anyone use alternatives to Microsoft Office applications?
i did a dumb thing. i allowed an install of an automatic update without looking at what it is. turns out it was a phishing expedition by microsoft to find "pirated" versions of their software. i.e. old versions, installed several times over and upgraded. anyway, so i got snagged with this "your version of office is not genuine" shit, and i know i can dump my whole hard drive and reformat the whole damn thing and reinstall and get all the goddamn service packs... which i may do, but while i'm at it i may as well switch away from MS products, given that they are a scumbag company anyway. so. i know that there have been a lot of improvements in the last few years and i thought i'd ask if anyone is using them.
i'm particularly interested in hearing about the free ones, Sun's open office and IBM's Lotus Symphony. i freelance from home, so i have to be able to create spreadsheets taht can be opened by people who don't download the software. i'd like to hear from people who've tried them out and can give honest feedback from someone who really uses the stuff.
really all i ever work in is spreadsheets and word processing. the other stuff might be nice, but those are the two i need to make money.
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I use Open Office, http://www.openoffice.org/ , for my business stuff. It works just fine for what I need it for, which admittedly isn't very in depth stuff. But I used to use Excel and all that shit at my last job, and it's pretty much the same. I know that I can open the documents in MS after created them in Open Office, I haven't really had to send much stuff to other people though. It's super easy to download and use.
Is THAT what the kids are calling it these days?
J/K.
It's my understanding that there are word processing programs and spreadsheet (tee hee hee) programs on the interwebnet. A friend of mine suggested this to me, since my old dinosaur computer can barely wheeze Word into life. Of course, I forgot the names of the programs, but I will ask him. If I remember to do that.
Fuck Microsoft, BTW.
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i spent my day "off" reading about this stuff, and there is no drawback to using openoffice or lotus. it saves files in formats that people with Office can open, and i can convert all my files. i was worried about a 3000+ entry mailing list but it'll be fine.
i've already ditched IE. i quit using Outlook because i was tired of like 70% CPU going to that every now and again, when i wasn't hardly doing anything with it.... what's with that?? the last holdout was my recipes and my -- ahem -- work.