OpenOffice 3.0

[Scott Shepherd]

Just thought I would bring this up in case it may help someone else.

Anyone looking to replace Microsoft Office or that just doesn't want to have to purchase MS Office to do simple stuff at home? Open Office has been around for many years now, and they have just released V3.0, which I think finally did some of the user friendly things needed (like a startup page finally).

One really nice thing about it is that you can export as pdf's. It's super nice to send out letters or anything else in pdf format instead of sending them in .doc format (I hate that).

It's compatible with MS Office documents and you can even set your default file type save settings as MS extensions. So you can save all your spreadsheets as .xls files, automatically if you wish.

Very very easy to transition over to, and best of all, it's 100% FREE! A lot of people who use Firefox and Thunderbird for email and internet have moved over to OpenOffice.

Anyway, if you need all that, it's free, and it works well. Give it a try. Works on Macs, Linux, and Windows platforms, oh, and did I mention, it's FREE!

One more thing- it's Free.

Openoffice.org is the website, or if I can't post that, then search google for openoffice.

[Jim Becker]

I've been using OpenOffice for years now. I have the kids using it on their PC, too. I do only install the portions of it that I actually need and since I rarely use the applications on my personal machine, I also don't run the "pre-loader" at startup.

And indeed, you cannot beat the price!

[Stephen Tashiro]

I wish Open Office would provide a way to turn auto-numbering off permanently.

[Tom Veatch]

...One really nice thing about it is that you can export as pdf's. ...

You can create pdf files without owning a copy of Acrobat? Since the OpenOffice package is a free download, I doubt OpenOffice is paying license fees to Adobe. I'm surprised Adobe allows that.

[Bill Cunningham]

When I had to upgrade my computer, I could not find my original lotus spreadsheet disk.. I was getting desperate , so I downloaded OO3, and only installed the spreadsheet portion, and aside from a few quirks, which I'm sure I'll get used to, it handles my spreadsheets exactly the same as lotus did.. If I ever find my Lotus disk, I'm not sure I will even bother installing it again..

[Jim Becker]

You can create pdf files without owning a copy of Acrobat? Since the OpenOffice package is a free download, I doubt OpenOffice is paying license fees to Adobe. I'm surprised Adobe allows that.

There are any number of applications that can write PDF format files. Acrobat is Adobe's product for creating them, but the file format, itself, is a separate issue. This is no different than OpenOffice being able to read and write .doc files compatible with MS Office. My Cannon scanner utility also writes PDF files...