Office 2010 or Open Office

[ROA44]

Have recently gained access to my sisters new Toshiba laptop with Windows 8 GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!! anyway do I put on MS Office 2000 which I already have, 2010 student which my son will probably want to reclaim and wants this laptop or Open Office. I don't use office programs much at all but they do come in handy now & then so don't really want to spend the money, but for compatibility MS is usually easier. Haven't used O/O but heard it's OK in most situations. So a few general opinions would be appreciated thank you.

Milton

[ameerat42]

What, are we twins?
OK, we're not, because I don't have Win8 ( :) ).
Milton, I use Office 2000, but for compatibility with later Office versions I managed with Open Office.

It looks the same - close enough; acts the same; reads and writes to MS Office files...
Oh, and it's free. Oddly, though - but this won't affect anything - it loads as a suite of programs, from which you pick
what you want: wprocess; spreadsheet, etc. AND the trick is, from inside that application you can open another.
Like from spreadsheet, you open a wordprocessing doc. If you exit any application, you exit the whole suite.

Anyway, if you don't like it, uninstall it.
See screen prints below.
Am.

PS: Who MIS-read 2010 for 2000 also.

Open Office suite "opening" screen.
100879

O Office montage of WP and Spreadsheet, and how to change applications from (here) the Spreadsheet.
100878

[ROA44]

thanks AM will not be making a decision just yet but interested in others thoughts.

Milton

[Dazz1]

Haven't used Micro$loppy office for years here. Everyone I deal with struggles between versions of office, and also adobe PDF, but Openoffice reads all versions of office, and can write out PDF when required. I really can't understand why people lock themselves into proprietary formats anyway.

No brainer, get Open Office - and since this a photography forum, get Gimp as well :)

[ameerat42]

Hey, Wetps. Are you struggling with Adobe Reader? I was some time back. It would open PDFs as blank grey docs(??!!!@#)
Somebody here - Was it AK, Kym? - put me onto Foxit Reader. (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/)
Never looked blankly at another PDF.

Am(quick, brown and volpine, of late).

[Dazz1]

Hey, Wetps. Are you struggling with Adobe Reader? I was some time back. It would open PDFs as blank grey docs(??!!!@#)
Somebody here - Was it AK, Kym? - put me onto Foxit Reader. (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/)
Never looked blankly at another PDF.

Am(quick, brown and volpine, of late).

'twas not me. Foxit is a good option, yes. I was actually referring to the ability to write out an office doc as a pdf. Office wasn't able to do that for a long time, but Open Office could.

[arthurking83]

I used to use OO for years only until a few months ago ... as a similarly basic user(excel/word)

There were very few incompatibility issues between the two programs(having Office at work, and OO at home), but there's usually a work around.

But the only reason I relented in the end and got Office(2013) was that I started using the MS online Office tools.

That is, having a Skydrive account, you can edit your excel/word/powerpoint/other docs online. While the (online)system is very basic, just having that ability can be handy if you need to edit while on the move(which I sometimes do).

The problem is: for your PC edited version of a doc, you need to have Office 2010(on the PC) for the edit to work on the online version of the document. If any Office version below 2010 is used on this 'synced' document, the online doc is not synced, but you can create a new version of it. That was tedious and I relented(and got Office2010).

If not for this point, I'd still be using OO, instead of Office. I have yet to even open Outlook up at all, and prefer to use Thunderbird for my email/contact software at home ... but now I've been forced to use Outlook at work.

I haven't checked if OO have issued any fix to mimic this Office2010 format to edit those Skydrive docs ... but now I have Office so I'll probably stick with it for a while.

As for any new incompatibilities that M$ will have created between the various softwares available(Office is now 2103) ... I'm sure OOOrg will issue a fix in no time.

I'd say that because OO is free you'd be crazy not to install it anyhow .. even if it turns out that you really DO need Office for some reason. It won't have cost anything to have OO installed anyhow.
So by default the answer will be try OO first, if you discover any compatibility problems, first check out if there is a solution to it, otherwise get yourself Office.

[Dazz1]

I used to use OO for years only until a few months ago ... as a similarly basic user(excel/word)

There were very few incompatibility issues between the two programs(having Office at work, and OO at home), but there's usually a work around.

But the only reason I relented in the end and got Office(2013) was that I started using the MS online Office tools.

That is, having a Skydrive account, you can edit your excel/word/powerpoint/other docs online. While the (online)system is very basic, just having that ability can be handy if you need to edit while on the move(which I sometimes do).

The problem is: for your PC edited version of a doc, you need to have Office 2010(on the PC) for the edit to work on the online version of the document. If any Office version below 2010 is used on this 'synced' document, the online doc is not synced, but you can create a new version of it. That was tedious and I relented(and got Office2010).

If not for this point, I'd still be using OO, instead of Office.


Yes, unfortunately, this is the new marketing strategy succeeding. They are all doing it. They'd love to get us all hooked again :).

I agree with what you are saying. It's just the online issue hasn't effected me yet. I hope OO may come up with a way to deal with it.

[ameerat42]

Yes, unfortunately, this is the new marketing strategy succeeding. They are all doing it. They'd love to get us all hooked again :).

...

You took the words right out of my "mouf", but they'll have a hard time taking the dough from my pocket!!!

Back to hammers and chisels, I say. In fact, bring back runes. OK, pictograms.
Am(having a go at shadow boxing).

Am.

[ROA44]

Thanx everyone for your input. I have downloaded OO and may wipe my older Laptop and load it on there to try out.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned or maybe even skeptical. I know a lot of people think the whole cloud thing and service provider storage is all OK and I know MS and other software designers have the right to protect their products which is fine. However I do like to have the software on my computers and begrudge being railroaded by the likes of MS' so that they control everything we do. Regardless of what they say there is no security, in that if someone wants to hack you no matter how big or clever the Organizations may think they are, if someone wants to they probably will, after all humans created the software humans can crack it.

Regards Milton