Openoffice - Free alternative to Microsoft Office

sublime

http://www.openoffice.org/

The title says it all really.

I've recently been having some activation issues with my Office suite for some unknown reason and this is a perfect alternative. I've found this to be better than office in many ways.

It includes some handy features which aren't included in office such as the ability to import a picture from my webcam in real time. It doesn't include things such as clipart, but everything else is there from what I can tell.

The interface is almost identical to office as are the mechanics used (such as =sum in excel) so shouldn't be hard to make the switch.

All office filetypes are supported too so it's quite useful. Even things like PSD's can be opened with the software, and there's no need to pick and choose, for instance I can open up the writing application, go to file > open select a PSD and it will auto-open the drawing suite.

Download is only around 90mb and supports windows, mac, linux and a few more too.

Enjoy :T :T

frestuffwooo

whats a psd?

i may try

ta :T:T

spa2k

frestuffwooo wrote:

whats a psd?

i may try

ta :T:T

PSD files are generally a layered file that is proprietary to Adobe PhotoShop. However, this file format has become so popular over recent years, that many other graphic software programs (newer versions) have programmed their software to be compatible with this file format. Adobe PhotoShop is an expensive program, however, two programs that we know can open and edit PSD files which are less expensive and quite good are Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7+ and Ulead PhotoImpact 7+.

From :- http://www.basictemplates.com/psd.shtml

frestuffwooo

cheers

:T:T

sublime

Oops, a PSD is a Photoshop file. Of course this isn't on par with photoshop at all, but I thought the ability to open a psd and then copy the image over (without saving it as a jpg in photoshop) was a nice surprise and a minor frustration i've had at times.

One example would be in college, only one room had photoshop installed. I'd designed some logo's and i'd forgot to save them as BMP's and JPG's so I could import them into word. This meant I had to log off, log in the other room and then save the work. It was a silly mistake to make in the first place, but wasted 10 minutes of my time in the end.

It's a good suite though and at 90mb (and no restart) it's worth a try I certainly will be using this in future instead of works because it's a superior product. Well so far I haven't encountered any infuritating short-comings (like you often do with open-source copies) and features such as the webcam, and the filetype support make it worthwhile.

djohnsonhk

The best thing about OpenOffice is the Adobe Acrobat (.pdf file) exporter which is built in. No need to use the free trial on Adobe.com, or spend hundreds of pounds on the full Acrobat software to create nice looking pdf documents!

Another big plus is that there are no known viruses that affect OpenOffice at present as hackers generally prefer to attack Microsoft products.

Only downside is that it's a bit slow starting up as bits of it are based on Java.

sublime

I haven't explored all the stuff, and the initial startup isn't that slow. Also it pre-loads stuff into the taskbar so over the course of a session i.e. using excel, word, powerpoint or whatever the load times once it's loaded is pretty much 0 seconds.

Java is much better than people give it credit for and it's not a memory hog really like word is.

I just ran a mini-test. I closed the quickstarter and opened a 33 page document (1.6mb in size) took about 5 seconds. I closed the app (and now had the quickstart in my taskbar) and it took less than one second.

Since I don't have office installed anymore I can't do the same test, but I can bet you it wouldn't be as fast as this, let alone when trying to use 5 different pieces of the software.

Bob63

Welcome to the best office package in the world! OpenOffice (and its commercial sister product StarOffice) were originally developed by Sun Microsystems (the Java people). They bought the original German developers StarDivision many years ago. Some time later they decided to make StarOffice free having previously invested millions of dollars improving the product. Then they went one stage further and made the whole product open source by creating OpenOffice.org. They should be applauded for this.

I use StarOffice for work and love it. Other than lack of support for Microsoft Office VBA macros which may be embedded in docs I receive from outside the company, it does everything I need.

StarOffice costs money because it is a commercial product and includes certain add-ons that OpenOffice does not have. However, OpenOffice is almost identical (sharing the same source code in fact) and IMHO highly recommended.

Mike

IvanOpinion

If you don't want to download it you will often find OpenOffice on the cover disks of magazines such as PC Plus and COMputer Shopper (which usually also contain many of the other opensource/freeware programs you will find mentione don these boards.

Ivan

Astaroth

Open Office wasnt that good in my experience.

The PDF aspect is fairly pointless in my opinion seeing as you can get free PDF "printers" which will do the same job but from any package not just open office.

The main 2 bits I use in MS Office is outlook and powerpoint. Open Office obviously has no equiv of outlook so doesnt directly solve that problem and with Impress (the OO equiv of powerpoint) even though it says it is compatable with powerpoint I found that it frequently couldnt cope with files originally created in powerpoint and formatting was often messed up when going back to MS.

I am sure that if you are using it as a stand alone product it will do everything the typical home user or small office would need but it is not a practical solution in my experience if you will be needing to share documents (with the need for others to edit so no PDF solution) with people using MS Office

ollyshaw

welcome to the world of open source software!

If you want to take it to the next level and ditch XP, check this out

https://www.ubuntu.com

Olly