PDA

View Full Version : Open Office 2

kryyst
20 Oct 2005, 03:07pm
Open Office 2 is out now.

What can I say I'm totally impressed. I've been following along with the semi monthly betas all along and found that Ooo Write can easily replace MS Word and Impress could Replace Power Point with no issues. But Calc was very defficient. However now it's bang on. I haven't started to get into very deep compless functions yet to trully test it but many of the every day features that Calc didn't get right like AutoFilter are now fixed (seems my bitching in the Ooo forum payed off). Base (their access equivolent) is so sexy I can't believe how much it's been improved and Draw is a very nice Visio style app. Though it doesn't come with all the nice pics Visio have it's still can replace it with some google picture searches.

Combined with the fact (not new to this release) of beiing able to save directly to PDF without needing acrobat (though you can't edit PDF's). Open Office is quite the killer app. I still have to do more testing to see if I can fully start replacing Office at work but, with this release of Ooo it's feeling damn close.

Now I just need to wait a little longer for thunderbird with calendar to catch up and Outlook is fully replaceable.

Sweet jesus they did a great job with Ooo2 seriously I can't be more impressed. The difference between Ooo2 and the beta 1.915 is like the difference between Office95 and OfficeXP. Crazy.
drowd
20 Oct 2005, 03:47pm
i love open office. when people install linux for the first time, i always hear people say they want to install crossover so they can run ms office in linux, and i never understood that, cuz OOo was always more than efficient for me.

but yeah, im updating right now :D
kryyst
20 Oct 2005, 04:27pm
i love open office. when people install linux for the first time, i always hear people say they want to install crossover so they can run ms office in linux, and i never understood that, cuz OOo was always more than efficient for me.

but yeah, im updating right now :D

FOr the most part I agree but calc compared to excel always sucked. Now that's no longer the case. Ooo has hit a huge level of maturity and functionality with this release. It's no longer the poor mans alternative it simpley competes with MSOffice and that's all there is to it. There are still differences and I'm sure there will be some things MS does better, but there are things Ooo does better as well. The core functionality though (as far as I've been testing Ooo i the last couple hours) and it's all there feature for feature. It's really in the extended stuff that most people don't even touch where it's a fight between the two. I'm very impressed with this Ooo release.
drowd
20 Oct 2005, 05:51pm
well, i was just doing something the other day. i ALWAYS forget how to get to headers and footers in msoffice. i always have to hunt around for it, and hit little drop-down arrows, etc. i just never felt it was very intuitive (that could just be me). anyway, so the other day, i had to add headers and footers for some work documents, and it was so intuitive. it was exactly where i expected it would be looking the first time. maybe im on crack, i dunno, but i love OOo
GnomeWizardd
20 Oct 2005, 06:18pm
wtf is open office?
kryyst
20 Oct 2005, 06:58pm
wtf is open office?

Seriously? Like Seriously?

Open Office is a free office package. Word, Spreadsheet, Presentation, FlowChart, Database etc....

http://www.openoffice.org/

It's what Staroffice is based on if that helps. Before it was pretty good and if you had no access to Microsoft Office it was damn great. However Calc was never as good as Excel. Now though in this release Calc competes with Excel, as do all the other package. It's not longer just the poor mans version of MSOffice it's competing at the same level. Plus well it's free and saves directly to PDF so in many cases that puts any short commings it still may have above of MSOffice.
GnomeWizardd
20 Oct 2005, 07:18pm
sweet, I am thinking of running a linux based OS on my lappy and need a good word processor for that too. Whats the best EASY linux there is? i am such a n00b?
kryyst
20 Oct 2005, 09:06pm
sweet, I am thinking of running a linux based OS on my lappy and need a good word processor for that too. Whats the best EASY linux there is? i am such a n00b?


Best/Easiest I've found is probably mephis. Downlaod it put it on a cd you can boot up with just the cd to see if you like it and also make sure all your hardware is working. Then there is an install to Hard Drive option.

For overall best it's debatable but my preference is Debian for a server and Xandros for ease on a desktop. Though Xandros isn't free, free versions can be found in the regular places.
rapture
20 Oct 2005, 09:11pm
I cant use Linux, just dont have the patience to be a noob again. That said, I thought Vector Linux (http://www.vectorlinux.com/) was pretty cool...