free office software

[stevejr]

I read the thread by Ridgerunner about the software D/L site and went there and saw the link to OpenOffice.org 2.0.1. The site looks good to me so I am gonna give the software a try...the d/l was about 78 Mb's...and even with cable speed it was gonna take about 25 minutes...so I decided to go to Amazom.com and ordered the CD ( only $13.95 w/free shipping). Question: any opinions or info. out there on this software? I probably put the cart before the horse but if ya'll have some real negative info. about this software then I'll just write off the $14.00 to "leaping before I look" !!

[SuperSparks]

I think it depends what you want to do. From everything I've read, although it's not anywhere near as polished as MS Office, it does quite a good job for most office tasks. Where it falls down is if you need to be able to work with a lot of files that were created with MS Office - it claims to be able to open them, but from what I've heard the results are usually poor with half the formatting missing.

[SpywareDr]

Developer.com - 2006 Open Source Product of the Year
http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/3578451 Top Notch Winners!

Congratulations to Mozilla's Firefox and Open Office, the two projects that share this year's Open Source Product of the Year Award. Perhaps even more interesting than the fact both of our winners target end users (and not a more technical audience) is the fact that both applications provide viable alternatives to widely deployed Microsoft products.
...
Open Office 2.0

Breaking the grasp of Microsoft's hold on the browser market may seem daunting, but OpenOffice.org is in the midst of charting new territory in competing with Microsoft's Office Suite.

In 2000, Sun Microsystems open sourced StarOffice as under the name Open Office. After five years of development, the suite is beginning to make waves as a viable option to the Microsoft Office Suite. In 2005, OpenOffice 2.0 Beta was released. The suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet application, presentation tool, and more. Advanced tools such as mail merge, the ability to read and write Microsoft office documents, macro recorders, and Macromedia flash integration are just some of the innovations that have users thinking Open Office is ready for prime time.

The recent decision of the Massachusetts government to standardize their office documents on the OpenDocument standard (implemented by OpenOffice) has undoubtedly provided an opportunity for OpenOffice to build on its recent success. Corporations are beginning to follow suit. Although it may come as a surprise to many that OpenOffice shared the title of Developer.com Open Source Product of the Year, OpenOffice is undoubtedly a worthy recipient of the award.

...continues...

OpenOffice 2 Reviews. Office suites Reviews by CNET.
Editor's rating: 6.0 out of 10 - Average user rating: 8.5 our of 10
http://businessweek.com.com/OpenOffice_2/4505-3524_7-31624261-2.html?tag=nav

[stevejr]

Well...since I will just be doing real basic stuff like letters...resumes...other simple things...then I think that it will be alright for my needs...and it's a lot cheaper, too !!

[Tinkertron]

I've used OpenOffice myself, and I do have to say that it a great tool. But don't think using MSWORD documents to look the same on OpenOffice. The fill text and margins will be off a tad. If you just uses one OpenOffice to do all your work, then yes go right on ahead, but don't think that it going to be easy going back and fourth between the two. Gave me a really bad headache! :o