OpenOffice works pretty good.

[techs]

Just for a lark I decided to test the OpenOffice free software. So far I have just been testing it on MS Word (Office200) docs but it seems to work flawlessly. Also opens Excel docs without any loss of info. It also seems to write to these file type perfectly. You can download it here. (http://ny1.mirror.openoffice.org/1.0.1/OOo_1.0.1_Win32Intel_install.zip) You can visit their homepage here. (http://www.openoffice.org/) It is a 50 mb download. I installed on an XP Pro machine that already had Office 2000 pro installed. No problems.

[NooNoo]

Sounds like the right price to me!! thanks!

[techs]

Sounds like the right price to me!! thanks!

The price for MS Office is getting out of hand.

[The Computer Valet]

There are some issues converting Excel documents over to the Excellish version of Open Office. Certain features like... ahmmm... locked cells and whatnot may not transfer correctly.

I've also noticed that if you have drawn boxes with background fills in Excel documents, the background fills will not transfer, nor will any text inside those boxes.

Open Office is good and I would recommend it to most people. But folks that have pretty complicated stuff I would prefer try it first before they commit their current documents.

Techs is right, too! The price is getting out of hand.

One major vendor --- I think HP --- will start offering Wordperfect with new PCs. Interestingly, the Wordperfect Suite is not _that much less_ than Office.

Another interesting thing: Did you know that Microsoft has NOT actively enforced the Proof-of-Institution claim for purchasing Office products at the educational prices? So, yes, you can buy copies at online vendors for very low prices. And, yes, Microsoft is aware of it. CNet did a story on this not too long ago.

Thus ends my MS/Office/OpenOffice spew. :D

[techs]

Another interesting thing: Did you know that Microsoft has NOT actively enforced the Proof-of-Institution claim for purchasing Office products at the educational prices? So, yes, you can buy copies at online vendors for very low prices. And, yes, Microsoft is aware of it. CNet did a story on this not too long ago.

That explains why a customer told me they could by an "Academic" version at a retail store.

[Stalemate]

Originally posted by The Computer Valet
...One major vendor --- I think HP --- will start offering Wordperfect with new PCs. Interestingly, the Wordperfect Suite is not _that much less_ than Office...

Dell (http://www3.corel.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=Corel/PressRelease/Details&id=ZZZZ8DJU88J) (and here (http://www3.corel.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=Corel/PressRelease/Details&id=ZZZZ8DJU87S)) also has struck a similar deal with Corel.

HP story here (http://www3.corel.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=Corel/PressRelease/Details&id=ZZZZ8DJU87H).

I've used StarOffice in the past and even though it wasn't 100% MS Office compliant, it did the job.

I think I'll check out OpenOffice just for the heck of it.

[The Computer Valet]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe both Open Office and Star Office run off the same internal engine. Perhaps that's ThinkFree Office and Star Office.

[Stalemate]

I think you're right, CV, but I can't recall where I heard/read that about OpenOffice and StarOffice being parallel projects.

[Rellik]

Originally posted by The Computer Valet
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe both Open Office and Star Office run off the same internal engine. Perhaps that's ThinkFree Office and Star Office. I think you're right. I think the best way to look at it is the Mozilla/Netscape situation; Openoffice is the continually developed, open source, non-marketed version, like Mozilla whereas Staroffice is Marketed and sold by Sun, sorta like Netscape.

I could be wrong tho'