Open Office dot oh are gee........ ):p

[MorzillA]

I found a page that sells it's self as rival to MS office, OpenOffice.org it's powered by sun technologies and a host of others. It is supposed to do everything and then some that one would do in office, spreadsheets, word documents, power points, drawings, etc., etc., and the "best" part of it all.....yep, you can download it for free! no cost to you at all, even better it works with MS office too! create something on MS and open it or work with it in Open Office!!! amazing no!? it's like paint.net

Ok so what's the "down" of this so called amazing program!?

Well I download it to my OSX, oh by the way, when I hit the download button, it automatically knew my system (OS), unlike others that have two or three links to download for the system you are using. I opened it and was eager to see how this program would work and if it can be a solution to me not having office....Well, I kept getting time outs and X11 opened, in the end I would not be able to open the program and it told me that the Open Office had quit unexpectedly.

So that's my sad story with Open Office. I'll wait ($) and get Mac Office instead!!!!


Do you have or know some one who has this program, have you had problems with it, has it "saved the day" for you, what are your thoughts.....

 

[muldul]

Many have tried Open office, i do prefer Mircosoft office though. Have you tried downloading it from Neooffice.org

 

[soberbrain]

Many have tried Open office, i do prefer Mircosoft office though. Have you tried downloading it from Neooffice.org

I've use Neooffice since I rarely use MS Office outside of work to justify buying it. Works well with updating resumes!

 

[mkrishnan]

Well, I kept getting time outs and X11 opened

If you want to use OpenOffice.org, use the 3.0 beta with Aqua support (link) or use NeoOffice, a variant that also does not require X11.

And please forum search.

 

[kkat69]

I found a page that sells it's self as rival to MS office, OpenOffice.org it's powered by sun technologies and a host of others. It is supposed to do everything and then some that one would do in office, spreadsheets, word documents, power points, drawings, etc., etc., and the "best" part of it all.....yep, you can download it for free! no cost to you at all, even better it works with MS office too! create something on MS and open it or work with it in Open Office!!! amazing no!? it's like paint.net

Ok so what's the "down" of this so called amazing program!?

Well I download it to my OSX, oh by the way, when I hit the download button, it automatically knew my system (OS), unlike others that have two or three links to download for the system you are using. I opened it and was eager to see how this program would work and if it can be a solution to me not having office....Well, I kept getting time outs and X11 opened, in the end I would not be able to open the program and it told me that the Open Office had quit unexpectedly.

So that's my sad story with Open Office. I'll wait ($) and get Mac Office instead!!!!


Do you have or know some one who has this program, have you had problems with it, has it "saved the day" for you, what are your thoughts.....

Open Office has been around for a while. The libraries have been around even longer than that. I've never heard the OO community say it can do all of what office can do an more but it does what needs to be done. In it's early years it was lacking a bit, but now has grown to be a nice bit of application.

I recommended it to my parents for a cheaper alternative to Office and they love it. My mother actually has NeoOffice (which uses the OO engine) on her MB and she's pretty happy.

Even the latest version of OO was optimized for Tiger not Leopard. Although it does run on it (most of the time) the beta is where the bulk of the Leopard support is going to happen. Remember, these are volunteers coding this so things don't necessarily move very fast. Patience. It's a great suite, I personally have used it many times in the past on Windows and know of a few companies that have it as standard on all their computers.

 

[r.j.s]

NeoOffice is better than OO, at least right now on the mac, but I still prefer MS Office. I have run into limitations in NeoOffice's "powerpoint" when trying to use pictures or other media. The real deal is better.

 

[MisterEd]

For your everyday office stuff, OpenOffice (or NeoOffice) serves me just fine. I have however run into a few limitations when trying some more advanced things. I'd definitely recommend NeoOffice though

Ed

 

[MorzillA]

If you want to use OpenOffice.org, use the 3.0 beta with Aqua support (link) or use NeoOffice, a variant that also does not require X11.

And please forum search.

..... so you mean to tell me that there has been posts regarding OO?! sorry I had no idea that OO is well......"that" old it was confirmed by my best friend aaaand the posts as well!!

Thank you all for letting me know of an alt to OO!! will look into NO later today!! Thanx!!!

 

[GoCubsGo]

I believe your best friend is mistaken if he/she told you that OO was anything but old. Neooffice is better imho and seems to be the consensus on the boards as well.

Alternatively, if you're a student then Office for the Mac is quite inexpensive. I would even say pick up the 2004 version if you can because I understand the 2008 version to have some issues.

 

[mkrishnan]

I believe your best friend is mistaken if he/she told you that OO was anything but old. Neooffice is better imho and seems to be the consensus on the boards as well.

I haven't personally used the 3.0 OOo betas with Aqua, but from what I've heard, they're reasonably stable and probably are going to become the "mainstream" very quickly in place of Neo.

Anyways, cheers, mind as well try out both Neo and OOo Aqua before deciding if you want to buy Office. I personally use, Office 04 on my iMac, Office 03 at work in Windows, and OOo 2.4 on my Eee. I prefer Office, but for the minimal things Officey that I do on my Eee, OOo has been fab.

 

[MorzillA]

...Alternatively, if you're a student then Office for the Mac is quite inexpensive. I would even say pick up the 2004 version if you can because I understand the 2008 version to have someissues.

interesting you should mention that, I am a college student. Yes at some retailers, I can get a reasonable discount on Programs and such, but I'm beginning to find my self in a very "tight" spot so, if it's free by all means!

...I understand the 2008 version to have someissues.

....tsk tsk...now why I am not surprised by that will be a mystery on it's own!

......mkrishnan uhmmm......what does Eee mean?! *feeling like a fool*

 

[cherry su]

interesting you should mention that, I am a college student. Yes at some retailers, I can get a reasonable discount on Programs and such, but I'm beginning to find my self in a very "tight" spot so, if it's free by all means!



....tsk tsk...now why I am not surprised by that will be a mystery on it's own!

......mkrishnan uhmmm......what does Eee mean?! *feeling like a fool*

Eee is a small laptop (netbook) made by Asus. The screen size comes in 7", 9", and 10" flavors. It is perhaps the most popular subnotebook today.

 

[dukebound85]

..... so you mean to tell me that there has been posts regarding OO?! sorry I had no idea that OO is well......"that" old it was confirmed by my best friend aaaand the posts as well!!

Thank you all for letting me know of an alt to OO!! will look into NO later today!! Thanx!!!

yea like infinitely more

I haven't personally used the 3.0 OOo betas with Aqua, but from what I've heard, they're reasonably stable and probably are going to become the "mainstream" very quickly in place of Neo.

Anyways, cheers, mind as well try out both Neo and OOo Aqua before deciding if you want to buy Office. I personally use, Office 04 on my iMac, Office 03 at work in Windows, and OOo 2.4 on my Eee. I prefer Office, but for the minimal things Officey that I do on my Eee, OOo has been fab.

i have used the aqua version and its sooo much better than neooffice and much faster

 

[exegete77]

I have used both NeoOffice and OpenOffice 3 Beta (private and public). Both do a fine job, and I have had no problems exchanging files with those using MS Office on the Windows side.

I recently completed a 50 page document (with drawings) in NeoOffice... went as smooth as MS Word.

 

[kepardue]

I'm an open standards advocate, so regardless of which office suite does the job I support OpenDocument vehemently. OOXML claims to be open, but the fact that it's controlled by a single vendor gives me the heebie jeebies.

That said, I've had mixed results with alternative office suites on the Mac. I've used NeoOffice, iWork, OpenOffice.org 3 (beta and developer snapshots). I also work in a mixed computer environment and need to share with Windows users.

NeoOffice does have some formatting issues sometimes going between it and OpenOffice.org proper. Specifically, the indents on the bullets sometimes get messed up. OpenOffice.org 3 beta does much better, but I've had TONS of issues with the performance. Scroll speed is abysmal (even in the more recent snapshots) in that it will beachball of death me for at least a minute and a half going from one page to the other of an admittedly very large document (120 pages, with images included sitting at ~80MB). This is on a quad core MacPro with 6GB of RAM, mind you.

Recently I've had the opportunity to use Mac Office 2008 opening the same document converted to Word format. Honestly, font rendering is amazingly better, images embedded in the page appear much less jaggedly, and scroll performance is, although not flawless, better. It's a purely cosmetic thing, but OpenOffice.org 3 doesn't fit in at all with a Mac desktop.

To compare, look at the attached graphic. Note that NeoOffice *really* screwed up the formatting after I saved the document out as OpenDocument 1.2 using OpenOffice.org 3. I would have put iWork in there too, but I'm on my work computer and don't have it installed here. I dunno, clearly the OpenOffice/OpenOffice derivitaves are way behind on the rendering quality and are apparently pretty inconsistent with rendering files even in the OpenDocument format. Very frustrating for something that's supposed to be stopping all of this.

 

[sushi]

I'm an open standards advocate, so regardless of which office suite does the job I support OpenDocument vehemently.

Agree.

OOXML claims to be open, but the fact that it's controlled by a single vendor gives me the heebie jeebies.

Scary thought when you consider who it is.

Very frustrating for something that's supposed to be stopping all of this.

Yes it is.

For those considering OO or NeoOffice, how about iWork instead of Microsoft Office?

 

[kepardue]

For those considering OO or NeoOffice, how about iWork instead of Microsoft Office?

iWork is worse on that front. Don't get me wrong because I love using iWork more than other office suites and it makes my life much easier to make nice looking stuff. But not only does it use a proprietary (albeit XML-based) format, but a format that's not well accepted and not even usable on other platforms since it's in a package. At least with MS Office we can work with others in a workgroup, even if our documents suffer from vendor lock in.

 

[sushi]

iWork is worse on that front. Don't get me wrong because I love using iWork more than other office suites and it makes my life much easier to make nice looking stuff. But not only does it use a proprietary (albeit XML-based) format, but a format that's not well accepted and not even usable on other platforms since it's in a package. At least with MS Office we can work with others in a workgroup, even if our documents suffer from vendor lock in.

Understand from a compatibility perspective.

I've used iWork a little, and simple documents seem okay. I have not tried anything extensive yet so I was curious.

Thanks!

 

[MorzillA]

WOW! 18 replies to this thread YAY!!! im happy I am now downloading Neooffice for both PPC and Intel. I have MS office on my G4 but having an extra app does not hurt at all!

Thanks to all replies, very insightfull!!!



Keep the replies going!!!!!

 

[akidd]

WOW! 18 replies to this thread YAY!!! im happy I am now downloading Neooffice for both PPC and Intel. I have MS office on my G4 but having an extra app does not hurt at all!

Thanks to all replies, very insightfull!!!



Keep the replies going!!!!!

I have MS office on my G4 but having an extra app does not hurt at all! :

So why not install Office on the newer computer from your install CDs? G4 should mean Office2004, but that works fine on new hardware.

 

[Scooterman1]

I have used MS Office for years. I have not been crazy about the Ribbon interface, but it works well.
I wasn't impressed with the 2.x versions of OOO, although they pretty well did the job.
However, I LOVE the 3.0 Beta. I have the PC versions of Office 2007 but now use OOO 3.0 most of the time.

 

[Mirrorball]

I have used MS Office for years. I have not been crazy about the Ribbon interface, but it works well.
I wasn't impressed with the 2.x versions of OOO, although they pretty well did the job.
However, I LOVE the 3.0 Beta. I have the PC versions of Office 2007 but now use OOO 3.0 most of the time.

I agree. Version 3.0 has everything I need. Maybe Excel is still better than Calc, but I no longer need it to plot my data. As far as I can tell, Writer is just as good as Word and Impress is more than I need for my simple presentations.

 

[kepardue]

For you guys that are pleased with OOo 3, how do you find the performance on large documents (100 pages+ with many images)? I've also used some of the developer snapshots, so maybe I have some older stuff sitting around slowing it down. NeoOffice scrolls much faster.

 

[BullMooseFilms]

I've been using OO on my windows machines for years, and I was glad to see it was available for OSX too, since I just had to get over 1k worth of software and didn't want to pay for office as well, but I had the same thing, it downloaded and seemingly doesn't install, some sort of X11 timeout?

Going to try the 3.0 beta thing mentioned, and just wanted to add in a thx for the help

 

[elitree]

Thanks to Kepardue for the 3-way comparison... I hadn't seen anything like that yet.

I've been using NeoOffice instead of OpenOffice for a while now, but reading through the thread I'm inspired to give the 3.0 beta a try as well!