Anyone used open office ?

[mgerics]

Lots of people ask me to 'fix' their computers, and 'do you have program "x"' that you could install, etc.
Ever conscious of copyright laws, I've been looking for a good alternative to MS Office. Tried Open Office, but just opening the document editor makes me feel as if I'm running a 486!
Any suggestions for a different freeware office suite? For Windows, please.

[odin]

There's Abiword. But that's a pile of poo too.

[MrZammler]

I've installed OO on a friend's new laptop the other day. He's not really into computers, and was just looking for a (legal) way to make docs and spreadsheets.

Anyway, when I mentioned that he didnt have to pay for Office but instead could have a free alternative, he instantly accepted it ;-)

OO is not bad. It's not bad at all. Although I've a few year to use Office, I'm guessing OO can replace Office for about 95% of it's functionality.

Have you installed the latest 2.0.x version? It seems pretty snappy and fast here.

[Erwin-K]

Open Office v. 1.1.x runs pretty well on Linux with a 500mhz system. At work I used it successfully on a 933mhz Windblows system under NT, 2000, and briefly XP. And that's with all kinds of network & background junk that our agency makes everyone run. (I justify have this "non-standard" software on my box because I use the PDF export function.)

Yes, it probably takes a bit longer to boot than M$ Word. After all it has to fire up an alternate display system first.

I upgraded at both work & home, so I can't speak to a minimum system for OOo version 2.x.

[drewz21]

I use OO and Portable OO on my USB Flash Drive.  I like it just fine.  I have 1 installation of OfficeXP at the house for school reasons but OO has met all my needs just fine.

IMHO the speed isn't bad.  I've recommended it many times to people.  I also like AbiWord.

[orange]

I like the way it stores documents in zip files.
it takes some time getting used to, but generally its OK.

the only thing that bothers me occassionaly is screen refresh, but that might be caused by too complex document.

[Cyberus]

I like OO.
Their spreadsheet program is quite functional, and I like the ability to save as PDFs.

Once had a bad experience preparing a presentation then running it from Powerpoint at an interview tho...:-(

[swift240]

I use OpenOffice 2.02 its free and legal.
Never had a problem with it.  It also has a PFD converter something that MS Office dont have.
But you will always get some one who will complain about OpenOffice.
There again you cant please them all.
Some want perfection for nothing to please them.

Mike.

[Magic-Merl]

I love it.  The only thing I miss is the use of Excel macro's.  Other than that it is an equal first to Office.

[Tomas]

Yeah, openoffice is nice and all, but it is like you said very slow. You can improve startup times by caching it in ram, but that wont improve the responsiveness while using it.

[srg86]

I've replaced Office with OpenOffice completely now. Appart from the startup it's not slow at all. I even did my final year project report on it for my Uni and it didn't give me any troubles.

[tonyvdb]

Open Office is a great MS office replacement, The reason it "seems" to run slow is that it defaults to not starting up in the background like MS office does. If you want it to run faster try going into the options and select load at startup. This will do just like MS office in it will load all the background files at startup so it will open fast when called upon (not reccomended if you dont have alot of ram)

[mikeymike]

I've used OpenOffice for the last few years.  Other than the startup speed issue, it runs perfectly fast for me.

I install it for customers quite often, configuring it to save in MS formats by default.

[irishmike]

I personally use OO 2.0.x on my Linux box.  Be great if it was also available on the Miggie ;-)

In my experience under both Windows and Linux (Windows XP Sp2 and Linux is Ubuntu 6.06 -- as of yesterday) the program loads just as fast on either platform.  The 2.0 version fixed a formatting thing that bothered me in 1.1 version from MS Office XP and I am now quite happily using OO for all my needs.

Just my two-cents, but I would strongly and gladly recommend OO 2 to anyone!

[keropi]

for the last 4 years, I use staroffice on my work daily. I found it to suite better my user-philosophy and can do everything ms-office can.
oh, and staroffice is SUN's commercial openoffice prog... they are the same, only name and icons change...