Hi All,

I was wondering if any of you had seen the new OpenOffice 1.1. It is basically FREEWARE and has been designed and tested by the general computing public as a rival for MS Office. Sun Systems will be installing it on all of their new systems and many schools and community groups are adopting it. The Northern Territory (State in Australia) is chnaging over ALL of it's schools to this software as it is FREE and WORKS. Here is the website blurb:
When OpenOffice.org 1.0 was released, no one could believe that software this good could be free. An estimated 16 million+ people have downloaded the software; many more have installed it from CDs or were passed copies by enthusiastic users. Community members produced translations in over 30 languages.

The OpenOffice.org community listened to users' comments, fixed their bugs, and is now proud to announce OpenOffice.org 1.1. More powerful, more compatible, more international, more accessible, more open than ever1 - and best of all, this world class software is still free!


A new approach to office productivity software
OpenOffice.org 1.1 gives you everything you'd expect in office software. You can create dynamic documents, analyse data, design eye-catching presentations, produce dramatic illustrations, and open up your databases. You can publish your work in Portable Document Format (.pdf), and release your graphics in Flash (.swf) format - without needing any additional software. OpenOffice.org 1.1 is now available for more users than ever, with support for complex text layout (CTL) languages (such as Thai, Hindi, Arabic, and Hebrew) and vertical writing languages.

If you're used to using other office suites - such as Microsoft Office - you'll be completely at home with OpenOffice.org 1.1. However, as you become used to OpenOffice.org 1.1, you'll start to appreciate the extras that make your life easier. You can of course continue to use your old Microsoft Office files without any problems - and if you need to exchange files with people still using Microsoft Office, that's no problem either.

What's in the suite?
WRITER Is a powerful tool for creating professional documents, reports, newsletters, and brochures. You can easily integrate images and charts in documents, create everything from business letters to complete books with professional layouts, as well as create and publish Web content.

CALC is a feature-packed spreadsheet which can turn boring numbers into eye-catching information. Calculate, analyse, and visually communicate your data quickly and easily. Use advanced spreadsheet functions and decision-making tools to perform sophisticated data analysis. Use built-in charting tools to generate impressive 2D and 3D charts.

IMPRESS is the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations. Your presentations will truly stand out with special effects, animation and high-impact drawing tools.

DRAW will produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects.

The Database User Tools give you all the tools you need for day to day database work in a simple spreadsheet-like form. They support dBASE databases for simple applications, or any ODBC or JDBC compliant database for industrial strength database work

You can find it at www.openoffice.org

I'm going to trial it this weekend.

Greg B

Hi All,

I was wondering if any of you had seen the new OpenOffice 1.1.
...
I'm going to trial it this weekend.

Greg B
I have not tried it, but the rumor hat it that it's pretty good. I'm looking forward to your verdict. If nothing else, it may be a good alternative for use at home.

/Claes

The only drawback I've heard is that most of the documents created in MS word, excel, works, etc. will not transfer over. Our IT guys were playing around with OpenOffice last year and they gave it mixed reviews. Maybe they have corrected the compatability issues with MS Office by now and it will be a great package to have at home.

Being a dummy, I have a hard time figuring why a very skilled person/people would write such complex software and give it out for free. Is it good advertising for their other products or services, or do they sell advertising on it, or what?

I look forward to Greg's review. :bigwave:

I think I'll download it at work, take it home and test it out. I've heard of it before, but I'm not going to download it at home on a dial up! Work just got a Full T1 so downloading is much faster now! :) We're also updating to Win2k on some computer so using a keychain usb drive is possible now. :smokin:

The only drawback I've heard is that most of the documents created in MS word, excel, works, etc. will not transfer over. Our IT guys were playing around with OpenOffice last year and they gave it mixed reviews. Maybe they have corrected the compatability issues with MS Office by now and it will be a great package to have at home.

Randy,

It is MS Office compatible and they say it can also transfer between Operating systems.

Greg B

Thanks Greg,
It sure is a lot cheaper than Office!

You can find it at www.openoffice.org

I'm going to trial it this weekend.

Greg B

Greg,

Were you able to trial this software? If so, what was your impression of it? Instead of sending Billy-Boy a couple hundred American for a newer version of MsOffice (I currently have Office `97), would I be better off moving to OpenOffice? :bigwave:

Dave,

The University lecturer that was telling us about this software says that this is all that he uses on his home PC and he loves it. He takes his work home from Uni (MS) and it is compatible with Office 1.1 (and Vica verca).

I am trying to get a copy of it at the moment but because we live in a remote valley we do not have access to cable or broadband so unless I want to spend many days trying ot download 65MB I'll wait until my friend sends a copy from the big smoke.

Like you I am sick of upgrading my software for what seems very little change in the Operating System or applications (other than MS Spyware and cosmetic changes). This new system has the same tools but seems to also have a different approach to how it presents them.

I was hoping that someone form the cove would have trialled it by now.

Greg B

Dave,

I was hoping that someone form the cove would have trialled it by now.

Greg B

I would have a report by now, but as a novice I'm confused on the following issue:

They ask for the operating system and offer "Windows". Having just purchased XP Home-Dell for home, I'm betting that there will be problems. But, I'm willing to try it anyway. Everything else, scanner-printer-digital camera-zip drives all required that I go the manufacturers sites and download drivers for XP.

Here's where my ignorance really shows. When they ask for the country to download to, my choices are:
Under USA there is Binary Code, Indiana U, Secs up, imbiblio.org, Pair and Umbc.

What are these and how do they effect me? Atul? You see I ask for the Grand Software Master, first. But, I'll take help from anybody. :vfunny:

Just guessing here! This is while you're downloading?

After asking for your country, they're probably giving you a choice of servers from where you can download the stuff. Have to tried clicking on one of the options?

Just guessing here! This is while you're downloading?

After asking for your country, they're probably giving you a choice of servers from where you can download the stuff. Have to tried clicking on one of the options?

It is the last step before downloading. No, I haven't chosen one. Maybe .org is the best choice? :bonk: You can do the same thing. It won't download anything until you choose. Scared? :vfunny:

Greg, that's all I use here. I have no problem with it. Everyone in engineering, sales, shop floor even the owner uses it. The secretary's are the only ones with microsoft still. They are determine not try it and they say that nothing compares to microsoft. It all the same to me. The version we use now is 1.0.3. Let me know if there anything i can help you with. :)

Energy, I think Atul is right. It's just asking you to choose a server to download from. Some servers may be faster, and sometimes servers go down. Click one and if it's too slow or not working, try another.

Energy, I think Atul is right. It's just asking you to choose a server to download from. Some servers may be faster, and sometimes servers go down. Click one and if it's too slow or not working, try another.Many firms which offer downloads (free or cost) set up "mirror sites" around the country or around the world to help balance the internet traffic load. Almost always, these mirror sites are directly connected to the internet "backbone" and can download at the highest speed your client machine and internet connection is able to accept. Even microsoft (no capital letters for billy - he has enough capital) uses this technique.

We'll give it a shot this weekend. I think that Wes and howste have given me the, no better not say that, the courage to hit the download button. Keep you posted. :smokin:

We'll give it a shot this weekend. I think that Wes and howste have given me the, no better not say that, the courage to hit the download button. Keep you posted. :smokin:

More info: file size is 65+mb and four of the six servers choices show a 3 1/2 hour download for 56K dial up. So, it has to be one of those late night downloads. I'd bring it in here @ work with the DSL, save it to a CD, but what if it screws something up? :ko: No way. :bigwave:

I would have a report by now, but as a novice I'm confused on the following issue:

They ask for the operating system and offer "Windows". Having just purchased XP Home-Dell for home, I'm betting that there will be problems. But, I'm willing to try it anyway. Everything else, scanner-printer-digital camera-zip drives all required that I go the manufacturers sites and download drivers for XP.

Here's where my ignorance really shows. When they ask for the country to download to, my choices are:
Under USA there is Binary Code, Indiana U, Secs up, imbiblio.org, Pair and Umbc.

What are these and how do they effect me? Atul? You see I ask for the Grand Software Master, first. But, I'll take help from anybody. :vfunny:

These refer to mirror sites. Mirror sites are just different download locations available. They do this so one site doesn't carry the load of all the downloads. Rule of thumb is to doanload from the site closests to you.

One reply to this post asks why a well thought of and highly technical application is offered for free? Well, there is a software movement that has been in the works for years and it is called "open-source". Open-source means that a programmer has the source code available to him/her so he can see how it really works and can make improvements/additions to it. This adds a "community-built" feature to it that also makes improvements easier and faster, unlike Microsoft which is very much closed-source. But Microsoft has to do this because they haven't developed, on thier own, an application that wasn't a dud since Microsoft Office. I could go on and on about Mr Gates......

Welcome to the Cove, Scott!:bigwave:


Gates and Mickey Soft bashing aside, have you tried this particular software? Do you have a review?

I have downloaded the software and find that it works just as well as MS. I often recommend it to my impoverished friends who cannot afford the cash layout for MS Office.

Has anyone encountered a glitch in his copy?

Hi,
I have been using open office for some time now. But 1.1 does not support excel list boxes & such features that MS office users are used to. Try 1.2 version... supports many more features.

I'm downloading OpenOffice 2.0 Beta and will gladly provide feedback after I check it out. I currently use MS Office Pro XP at home and Office Pro 2000 at work. Have been using MS Office since the beginning, but always interested in checking out what others are authoring.

I've been using it off and on for several years now. It's getting better with every release. Generally it's been pretty good, but the draw package has crashed on me a number of times (losing me work) so I stopped using that. One of the main reasons that I use it is the built-in pdf export capability. The other main reason I use it is just because I like playing around with software. :-)

Overall I think it's okay, but I still prefer the MS Office suite. I'm a power user and I write quite a few macros, which is something that doesn't transfer between MS Office and OpenOffice. This is a critical issue for all those home grown Excel applications developed in Accounting departments, etc. [Note: The last time I tried this was a while ago - they might have upgraded this functionality.]

There are a number of other incompatibilities as well. For what most of us do day to day, those incompatibilities will never be apparent because they are seldom used features / capabilities. On the other hand, many of us have "seldom used features" that are our favorites and we rely upon.

Here's a pretty good comparison of MS Office and Open Office: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1571626,00.asp

Someone above asked why this would be given away for free. The primary motivation for Sun to develop this (then turn it over to an open source package) was to commoditize the software as a marketing tool to sell their hardware. Unfortunately, because their software is cross-platform, this plan seems to have back-fired for Sun. The advent of Linux (over Sun's Solaris), improvements in the speed of AMD and Intel's processors compared to Sun's Sparc, and the cross-platform nature of Sun's own Java language have all combined and commoditized Sun's hardware. Their stock has tanked and no one in the industry has quite figured out what their business model is. The bottom line: while Sun's Scott McNealy was so focused on beating Microsoft, who wasn't even his competitor, IBM and HP snuck in and stole all their market share. [I know this has strayed off topic, but I just love tech soap operas.]

OpenOffice 2.0 has been released. I have not down loaded it as of yet, but I would assume it is an improvement. I am happy with my older OpenOffice Suite which I use at home exclusively.

On the same theme:

Anyone come across PDF Creator (it's also open source)?

The issue is that we need to be able to pass a parameter from our software to something which can create a .pdf file, to give it a filename and a file path for the file we want to create.

We can do that with Acrobat PDF Writer (standard in Acrobat 44 and a custom install in v5, but now discontinued), but not with eg Acrobat Distiller (we still can't understand why Adobe have removed PDF Writer).

Any advice appreciated, thanks.

Peter there is an program called PrimoPDF which acts like a printer and converts documents into a PDF file. Goggle "PrimoPDF" to find the site. Hope this helps.

Peter there is an program called PrimoPDF which acts like a printer and converts documents into a PDF file. Goggle "PrimoPDF" to find the site. Hope this helps.

Jim

Many thanks. We'll check it out - it looks as though it may allow us to generate the file name and path by code, rather than asking for input (there are plenty other .pdf creator programs around, but none of them seem to have this capability).

All the best

I'm still using Office'97 at home & at my camera club. I'll give this a try & see if my club member database transfers back and forth ok.

We are still using '97, I almost went up to 2K when I cough-had a chance-cough, but seemed that if I saved the database in 2K version, it wouldn't work in the '97 version installed at our camera club. Imagine, can't even use files within the same application, let alone between Office and OpenSource.

I can't justify 100's of $ every year when M$ adds a few tweaks. Just how much can you update a word processor & speadsheet?

Looking forward to more open source goodness...

Jerry

Gates and Mickey Soft bashing aside, have you tried this particular software? Do you have a review?

I have downloaded the software and find that it works just as well as MS. I often recommend it to my impoverished friends who cannot afford the cash layout for MS Office.



Oh yeah, my review! Oops!! I haven't used all the features but have used the spreadsheet feature. It is very comparable and to it with some minor formatting differences. One feature I do like about it is that you can size the row and column widths in inches rather than in points. Came in very handy when I had to recreate a form and be pretty precise. Although, I am sure in excel there may be the same option to select, but I am a little impatient!

I have been using open office for quite sometime & am now using open office 2.0. Compared to excel the number of functions that you can use are simply tremendous. Even higher math functions are available & come in pretty handy.