gwilks98

My g/f's mother wants to get a laptop. She can get one for cheap that runs a GUI Linux and I noticed it comes with Open Office.

Searching through the bug page has proven pretty tedious, so I thought I would ask everyone here:
What has your experience been like with the office clone? Are there any show stopping problems? How buggy is it? Anything you wish you had in this that's only available in office?

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mechmike0034

I like it. I run MS Office as well, but have been playing with OO for a year or so. There are not as many templates, etc., but it is pretty stable and is all the office suite a casual user will ever need. I haven't seen any show-stoppers or crashes.

I do a lot of repairs, setups, and system cleanups (anti-spyware) on Windows boxes for people, and I install it on any machine that I work on that doesn't have an office suite (with the owner's knowledge and permission). Never used the Linux version tho. The MS-ported versions have all been great, and I have heard no complaints from anybody yet.

Just to hedge my bets, any OO installation I do (all on Windows) also gets the free MS Office viewers. That way if the user runs into a document/spreadsheet/presentation that won't open in OO they can use the appropriate MS viewer to open it and then copy/paste it into OO for editing.

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ski

They have MS Office viewers? I'm interested -- this would be great for my family.

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mechmike0034

MSOffice Viewers: http://www.microsoft.com/office/000/viewers.asp

Here's a handy page (in a combination of German and English) with the viewers, converter packs, service packs and more: http://beqiraj.com/office/viewer/

Tommy Boomfiger

I've used the linux version of OOo and I like it. The only complaint that I have about it is that it takes a long time to open, and its got an annoying splash screen that sits on top while opening. There are a few incompatibilites with MS office files, but mostly it works perfectly and is a great office suite on its own.

shocky123

I use it at the office. Cannot say I've had any problems aside from what has been stated above. It's not a 'direct-equivalent' by any stretch of the imagination, but it gets the job done. The only complaint i personally have, and this may be due to my lack of knowlege/training with the program, ..is that it has very poor graphing/plotting functionality, used in data tables, spreadsheets, etc.

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Dman33

I have been using it in conjunction with MS Office XP for about a year now. I have it installed on the laptop and Office XP on the desktop.

I like it. In fact, I was suprised by it! Darn stable, and works better than StarOffice did. (It has been awhile since I have used StarOffice, so things may have changed.)