OpenOffice.org and CutePDFwriter

My computer is now much faster thanks to Stallen's clean install guide. I'm also protected to AVG and Comodo firewall. Now I need some office applications. Is OpenOffice.org good as an equivalent to Word and Excel? Will it bog down the system? Also, how about CutePDFwriter to create and merge PDFs? Thanks to everyone for helping out a novice!

 

OpenOffice works pretty good as long as you don't need to open up files created in MS Office. In my experience its pretty bad at importing them.

 

Hmm that could be a probably if I can open and edit prior MS docs.

 

Try Abiword for word processing. i am pretty sure it can open .doc extensions and other formats.

 

Well Like Office, OpenOffice is a collection of programs

Writer == Word
If you use Word to handle revisions and other versioning type uses, you will be disappointed with OpenOffice for word processing. On the other if you just type documents and print then it works fine. This issue really becomes apparent when you need pass a document around for critique and in the end you need to be able to identify changes and then pass it around again to accept or reject revisions.

Impress == PowerPoint
It's Ok, but I am sure a power point pro would find it lacking in some areas. Now if you just make basic slide shows it works fine ( I don't use PowerPoint too much )

Calc == Excel
For very basic spreadsheets it works, but it lacks the rich macro environment that Excel has


As for system clutter, it will not. It runs using Java, and that is really the bulk of the install if you don't have it. It does offer minimal integration into windows, but not to the extent of Office, too my knowledge there is no browser extension for OpenOffice (And I am very glad), it does have an optional 'quick launch' feature that will start at boot and makes the program launch faster - I disable this, but then I don't use it everytime I sit at my computer.

I think the bottom line is:
If you do basic functions in Office, then OpenOffice is no different. If you use some of the advanced features in Office you will think OpenOffice is horrible.

As for PDF stuff, OpenOffice will save to PDF natively, I do not know about editing PDFs.

Also I have never had issues opening .doc files or saving to them. It does not support the new 2007 office document format (but who does?)

 

I’m pretty sure I’ll get blasted for even suggesting this here – but what the hell: Let Microsoft monitor your computer for three months… http://wfp.microsoft.com/

…and get the one of the following for free:
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit DVD)
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007
Microsoft Money Plus Premium
Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008
Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008

You can just load it on a different computer if you have an extra sitting around.

 

Three months is a long time to go without a word processor...

 

As if Microsoft isn't discretely monitoring our systems already.

 

First, I don't think the Microsoft thing works anymore (in terms of a free gift).

Second, I use CutePDF writer all the time and it works great for making PDFs. It is a great little program. FYI, it works in Vista as well if you didn't know already.