Anyone running Open Office?

Is anyone using OpenOffice? I was recently thinking of installing it on my wife's notebook, instead of paying thru the nose for another MS Office 2007 license. She's running Vista Ultimate, but she has an old version of Office XP Pro installed.
Just wondering if it is fully compatable with MS office? Opinions? Comments?

Thanks

Yes, I'm running Open Office on a dekstop equipped with Vista Home Premium. I haven't used it a whole lot because I don't do much word processing on this computer. What I have seen is that, at least with Writer, it is intuitive if not identical to Word. You have the option to save files in .doc format, so it should be easily opened by others, as well.

Ashcat wrote:Yes, I'm running Open Office on a dekstop equipped with Vista Home Premium. I haven't used it a whole lot because I don't do much word processing on this computer. What I have seen is that, at least with Writer, it is intuitive if not identical to Word. You have the option to save files in .doc format, so it should be easily opened by others, as well.

Thanks! and does it have the other components, like MS Office has Excel, Outlook, Word, Powerpoint, Access, etc?

I use Open Office occasionally. Version 3 has improved significantly over previous versions. There are still occasional variations in the display of files on the screen and in printed form. Some user functions are implemented differently than in Microsoft Office as well and take a bit of learning for someone who is used to Microsoft Office.

Open Office does not offer a relational data base program with the capabilities of Access. However Open Office does offer simple data base capabilities that will meet the needs of many users. [Correction--the current version of Open office includes a relational database. Sorry for the misinformation.]

I recommend Open Office but I think that anyone using Office programs to make a living will find that buying Microsoft Office is worth the price because of the remaining differences in the way documents are rendered on the screen and when printed. Additionally, if you need a relational data base Open Office won't meet your needs.

I too am a proponent for Open Office and agree with Bob that version 3 is far better than version 2. The corporate world may need MS Office but I push Open Office where I can. While I prefer Open Office 3, IBM's Lotus Symphony is also now a free download.

http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotu ... e.nsf/home

Open office has most of the components of MS Office with the exception of Outlook. You may want to look at how Mozilla products an fill that need.

http://www.mozilla.org/

Install it, if you don't like it uninstall it.

I've only used it for opening Excel and creating PDF's.

If your going to get Open Office, you might want to get it soon.
I read the Microsoft is going to buy Sun Micro. That means a stab
in the neck to Open Office.

Tom

I wouldn't be overly concerned about it, Open Office is open source and released under the GPL. I don't know exactly what version or stipulations however most GPL licenses specifically allow the work to be used by others. Sun is just supporting it. Anyone can get the source code and take it from there to release future versions. The beauty of the GPL license is it acts the exact opposite of most copyrights in that it insures that someone cannot hijack it and turn it into a commercial product nor keep the source code.

Firefox is in the same boat as much of their funding comes from Google and the word is Google might drop funding because they have their own browser now.

So everything, or most everything is in OpenOffice, except Access and Outlook. Ok, we can live without access on one PC, but is there a 'free' version of a pseudo-Outlook out there? We love Outlook, and hate OutlookExpress(free). Whatever, it needs to be able to handle multiple email accounts at same time, in same instance. IE.. not two users with one email account each, but one user with multiple email accounts?

Use Thunderbird for an e-mail client. You can have multiple e-mail accounts. See:

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Yanche wrote:Use Thunderbird for an e-mail client. You can have multiple e-mail accounts. See:

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

THUNDERBIRD 2 !!
Fantastic! My wife just went to bed, so I can steal her T61 and load it up.
Thanks, Yanche ! I don't care what Richard says about you.... your allright!

DVC500_at_last wrote:instead of paying thru the nose for another MS Office 2007 license.

Bittorrent is your friend.

DVC500_at_last wrote:So everything, or most everything is in OpenOffice, except Access and Outlook.

There is a Database (Access) part of Open Office 3.0 as well. While Outlook is a far better product than Outlook Express, I have been able to created multiple email accounts under one profile. Still, I use Thunderbird.

kozel wrote:

DVC500_at_last wrote:So everything, or most everything is in OpenOffice, except Access and Outlook.

There is a Database (Access) part of Open Office 3.0 as well. While Outlook is a far better product than Outlook Express, I have been able to created multiple email accounts under one profile. Still, I use Thunderbird.

I just finished installing Thunderbird 2 on my wife's T-61. It works FANTASTIC with multiple email accounts!

Now, onto the Open Office 3 install...

OA works great, I've installed it at several clients who just need Word & Excel functionality. Renamed the icons to "Word" and "Excel", set the file type default to MS Office and they haven't said a thing for over a year. I'd say 97% of basic users can not tell the difference between OA and MS Office if the icon names are changed.

Haven't played with Ver 3 but Ver 2 had some problems with Word and Powerpoint templates.

For Thunderbird (and Mozilla users) MozBackup is a good utility to back it up or transfer to a new computer:

http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/