http://www.openoffice.org/

Just need a simple office suite. I have a copy of the 98 version of windows office, but wondered how this would work out. So, anyone use it? Advice/complaints/ect?

I prefer Open Office to Office XP.

It works okay, but it is slow as hell.

I've used it and have no real complaints, but I find myself still using Microsoft Office.

I hate openoffice.

I use OpenOffice. Cheaper than buying Microsoft Office. It serves my needs.

I used to hate OpenOffice. Always found Microsoft Office to be better. But I tried it a few weeks ago and it looks like it has been improved a lot.

I use it. I only use Office if I'm stuck on a Windows machine at school or if I'm being forced to use Powerpoint.

I really don't like OO... I'm a lot more productive in Office XP.

I'm using openoffice, the 2.0 beta.

it's a lot better than the first version.

I'm a mixture.

I have both OO 2.0 Beta, and Office 2003 Professional.

When it comes to spreadsheets and writing, I use OO. But when it comes to PowerPoints, Office 2003 is definitly the best

I use it, it's free.

It's free and you can even download and run a portable version from a thumb drive or cd on "any" computer. The only problem I have with the program itself is that it seems to load slowly but that I don't even rate that as an inconvienence. Detailed Excell spreadsheet matrices may not retain all of their formatting when opened in openoffice and I have noticed similar issues with multimedia Powerpoint presentations I've made although I haven't opened them in the most recent release. Still, the convenience of the free, full featured program outweighs these minor issues, in my opinion.

Definitely work with it. It's the best alternative to Office especially being free.

The 2.0 beta is so much better than 1.x it's really quite astonishing. It's like a whole different office suite. Much, much faster for one. More productive for me.

It can be hard to get used to OpenOffice after switching from Microsoft Office. While OpenOffice is designed to be similar and easy to migrate to, they put commands and features in their *proper* places. E.g. Page Properties is under Formatting, not under File. I've found Office has half its commands in totally arbitrary places. Normally it would kill productivity but we're all so used to it.

I agree, the openoffice.org beta is very smooth and well developed, with none of the stability problems and other bugs (from my experience) common in beta software.

Have you used the Openoffice.org database program? (I think it's called Sbase.exe or something like that. ) In the beta, it seems like it has a lot of promise, but it seems rough and undeveloped if you try to do actual work with it at this point. I hope they improve it for the final release.

Plus, is the database new to Openoffice 2.0 or did they have it in 1.x?

It was good as long as you kept it upto date, the company I worked at before used it in all thier Retail stores all 400+ 20 terminals in each building, plus Head office, it worked okay but they only used 1.1 for some reason. Had issues with .doc files then, not sure what it is like now.

I haven't seen this new version - the speed of the last one put me off!

agreed

It's like 2x as fast.

I could be, rarely, wrong, but I believe earlier versions had some form of database support embedded in the spreadsheet program. The recent beta seems to have a seperate database module.

Umm, have you tried Access lately? Seriously, you can't expect a 'database' app in an office suite to be anything other than a toy. If you need the power of a proper databse, you get a proper database, be it Oracle, MS-SQL, mySQL (only just makes it onto the list of 'proper' database), ...
If you don't need the power of a proper database, you're probably just as well off doing whatever it is in a spreadsheet.

Office suite developers should spend effort on seamlessly connecting to databases through the various standards, not on implementing a half-baked toy DB that rally solves no problem.

You're saying Access is a toy? I have seen very impressive database files made with Access. Far more complex than any spreadsheet program could replicate. I'm not saying there aren't more impressive and costlier alternatives but I don't see the need to call these programs toys.

Same here.

Compared to MySQL access is crap.