Open Office

[flan_taster]

On my new PC, I had received an anto update from JAVA and after it finished downloading I have a short cut on my Desktop that leads to a page where I can download OpenOffice.org for free.
I am tempted to do this because there may be some extra things that my basic MS Works 9 does not already offer. (I don't have MS Office)

Has anybody been using OpenOffice and can tell me if I should go ahead and download ? Any useful things ?

[chrissiehope]

Hi,

We used OpenOffice for many years as we didn't have Microsoft Word (trying to keep Bill Gates under control !!), and found it worked very well. The only thing I noticed is that the formatting of documents came out a bit different to the way they would have in Word (ie pages ending at different points etc), which was generally not an issue (I only found out about this when it was an issue !!).

We now have Word (courtesy of one of my husband's business interests) and don't really use OpenOffice these days.

If you don't want to give Bill any more of your hard-earned dosh , then OpenOffice is a very acceptable alternative.

Cheers,
Chris

[gerryh]

...where I can download OpenOffice.org for free.

Open Office is always free.
I use it, does everything I want, and more.
It can read MS Office files and output MS Office file formats.
Go for it, you won't regret it.
Cheers
Gerry

[Beachcomber]

Yes, I also use Open Office. I prefer it to MS Office in the same way that I prefer Firefox to Internet Explorer.

[flan_taster]

Thanks and have downloaded it. There are several features that look very useful indeed.

[Coin Boy]

I've been using it since version 1.0 and have never looked back. I've even been able to go back to the documents I created in 1990 in the word processor that came with Windows 3.0, something I couldn't do with later versions of Microsoft Word.

Apart from Openoffice being free and not being a product of Microsoft, it is not proprietary software and its the only office software that fully complies with an ISO standard. The most important reason however is probably that it's not controlled by a company that can profit from changing specifications in updates to force you to buy further software. This is the reason why governments across the world, including Europe and moving over to it.

The new version 3.0 is due out tomorrow and can be downloaded from www.openoffice.org. If anyone wants to check what the professional opinions are on Openoffice, just search on the the word and you'll find plenty of reviews from many sources including Forbes magazine, a publication for those not fiscally challenged.

Just following up Beachcomber's remark about preferring Firefox, I also prefer Mozilla Thunderbird to Outlook Express and that's available free at www.mozilla.com, the same site as Firefox.