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Office Software

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XFool
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Office Software

#181232

Postby XFool » November 18th, 2018, 1:41 pm

So, after setting up again with my new(ish) PC with Window 8.1(!) time came to install the office software*. Was I to continue with my previous OpenOffice, or switch to LibreOffice?

We all the the situation: dear old Apache OpenOffice is yesterday's software, all the tech hipsters are over at the jazzy, professional looking LibreOffice site. All those programmers, all those bugs fixed, all those updates. One feels positively sad perusing the almost deserted Apache OO site with it's last years 'Latest Update'...

So, new(ish) computer, new horizons! I made the jump. I felt surprisingly guilty about deserting OO after so many years of loyalty.

I was a bit surprised that Libre Ofice was so monolithic and I couldn't just pick and choose the apps I wanted, I mainly use spreadsheets, still... Had a bit of a problem at first, it wouldn't launch - some DLL missing. Temporarily online with Win 8.1 to install SOME of those updates (Hah!) and it was soon running.

Thing is... I'm not sure I like it as much as OO. :o

OK, LibreOffice is more 'moderne' than 'old fashioned' OpenOffice. But maybe I like old fashioned, the up to date LO user interface icons seemed a bit toy like to my eyes, more 'My Little Spreadsheet' than OOs 'old fashioned' professional office software look to me.

There are other issues: Cells with comments in OO Calc had a yellow triangle - same Post It Note colour as the comment box - in the top right cell corner out of the way of the text. LO uses the same Post It Note yellow in the comment box but puts a small red square at the right side of the cell, making it impossible to read the last digit in the cell with the small fonts I prefer. There is also a kerning problem with fonts. e.g. on screen the word Investment is rendered as Inv estment. Also, when I scroll a sheet up and down, for some reason text in cells at the right side of the screen wobbles alarmingly as if written on jelly.

I am wondering if I should have stuck with OpenOffice. What do other people think?

P.S. My Opera browser flags LibreOffice as a spelling mistake but passes OpenOffice. Is it trying to tell me something?


* More on that story later...

XFool
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Re: Office Software

#181235

Postby XFool » November 18th, 2018, 2:25 pm

*

One further point. The new(ish) Dell came with MS Office on board and indeed it already comes up in context menus 'Open with... MS Office' etc. My notebook had MS Office 'preinstalled' but I never installed/used it. Recently after several years use I accidentally clicked on the MS Office icon on the notebook desktop. A 'DOS' type window opened up, something happened too quickly to see and then it closed down; nothing else. I found the Toshiba Software folder Office.lnk file had been deleted. Office directories were still in place, so imagined this was some MS quibble...

The new Dell seems more ready to go, but I have not tried to use MS Office. Does anyone know anything about these things? Are they free to the end user or does the user have to buy a licence after a free period? Will they be updated etc. In other words, what is their status?

TIA

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Re: Office Software

#181266

Postby Lanark » November 18th, 2018, 4:49 pm

Libre Office is still being actively developed, so whatever quirks it has there is at least a chance they will get fixed in future.

Open office on the other hand is likely to stay much the same, with security patches and not much else.

Both of them lack the polish of Microsoft Office, but then they are free.

UncleEbenezer
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Re: Office Software

#181294

Postby UncleEbenezer » November 18th, 2018, 8:01 pm

Both are valid choices. If you have a clear preference for one over t'other then use it!

superFoolish
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Re: Office Software

#181319

Postby superFoolish » November 19th, 2018, 3:29 am

XFool wrote:*
The new Dell seems more ready to go, but I have not tried to use MS Office. Does anyone know anything about these things? Are they free to the end user or does the user have to buy a licence after a free period? Will they be updated etc. In other words, what is their status?


I'll stay out of the OpenOffice / LibreOffice discussion, as I do not use them.

However, I can comment on the MS Office products.

The version of MS Office installed on a new PC is most likely a trial version of the Desktop MS Office Suite and will thus need to be paid for at some point. If you don't want to pay for office software, then it's not the right version of Office for you. I think it is good value at GPB80 / year for up to six users, but we all have our own opinions about what is good value, so I'll leave it at that.

There is a free version of Office called Microsoft Office Online. I would think that it is suitable for the vast majority of home users (assuming Internet access is available); it has a good set of features for free:

https://products.office.com/en-gb/offic ... ice-online


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