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404 Comments
- holyskeleton, on 10/13/2008, -14/+280Why OpenOffice 3.0 Just Became An Even Better Alternative
uhhh... because it got updated? - Popeiler, on 10/13/2008, -22/+271Piratebay!
As a college student, it's so much cheaper! - minidiez, on 10/13/2008, -17/+254OpenOffice!
As a college student, it's so much cheaper! - Jarrane, on 10/13/2008, -70/+248I'm sorry, folks. I know it's fashionable to hate on Microsoft, but OpenOffice is light years behind Office 2007 (and this article doesn't make a good case for why 3.0 is much of an improvement). If you are even an intermediate user, Office 2007 is much more intuitive and powerful once you know its features.
As for price, students can get the Ultimate edition of Office 2007 for $59.95 (USD) or $64.00 (CAD). I don't see how you can go wrong with that.
US - http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theulti ...
CANADA - http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theulti ... - LMN8R, on 10/13/2008, -10/+95Stop being so sensible. That isn't allowed on Digg.
- tbredofsin, on 10/13/2008, -13/+79Writer still starts up too slow for my taste (clocked over 20 seconds this morning with 2gb and a dual-core Athlon X2 5200+). But 3.0 does seem more solid, and I will continue using it over Office simply because the differences aren't important enough to be worth $100... and I don't like pirating software.
- codyman, on 10/13/2008, -9/+72I'm a college student who uses Open Office.... never had a teacher complain about "formatting" or "why does it look funny"... in fact, teachers compliment I send them PDFs instead of doc/docx files... and with OO, you just hit the PDF button and call it a day...
- MWeather, on 10/13/2008, -10/+71Unlike Microsoft Office, OpenOffice 3 supports OOXML.
- inactive, on 10/13/2008, -8/+671994 called, they want their joke back about other years calling them.
- carterx, on 10/13/2008, -5/+59I would love to see more schools, large organizations etc. move to Open Source software such as this. Should be teaching and learning Open Office Productivity and not Microsoft Office specific.
- fishrjv, on 10/13/2008, -8/+55Did the update make it any faster or more usable?
- seinman, on 10/13/2008, -2/+48Because, believe it or not, honest people still exist.
- BlueSkyfish, on 10/13/2008, -5/+48As a college student, torrents are blocked on my dorm's network and they monitor out network use :(
- fatsobob, on 10/13/2008, -4/+45The biggest problem with Office 2007 and the average user, they don't even begin to scratch the surface of functionality. For most people, they could get away with Wordpad with a spellchecker, but they go out and buy the most powerful office software with a pricetag to match. Open Office is a great solution for those who don't need all of those features necessarily.
- bjarnen, on 10/13/2008, -4/+43Wrote a over 130 page report incl. lots of graphs, images and equations, in OpenOffice 2.4 and it was both easy and stable to use! i warmly recommend it, especially the Math function and the capability to add extensions.
- 3242130193, on 10/13/2008, -6/+44"If your browser times out when you try to access the site, keep trying."
Right. That's the perfect solution: just give more traffic to the server! Or you could find a damn mirror.
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ny1.mirror.open ...
In any case, the best advantage about OOo (in my opinion) is that they'll never change the interface. OpenOffice3 will look like OpenOffice2 which will look like OpenOffice50. None of this damn ribbon *****. - inactive, on 10/13/2008, -41/+79MS Office 98 called, they want their 10+ year old GUI back.
- chrisaug18, on 10/13/2008, -8/+44As a college student, OpenOffice 0.00$
http://www.openoffice.org/
Legally... - goltzc, on 10/13/2008, -8/+40yes and yes!
- rushiku, on 10/13/2008, -9/+39Friends/Family: OMG, MS Office so expensive!
Me: Try OpenOffice, it does the same thing, in the same formats and it's free unless you _want_ to pay for it.
Friends/Family: ...OMG, MS Office so expensive!
Moral: Marketing FTW! - Zomgondo, on 10/13/2008, -1/+29I have almost the same problem getting my dad to use Firefox.
HIM: OMG IE is so unstable and I get viruses and stuff and I hate it!
ME: So use Firefox.
HIM: No, I don't want to have to learn a new browser.
ME: Huh? That's like saying you don't want to learn how to use a new CD player... they all work the freakin' same.
HIM: Well it's OK, I pay X a year to protect me from spyware.
ME: Uh.... (makes mental note to claim I "forgot how to work on Windows" next time the old man asks for help) - Colindean, on 10/13/2008, -2/+30I used OOo for four years of college in CS and creative writing classes and never once had a problem. The note/comment system in OOo 2.x was difficult to use, but it existed. It's now excellent in 3.x, removing that one gripe.
There's no reason that colleges couldn't standardize on this now. - SuperMoses, on 10/13/2008, -1/+28Well, I had sex with your wife.
- sremick, on 10/13/2008, -2/+28Right, because everyone is a student and can get the student pricing.
- slythfox, on 10/13/2008, -2/+26As a college student, I hope they fixed the bullet point system from the earlier 3.0 betas and rcs. I use this thing for notes all the times, and the bullet point system was so screwed up I had to go back to 2.4.x. Is it "fixed" in OOo 3.0 Final?
- CrackyJSquirrel, on 10/13/2008, -1/+24Access is a poor excuse for a database.
- megaton, on 10/13/2008, -8/+29That wasn't a question?
- adriaaan, on 10/13/2008, -8/+29But you can't beat free :)
- inactive, on 10/13/2008, -1/+20it became freer ;)
in open office 3! software makers pay you! - Beatmiser, on 10/13/2008, -6/+25Actually once I trained my users to work with Office 2007 they refuse to go back. Especially Outlook- the new functionality and ease of use has done wonders for information flow via calendars.
You may want to consider doing a bit of training. I'm not saying that in a smart-assed way, I actually think that the blind dumping of the Ribbon onto people was a poor decision from MS. With a bit of knowledge though I have a hard time going back it really is improved workflow. - rmxz, on 10/13/2008, -2/+21I like OO because it gives me confidence that I'll still be able to open my documents in a few years.
I have copies of all my old college reports written in some proprietary crap software long ago - and I kinda wonder if I'll still be able to find software that can open them when my kids go to college or if I'd need to reverse-engineer the poorly documented proprietary formats.
With OO - and standards-based documents with source code available - that would be much easier. - rieuwa, on 10/13/2008, -6/+25As a college student, Office 2007 Ultimate 59.95$
http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theulti ...
Legally... - mithrasinvictus, on 10/13/2008, -0/+19Wordperfect used to be the industry standard, that changed. People need to be taught to understand the concepts, not an interface.
- savocado, on 10/13/2008, -18/+36I have a 'borrowed' version of Office 2007 and it is better (sorry) than OO.
- abbathdoom, on 10/13/2008, -3/+21I don't get it, Microsoft update their GUI last year, and now anything that is similar to that old interface from last year is "Office 98 called". WTF.
- NinjaBoy, on 10/13/2008, -11/+27I just downloaded it and tested it and came back to say.
No and No.
Writer lags when I type.
And calc doesn't give any help when doing functions such as VLookups.
It does look a little better
I could go much more into detail on this but its better to just summarize. If you cant afford $60-$100 for office 2007or don't need to use it much, this is perfect, other wise go with office. - inactive, on 10/13/2008, -6/+22your face is a ripoff of ms office
- mggs, on 10/13/2008, -0/+16OO's own format is ODF. OOXML is the new MS format.
- angryfirelord, on 10/13/2008, -0/+16In addition, it's not like it's a huge leap of difference either. I mean, how many different ways are you going to use a Word processor? Do most schools even use macros or VBA scripts? More than likely not.
- douglasr007, on 10/13/2008, -3/+19"Eh, it's a single platform microsoft product."
Yeah and every ***** professor uses .doc or .docx as a standard for submitting papers online....your point is? - fuhrysteve, on 10/13/2008, -0/+16it'd trust Access to store a list of things i hate about Microsoft, except that when you have > 3000 rows, it really starts to lag.. so instead i use MySQL running under Debian on an old 133mhz pentium.. it starts to lag at > 3,000,000 rows.
- inactive, on 10/13/2008, -6/+22Users are usually more reluctant to try ANYTHING else, after they are trained in something. Office is not special. Train them in OpenOffice first, and they would refuse to change from that.
- rancidpony, on 10/14/2008, -2/+17Umm... Office 2007 only costs $60-$100 bucks?
Standard version: $209.99
Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 ...
Professional version: $379.99
Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Access, Outlook, Publisher
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 ...
Not a bargain. - abbathdoom, on 10/13/2008, -0/+1520 seconds? I'm guessing you don't have the quick start thing turned on.
- inactive, on 10/13/2008, -4/+18do you have any proof that Office 2007 has more bugs than OO?
- doctechnical, on 10/13/2008, -4/+18I've still got my copy of Office 97. I see no compelling reason to upgrade.
Which speaks volumes, really. - CalcProgrammer1, on 10/13/2008, -3/+17@BlueSkyfish
Looks like someone's in trouble. VNC TO THE RESCUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have no fear, just set up a PC at home running a VNC server. Then from your dorm you can control it, tell it to torrent stuff, and then FTP it from home to your dorm. Sure, it's complicated, but it works, and it's pretty much the only way. In fact, I'm using mine right now. The worst part is going from home to dorm, as home connections have slow upload speeds so you usually have to wait a while for that part of the transfer.
Openoffice is still better though :) - KaiserArny, on 10/13/2008, -4/+18It may be light years behind in number of features, But 90% of users do not need 90% of the features included in Office.Just look at how many people are still using Office 97 and Office 2000. Why would you pay for what you don't need?
I know I can get better use of that 60$ instead of wasting it on something I don't need. - hamobu, on 10/13/2008, -5/+19For individuals it makes a lot of sense to use OOo, and I use it at home.
But for companies, not so much. I believe my company has agreement with Microsoft where we pay them a fixed fee, and we get to use Microsoft software all we want. This would include Office. Therefore there would be no savings per copy. In fact I could get a copy of Microsoft office from my company for $25, but I would have to return it if I lose my job.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/ent/ov ...
Additionally it is my experience that desktop software costs are really not an issue in a company. Other costs of running the business are far more significant. I bet my company pays more per month just for my healthcare than they paid for all the software that I have used on my PC since I started working here. However even the smallest business disruption would cost a lot more than software licensees. Therefore companies don't want to rock the boat when it comes to software. - pilgrim3970, on 10/13/2008, -4/+18I use Office 2007 at work and Oo at home on my laptop and desktop (both of which run Ubuntu). Honestly, I don't really think that Office 2007 is that much better. A little more whiz bang? Sure, but they are about equal as far as functionality
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