Open Office

[Chief]

I just recently changed my virus protection and spam protection program. As a result of this new program I have the option on the Desktop of downloading Open Office. It appears to be a free program. Are any of you familiar with it or use it?

[ChEAr$]

Open Office

yes. And the very best thing I like it, IS that it's free.

Mostly I use Microsoft Works, since I never liked to pay extra for Microsoft's Excel.
But one client uses Excel, so OO's spreadsheet "calc" comes in real handy.
No problems with it.

[KBTS]

Open Office is a free software suite that is an alternative to Microsoft Office products; i.e. Excel, Word, Power Point, Access, etc. From what I understand, the software is written with open code meaning users can report bugs, request changes, or add enhancements to the software. It can open files created in Microsoft Office and I believe save them in a format that you could re-open them again in Office. I have not used it; but users seem to really like it, enjoy the price (free), and the fact that they are no longer forced to use Microsoft products. Since the release of Office 2007 and all the "enhancements" to Excel and Word that I hate (such as completely changing the way you have to access all the menus), I have been thinking about giving Open Office a try. Hope this helps.

[erchess]

Open Office

is indeed a free program. To be sure there are really no strings attached I would go to www.openoffice.org rather than download through your vendor. OO is what is known as open source software which means that anyone can have the program and distribute it even in modified formats.as long as there is no charge for the software. The trouble is that outfits are allowed to charge for putting the program on a CD or letting people download it from their servers.

I trued an early version of OO and I didn't like it. However it will produce letters spreadsheets and so on - many if not all of the things Microsoft Office will produce and it will (although this is not the default) produce them in formats MS Office can read and it can read files produced by MS Offices. Try OO you might like it but my guess is that if you have MS Office you won't stick with Open Office.

[Snaggletooth]

Revenue

Sounds good but how does this "free" software make enough money to stay in business?

[RLymanC]

Forced to use MS

KBTS:

Interesting that you use "Forced to use Micro Soft"

I suggest you delete EVERYTHING on you computer that is MS, Operating system, software, everything.

Myself, I would be totally out of business, as would most of the worlds business.

[David1980]

Most people can quickly adapt between MS office and OO. They use basically the same interface.

File compatibility is fine, OO can open and save MS format files. I'm not sure about the embedded macro 2007 formats like a .docx but I've never found the need yet to put a macro in a document either.

Price is great. Speed wise, it's in Java and although they make improvements I would still say MS is a little snappier. I use MS at work (but someone else pays for it.) At home I use OO, and if I had to pay for it given the limited amount of use I get I'd use OO. If my job was 100% documentation/excel I'd pay for MS.

But hey, it's free. Just go download it and give it a good run through. I'll personally give you a money back guarantee!

Sounds good but how does this "free" software make enough money to stay in business?

Open source is not really a business in the normal sense. There are big names that contribute to open source direct and indirectly including some pretty heavy investments by IBM, Sun, etc... Also a lot of the work has been funded by universities (AKA tax dollars) but my guess is most of the work is considered volunteer work (for example college students doing work on it or other computer savvy people who program for a hobby.) For sure there are open source companies like Redhat. Also companies that sell services using open source (like a lot of web hosting companies are going to sell you web space hosted on apache servers, an open source web browser.)

Good example: Dell contributes money to open source projects. Dell sells computers with the Linux operating system installed, open source software. Dell makes money on the hardware sales.

[dmj4]

So, you say it will open .doc files?

I only have Microsoft Works on my home computer. People send .doc files all the time. I can open them because there is an expired trial edition of Word on my computer, but I can't print or edit any of the files once I open them. I downloaded a converter that didn't work.

My work laptop has Word, but I'm too cheap to buy it for my home computer. It's the same thing for Excel. I have it on my work laptop but not on my home computer.

Will OO allow me to open and edit the .doc files?

Thanks!

[S T]

Open Office

Well I am not sure and have not loaded, but here is a link

http://www.openoffice.org/

I have an email to my "computer guru" to see what his take is!

Will post more later as I find out.

Well my "computer guru" responded faster than I thought, so here is his take on Open Office

It seems like it is a decent product but it is redundant if you have Microsoft Office.
It is a bit behind too. Microsoft is always tweaking and changing little things particularly in the advanced features. They don’t usually make promises about adding or deleting features. Some say that this is deliberate to make it hard to maintain compatibility. I think the Microsoft people just work like everyone else and don’t really know if things will be ready to ship by the deadline or not.
I do not think Open Office can handle the new default data formats for Office 2007 and by the time it does, Microsoft will probably have moved on again.
For a casual user it is probably fine, but for a professional user, who do you call if you need help? What if something comes in that was created in Word and Open Office can not present it properly?
And for a student, while it would not matter for completing assignments, in general they are in school to prepare them for the workplace, they are more likely to use MS Office in the workplace than Open Office.

For what it is worth!

Sandy

[thomtax]

Another Option

For those who are interested, a much lower priced option to MS Office is go get Corel Office X3. It has Wordperfect (which I prefer over MSWord), with an option to use the MSWord mode. It has Quatro Pro spreadsheet, with the option to use the Excel mode. There is also Multimedia Presentations.

From the software package "Open, edit and create Microsoft Word, Excel, powerPoint and Adobe Acrobat PDF files."

As I said, the cost is only a percentage of the cost of MS Office.

LT

[KBTS]

KBTS:

Interesting that you use "Forced to use Micro Soft"

I suggest you delete EVERYTHING on you computer that is MS, Operating system, software, everything.

Myself, I would be totally out of business, as would most of the worlds business.

I was just passing on the opinion of some people who dislike Microsoft's monopoly on the software market - I never claimed it was my personal opinion. I am by no means a computer expert, but I believe you could delete everything MS off a computer and still have a usable machine - it probably would be called a Mac..ha ha

[DaveO]

Open Office is a good workable sub

for the MS Office product. I'm not a Microsoft basher though. I wish the DOJ would leave Microsoft alone and go after Intuit. Can you imagine the outrage if Excell and Word were not forward AND backward compatible? People would be livid if the couldn’t open a Word 2007 document with their Word 2003 program. But then we just take it on the chin and buy a new Quickbooks program every year. I just imported and updated some old stock basis worksheets I created in Lotus 1.0 back in the early 80’s with Excell. I can save the files and use them with Lotus again if I chose, try doing that with Quickbooks!

[Gretel]

I recently attended a Technology Seminar by Bob Jennings. A must do I would say. Everything he talks about and shows comes from application in his own office and his office is paperless since decades. He also offers a new seminar format, called Streaming seminars. You sit at your computer and attend a live seminar and get credits without taking an additional test. I really like that.

Anyway, he had to install Open Office (reason doesn't matter here) and just renamed the icons or whatever it was and said that it took his partners over a year to even notice that they were not using MS. He also says that if you don't use real fancy features you are fine with Open Office.

[David1980]

People would be livid if the couldn’t open a Word 2007 document with their Word 2003 program.

Actually you can't.

Not if the 2007 program saved it in the macro format files like .docx. Well, you can... After you install the converter program for older versions of MS office. It just removes the "new" stuff like macros in documents. (This probably makes MS office 2003 more secure than MS office 2007 I would think!)

[Roberts]

Open Office was originally Star Office / a part of Sun Microsystem. They gave away the code to the open source community with the agreement they could use their work and sell it in the Star Office program, along with their own add ons. Star Office was eventually shut down and Open Office took control of the entire program.

It is a good program that provides free updates. It runs very much the same way as MSFT Office and in many ways is less taxing on your computer because the programs are so much smaller. They don't have ALL the features but if you are an average user with average needs, it is more than adequate.

Open Office makes money by licensing the product to other users to sell. For example they sell a book at the book store on how to use the software and it comes with a licensed copy on a CD. Some companies contract directly with OOO community to license, get CDs and direct support. They also take donations!