Re: OT and just for comments - MSoft Office or Open Office?

dave wrote:
> I replaced my trusty M$ office 97 with the free Open office suite
> about 12 months ago. The price was right :-) but while I find it has
> many neat features, it somehow seems sluggish comparted to the M$
> product. Anyway have one by one changed all my .doc's to .odt's I
> thought maybe time to see if there is a newer (and faster - more
> immediate) Open Office available. Well there is now version 3 - but
> guess what - it costs money. And so I've gone full circle and am
> thinking maybe buy the zippier M$ Office after all.
>
> Are there any other options? Which of the two do you prefer?
> On the Msoft Office point - there are so many versions... I just want
> to run it on a single user Xp machine - which version would I try to
> get?
> tia

OO does seem slower than MS Office 97, especially recalculating
spreadsheets (though I turned off auto-calculate in both for most
files). I have one spreadsheet that runs a macro and outputs a series of
CSV files - this takes at least twice as long to complete, much of it
being the "response time" to hit enter for each file output, as the
dialogue cannot be easily suppressed :-( Even so, I don't notice it for
90%+ of my usage and don't find it a problem for the rest.

Having switched to openSUSE, I decided to convert all my files even
though I still run XP in a virtual machine when required.

OO has its quirks, but handles different MS file versions reasonably
well - more than can be said for older MS Office products.
--
PeeGee

"Nothing should be able to load itself onto a computer without the
knowledge or consent of the computer user. Software should also be able
to be removed from a computer easily."
Peter Cullen, Microsoft Chief Privacy Strategist (Computing 18 Aug 05)