Free?? "But is it good?"

[Edge]

Ive just downloaded a free "Office" programme, to save giving Mr.Gates even more money :roll: .

Question is...
Do any of you guys use "Openoffice" :?:
Have you had any problems with it  :?:

So far it seems to be running fine on Vista.

[martha focker]

i think it should be fine, if you go on microsoft.com, you can usualy download stuff like that for free

[smo]

Hmm, i shant be using it i'm afraid - i'm not anti-microsoft so dont see the point, it wont be better than MS office so why bother.

There are some products that beat MS stuff hands down, like firefox but i dont see the point in changing just to get at MS like many do....as if they care!

[L90OOK]

I use firefox & openoffice.
Openoffice is superb...I have never had any problems with it.  8)

[Drift]

I used to use it and its about the best bit of free software Ive had.

[Thrasher]

I use it - does what it says on the tin. But then ..  I also use Linux as well.

As of tomorrow our office goes Linux for the servers too - goodbye Mr Gates, goodbye W2K3 and all your bloated server problems. Hello money saving and a server package with no requirement for a state of the art gfx card! :)

[SteveGoodz]

I've got OpenOffice on my Linux box. Great software - does everything MS Office does ... quicker and with less demands on processor or graphics. You can also save documents, spreadsheets, etc. in MS formats so that others can read them.

Unfortunately, I still use MS Office too  :x

[baz2236]

I use open office on my linux system at it works great. once you get use to it you will never look back.

[thermidorthelobster]

I've used it (in the guise of NeoOffice) on the Mac, but I found it was a bit slow compared to M$.  I think this is probably because it's not natively written to support the Mac GUI.

[carbore]

Hi,

I evaluated it and found it to be excelent, it has some nice extras like built in PDF creation and it can save in MS format so no problems with sharing stuff.

The only thing that held ME back is that Im a bit of an Excel Power user and very famillier with  it as i use it everyday. Therefore the hit in productivity was not worth it as I already had a pukka copy of excel.

If i was setting up a business on my own from scratch I would Definitely use it rather than for out for MS office (productivity aside). Id also think about adopting it across a business for multiple staff as most people only use excel to do tables and maths! The word equiv etc are fine (better than fine!)

Im not anti MS but in a world where we are starting to get cross about the fact that Tescos is so dominant, I find it  sad that there is less choice in software than when I were a lad (remember Lotus 123 and word star anyone!)  Open source is amazing I am now using a Open source CMS that is as good as a commercial one I used to resell for about £30,000!!!!

[Edge]

Thanks everyone  :D  :D . Sounds like i made the right choice in downloading it.

[Evilgoat]

Its ok BUT

It can cane slower systems,  as someone has pointed out, its not as quick as the MS product, its not a Mac thing.

If you are a power Excel/Word/Access user you'll suffer too, but itsmore a case of getting used to how OO does things.

If you work in a mixed environment, MS Office and Open Office then prepare for a world of hurt. This is MS's fault though more than OO.

As a home user its great and I used to preload it onto PCs I sold.

[barnyzuki]

Personally I wouldn`t give any advise to someone with a live link to the BNP in their signature.

Just my view.  

[L90OOK]

Personally I wouldn`t give any advise to someone with a live link to the BNP in their signature.

Just my view.  

Why??

[Evilgoat]

Tolerence Guys :)

Someone is perfectly entitled to beleive/support what they wish.

[muddycarl]

OO is very good ....will do everything MS office will do  :D  :D  :D

[datalas]

OO is very good ....will do everything MS office will do  :D  :D  :D

Including crash, badly save files, save 0byte versions of a big document, run slowly, take more disk space, be really dull and naff and forget how to display icons... [1]

Although,  it's like a lot of things, you get what you pay for and unlike it's more-commercial counterpart [2] you're more likely to see any issues you have being addressed.


[1]  Your actual milage may vary of course

[2] Technically OpenOffice.Org isn't entirely "none commercial" since it has a couple of semi commercial backers who contribute heavily, but also gain from the codebase,  however, that's a technicality which only open-source propeller heads care about.

[Terranosaurus]

I've been using it for quite a while now, personal and business and find it great. Quite slow to open on this old PC but once running it's fine. Takes a bit of getting used to finding various functions that you know the name of in Word but have to find all over again in OO, under a different name in a different menu but you get used to it.

The PDF writer is an excellent add on, something you'd have to pay for again with Word an something I use a lot.

[jjsaul]

Hmm, i shant be using it i'm afraid - i'm not anti-microsoft so dont see the point, it wont be better than MS office so why bother.

Erm...because its legitimately FREE maybe...

Anyway, i've been using OO for years and i'm impressed with it, seems to crash less often than MS Office but don't get me wrong, its not perfect, but what software is??  :lol:

Runs fine on Win2k, XP and Vista.

[Elmo]

For the 99% of people who have office who use 40% of its features OO is great I use it here on Linux and Windows. All I would say is take the upgrades when available the development cycle is much shorter for OO and taking the upgrades means you sort the bugs out quicker.

For MS power users no its not a good choice but in reality there are not so many of those around.

Just my 2 bytes ;)

[thermidorthelobster]

The PDF writer is an excellent add on, something you'd have to pay for again with Word an something I use a lot.

CutePDF and PDFWriter are both good, free PDF writers which will work with any software, including Word.