Alternative to Microsoft Office 2007

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calvincoetzee

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I use Outlook for email, contacts and calendar, word for documenting work.

That's about it, but I want something I can use without paying so preferably a free alternative to Office.

Has anyone ditched Office and found something worthy to replace it? I'm thinking bout Thunderbird to replace Outlook.
 
calvincoetzee said:
I use Outlook for email, contacts and calendar, word for documenting work.

That's about it, but I want something I can use without paying so preferably a free alternative to Office.

Has anyone ditched Office and found something worthy to replace it? I'm thinking bout Thunderbird to replace Outlook.
Click to expand...

Try Open Office. It has a word processor, spreadheet, presentation program and a database. Also a nifty graphics program.

Thunderbird is one of the most popular free email and PIM programs,
about 10 million users can't wrong.

I don't have MS Office on my computer, and I won't buy it or pirate it. You simple don't need it any more, because there are viable free alternatives available.

I also use a grand small word processor called Jarte; it loads quickly and can do most writing jobs. Only takes 2 seconds to load.
 
Open Office .org . You can download it from pretty much any of the local ftp repositories.or It supports all the latest office formats so you dont have to worry about that either.
 
LOL...

Try Office 2010 beta!

Free for a year!

:)

Edit: I know... sorry, hard to resist!
 
The new Open Office is magic. While OO is always trailing M$ Office in features, its not that far behind.

The current OO has the same feature set as M$ Office 2005. Few users are advanced enough to point out what M$ 2005 has that is missing in OO.

Switched my wifes business to OO a few years back and never seen the need to go M$ - business licence is too expensive for what she does.
 
Okay so now I have OO installed, are there any addons I would want to install to increase functionality on the system?
 
calvincoetzee said:
Okay so now I have OO installed, are there any addons I would want to install to increase functionality on the system?
Click to expand...

You don't need any add-ons, unless you are something like the lead-designer of the next space shuttle, or the chief programmer for the Large Hadron Collider. :erm:
 
I use both OOo and MS Office extensively.

OOos biggest strength is, of course, it's price. Free is always a good price, especially when you need multiple licences.

But it lags MS Office is several areas, and it's up to the user to decide whether those missing features are an issue or not.

1. Localle data. OOo gets its localle preferences exclusively from (IIRC) an ISO repository (i.e. set in stone), while MS Office gets them from the Windows localle preferences (i.e. they are user customisable). For some of my work this is inexcusable, and I CAN'T use OOo. For other work, it doesn't particularly bother me. (For those who don't follow: localle data includes your thousands separator, decimal separator, currency symbol, and so on. OOo insists on using "." as a thousands separator and "," as a decimal separator. I don't care what the ISO says they should be, my industry standards are " " and ".", and I'm not going to have my documents look like they were prepared my an illiterate two year old, because some arrogant OOo author doesn't acknowledge the existence of industry standards.)

2. Sheet length limits, this is pretty self explanatory: MS Office allows more rows and columns per sheet than OOo. If you need more than (again, IIRC) 65000 rows per sheet, you can't use OOo. Some arrogant prick from the OOo dev team commented, "If you need more than 65000 lines, you [-]should be using[/-] will use a database, not a spreadsheet.", to which I say, "**** you, if I find it more efficient to install an extra R 50 worth of RAM, than to learn an entirely new application, then that's what I'm going to do. Either cater to your customers requirements, or forever remain an also ran."

For those saying TL-DR: There is no alternative to MS Office, unless you're willing to accept OOo's faults. OOo is free and it works, but be aware of its limitations, and decide whether you can live with them, otherwise spend the grand and a half, and get a basic version of MS Office.
 
Drunkard #1 said:
I use both OOo and MS Office extensively.

OOos biggest strength is, of course, it's price. Free is always a good price, especially when you need multiple licences.

But it lags MS Office is several areas, and it's up to the user to decide whether those missing features are an issue or not.

1. Localle data. OOo gets its localle preferences exclusively from (IIRC) an ISO repository (i.e. set in stone), while MS Office gets them from the Windows localle preferences (i.e. they are user customisable). For some of my work this is inexcusable, and I CAN'T use OOo. For other work, it doesn't particularly bother me. (For those who don't follow: localle data includes your thousands separator, decimal separator, currency symbol, and so on. OOo insists on using "." as a thousands separator and "," as a decimal separator. I don't care what the ISO says they should be, my industry standards are " " and ".", and I'm not going to have my documents look like they were prepared my an illiterate two year old, because some arrogant OOo author doesn't acknowledge the existence of industry standards.)

2. Sheet length limits, this is pretty self explanatory: MS Office allows more rows and columns per sheet than OOo. If you need more than (again, IIRC) 65000 rows per sheet, you can't use OOo. Some arrogant prick from the OOo dev team commented, "If you need more than 65000 lines, you [-]should be using[/-] will use a database, not a spreadsheet.", to which I say, "**** you, if I find it more efficient to install an extra R 50 worth of RAM, than to learn an entirely new application, then that's what I'm going to do. Either cater to your customers requirements, or forever remain an also ran."

For those saying TL-DR: There is no alternative to MS Office, unless you're willing to accept OOo's faults. OOo is free and it works, but be aware of its limitations, and decide whether you can live with them, otherwise spend the grand and a half, and get a basic version of MS Office.
Click to expand...

Nice post. I agree that OOo has limitations; but I cringe when I see what some companies do with a R5000 MS Office Pro package - namely nothing that wordpad can't do!

The question is not whether OOo can do what MS Office can - it can't; but rather: can the USER do anything with MS Office that cannot be done in OOo. There is always a big gap in IT between what a system is capable of doing - and what a user actually does with a system....
 
Drunkard #1 said:
I use both OOo and MS Office extensively.

OOos biggest strength is, of course, it's price. Free is always a good price, especially when you need multiple licences.

But it lags MS Office is several areas, and it's up to the user to decide whether those missing features are an issue or not.

1. Localle data. OOo gets its localle preferences exclusively from (IIRC) an ISO repository (i.e. set in stone), while MS Office gets them from the Windows localle preferences (i.e. they are user customisable). For some of my work this is inexcusable, and I CAN'T use OOo. For other work, it doesn't particularly bother me. (For those who don't follow: localle data includes your thousands separator, decimal separator, currency symbol, and so on. OOo insists on using "." as a thousands separator and "," as a decimal separator. I don't care what the ISO says they should be, my industry standards are " " and ".", and I'm not going to have my documents look like they were prepared my an illiterate two year old, because some arrogant OOo author doesn't acknowledge the existence of industry standards.)

2. Sheet length limits, this is pretty self explanatory: MS Office allows more rows and columns per sheet than OOo. If you need more than (again, IIRC) 65000 rows per sheet, you can't use OOo. Some arrogant prick from the OOo dev team commented, "If you need more than 65000 lines, you [-]should be using[/-] will use a database, not a spreadsheet.", to which I say, "**** you, if I find it more efficient to install an extra R 50 worth of RAM, than to learn an entirely new application, then that's what I'm going to do. Either cater to your customers requirements, or forever remain an also ran."

For those saying TL-DR: There is no alternative to MS Office, unless you're willing to accept OOo's faults. OOo is free and it works, but be aware of its limitations, and decide whether you can live with them, otherwise spend the grand and a half, and get a basic version of MS Office.
Click to expand...

Cheers to that! :D
All M$ software is free for personal use if you just know where to look... :eek:
Why do people pay for any software and music if they have internet? :rolleyes:
 
I'll pay for a good product, only the last 3 years I've been buying Windows keys and I think it's worth it, but I can't fork out a grand for an office suite for my pc, I don't use office that often, but as far as Windows 7 goes, it was worth it because it's the basis of everything else I do on my PC.

Anyway I'll definately try use OO and it should be fine, not as friendly on they eye as the latest office but not something I can't get used too.
 
Last time I looked OO could not add a culum of numbers nor had any sort functions.

Has that changed by now?
 
Conradl said:
Nice post. I agree that OOo has limitations; but I cringe when I see what some companies do with a R5000 MS Office Pro package - namely nothing that wordpad can't do!

The question is not whether OOo can do what MS Office can - it can't; but rather: can the USER do anything with MS Office that cannot be done in OOo. There is always a big gap in IT between what a system is capable of doing - and what a user actually does with a system....
Click to expand...

Hit the nail on the head there.
 
Leostar said:
Last time I looked OO could not add a culum of numbers nor had any sort functions.

Has that changed by now?
Click to expand...

Mkay, how long ago was that then? Must be version 1.0 issue.

No problems with the new OO - my wifes excel spreadsheets work perfect (lost of formulae and eyecandy - she runs her entire business off them).

I used OO to do all my UNISA assignments this year without glitche. Even inserting mathematical formulae was a breeze.

Last year I did my ICDL (UNISA requirement) and I actually learn't how to use 2007 properly. 2007 is nice but unless M$ produce a LINUX version I'm not buying it - heck they have an OS-X version
 
Is there anywhere I can download Office 2010 Beta from with local Cap?
 
Oh and a second question: Is there a 64bit version of Open Office available? I can only find the 32bit version.:confused:
 
yes probably is but you're going to figure that one out yourself, and why do u need a 64 bit compiled office suite, use the 32 bit.
 
I don't think anyone has mentioned Google yet.

You don't need to install any applications, everything is done online.

Google docs can pretty much do anything Office can, and Gmail can now receive any email via your POP settings.

It's all free, and it's always up.

Now with the Chromium OS, it's even faster and more accessible.
 
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