openoffice. What do you think?

grimbo

im thinking of downloading openoffice, as i lost ms office in a pc upgrade. I would like to know what other people think of it first. It will only be used for the kids to do their course work on.

tigermatt

I must admit the features are a little different, located in different places and some of the more advanced features don't exist, but if it is just for simple word processing, spreadsheet work etc. then I would highly recommend it.

The only thing I must add is what connection are you using? If you are on dial-up I wouldn't recommend you download it, you will either need to download it on a friend's PC on broadband and burn to DVD, or obtain an installation cd from one of the distributors here under United Kingdom: http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/index.html

marka87uk

I've been using it for a few months now because I couldn't be bothered to install Office 2003 again.

It's good but as said, does lack some advanced features (in the word processor for instance I don't think there's a theasaurus, and it doesn't underline incorrectly spelled words).

For free software though you can't complain, and it's highly recommended by the open source community.

grimbo

thanks, i've got 2mg broadband, any ideas how long it takes to download, as for no theasaurus and not underlining wrong spellings, the kids will have to read through their work before before printing.

marka87uk

Won't take long at all on 2Mb broadband. It's only 64MB, will take less than 10 mins probs.

Joe_Bloggs

The latest version is about 94Mb and this tends to trigger a Java update on a restart that is lots of MB. The Open Office2 package seems a good deal if you have broadband. There may be a java update required once downloaded. What you have to download may well depend upon what you have got at the present time. It is more than worth the £0 it costs to use.
J_B.

996ducati

Its definately worth a look.

I have been using it for about 2 years now. My work laptop has M$ Office on it but for general home/small business stuff it does what it says on the tin!

Remember to set it to save documents in the default Microsoft formats for maximum compatability.

996ducati

codetown

OpenOffice is an exceptional product. Has probably 300% of the features that most people would ever use and also a system of addons which can help in case you need some additional tasks that someoneelse has already thought of.

Also very useful feature the possibility to create .pdf outputs of your documents at a press of a button. This feature is still missing in Microsoft products and is becoming really essential.

judderman62

marka87uk wrote:

It's good but as said, does lack some advanced features (in the word processor for instance I don't think there's a theasaurus, and it doesn't underline incorrectly spelled words).

Oh yes it does - certainly the latest version - which I am on does, I also suspect one may well be able to get a thesurus for it too.

There as a forum for it too and the folks there tend to be pretty helpful

judderman62

I use it home and work and have done for a while. I like it

Darksun

I'm not actually that big a fan of OpenOffice, it's well featured but I've found it slow and bloated, it can take a long time to start up.

If you mainly want a word processor, you should look into Abiword. It's a lightweight but fully featured word processor, and is open source like OO.o