Go with the name you know
Steve H. will not be installing OpenOffice any time soon:
I just don’t need the headaches associated with being a software pioneer. I’ve been using Word 2000 for seven years. It does what I tell it to do. I know where the problems are. I have never had anyone complain that they couldn’t open a document I created. Maybe Openoffice will work just as well; I don’t care to find out. If a guy who mows lawns for a living can spend two thousand dollars on a riding mower, a writer can spend a hundred and fifty on Office, once every seven or eight years.
This I understand; I am loath to change applications. On the other hand, Lotus’ WordPro, which had been my word processor of choice for years and years, is seriously out of date, and not because it lacks the latest bells and whistles; it works only sporadically on my Windows XP installations. (Curiously, 1-2-3 still seems to run just fine.)
In my experience with OpenOffice, there’s been only one document it’s failed to open: a fairly large (24 mb) Excel spreadsheet with 36,000 rows and columns out to D-something. Since I don’t have to update this file, I installed Microsoft’s Excel viewer and let it do the dirty work. And no, 1-2-3 won’t touch it.
Dan B »
19 January 2008 · 10:10 am
The only problem I’ve had with OpenOffice is that it didn’t make Avery labels just right. Fortunately the rest of the office has Turd 2000 so I just transfer the addresses and print from there. They may have fixed the problem, since it was 2.1 that had the problem and they’re at 2.3.1 now.
Jeffro »
19 January 2008 · 10:51 am
Ol’ Steve has made me feel pretty guilty about some of the software I’ve used. There is nothing illegal or immoral (software, anyways) on this laptop, but I sure couldn’t say that in the past.
John Owen Butler »
19 January 2008 · 12:17 pm
I’ve used StarOffice since 5.0 and then OpenOffice 0.9 when still in beta to its present versions, in both Win98 through Vista and Linux RedHat 7.2 & 9, Sun Office Java Desktop System, and various shades of Ubuntu Linux (so, about 8 years of experience with them). I had Word 6.0 on an old 486 laptop. I liked Word 6.0; it fit like an old shoe.
StarOffice was still a bit Teutonic for me when it was acquired by Sun (a few of the help sections were still in German or in a stiled English translation), but I used it anyway and got used to it. It was sure better than MSWorks. The old StarOffice 5.0-5.2 had calendaring and email integrated, but it was stripped out in later iterations.
I have the same beef with Avery labels; it just isn’t right (I haven’t tried it in OO2.3.1 yet).
I like OO ’cause it is free. I, too, write and speak in my calling, and OO gets me where I need to go.
I have used Google docs, though, for most of my sermon writing since it was still Writely. Anything fancier, I go to OO. There is some move towards an online version of OO.
McGehee »
19 January 2008 · 12:38 pm
The last time I produced something to be printed and read by others, I used the oxymoronically named Microsoft Works — it came with the OS.
Rena »
19 January 2008 · 2:07 pm
One thing I really like about OO is that you can export docs to pdf format. Can’t do that with Word (unless the newest version has added the feature). I’m using MS Office now because it came with my computer. Otherwise, I’d still use OO.
Mel »
19 January 2008 · 11:09 pm
Our corporate deity recently deemed Office 2007 mandatory. The 15 minute install for me took 45 minutes … while a fellow cubicle dweller’s install resulted in a new laptop.
My own response is “underwhelmed”.