talent and lets the slightly above average user do some "interesting" things. Rename the extension for the file that describes a document to .zip and it opens as a zip document. You could change all the fonts to wingdings just for fun.

Hopefully this will speed the use of XML over the web as well.

 

[gadget_lover]

There's also Sun's Star Office.

Star Office is the same program. I'm not sure what Sun is adding to it nowadays. It used to be the "advanced" version of openoffice.

Daniel

 

[tebore]

Star Office is the same program. I'm not sure what Sun is adding to it nowadays. It used to be the "advanced" version of openoffice.

Daniel

Yeh it used to be a nicer verstion of Open Office. I haven't touched either in a while. I get free MS stuff so I've been using MSO2003. My company sends me to those launch parties and I get their software for staying a day listening to their praise. I missed out this year (forgot to sign up) or I would have gotten Vista Ultimate and Office 2007(not to mention a paid day off).

 

[Mike Painter]

Google also has free word processing and spread sheet as well as picasso a not bad photo manager.
It also offers you teh whole earth, something I've wanted since seeing a laser disk version which could resolve to about baseball diamond size in the early 80's.
Now they need to add a joy stick control to it.

 

[carrot]

Open Office has improved greatly since I last used it at v 1.x. Now it is better, but I still have some qualms with it.

I stick to Office 2K4 on my Mac. It works well, cost me only $99, and I do make use of the advanced features that are not completely (or poorly) implemented in Open Office.

There's also Abiword which I found fantastic for simple word processing... fairly slim and a good alternative if all you need is word processing with minimal formatting... for most people it works great as a drop-in replacement for Word.

 

[TigerhawkT3]

I don't use OO much, but it's sometimes nice for the drawing app, which is vector-based. It's also cool to be able to turn docs into PDFs so easily.

Funny story about MSO and OO:

A couple years ago, I was doing a group project in a technical writing course. We had to make a ppt presentation, and whenever someone had input, they could modify the latest file and email it to everyone. Well, one night, one of my group members called me on my cell phone. He was having trouble opening the latest ppt file into the view he was used to. I tried to walk him through it for several minutes, but nothing seemed to match MSO ppt. I told him to go "Help>About" to see if the version was different, and he started saying "it just says 'Open Office 1.x....' " I started the OO presentation app on my computer (which I fortunately already knew about and had installed) and fixed his problem in about five seconds.

But yeah, OO is good stuff.

 

[Eugene]

I've been using it for a while now, there are some features I like better in OO. For example on my work PC every time you type in Excel (MS Office 2000 and XP) it clears the clipboard. So you copy and paste a cell then type something in another then try to paste again and you have to go back and copy first then paste. Or you copy some data then create a new worksheet and try ti paste and its been cleared so you have to go back and copy then come back to the new sheet and paste. It annoys me to no end because its completely different operation than any other windows program including MSWord etc. Then every time it crashes it takes me to the web site suggesting I buy a new version. Why would I spend $ for a new version given based on their refusal to fix bugs in the old version? If your car broke down every day would you buy another one like it?

 

[Lebkuecher]

Thank you to everyone for your input!!!

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Another vote for OO. It does a really nice job of exporting documents and images as PDFs.

 

[Aloft]

After building a PC instead of buying one, I didn't get the 'good deal' from the OEM on MS Office. I had used OpenOffice for years on my linux machines and liked it. So I installed it on my homebrew machine and I've been very happy ever since. Envelopes were VERY easy in MS Office, and they're not so easy in Open Office, but I eventually figured it out. Ditto for embedded tables. Those are the ONLY two things I've found so far that were a bit rougher in OpenOffice. And for the price, it was a no brainer. I even installed the Mac version on a friend's machine (though there were a few glitches getting it to work, all eventually solved).

I'm curious as to what the OpenOffice developers will do now that MS is using XML for it's file formats. I think that's a great idea and will probably make OpenOffice even more compatible with it in the future.

I love OpenOffice!

 

[revolvergeek]

We have started using it at work for people that that don't HAVE to use MS Office. Very minor learning curve, no compatability issues. I keep a copy of it on a U3 USB drive on my keyring so I can work when I am not at my normal computer. Good stuff overall. :thumbsup: