Favorite Office Suite

[lpc300]

Hi All,

Thought I'd throw out the first poll for the General Software Forum. Just like the Intel vs. AMD debate in hardware can get heated, Office Suite debates in software can also get involved. What do y'all use? What are your favorite aspects? Which do you not like? I currently use Office 2000, Lotus SmartSuite and, WordPerfect 2000, each for various reasons. I have use each, fairly extensively. I like Lotus best, primarily for the integration of the individual components. Each component (especially Organizer) stands up well on it's own, though, admittedly, most of Office's programs are more full-featured.

Opinions?

[glc]

I use MS Office 97. Why? To be compatible with my customers and co-workers is probably the best reason. I have tried MS Office 2000 and cannot stand the bloated pig. I have used Wordperfect and do like it (I did start out with WP 5.1 on DOS) - and I did try the Star Office 6.0 beta. It's VERY nice - and eventually I would LIKE to switch, but there are some things that it will not do that MS Office 97 does that I need. If anyone can tell me how to copy a range of spreadsheet cells into a preexisting table (originally created with Word) in the word processor I would be interested in hearing how. It's a simple copy and paste with MS.

I really don't have any complaints with MS Office 97 - by today's standards it's actually pretty lean and fast. For all that matters, Office 4.3 and Office 95 both did the job, but file formats are not compatible with 97 and newer.

[HAL9000]

I agree with GLC here, Office 97 does everything my wife and I need it to do without requiring a separate hard drive to load a word processor on.

[OOPS!]

I use Star Office 5.2 or KOffice on linux. The last Windows office I used was Office97. I really liked Lotus SmartSuite for the longest time, but it went downhill and I switched to MS and now linux.

OOPS!

[Nunya]

Ms office for compatibility with work only

[pam123]

I don't need a full office suite so I just downloaded abiword. It's compatible with MSword and does all the word processing without being a disk hog. Best of all, it's free!

[mbossman2]

I prefer Corel's office suite. I cut my teeth on WordPerfect as a WP and while i do use MS at work (no choice there), I use WordPerfect at home.

[Carl Price]

I don't use a suite either. I like Microsoft Works. I tell my customers that it does 80% of what the suites do for 10% of the price. I would really like folks that use MS office to tell me what they DO (not features that are not used) that I cannot do with works. Although it is not the latest version I bought my copy of works for $29.00.

[mairving]

I have started using StarOffice. Overall I like it. Some things I think are better. Some are worse. I am not sure why they always have that help assistant popping up. I guess that it could be worse and be clippy. I have currently only used the spreadsheet portion. It has some Microsoft behavior since it wants to save things with it's own extension. So far, I would say that the spreadsheet has 95% of MS capabilities. Sometimes just finding out how to do things is harder. For instance, I will grab data and stick it in a spreadsheet and then insert it into a MySQL database. Excel always had a problem when I saved a file as tab-delimited of putting quotes around it. So I would have to open the file in a text editor and delete all the quotes. StarOffice at least gives me the option to use quotes or not.

[Nelreem]

carl-
you cant do a grammar check on works... lol
most things are word compatible now, as MS seems to be upgrading that quite a bit. Dell offers works with their computers, but to save works documents to word format, you gotta go and change around your save settings. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.

[dan3223]

Been using Star Office primarily for a while now. I have Office 2000 too, but I hardly ever use it.

[dead_eye]

I had staroffice but rarely use it because it is harder to use. I like the spreadsheet and presentation programs, though since I only have word97.

[Nuclear Krusader]

I use MS Office 97. I never wanted to upgrade to 2000 because 97 does have all the things I need. And most of 2000's newer features just didn't justify the cost of the upgrade.

I'm one of the few persons who likes the Assistant. Well, just the dog actually, and I think that the dog from 97 is nicer than his 2000 brother. When I'm a bit bored or tired but can't play a game in that very moment, I right click on the doggy and select "animate", for a lil' entertaining rest.

I primarily use Word and sometimes Excel. I'm also very good with Powerpoint, and I used it extensively in my college years. Some of my colleages used to call me the "presentations lord"

[audiyoda]

I wish I had a copy of Office97, would prefer that over 2000. But by the time I decided to upgrade from Office95, I couldn't find 97 anywhere. Tells you how long I was using 95! Well, I had to upgrade for schools sake -- MSU is very connected and I needed to be able to read documents that profs put in their ftp or on their web sites for download.

-Craig

[Floppyman]

Well, I have used Office 4.3 way back then, Office 97 and also Office XP. I currently have Star Office installed and it works great, considering it's free. You have to be careful with it though otherwise you could mess up your file associations. I like Office 97 and have a copy of Office 97 pro here that I'll probably install next time I reformat.

[Orcmonkey]

I use office 2002, but recently downloaded a trial version of WordPerfect, which I've enjoyed playing around with.

[Jenni]

Office suite???? For what? Never have installed one, and I never will. I have Office 97, and Works 4.0, but they aren't even installed. If I need to type something up, I use Pagemaker. If I want curved text or something weird like that, I use Print Artist/Shop/Master.... I have no need for any of the other things included in an office suite.