office

[shadowpr]

does anyone know any good free alternatives to microsoft office??

i basically just want an equivalent to Word, Excel, Power Point, and Outlook.

i saw openoffice, but haven't heard much about it.

thanks for any input,
Will

[sdkfz]

http://www.openoffice.org/

[peekaboo]

http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable

[shadowpr]

has anyone actually had experience using openoffice?

how does it compare to microsoft? are the files easy to transfer between openoffice and microsoft office since i email quite a few files, and have people email me files in return?

thanks for your suggestions, and sorry for being a pain,
Will

[glc]

Moved to General Software, this does not qualify as a review, you need to read pertinent sticky threads in forums before you post in them.

I do not believe Open Office has an equivalent to Outlook. What you may want to do to keep the cost down is buy the student/teacher edition of MS Office.

[shadowpr]

Originally Posted by glc Moved to General Software, this does not qualify as a review, you need to read pertinent sticky threads in forums before you post in them. I do not believe Open Office has an equivalent to Outlook. What you may want to do to keep the cost down is buy the student/teacher edition of MS Office.

sorry about placing it in the wrong forum.


any idea where i could purchase the student version from, seeing as how i'm not a student?

[Panama Red]

Be careful selecting the Student Teacher edition. You'll need 2003 or XP versions to get Outlook. The new 2007 Office version is called Home and Student and does NOT contain Outlook. It has Word, Excel and Powerpoint only.

[sdkfz]

The 2007 version of the student teacher version is available anywhere where office can be bought, best buy, office max etc. and is now called the student / home version and no longer has the student teacher requierment - nor outlook either you get one note instead.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/su...655301033.aspx
"Do I need to have a student in my household in order to qualify to purchase and use Office Home and Student 2007?

No."

2003 on the other hand - still available at Amazon - the limits for use are basically- some one in the home is a student or a teacher - I could not find it on a US site but they are still on a UK site

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/buy/who.mspx

[LeftyAce]

For word processing and powerpoint, OpenOffice is fine (it's what I use all the time). It can save in microsoft's .doc and .ppt format, as well as the more universal .rtf text format (which microsoft word can read just fine).

The Open Office equivalent to excel isn't as robust. I've run into major performance issues when dealing with 1000s of cells in OO, but excel handled the same stuff just fine.

If free is what you're after, take a look at Mozilla Thunderbird for an email client, and possibly SunBird for calendar.

[shadowpr]

I appreciate all the feedback and suggestions.

I'm probably going to give Open Office a shot. And i'll have to look into Thunderbird. Haven't heard much about that.

Thanks

[Pcfreakske2000]

Originally Posted by shadowpr does anyone know any good free alternatives to microsoft office?? i basically just want an equivalent to Word, Excel, Power Point, and Outlook. i saw openoffice, but haven't heard much about it. thanks for any input, Will

@shadowpr : OpenOffice.org ( http://www.openoffice.org ), like others have already posted already.

It's a good alternative to Microsoft Office

[Entsure]

OpenOffice is indeed a great free app... there's a review of the latest version here if anyone's interested in reading further info about it...

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/software/s607.htm