OpenOffice

[Go2gtr]

Any reviews on OpenOffice by Oracle? I have read some reviews on CNET and no one has anything really bad to say about it.

Replacing the 6-year-old Dimension. I got an Acer tower that is really sweet, 4GB/640GB, 7200rpm, 3Ghz, Pentium chip set, wireless card installed, free delivery, $349 plus $23 tax from Office Max. Arrived in two days. That would be $600-$700 from Dell plus shipping, tax etc. The _ell with Dell.

[LakeGator]

It has been several years since I used it so I am sure things have improved. I found it to be a decent set of tools for light weight word processing and spreadsheet work. I found a number of Office features, especially from Excel that were lacking or inferior so I didn’t stick with it.

OpenOffice seems a decent set of tools unless you really use some of the advanced features of Microsoft Office. Clearly, the biggest advantage is saving the cost so it’s certainly worth your trying.

[LeafUF]

I use it now and it works great for all my personal needs. However, those are very light. Excel offers more than the spreadsheet program but it still works fine for me to use on some personal finance stuff I track. The writer does exactly what I need it to.

Since I also have a work laptop if I ever need microsoft features I can just jump to that computer but for personal use I dont see the need to spend the money.

[Potzer01]

I have never before heard of "Oracle Open Office" Apparently these schmucks are selling a rebranded version of the free openoffice?


OpenOffice has been good to me though.

[brainstorm]

Oracle got OpenOffice when they bought Sun computers.

[LeafUF]

Still free at www.openoffice.org.

You might even miss that its oracle since there name doesnt even appear until the bottom of the page.

[Potzer01]

OpenOffice is still free @ OpenOffice.org...

I don't think I'd pay for whatever Oracle has going on.

[SteelGator]

I've used it for a couple years, and love it. I'm using one of the forks (for lack of a better term) called LibreOffice (http://www.documentfoundation.org/).

[gatorsfan530]

Yep,

I just got a new laptop for xmas and am going to download it soon. Don't want pay for any Microsoft product since it's so expensive.

I used OpenOffice back in 2004(?) and at first thought it sucked, but I've used it occasionally since then and haven't had many problems. For basic stuff, it should be fine.

The good thing is that does the basics and more importantly it's FREE! :)

[gatorsfan530]

Could someone explain why the new OpenOffice won't save the text document files into .doc Word files? I mean you can, but there's an error message indicating a possible format change.

I know they're their own extension (.odt) but it can't save properly without an error message warning you of the format changes, etc.

BTW, i like the program and don't have any real issues but it takes some getting used to.

[SteelGator]

The Microsoft DOC format is a "closed" format. Meaning, they invented it but won't share the full specs/makeup with anyone else.

There are several word processing programs (OpenOffice being one of them) that can save in DOC format, but they had to reverse-engineer it to figure it out. Without the full specs from Microsoft, they can't recreate the DOC format 100%.

OpenOffice (and LibreOffice and all "sister" programs) are great because they are open source programs. Even the native OpenOffice document format (ODT) is "open," meaning they publish the full specs so anyone can use it.

[JaxGator]

Works great!

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Fine for lightweight stuff, won't cut it if you're an advanced user of Excel/Access/etc. My dad says even the word proc stuff doesn't cut it for him since he does a lot of visual / print layout work within word.