Just downloaded OOo..Inital impressions

[asphalt-proof]

I thought I would give a quick and dirty reveiw of Open Office from a complete noob's perspective. I know that when downloading they recommend those with no experience with X11 or Unix wait till the native OSX release but i thought I would try it anyway. heck its only a$2200 machine.

Since I work for the public schools system, I cannot afford MS Office (even with the student/teacher discount) so I thought I would try Open Office. I was worried because I KNOW nothing about Unix or X11 but I figured I have to learn something new today. Anyway, downloading and set up was a breeze. Very straight forward. Then I get to the screen where I have to enter in the commands in the X11 terminal. Got a little squirrely here. Here are the commands to be entered in:
setenv DISPLAY localhost:0

setenv DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.1.2/program:/Applications/OpenOffice.org1.1.2/program/filter

cd /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.1.2/program

sh soffice

Once this is entered you don't have to type these commands in again to start the program. Continuing to install from here was very smooth.

So far I have only tried the text document and spreadsheet (really original names here ) very much like Office and really no learning curve to speak of if you are conversant with Office or WOrdperfect.

Very straight forward and Office-like. Nothing here to see. When importing a Word document there were some very minor changes to the formatting but nothing major.

One word about the look of OOo. It looks like crap if you want something that is as polished as Office. Heck even AppleWorks looks better and I HATE the look of AW.


All in all, its a very capable program and easy to use. If you haven't used it because of the Unix factor try it. Its not that hard of an install and its as good as MS (better because its free). I give it a 4 out of 5 Prozacs. A real winner!

 

[ravenvii]

I installed OOo once, and didn't remember having to enter any commands. I just installed it, then ran this applescript thingy, and the program runs.

 

[stcanard]

Give NeoOffice/J a try too:

http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php

It's a Java port of OpenOffice.org. It acts a lot more "Mac" like (familiar shortcuts, fonts, etc), and supports things like native printing that I never got to work on OOo.

I use the 0.8x series regularly, and it seems quite stable to me. I haven't really "stressed" it, though, just basic letters and spreadsheets. I see there's a new version based on OOo 1.1.2 which I'll have to try.

It gives a much more Mac feel than OOo does right now.

 

[annk]

We use OO on Windoze at work (to avoid expensive Office liscenses) and I find it works well, though it takes a long time to open intially. I tried it on OSX a few months ago and decided I needed to wait for the native OSX release (I was too confused by what I needed to do/know ot use it in its present form).

One word of warning - if you make a presentation in OO's version of PowerPoint, it won't work 100% if shown in PowerPoint (on Windoze, at least). I learned this the hard way, giving a presentation where none of the links I'd put in my slides worked.

 

[Dave00]

Haven't used O on the Mac yet (waiting for the OSX version) but I really love using the Windows version at work (makes working on a Windows machine almost tolerable). The best part - and this is what is lacking in AppleWorks - almost seamnless integration with Word/Excel. You can open Word/Excel documents, they look the same, and you can save as Word/Excel to give back to those colleagues of yours unfortunate enough to still be paying for the microsoft products. You can save it as a .doc, .pdf, or multiple other formats. And, it has seemed very stable, doesn't have the beta/freeware precarious feel. I can't wait for the Mac version, although I have to admit Appleworks does most of what I want it to (with many frustrating quirks, of course.)

--D