Open Office - the great discovery

I have discovered a new office package:
http://www.openoffice.org/

It's totally free.

I have planted the Blitz flag of discovery onto their site and made off with the glory and spoils of my discovery.

I've already finished my download, so you lot can go get some - if there is anything left.

You'd be hard pressed to find a soul on the Internet today who hasn't heard of OpenOffice.

You have far too much RAM in your computer to want to be using OpenOffice.

You also dislike VBA macro interoperability.

I like OpenOffice, but I can't use it because of its stupid small incompatabilities with MS Office file formats and incomplete VBA 'port'. It also uses stupid amounts of RAM and is slow as hell (in comparison to most Office 2003 and 2007 stuff).

I only got it to get the database thing.

I am going to database my eBay purchases.

Free but awful piece of software when you're trying to deal with others who use MS products as the files still get fu&$ed up.

Yes, they even kept up the fantastic feel of the Microsoft Office options!

In other words:
Do not look at any of the program's configuration or you will want to tear your eyes out. Why would anyone want to (and why should anyone have to) configure whether their word processor renders text with OpenGL? What the heck?!
(Among many other options that nobody should screw with, whose purposes are completely unclear, and that conceal the much more useful options such as "Go Away Useless Office Assistant!").

Other than that, I do very much like OpenOffice. It is a worthy attempt. (Never look under the hood, either, though. The number of languages they wrote the thing with reminds me of an infant's first scribbles "masterpiece").

Sadly, we seem very limited in terms of good open word processors that make some effort to blend with the desktop, so OO is pretty much the best choice right now.

Of course, OO is more than just Writer, so I shouldn't say that! The other components that are not the word processor work great and are very useful from time to time. (They just aren't as immediately useful). That is not to say they are free of ugly interfaces, but they get away with it via some really good functionality.

So there's my opinion: OO is great functionally, but rather unfortunate interface-wise. If it wasn't such a scary piece of software to develop for, someone probably would have made a nicer implementation for each desktop, but, alas...
The OOo developers are obviously very good at this stuff, and the program has incredible potential, so maybe some day they will do a rewrite which sufficiently solves these problems.

Has it got one of those Assistant things?

I have MS Word (on its own), and I use the round, red, ball Assistant - as he is my favourite.

I use OpenOffice all the time, most often the Writer program, and it starts quickly, runs with no slowdowns or delays, and uses less RAM than most of the puzzle games I run into these days. Are you using an ancient, unstable Alpha build or something?

SpaceAce

Could be he's using the Mac version, which, like mine, uses the X Windows system - its not the fastest way of doing it (apparently a more native version is being done), but its certainly acceptable, and very usable. Its not like it runs the speed of a snail or anything

No idea how much RAM it uses, as I dont really care...

Lol.. eh?
Dosent that mean the ram can be used for other things at the same time :/ why bloat when u can already float :?

I love openoffice, i can do 100% of the stuff i did in mso at a 100% discount. Its much faster & smoother than MSO (at least when running on linux).

Its a bit slow on windows for some reason but loads like lightning on linux/unix/osx.
Once its been loaded once on windows tho its fine and reloads very quick after being closed.

Tip of the day: you can substantially decrease the OpenOffice launch time by disabling the Java Runtime Environment under Tools -> Options -> Java.

For the Mac users; Try NeoOffice..

The problem with that is it may be a few revisions behind OpenOffice.

Sun's working on a native version of OpenOffice for OS X that won't need X11 anymore. They already released an early alpha version.

Anyway, if you spend a few bucks, there are better options available for the Mac.

xlsior: That's all well and good, but most of the stuff I do with MS Office that I want to do in OpenOffice requires the Java VM to be active.

I'm not (wasn't) using an alpha build either. It does require stupid amounts of RAM (under Windows XP), I don't care if anyone says it doesn't, because it big fat does.

Why, in 2007, have we to choose between MS Office and OpenOffice? Where's the competition?

lol puki is getting sucked into this ebay thing..

I got a free copy of Corel's WordPerfect Office with an ink-jet printer I bought about 6 years ago. I've long since upgraded to a laser printer but I've never needed to upgrade this office suite.

And you can buy it real cheap here

People are also forgetting Microsoft Works which is another cheap alternative to MS Office and way better than Open Office.

ms works is free? I use OO to print letters, why not. Tho it crashes when Antivir is running in the background.
Can't believe Puki didn't know it yet.

Yes - looking forward to it!

> ms works is free?

No, but it is cheap(er) then Office.

Open Office is a great piece of software. I use Writer daily.

Lol, Thanks Amon that ´laughter attack i just had really cheered me up :) (I hope youre kidding :P)