Alternative to Microsoft Office products

[FLPilot]

When I asked a question in one of my "hot deal" forums about how MS (Microsoft) verifies that you are a teach or student for their academic education version of MS Office a member answered me with a question. His question was why pay for something that is free. Of course that made me very excited and I clicked on his link. The link took me to http://www.openoffice.org/ , which appears to be MS products but it's not. The best part it really is free. They have a programs that look like Word, Excel, & Power Point. So go download it and tell me what you think. I have checked it for spyware/adaware with Lavasoft's ad-aware program and came up negative. Beware that the program is almost 66MB, but only took me about 4 minutes to download

[colorider]

Originally posted by FLPilot
When I asked a question in one of my "hot deal" forums about how MS (Microsoft) verifies that you are a teach or student for their academic education version of MS Office a member answered me with a question. His question was why pay for something that is free. Of course that made me very excited and I clicked on his link. The link took me to http://www.openoffice.org/ , which appears to be MS products but it's not. The best part it really is free. They have a programs that look like Word, Excel, & Power Point. So go download it and tell me what you think. I have checked it for spyware/adaware with Lavasoft's ad-aware program and came up negative. Beware that the program is almost 66MB, but only took me about 4 minutes to download

Good find! Have you tried it yet?

I'm considering making the plunge and going to the "dark side" VERY soon. iMac G4 with a 20" LCD is looking REAL nice!!!

[fireflock]

OpenOffice.org is a great piece of software. It does not have 100% Microsoft Office compatability, but it is pretty darn close.

I have installed OpenOffice.org on some computers before and the people using them had no idea they were not using MS Office. This is especially true if you set OpenOffice to save files in MS office format as a default (Go to Tool-->Options-->Load/Save and Change the Standard File Formats)

One of my favorite features is that you can print .pdf files without any extra software.

Check out this site for some add-ons:
www.ooextras.org

Great Find!
Rich

[jay]

Originally posted by colorider


Good find! Have you tried it yet?

I'm considering making the plunge and going to the "dark side" VERY soon. iMac G4 with a 20" LCD is looking REAL nice!!!

You do mean that you're about to leave the dark side and come to the light, don't you. I love my flat panel iMac with 20 inch LCD, and OpenOffice runs great on it. And free sure beats the heck out of $400+ for that other product.: P

I use the software it's based on, StarOffice, a Sun Microsystems, Inc. product, every day at work.

[colorider]

Originally posted by jay
You do mean that you're about to leave the dark side and come to the ligt, don't you. I love my flat panel iMac with 20 inch LCD, and OpenOffice runs great on it. And free sure beats the heck out of $400+ for that other product.: P

I use the software it's based on, StarOffice, a Sun Microsystems, Inc. product, every day at work.

Cool!! So, this is the same system you currently have? I'm shopping it now - not a lot of range in price. We can get an EPP directly with Apple and I may just order from them.

[jay]

Originally posted by colorider


Cool!! So, this is the same system you currently have? I'm shopping it now - not a lot of range in price. We can get an EPP directly with Apple and I may just order from them.

I got my 20 inch iMac late last year. It replaced the 15 inch flat panel iMac I bought in February of 2002. I like the 20 inch screen, and was even more impressed when I got it home and set up in my home office.

The downside is that I liked it so much that I had to get a 17 inch PowerBook to replace my 15 inch PowerBook, because that 20 inch screen spoiled me. I have a 20 inch iMac on my home office desk, and a 17 inch PowerBook laptop that I use mainly in the kitchen. No blue screens, no virus issues, no spending all weekend rebuilding your crashed Windows box.

[colorider]

Originally posted by jay
I got my 20 inch iMac late last year. It replaced the 15 inch flat panel iMac I bought in February of 2002. I like the 20 inch screen, and was even more impressed when I got it home and set up in my home office.

The downside is that I liked it so much that I had to get a 17 inch PowerBook to replace my 15 inch PowerBook, because that 20 inch screen spoiled me. I have a 20 inch iMac on my home office desk, and a 17 inch PowerBook laptop that I use mainly in the kitchen. No blue screens, no virus issues, no spending all weekend rebuilding your crashed Windows box.

My home system crashed weekend before last. I'm still trying to recover stuff!!



I will probably look into a Powerbook within the next year.

[FLPilot]

Originally posted by colorider


Good find! Have you tried it yet?

Only opened it up to see the format, and as stated before, it looks just like MS's $500 and something bundle. Since I only use it once in a while, it is not worth paying that much money for software like that. Then again, even if you were rich and you needed MS this free software is better!

Jay, if windows isn't crashing or giving me problems then what would I do with all my free time?

I guess since I have been using (fixing) windows based computer as far back as I can remember, it would be hard for me to change over.

[jay]

A "retail" version of the StarOffice suite is available at places like Best Buy, Compusa, and MicroCenter. $79.95 gets you a CD and a user's manual. Still a good deal. Check it out at this link.

[m-mmeyer]

Not to take sides on the Apple Vs PC debate, but everyone must agree that Windows is getting better! Am I saying it is perfect, NO but my kids have XP on there computer now and it runs a thousand times better than it did new with ME!
I haven't had much issue with my computer running 98se but it runs even better with 2000. So what I guess I am saying is that XP is not to bad and they seem to getting better!
I would buy a mac again, the only thing that is holding me back is price. I can build a faster pc or upgrade what I have for a resonable price but I would have to put some coin down to go back to a Mac.

I would love to be able to use iMovie and iDVD though they rock and the Mac handles video editing so nice!
See now what you guys started!

Matt

[jay]

Originally posted by m-mmeyer
Not to take sides on the Apple Vs PC debate, but everyone must agree that Windows is getting better! Am I saying it is perfect, NO but my kids have XP on there computer now and it runs a thousand times better than it did new with ME!
I haven't had much issue with my computer running 98se but it runs even better with 2000. So what I guess I am saying is that XP is not to bad and they seem to getting better!
I would buy a mac again, the only thing that is holding me back is price. I can build a faster pc or upgrade what I have for a resonable price but I would have to put some coin down to go back to a Mac.

I would love to be able to use iMovie and iDVD though they rock and the Mac handles video editing so nice!
See now what you guys started!

Matt

I agree completely. I haven't had any issues moving back to Apple, and since my Mom moved to a new machine with Windows XP, the telephone support calls I receive have dropped to zero. iLife on the Mac rocks! And back on topic, the OpenOffice suite comes in a variety of flavors, including UNIX, Linux, Windows, and Mac.

[camanopilot]

I've also installed OpenOffice for people who can't justify the small fortune for MS Office for occasional use or for folks that need a word processor and/or electronic spreadsheet and don't need (or worry) about it being 100% MS compatible. None of them has had any real problems and all have been happy with it- I say go for it!
Any money you can save on software you can then spend on your Pilot. If you have all the Pilot add-on you can handle feel free to send the $$ to me, I'll glady find something to add something to mine.

[krygny]

Want lots of free/open-source software? Go to http://sourceforge.net/

[phinzup]

IIRC, several years back the City of Houston government offices went to Open Office. There was some kind of big stink with Microsoft when it happened...

OK, I did some research. It wasn't Open Office. It was Sim Desk that they switched to, and Microsoft threw a hissy fit.

I'm going to install Open Office on the new 'puter downstairs. I just haven't bothered to yet.

[LChisum]

I installed Open Office today (thanks again, FLPilot). My limited exploration so far has me thinking that it's quite compatible with my knowledge level of Word and Excel. I attempted to set up a spelling dictionary and thesaurus from the same download site. Spell checker looks OK, but the thesaurus is not very comprehensive. Is there any good open source replacement for Access?

Larry