Free Office & Other Software Article

wolfman

gerryg wrote:

Well, the thing is you are going to have to learn how to use MS Vista (and it will cost you more than £60). Whereas with Linux/Unix file formats and methods of operation rarely to never change.

There's nothing wrong with XP though, and for £60 that's not too high a price to pay. Ok, so Vista will cost a lot more, but for any existing Windows user it's very easy and familiar to pick up. I've certainly not had any problems with it.

gerryg wrote:

And the big problem for new users is that they assume that they have to fiddle around with Linux in order to join the club. But just because you cam doesn't make it compulsory.

I'd disagree here. I've yet to do a single Linux install where I haven't had to fiddle around with it to get things running how I want. A good example is setting up WPA, or a bluetooth device, Windows and other codecs, Xgl + Beryl, ATI display drivers, Autostarts etc... The same applies to XP, but it's much more familiar.

I'm very happy with Linux. It can and usually does take time to learn and adapt to though, given that most people will be some form of Windows user. Just depends how much and valuable your time is as to whether you'll be money saving or not.

DaveO

MSE_Martin wrote:

Hi folks,

Before the techies as always take apart the IE stance.

It is our duty to do so

A little mitigating note. This site is still roughly the same one I had built for £100 three years ago. We are currently (as has been announced) in a major redesign. Step 1 is the format, look and navigation, including the style sheet - which is all being designed to standards and works well in all browsers.

Well I am glad to see that. I have always thought it odd a site with the ethos of this one relied on the vagaries of Internet Explorer from a organisation many consider monopolistic.

I shall be keeping a look out for the little w3c standards compliant icons you can put on sites that verify the w3c standards tests have been passed.

RecentRunes

Another excellent piece of free software is Inkscape ( http://www.inkscape.org/ ) which is an Open Source version of Adobe Illustrator, and has similar capabilities to it.

DaveO

wolfman wrote:

Linux is cool, I use Kubuntu most of the time these days.

One point I would argue though. Linux is great, but you need to take the time to learn and adapt to it. There'll be plenty of issues/bugs/questions along the way before you get things setup perfectly. I always see far too many posts on Linux forums where people have tried it for a matter of hours, or had one problem and given up.

I have played with Linux in the past and I am familiar with UNIX from my job in IT so it does not phase me to install it or tweak it.

I still use XP Pro though for the simple reason Linux does not support my main hobby that well compared to XP, photography. While there are image editors like the Gimp the last time I looked Linux did not support ICC colour profiles and compared to the Windows environment there is a lack of image cataloguing software available. I could run the programs I use using the Windows emulators under Linux but I just don't see the point in that.

If I were to drop XP it would be for an Apple MAC OS system because that also supports image manipulation fully.

My knowledge could be out of date regarding Linux capabilities in this area but it would be a big effort for me to change over even if things had improved.

I would say though Linux runs much faster than XP. In Linux you often only need a single rather than a double click to launch a program. If you are used to the windows double-click method and do that on Linux you will often get two instances of the program running instantly with no hour glass while the machine thrashes about.

Finally if people don't want switch from XP I would recommend they use Open Office for their office suite. It is great. I can't understand why more organisations don't use it and save themselves a fortune. It is ideal for things like charities and any other organisation on a low budget.

Dave

bobmccluckie

I have 2 PCs, one loaded with the latest Open Office suite, the other with MS Office. By itself OpenOffice is a fantastic piece of work, especially considering it os free however In my experience the 2 formats are NOT compatible when anything other than the most basic formatting is being used. Word documents often don't fit the page when opened in OpenOffice but by far the worst problems occur with problems between MS Excel and OpenOffice Calc. I have stopped trying to use cross platform work due to the incompatibility of these packages.

kevin2154

:j Have to agree the 2 formats don't always work together as they say they should! Have several spreadsheets that use the two, and have problems. Please could anyone tell me how to"set print area" in open office, it's completly in a differant place than excel, and have been trying to print out last years accounts for ages, thanks kevin.:A

bobmccluckie wrote:

I have 2 PCs, one loaded with the latest Open Office suite, the other with MS Office. By itself OpenOffice is a fantastic piece of work, especially considering it os free however In my experience the 2 formats are NOT compatible when anything other than the most basic formatting is being used. Word documents often don't fit the page when opened in OpenOffice but by far the worst problems occur with problems between MS Excel and OpenOffice Calc. I have stopped trying to use cross platform work due to the incompatibility of these packages.

AlanR

bobmccluckie wrote:

I have 2 PCs, one loaded with the latest Open Office suite, the other with MS Office. By itself OpenOffice is a fantastic piece of work, especially considering it os free however In my experience the 2 formats are NOT compatible when anything other than the most basic formatting is being used. Word documents often don't fit the page when opened in OpenOffice but by far the worst problems occur with problems between MS Excel and OpenOffice Calc. I have stopped trying to use cross platform work due to the incompatibility of these packages.

Where spreadsheets are concerned, it's worth trying Gnumeric. This is an open source spreadsheet, more or less the companion to Abiword (though the development teams are totally distinct, as far as I can tell). It is primarily written for Linux, but there is a Windows version as well (which requires Windows 2000 or later, and which also tends to lag a bit behind the Linux releases). Get it from here.

In my experience Gnumeric's Excel compatibility is very good -- I've certainly had experiences where the OpenOffice spreadsheet has mangled the format of an Excel spreadsheet I was trying to import, whereas Gnumeric did a perfect job.

The other free software product I'd like to mention is RoughDraft, a Windows word processor produced by a creative writer, Richard Salsbury, specifically to aid writing novels, stories, plays etc. Because of this orientation it has some brilliant features not found in the likes of Word, but which are in fact equally useful if one is simply writing letters, business reports and so on.

Correspondingly it lacks a lot of the bells and whistles in which Word (and its imitators) are drowning, but many people will regard that as a blessing not a curse. RoughDraft retains enough formatting options for most mainstream text, the major omissions being tables and office-type functions like mail merge. So it isn't for everyone, but if what you write is principally text then do take a look. Apart from anything else, it's so refreshing to see a word processor which does not look like a clone of Word.

I wish I'd known about RoughDraft years ago, when I was spending a lot of time writing reports!

Regards, Alan

Superfast_Gran

Does anyone know where to get free office software for Mac's? We have 4 with licence to use on only one and, as they're all wirelessly linked, if office isopen on one it won't allow it to be opened on any of the others - nlol!

wolfman

DaveO wrote:

My knowledge could be out of date regarding Linux capabilities in this area but it would be a big effort for me to change over even if things had improved.

Yeah I've been dual booting XP and different distro's for years. Has taken me ages playing around making sure I can do everything in Linux that I can (or at least with the same ease in Linux).

I mainly only use XP for gaming and .Net development, and AutoGK.

DaveO wrote:

I would say though Linux runs much faster than XP. In Linux you often only need a single rather than a double click to launch a program.

I've never found this. Only maybe on boot/shutdown. In terms of responsiveness I think XP is still slightly faster. I don't mind though as I've got Beryl running which puts XP (and to some extent Vista's) dekstop to shame, although it still a little buggy.

DaveO wrote:

If you are used to the windows double-click method and do that on Linux you will often get two instances of the program running instantly with no hour glass while the machine thrashes about.

Can be changed on either. I've got KDE set with double-click. You can also set Windows to be single or double click.

AlanR

aleph_0 wrote:

... The free operating system link is a page full of way too much writing that and gives far too much information an average novice linux user wouldn't need, and so is likely to scare people off. I'm sure there must be a better article out there somewhere to link to.

It's also somewhat out of date, which is a problem with this stuff as the desktop Linux picture evolves quite rapidly.

I've found DesktopLinux.com a useful source for this kind of advice, specifically the series of longer articles on changing to Linux, choosing a Linux distribution etc.

For example here is quite a thoughtful one written by a long-time Windows user who has spent around 2 years getting to know Linux and gradually migrating across to it. Much my own experience, in fact :-)

Hope this helps, Alan