Microsoft HUP

[TonyVianoAmbiente]

I've only ever used MS Office but I'm not adverse to change. I had seen recently a couple of free add ons for MS Office 2007 which interested me:
1) Office accounting
2) MS version of a PDF creator

Does open office have a small business accounts package? Or is there another "free" accounts package I could look at?
I'm pretty sure that I have seen a free PDF creator recently so thats not a problem

Finally, both sons in 6th form next year doing A levels - a lot of their school homework is done in MS Office products - does Open Office output in suitable format for homework to be e-mailed into school system?

In answer to your first question, no, OpenOffice does not include an accounting package. I have done my business accounts in MS Excel since 1990 and simply opened the Excel spreadsheet in OpenOffice. I also save it in MS Excel 2003 format so my accountant can open it with Excel.

Yes, there is a freeware PDF creator but it isn't part of OpenOffice.

Finally, OpenOffice can save documents in MS Office formats up to Office 2003, such as .xls and .doc. OpenOffice is not compatible with the .xlsx and .docx formats which Microsoft developed specifically to deter use of OpenOffice. For me that's a good enough reason to find every possible way to avoid MS Office!

I do undertstand the reasons why so many people use MS Office, though. It has become a de facto standard. I use Adobe Creative Suite CS3 for my image editing for the same reason. I have to have it even though there are cheaper programs that do most things just as well.

 

[Spinal]

Finally, OpenOffice can save documents in MS Office formats up to Office 2003, such as .xls and .doc. OpenOffice is not compatible with the .xlsx and .docx formats which Microsoft developed specifically to deter use of OpenOffice. For me that's a good enough reason to find every possible way to avoid MS Office!

I do undertstand the reasons why so many people use MS Office, though. It has become a de facto standard. I use Adobe Creative Suite CS3 for my image editing for the same reason. I have to have it even though there are cheaper programs that do most things just as well.

Unfortunatly, OpenOffice doesn't get things exacty right when it comes to .doc files - the formatting tends to be off most of the time. If you deal with "digital-immigrants" and other "worried" users, they will find this enough to throw them off...

As for the docx and xlsx formats, Microsoft released those in response to consumer pressure asking for an xml-based format... Even the Apache POI is going towards OpenXML compatibility...

Office Open XML (also referred to as OOXML or OpenXML) is a free and open Ecma international standard document format, and a proposed ISO standard for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.

Microsoft originally developed the specification as a successor to its binary Microsoft Office file formats. The specification was later handed over to Ecma International to be developed as the Ecma 376 standard, under the stewardship of Ecma International Technical Committee TC45. Ecma 376 was published in December 2006[2] and can be freely downloaded from Ecma International.[3]

An amended version of the format, ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Draft International Standard 29500), received the necessary votes for approval as an ISO/IEC Standard as the result of a JTC 1 fast tracking standardization process that concluded in April 2008.[4] However, formal protests were filed in May and June 2008 by the national bodies of South Africa, Brazil, India, and Venezuela meaning that ISO/IEC 29500 will not be published until these appeals are resolved.[5]

Michele

 

[Piff]

Just ordered MS office Home & Student with 3 licences for £65 from Amazon.
I found another site on the way there that sells MS office products:
http://www.software4students.co.uk/?gclid=CNjPmK_d6pMCFSM4Zwod31p7Vw
Standard £35.45
Pro plus £45.95
Enterprise £56.95
These are on student licence & limited to installation on one desktop & one laptop for use by one person.
Unfortunately I need the 3 licences.

 

[masqueraid]

Also try http://www.rm.com/thebasement/ for student deals

 

[Piff]

Also try http://www.rm.com/thebasement/ for student deals

I went there too,but the licence terms were tighter - to be loaded on one computer only