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dr_d12
August 24th, 2007, 02:20 AM
I've been using Ubuntu on my laptop for a little while. Once I got it going I haven't had any problems.

My desktop computer is XP since I can't let go of Adobe, and the boss just bought me a copy of Office 2007. Hey, I don't love MSoft but I do like the new word. Maybe I wouldn't like it so much if I had to pay, it is too expensive.

Anyone else tried it? Do you like it?

Openoffice seems so Word 5.1 for mac to me. It works, it's free, it's not word.

Are you anti Office2007 for the price or because you don't like the software?

igknighted
August 24th, 2007, 02:35 AM
I've been using Ubuntu on my laptop for a little while. Once I got it going I haven't had any problems.

My desktop computer is XP since I can't let go of Adobe, and the boss just bought me a copy of Office 2007. Hey, I don't love MSoft but I do like the new word. Maybe I wouldn't like it so much if I had to pay, it is too expensive.

Anyone else tried it? Do you like it?

Openoffice seems so Word 5.1 for mac to me. It works, it's free, it's not word.

Are you anti Office2007 for the price or because you don't like the software?

Sadly there have been no improvements to Microsoft's Office suite since '97 (aside from what basically amounts to skins or visual gimmicks). I have '97 and 2007 and the wizards are the same. I would never buy 2007, but since my uni gave it out for free I was obligated to trade in '97 for it

Depressed Man
August 24th, 2007, 02:45 AM
Have it on the Vista install of my laptop. I don't like it. Some parts of it are ok, but really the interface ticks me off whenever I use it. So I just installed Open Office (that way it's all uniform across both computers regardless of the OS. :) ).

kiddo
August 24th, 2007, 02:55 AM
I care too much for letting my documents be locked into proprietary formats or pseudo-open formats like ooxml. I will resist the idea of using Office 2007 (or any other version) like I resist the temptation to use a mac (well, having to buy expensive hardware to run their software helps keeping me away).

Depressed Man
August 24th, 2007, 03:14 AM
You can get 2007 to save in the regular .doc format instead of docx (granted its still not odt). Haven't figured out how to get that plugin for read (and write?) support of ODT working yet :(

PurposeOfReason
August 24th, 2007, 03:21 AM
I used it and, at lease as far as I could see, it's just a pretty version of 2003.

DarinB
August 24th, 2007, 03:22 AM
yeah it looks nice, but i wonder are writing this from your office in,hum lets say Redmond? I don't put anything past those corporate fascists.

long live the freedom to choose.

M$ gives you a window but ubuntu gives you the whole house (Home Directory)

starcraft.man
August 24th, 2007, 03:28 AM
I've been using Ubuntu on my laptop for a little while. Once I got it going I haven't had any problems.

My desktop computer is XP since I can't let go of Adobe, and the boss just bought me a copy of Office 2007. Hey, I don't love MSoft but I do like the new word. Maybe I wouldn't like it so much if I had to pay, it is too expensive.

Anyone else tried it? Do you like it?

Openoffice seems so Word 5.1 for mac to me. It works, it's free, it's not word.

Are you anti Office2007 for the price or because you don't like the software?

Seen it, tried it and not that impressed. Sure the ribbon is nice and organizes things nice (if differently from how I remember before, new users will like it a lot) I certainly wouldn't pay between 2 and 500 dollars for a copy though. And there are more reasons not to use Office 2007 than your 2... like not wanting to support Microsoft with your money (office sales to my knowledge represent the largest chunk of MS revenue, even greater than Windows sales).

Oh and I don't have any problems with the OOo interface. Sure it's not flashy like 2007 or web 2.0 sites, but it gets the job done and that's what matters.

macogw
August 24th, 2007, 03:30 AM
I tried to use Word2k7 on the Dells at the Dell kiosk in the mall to put real big "Where's Ubuntu?" on the screen (hehehe), but the interface is royalled F'd up. I pulled out Notepad instead.

Kingsley
August 24th, 2007, 03:40 AM
I have Office 2007 but haven't used it for any schoolwork yet. I've heard good things about Excel so I can't wait to try that out. My plan is to use OOo for typing up rough drafts of papers, since it doesn't have grammar check. And for final drafts I'll use Word 2007.

teet
August 24th, 2007, 03:59 AM
I used the beta version for 6+ months.

At first I absolutely hated it. After several months I was indifferent towards it. And now...well the beta version expired and I went back to office 2003 on my windows laptop.

The new interface certainly takes some getting used to. Some things are certainly easier to do in 2007. You can make some really snazzy looking tables and flow charts without much hassle. But overall I wouldn't shell out the money for it.

My university upgraded all the computers to 2007. They set it to automatically save in *.doc format instead of *.docx. They've sent out 3-4 emails reminding students not to save in the *.docx format. But I still occasionally get a file from one of my classmates saved in *.docx *sigh*. Pure genious on microsoft's part. By switching formats they're almost forcing people to upgrade to the new version to avoid the hassle of not being able to open *.docx files sent out by inconsiderate/ignorant people.

-teet

GFree678
August 24th, 2007, 04:05 AM
Meh. I can take it or leave it.

I have used it, but I can't see why I'd shell money out for it when my needs are fairly well supported by OpenOffice. I can certainly appreciate how some people might want to use features specific to Office 2007 that are a lot more technical and niche than what I would use it for, and that's fine, but I don't need that much from it and hence, OO is enough.

LyX kicks the *** of both though, but that's just me. :)

macogw
August 24th, 2007, 04:36 AM
Meh. I can take it or leave it.

I have used it, but I can't see why I'd shell money out for it when my needs are fairly well supported by OpenOffice. I can certainly appreciate how some people might want to use features specific to Office 2007 that are a lot more technical and niche than what I would use it for, and that's fine, but I don't need that much from it and hence, OO is enough.

LyX kicks the *** of both though, but that's just me. :)

I'm teaching myself LaTeX now :) I use OOo for most stuff, but I just did my resume in LaTeX, and it's pretty cool, especially the bibliography bit. OOo is still better than Word for layouts, but something made for typesetting, like TeX is unbeatable on that count.

igknighted
August 24th, 2007, 05:11 AM
One thing I must hand Office 2007... the integration between Outlook and OneNote is nifty as hell. As far as note taking at Uni or managing projects, its unmatched at this point (later incarnations of KDE4 might have similar functionality).

GFree678
August 24th, 2007, 05:12 AM
I'm teaching myself LaTeX now :) I use OOo for most stuff, but I just did my resume in LaTeX, and it's pretty cool, especially the bibliography bit. OOo is still better than Word for layouts, but something made for typesetting, like TeX is unbeatable on that count.
You didn't write the entire resume in pure LaTeX I hope? You used a graphical frontend like LyX I hope? Or are you trying to take the title of hardcore document creation queen?

:popcorn:

Spr0k3t
August 24th, 2007, 06:24 AM
I am forced to use 2007 every day at work. I hate it. The ribbon interface has slowed me down for more than four months now. I used to be able to use the portable OOo but the network admins didn't think it was right. So now, all of my own documents are published in RTF format or plain text out of spite.

The thing that makes 2007 so much of a pain, the ribbon.

EXCiD3
August 24th, 2007, 06:30 AM
I am forced to use 2007 every day at work. I hate it. The ribbon interface has slowed me down for more than four months now. I used to be able to use the portable OOo but the network admins didn't think it was right. So now, all of my own documents are published in RTF format or plain text out of spite.

The thing that makes 2007 so much of a pain, the ribbon.

Aww man, I thought it was somewhat easier to use...I could guess where those hard to find tools were located easier...But over all it has slowed me down...And the team that did the ribbon interface is going to develop the soon to be infamous IE8...

goumples
August 24th, 2007, 07:33 AM
Even if MS Office were superior to Open Office, the price issue stops it debate right in its tracks. I wouldn't pay 1 dollar for software.

karellen
August 24th, 2007, 07:38 AM
yes, I've tried it and I like it. unfortunately, the trial version has expired and by no means I'm not going to pay some hundred dollars for it. I find that for my (modest) needs openoffice it just fine (the linux and the windows versions), in fact I use abiword alot more than openoffice writer for docs

cmat
August 24th, 2007, 07:46 AM
I found for word processing and spreadsheets, AbiWord and Gnumeric are better than OpenOffice and Word 2007.

tehkain
August 31st, 2007, 04:39 AM
After some blogs today I am pretty pissed at Office. So Ms is patenting the 'ribbon'. It amazes me that they will even attempt to patent an idea that has been used for an ample amount of time. Loom at dreamweaver, bluefish, blender, and any other app with buttons inside of a tab window.

Example - it took me 7 minutes to have the attached example working with glade and pygtk. Prior art is ample.

Dimitriid
August 31st, 2007, 04:44 AM
Ive seen a few people around that sent me key documents and I was so annoyed when I opened my email and saw *.docx. My laptop dual boots to Vista and I can get a key from my work so I might need to install it just to click on "Save As..." then save it as a normal doc.

Not If i can find a workaround though.

stmiller
August 31st, 2007, 04:57 AM
There are a few online converters for free. Use a mailinator.com fake email though or you are just asking for spam:

http://www.zamzar.com/

http://docx-converter.com/

derekr44
August 31st, 2007, 03:59 PM
I have Office 2007 Enterprise and am actually impressed with it as a program. .docx is a different story, however...

rickyjones
August 31st, 2007, 04:16 PM
I've been using it since Beta and I like it. The interface looks nice to me, the ribbon was slow at first but now it just makes sense.

.docx isn't hurting me at all since everyone I know runs Office 2003 or 2007 and 2003 can open up .docx files just fine (at least on all the computers that I've been using).

-Richard

Kingsley
August 31st, 2007, 04:49 PM
Well, yesterday I typed up my first paper for English in Word 2007. The teacher actually walked us through the interface a few days ago. What I find most impressive are the interface and tools that make writing a bibliography/works cited page a whole lot easier. Microsoft shouldn't have thrown in the big, colored fonts though.

raijinsetsu
August 31st, 2007, 04:59 PM
There are a few online converters for free. Use a mailinator.com fake email though or you are just asking for spam:

http://www.zamzar.com/

http://docx-converter.com/

There are no real converters... From what I've read, it's not really possible as MS is using proprietary parts inside it's document format(which is not XML).
Here is an interesting document on OOXML (http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/). It's a heavy read though.

I won't ever pick up Office2k7 because of the ability to lose an entire document to 1 bad bit...

saxuntu
August 31st, 2007, 05:30 PM
I find to cost absurd and the redisigned GUI annoying and irritating. Microsoft changes the layout and all of a sudden its "New and Improved"? I found it annoying.

I had the person running the trial download Open Office instead.

jdrodrig
August 31st, 2007, 05:55 PM
For me, Word 2007 is great but Excel 2007 seems a bit erratic, specially when handling large PivotTables....

I think we are not the audience the changes in 2007 were meant for: people needing meaningless aesthetical changes in their documents done quickly...

On the format, as I understand it, it is the first step of MS toward having an "open source" file format, I mean, they are to (or already) publish the schema of the xml file so that we could, technically, open a docx file in our home-made editor...so it is not perfect, but in perspective, it is great they move away from 100% binary formats like .doc...it will take some time to get adjusted to it, of course..

I agree, the integration OneNote-Outlook-Word is great!

Hendrixski
September 1st, 2007, 10:38 PM
There is a good reason why you should not use it. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=540016

The fact that it will never support ISO standard documents like ODF is because it's designed to lock you into not just MS Office, but also the entire MS stack of applications like Sharepoint, Exchange, MSN and Live.

Also, security wholes and a lack of implementability.

Steve Fisher
September 1st, 2007, 11:56 PM
I use it at work, simply because mine's a newish PC which didn't have any office apps on it. My choice would have been for OOo, but it wasn't mine to make.

Anyway, I have to say I've grown to like it. The ribbon is a tad confusing at first, but once you get used to it, it's much better than the old interface imho. Actually, the other day I was using someone elses PC that had an older version of Office on it and I couldn't find the tool I needed amongst all the menus!

I often have to convert Word documents into PDF's, using the free MS PDF plugin for Office 2007. Ironically, I've had to install OOo on other colleagues machines with older versions of Office to get this functionality...

agurk
September 2nd, 2007, 02:58 AM
I've been on Office 12 for a few weeks now and Outlook starts up around 20% slower than in Office 11. Not bad, compared to Vista.

thisllub
September 2nd, 2007, 04:11 AM
The compliance check on startup is a PITA.

New software should improve usability and stability. All I can see here is more of the same.

However Word is superior to OO.

Not enough for me to want to pay for it though.

dark_harmonics
September 20th, 2007, 04:15 PM
Office 2007 is actually a really sweet program. Too bad its expensive and proprietary. If they made a Linux version then it would be great!

In reality though, Microsoft needs a lawsuit before they're gonna add support for Linux or open office documents. Now that they are on top, all they have to do to maintain their monopoly is make all their **** anti-linux/open source and if you want to work with consumers of Microsoft (every dumb *** who can barely click a mouse) you HAVE TO CONFORM. I hate this and Microsoft for it. The fact remains that I'm locked in to having a windows virtual machine on my Ubuntu laptop and so it will at least be running the best software Microsoft has (my company pays for it).

Bungo Pony
September 20th, 2007, 05:15 PM
I used the beta version and I thought it was junk. BTW, for those who still have a beta copy, you can still use it if you roll back the date on your PC. I had to do that at work while I was waiting for an official copy to come. When I got tired of waiting for it to come and rolling back my date, I just installed Oo.

I believe there are program loaders out there that will do a date rollback for you to run software like this.

50words
September 20th, 2007, 06:14 PM
I upgraded soon after it came out. For the record, I use Outlook, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, or their OOo counterparts, in about that order.

I love Outlook. I need a full-service PIM to track calendar(s), tasks, contacts, and e-mail. Outlook does that better than anything else I have tried, although Evolution works well enough. If/when I fully move to Linux, however, I will leave Outlook behind and use Evolution.

Word with the Ribbon is pretty cool once you get it configured properly. The built-in styles are next to useless for anyone building professional documents (I am an attorney, so all those pretty colors and fonts are worthless). And while the Ribbon makes some tasks more accessible, other tasks that I use just as much are less accessible than before, with no option to add them to the main Ribbon. Disappointing. So even in Windows, I use OOo for word processing. The interface may not work perfectly for a casual user, but for me, it is more functional (not that I don't have a wish list). Saving to .doc seems to work well enough in most instances. If I need to share documents, I usually check them in Word. I do use Word to track changes, though, since I haven't played with those features in OOo very much, and it needs to work smoothly when I am collaborating with opposing counsel.

I stopped using Xcel the instant I started using OOo. For the simple spreadsheets I use to track time, trust accounts, and billing, and to help with damages calculations, it works perfectly.

PowerPoint is definitely better than its OOo counterpart. It is visually more appealing, more enjoyable to use, and comes with much better built-in themes than OOo. I don't need to use it, but I do because I prefer it. The Ribbon is useful, but I wouldn't say it is a huge leap forward. Mostly, PowerPoint 2007 is just better in a lot of little ways.

One of the things I really noticed when I upgraded to Office 2007 was the incredible jump in onscreen font display. The fonts are clear, crisp, and easy to read. OOo (and Ubuntu, for that matter) does not come close. The same is true for Firefox vs. IE. I use Firefox for many reasons, but IE has much better font rendering.

So in sum, I like Office 2007, especially Outlook and PowerPoint, but I am not wed to it. Evolution and the OOo alternatives are perfectly capable for my needs, and in the case of the word processor and spreadsheet, I prefer them anyway.

If/when I switch to Ubuntu, PowerPoint and Word will remain on my virtualized copy of Windows, because sometimes I need to make double-sure my documents are compatible.

mech7
September 20th, 2007, 06:37 PM
I love word 2007 don't care too much for Outlook and the rest as it is a bit cluttered, but with word things have gotten much better :D not that i use it that much but still :)

Andrewie
September 20th, 2007, 06:37 PM
the ribbon is kind of weird when you first start uisng it but after awhile you get use to it, and it actually helps. Feature wise I didn't notice too much other then the new format. I wouldn't pay the 500 dollars for the program, but given to me for free I would have nothing against it.

Features missing:

Linux version
export and save as opendocument format

mikewhatever
September 20th, 2007, 06:44 PM
Tried Office 2007 yet?

No. I was once offered a questionably legal copy of it, but refused. Open Office suits most of my needs, and if it does not work, I try Zoho or Google Docs, or some online converter.

BuffaloX
September 20th, 2007, 07:04 PM
Last I used MS Word, my head almost exploded.
I will probably never understand Why would anyone use Word???

I wouldn't install MS Word even if I got paid to do it. Unless it was a LOT of money. :)

TeraDyne
September 20th, 2007, 07:12 PM
I got to toy around with it thanks to a friend of my mom. I wouldn't mind seeing the ribbon interface in OOo.

Over all, I think it's a nice liitle UI upgrade, but the "new features" catagory is a bit lacking. If I had the money, I might actually buy it, if only for the UI and the fact that more people will probably use the docx format.

LuisAugusto
September 22nd, 2007, 04:55 PM
MS Office 2007 is better than OpenOffice in almost everything.
Of course I don't like MS, but that doesn't change the fact. Does it?

And it isn't because MS Office is good, it's because OpenOffice is quite unstable, slow, ugly and lack functionality.

Zootropo
September 22nd, 2007, 05:18 PM
And it isn't because MS Office is good, it's because OpenOffice is quite unstable
Not mine


slow
Not mine


ugly
Well, you can change the icon theme...


and lack functionality.
And has some options which MS Office lacks.

Kingsley
September 22nd, 2007, 05:36 PM
Not mine
And has some options which MS Office lacks.
Can you elaborate?

Takmadeus
September 22nd, 2007, 05:50 PM
dunno, I am still not convinced about using it.... the interface does not surprise me, I have been using the regular office for a long time (and I like OOo interface a lot more) and the fact that it uses a new format is a drawback since it will be a while for it to be "standard".... so I'll stick to OOo

mech7
September 22nd, 2007, 07:05 PM
dunno, I am still not convinced about using it.... the interface does not surprise me, I have been using the regular office for a long time (and I like OOo interface a lot more) and the fact that it uses a new format is a drawback since it will be a while for it to be "standard".... so I'll stick to OOo

You can still set it to save as standard to .doc.. and there are plugin for pdf and xps.. The beta could save to pdf by default but Adobe didnt want it :confused:

jdq997
September 22nd, 2007, 08:14 PM
Despite all of the usual whining by Linux people who live to complain about MS products I will be unpopular and say good things about it. I think that Office 2007 is a very decent piece of software. The interface is an improvement simply because of the fact that all of the features are made readily available for people who never thought of digging through menus to figure out that they exist. In Excel 2007 this is particularly useful because there are so many little features in this software that make life much easier for people who are constantly banging away at spreadsheets which most are unaware of.

The implementation is not quite as good in Word, which should have defaulted to formatting settings that are typical to previous versions. Not a problem, because this can easily be fixed but this will turn off some people who aren’t used to playing around much for format settings. Powerpoint 07 adds some nice eye candy, and it too greatly benefits from reminding users that they can do a lot more with the software. Some of the other software in Office 2007 is very good as well. There is simply no replacement for One Note in Linux. Anyone here who has a college email address can now get Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for $60 at www.theultimatesteal.com.

For 75% of the rest of the world I would suggest www.openoffice.org, but for power users, office workers and people who can afford it (and ignoring any ideological considerations) Office 2007 is a very powerful, user friendly piece of software.

- Jason

R_U_Q_R_U
September 22nd, 2007, 08:18 PM
In case any of you students want the complete version of Office 2007, there is a special promotion going on now. You can get Office 2007 Ultimate for $59.95 at:

http://www.theultimatesteal.com/home.asp

Deal ends April 30, 2008.

LuisAugusto
September 23rd, 2007, 04:06 AM
Not mine

I have use OpenOffice on more than 20 distros. In all of them (except on OpenSuSE, but they made a special version) it's unstable, I remember once that it crashed because I added and then erased a ******* dot on a Presentation, and yes, I reproduced the behavior.


Well, you can change the icon theme...

It's still ugly.



And has some options which MS Office lacks.

Could you give me an example? (I'm sure there probably some things, but for some reason I believe they'll be just mini addons)

Zoiked
September 23rd, 2007, 05:02 AM
I Love Office 2003 but hate Office 2007. The Reason?; The interface is so complicated to use and is not to the point. :D

Saylient_Dreams
September 26th, 2007, 03:11 AM
I've used it, and I have to say I would rather use Word 2007 and Onenote 2007 over anything out there right now. My reason for using Word 2007 is because of how easy it is to insert mathematical equations. Onenote 2007 just to me is better with inking than 2003, its more forgiving when I ink something into my notes. Hopefully Open Office will have something very similar to those things I really need. Right now I switched over to IBM Lotus Symphony because it has a decent UI, and I don't need a math equation writer right now (not taking any math courses this semester). I might have to put some money out soon for Office Home and Student as I will definately need Onenote and the math equation editor in Word 2007.

Montsegur87
September 26th, 2007, 03:23 AM
I tried it at work.

BLOATWARE

Kingsley
September 26th, 2007, 03:27 AM
I've used it, and I have to say I would rather use Word 2007 and Onenote 2007 over anything out there right now. My reason for using Word 2007 is because of how easy it is to insert mathematical equations. Onenote 2007 just to me is better with inking than 2003, its more forgiving when I ink something into my notes. Hopefully Open Office will have something very similar to those things I really need. Right now I switched over to IBM Lotus Symphony because it has a decent UI, and I don't need a math equation writer right now (not taking any math courses this semester). I might have to put some money out soon for Office Home and Student as I will definately need Onenote and the math equation editor in Word 2007.
I have Onenote too but have never gotten around to using it. Which school subjects do you use it for?

Frak
September 26th, 2007, 03:58 AM
I use 2007 everyday, my job requires it. I love it. It is a pretty version of 2003, but I like pretty :)

Con: It's all great until something goes wrong, then Help (the button) is the most useless thing on Earth.

wersdaluv
September 26th, 2007, 04:18 AM
I like it. I like how it looks, how it works, and the new fonts. I just hate the cost and the file format.

Frak
September 26th, 2007, 04:21 AM
I like it. I like how it looks, how it works, and the new fonts. I just hate the cost and the file format.
Callibri & Cambria FTW!\\:D/

joe.turion64x2
September 26th, 2007, 05:36 AM
I used Office 2007 in the school for a while and at first it impressed me: I did not think the same thing could be disguised that much. However for me that new interface was confusing.

Since I don't have the money to get it I don't have any version of MS Office installed in my machines, and even if I had the money I don't see the need because OpenOffice.org can make all the office work; for more serious things I use LATEX.

The only thing I like from MS Office is its ability to dynamically change font size with the shortcuts Ctrl+> or Ctrl+<. OpenOffice.org does not do that specific thing (which I dislike from it) but in turn gives me a nice app to draw, and the way it handles equations...so similar to LATEX...simply gets me. Another thing I love from OpenOffice.org is its ability to DIRECTLY export to PDF.

Obviously I dislike the new format proposed by MS (OOXML) and even more its 'evil' practice of making it Office 2007's default one, knowing that dumb people would spread it. By the way I am completing the conversion of all my documents to ODF. People wishing to use them must comply to my 'terms' then.

My machines have OpenOffice.org regardless of the OS they boot from because I prefer to have an organized and uniform computing environment.

Thanks.
Joe.

mcduck
September 26th, 2007, 07:20 AM
I don't use Microsoft Office. OpenOffice does everything I need my office programs to do, and works on all operating systems I use. Plus it's free.

Why would I even consider some windows-only office package that doesn't even support the only existing document file standard, ODF?

syxbit
September 27th, 2007, 01:35 AM
anyone who thinks OOo is better is dreaming.
i just use abiword, cause OOo is just so slow
DARN JAVA!!

mcduck
September 27th, 2007, 07:35 AM
anyone who thinks OOo is better is dreaming.
i just use abiword, cause OOo is just so slow
DARN JAVA!!

Why not turn off the Java in OpenOffice if you don't need it?

LookTJ
September 27th, 2007, 07:44 AM
I think LaTeX is better and more powerful than word processors.

edit: btw I used MS Office from 97-XP

Azriphale
September 27th, 2007, 07:46 AM
The last MS Office I used was Office 2000. A few years later, still using Office 2000, and having problems, I swore I would never buy MS Office again, and switched to OpenOffice.org.

Now, at the end of my undergrad engineering degree, I have decided that OOo is not good for professional documents, technical reports and papers, and I have switched to LaTeX for any serious document writing as it removes all of the layout stressing that comes with packages where you have to do your own layout. Even better, I use LaTeX through a GUI front-end (called LyX) that hides all of the LaTeX code from you, making it even more simple to use. I highly recommend using LyX over any WYSIWYG word processor.

LookTJ
September 27th, 2007, 08:38 AM
The last MS Office I used was Office 2000. A few years later, still using Office 2000, and having problems, I swore I would never buy MS Office again, and switched to OpenOffice.org.

Now, at the end of my undergrad engineering degree, I have decided that OOo is not good for professional documents, technical reports and papers, and I have switched to LaTeX for any serious document writing as it removes all of the layout stressing that comes with packages where you have to do your own layout. Even better, I use LaTeX through a GUI front-end (called LyX) that hides all of the LaTeX code from you, making it even more simple to use. I highly recommend using LyX over any WYSIWYG word processor.
Thanks for recommending LyX, I don't feel like typing in vim all the time. :D

joe.turion64x2
September 27th, 2007, 02:56 PM
Thanks for recommending LyX, I don't feel like typing in vim all the time. :D
Haven't you tried Kile yet? IMHO it is the best LATEX editor available out there. Besides its comprehensive help system and extensive menus, It even 'completes' the instructions you type, and gives 'drop-down' lists in the go to 'pick up' the command you want as you type; for instance, you type \begin{ and a drop-down list appears showing all possible instructions that can 'fit' a /begin, and after you've chosen/typed the environment it automatically adds the \end{environment you chose}. I find this feature priceless.

It isn't certainly as Lyx because in Kile you actually see the code, but it is displayed in an intuitive 'color' layout, and given all the additional customization options available when you 'see the code' it is quite worth the effort.

Kile is not included by default in Ubuntu because it is a KDE app, but it can be run from GNOME as well (installing some few KDE dependencies), and is available from Synaptic!

Thanks.
Joe.

Joeb454
September 27th, 2007, 03:00 PM
if your a student then you might want to check out http://www.theultimatesteal.com

Thought I'd let you know (incase you didn't already)

mcduck
September 27th, 2007, 09:00 PM
if your a student then you might want to check out http://www.theultimatesteal.com

Thought I'd let you know (incase you didn't already)

I wouldn't pay even 10c for Microsoft Office. Why would I?

foundation
October 6th, 2007, 06:07 PM
I bought it for $75AU when they did the Ultimate Steal thing a few months ago for Australia.

Simply, 07 is the best office suite I've used and blows OO and others out of the water. I hope there's an easy way to use it in Linux.

Frak
October 6th, 2007, 06:08 PM
I bought it for $75AU when they did the Ultimate Steal thing a few months ago for Australia.

Simply, 07 is the best office suite I've used and blows OO and others out of the water. I hope there's an easy way to use it in Linux.
It runs... for about 5 seconds then crashes.

Its developing though, give a couple of months, and it should run for at least 10 seconds ;)

Andrewie
October 6th, 2007, 06:15 PM
http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/

this allows office 2007 to output opendocument formats.

michaelzap
October 6th, 2007, 06:29 PM
I use Office 2007 on XP (although I can't even remember the last time I did that since I switched to Ubuntu). I thought that Outlook was greatly improved, and by itself made it worth the switch from 2003. And there are definitely some improvements in the other core applications as well, although the damn ribbon made it very difficult for me to find anything in any of them.

My main complaint (apart for the price and proprietary formats) was that it's incredibly slow to launch and requires an outrageous amount of system resources just to do normal tasks. It's clearly inefficient, since there's no way it could be such a hog unless the code is totally bloated (it ain't that pretty). I have a fairly new and fast computer, but people with anything more than a year old shouldn't even consider installing Office 2007.

Oh and actually Outlook 2007 now uses Word to render HTML emails. Word! Needless to say, they do not render properly.


I found for word processing and spreadsheets, AbiWord and Gnumeric are better than OpenOffice and Word 2007.

I totally agree. OpenOffice is also too slow for my liking, although it works well enough. AbiWord and Gnumeric are blazingly fast and capable of 99% of my document and spreadsheet needs.