Open Office is a great program. I install it on all my customers systems that I have to reload and they have misplaced there Microsoft Office cd's and product keys. Open Office is compatible with Microsoft Office programs so they can be switched back and forth. Best part about Openoffice is that it is free. I would recommend it. If I hadnt already had the Office software I would definately be using it.
I've played around with Open Office also, but because of the large number of MS Office installs I support, I've never explored it that much. Looked good though and gets high ratings. One real world experience I will pass along that occured last week - was working with presenters that were providing presentations for an annual conference. For some reason, this person had done half their presentation in PowerPoint, and the other half in the Open Office equivilent. However, PowerPoint would not open the Open Office file when we were testing it. I would imagine compatibility with documents would be more of a sure thing than graphic presentations. Let us know how it works for you - a hands on review would be great!
I usually ignore the open source stuff for the same reason as Appcomm. Just don't have the time when a product isn't in the lime light of what I support. I had some time last month so I played with a copy my friend gave me on CD. It's not bad. Interaction with importing items created on MS Office is where it failed, but not enough to ignore it as a viable option. I had prob's with macro's and inserts when opening items from MS Office. I also had prob's with borders, shading, backgrounds, and graphics. If your not having to open complex MS office items it's a great tool. MS Office opened anything I gave it that was created in Open Office. My personal opinion is MS seems to have the problem here???
Even though I think most knew my intent, let me re-phrase that for Ken: I "do not spend time gaining knowledge on" the open source stuff ..... I have little or no knowledge on web development so I didn't know what this site used until I just viewed the source on this page. I was curious so I went to the phpBB web site. I do know this now, the graphics would not show on the web site which means they haven't made any considerations for "all" browsers.
I use Win 2K Pro with lastest IE ver. Yesterday I did a refresh multiple times and it gave me nothing. I deleted all cookies and temp files and reloaded the page and nothing still. Today it was just fine and showed all the graphics. Must be my bad .... or .... Ken secretly found his way into my network removed the graphics ability to discredit me and leave me with my foot in my mouth .... naaaaaaaa .... that foot's always in there. :lol: :lol: :lol:
