You may or may not know what Open Office is. Maybe you know what it is, but have never used it.
Well, I used to fall into the second category. Every PC I’ve ever had has come installed with MS Office. For the computer challenged, Office is the suite of programs that contains Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and more. Pretty much the programs you need to do most types of work. The program carries a hefty price tag of $200+, but it the standard for home and office PCs.
So, I decided to get a new PC, and the one I wanted came without Office. I took the plunge. I downloaded Open Office the next time I needed to read a word doc, and have been using it ever since. If you’re a regular user of Office, using Open Office is a breeze. Anything you can do with office, you can do with Open Office. All for the low, low cost of free.
Frankly, after using it regularly for a while now, I wonder why anyone would pay for Office. Take the $200, download Open Office for free and use the cash to get a decent prostitute. It’s what I did. And I couldn’t be happier.*
*Disclaimer: Monkeypup does not endorse prostitution. (But if he did, he’d suggest one from the corner of 8th and Madison.)
Open Office is very good, especially 2.0, which is much more ‘friendly’ to those that are use to MS office.
I would say 90% of folks that use MS office, could fairly easily move to OpenOffice with little pain. However, all of those Outlook junkies would have a problem. Also, I have not really looked to see how well docs go back and forth with OO 2.0 and MS Office. Docs transfer fairly well, I know the presentations sometimes didn’t. Also anything with macros in one would break. Not sure where that is now.
But, for anyone that just needs the basics from an office suite or is not worried about sharing with MS zombies, Open Office is the way to go. Especially if the open source community convinces Sun to free openoffice into a independant foundation.
i’ve been using open office since classes started this fall. it is great.
Yeah, well Thunderbird is all the mail program I need, so I don’t miss outlook at all.
This program is too cool. I got it last night and I’ve been kicking myself for stealing Office XP ever since.
J