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Hi there. I know someone who knows someone else who knows me, who was thinking about downloading Open Office, but that person wasn't sure if it was any good. Does anyone here use it? Know about it? Recommend it? Does it compare well with Word and other leading (damn, I sound like an advert), word processing packages? Are the files compatible with word, and vice versa?
I use it because I lost my OfficeXP CD. Losing that doesn't bother me anymore knowing that OpenOffice is just as good.
Why doesn't your friend just download it and try it?
I don't know. I think it was something to do with downloading 100 MB of stuff to see if it's usefull/any good being somewhat ... I dunno, weird or something to him. Meh. So, it's just as good as Office in your opinion? Cool. I'll pass it on.
Are the file types comaptable?
> Are the files compatible with word, and vice versa?
The native files are not, but OO word can read and write a variety of different formats including several different versions of Microsoft word.
For simple MS-Word documents, I'd say that OO 2.0 is pretty darn solid. If you've got something which is macro-heavy, then it might have some problems. I have one bespoke Excel spreadsheet which has many macros and although OO sheet didn't fully understand it, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it did cope.
All the usual UI toys are available to work with (fonts, tables, bullets etc etc) are all there, along with a large number of other things as well. Given that most people use but a fraction of the capabilities of word, then OO is going to be a pretty good replacement for it.
If you rename your file.odt to file.gz for example, you can get to all the raw information, which is all nicely stored in XML. That coupled with access to the source code means you've got a hell of a lot more freedom to do stuff than M$ closed proprietary system.
It's good, but takes a bit longer to load than I like. It has a lot of the same functionality as MS, and it doesn't cost a penny. For word processing, if I ever have to do it, I use wordpad anyway.
Open Office to me is a good example of how quality applications can get without biting into your wallet.
I use the OO spreadsheet for a few simple financial spreadsheets around the house. It does take a while to load (everything does, though, I think it's time to ditch SuSE) but its free and allows me most, if not all, of the features I use from Excel.
I wish I could find the quote in this page, but I think it's from the same region. Once the switch went public, someone from Microsoft reportedly said something like, "The region has decided to go with software that is about on par with Office 97."
To which a representative of said region replied, "That's right. That's all we need."
> I think it was something to do with downloading 100 MB of stuff to see if it's usefull/any good
Yeah I know what you mean - the core and each application should be downloadable separately. I hope they fix that at some point, 100MB is a monster.
It seems to be pretty popular . . . the "DO USE OO :: '' '' '' '' '' '' Recommend " vote has 100% of the votes . . . 11 votes. Make that 12.
If it was myself who was wondering about it, I would just download it, see if I liked it, and if I didn't, well I'd probably delete it. But one man's ceiling is another man's floor, or something. 100 MB may be a pain to download on a slow connection, but you'd get over it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Salem
Good news though - the person who was wondering about it is currently buying MS Office :rolleyes: typical I say, after 100% posative-ness.
Ah, the old addage "no-one ever got fired for choosing IBM" reinterpreted for todays behemoth.
while one part of me yells "OpenDocument you idiot!", the other part realizes that the world runs on windows and other various microsoft products...