REDZMAN

I just got a laptop today, I've been waiting for some time and a friend owed me some money, he repaid me with a laptop, that's in pretty good damned shape too. It's an older Sony (ARGH!!!) Vaio, with XP on it.

Anyways, it has MS Office on it, but I'm getting a bit sick of that huge suite of bloated programs, and have a few fellow students at UNM that are using open office instead. It's free, does everything that MS Office does, and more, all in one program, and all in a much smaller package.

I'ven ever used it yet, was wondering if anyone here has?


www.openoffice.org

01silvtiby

I think i had that when i was running Linux. I really wasnt thrilled with it, just didnt have all the options. I have MSoffice 07 and i love it, other than the whole package is a little much. But it was free for me.

DTN

Open source software is always free. That's the benefeit to it. Everyone puts something in, so everyone gets a copy. Just stick with M$ office. It's a better, more functional software.

Bullfrog

open office is coming along quite nice. If you need flash and glam of Vista like looks then office 2007. for older laptops i would go with linux full blown if you can handle it. I support a couple of Viao's at work, there not that bad.

daafisch

I have ran open office on windows machines and it came with ubuntu when i installed it on my laptop. Personally I like it, there are certain formatting features that help me when i take notes in class. I have only used the "word" portion of it so i don't know what the spreadsheet or presentation portion of it is like.

If you already have MS office use that, if you don't (have like MS works...i hate ms works) then download openoffice because free is better then having to spend more money

supercow

ms office is the standard but in my opinion openoffice is just what most people need. While dtn sounds a little like a microsoft ad he has good points but apparently is still missing the point. We aren't using it because it's better than ms office, we use it because its free!! It's only competition right now thats worth counting is works and it sucks really bad.

I miss having publisher but truthfully I don't use it much and hardly ever for work related items. I've got one pc here with a older legal copy of office and pretty much only use it for my business card thats in publisher. All the rest of my pcs run open office. I've used it for about 3 years now for business. All my document and spreadsheet work is done with it and it's great. Bearly any relearning switching from office.

Alot of the government sector is starting to switch to save money in their budgets. The thing is ms office IS NOT worth what you pay for it. Total ripoff. They'll have to come down once openoffice starts getting more popular. Think of it this way. It's office software that everybody uses but is 3x more expensive than the operating system it's running on? Does that make any sense to you?

paperstsoapco

^^ yes i think we all agree MS office is WAY overpriced. and as a cheap, well free really, alternative; open office is a great substitute.

however redz has office on his laptop, so why downgrade when the previous owner already shelled out the $$ for it.

mb499

I only use the word equivalent part of Open Office, and it suites me just fine. I don't do anything except write essays and stuff with it.