So, if you had your choice of office programs which would you choose?

[slowday444]

My Office7 Beta runs out 3/31, although they are nagging me for the 60 day trial. Need an MS compatible program occasionally if children are home without their notebooks. Had Open O once and it was occasionally buggy. There is http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/217.../sun-staroffice for free

http://www.ashampoo.com/frontend/products/...p;idstring=0138 for $9.99 only

Or my MS 2000 disc from work?

[rridgely]

OpenOffice will do anything the average student needs to do. Free versus 150 bucks, your choice.

[Maysky]

StarOffice and OpenOffice are basically the same thing. Since StarOffice 7 is OpenOffice 1, and StarOffice 8 is not free, you might as well use OpenOffice 2.1.

 

Unless you use the fancy extras of MS office that most ppl never or rarely use, OpenOffice will be more than good enough.

 

You can even find portable (no installation) version of OpenOffice at PortableApps.com (version 2.04).

 

 

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[Pfipps]

I like the new MS Office 2007 to be honest, they improved the ease of use. While it may not be original (they use tabs - surprise!)

I think it has better functionality and features than Open Office 2.1. Does it warrant the high price? No, but there are clever ways outside of

pirating that are legal to using MS Office more cheaply. The better ones are educational discounts and using the student and teacher edition. The others

are quite obvious but involve MS's generosity with their evals

[rridgely]

Office 07 is nice, I finally downloaded a trial.

But I don't plan to buy any office software as long as openoffice is still around. Honestly it does everything most home users need, and its nice to get to keep that 150 or 300 dollars.

 

There has been a big push for MS to accept opendocument format and there is already a plug in for it. Once it becomes a more standard format for general users there really wont be any reason for most folks to pay for office.