Don't Pay for Microsoft Office!

[Junket]

[url]http://www.openoffice.org/[/url]

My girlfriend told me about it. It's very similar to office (word/powerpoint/excel/database/drawpad), but it's free! And it's completely compatible with all of offices files. If you have the silly trial versions, or are still using Office 2003, look into this, it downloads fast, installs fast (no restarting), and is easy to get accustomed to.

I don't feel like paying 300 dollars for microsoft's bullshit.

[Cain]

I bought Office for $60. They had a special where you could get it if you were a student for that price.

[Junket]

Okay, well for everybody who isn't a student, and woud like a completely free, fully functioning, fully compatible, fully legal version, should give it a go.

[Cain]

And I've used OpenOffice as well. I like it. The only thing I don't like is the word count, for some reason, is ALWAYS different than the word count on Word. Also, I haven't tried, but I don't know if OpenOffice opens .docx files, the new Office extension.

[DoesntMatter]

People actually pay for software?!?

[Junket]

People actually pay for software?!?

Those bittorent days are gone for me, just don't have the time or patience to sort through the bad shit.

[boobaa]

Heh, same question, DM. But well, software developers need to live also, you know. But yes, it is too bad that most of the money goes into someone elses pockets. But yes, torrenting takes time, thats why I just mostly use old stuff which I already have.

I've been using openoffice for several years now. Free legal stuff is much better and more fun. I've thought about linux also, I would probably do it if I didn't already have so much stuff working on windows, I am just too lazy to convert everything into linux and start over.

[Aegis]

Newsgroups!

Still, I tell everyone that asks me for advice to forget MS office and use OpenOffice.

[misombra]

i have open office and i like it.

[PussyCatDoll]

People actually pay for software?!?

someone i know bought the microsft version copied it and the copy works. and its the xp version.

[misombra]

i had to get open office cause i had a "unauthorized" version on my computer and it was giving me viruses.

[Kiechi]

rapidshare

[Mish]

I use it on my Linux PC, it's perfect!!

[Tedel]

I've been using OpenOffice since version 1.4. It does the job.

If you want some other good freeware, here some titles:

Gimp instead of Photoshop
Inkscape instead of Corel Draw
Foxit Reader instead of Acrobat's
Scribus instead of Pagemaker

[anachronistic]

Well I could have told you about Office.org, but you didn't ask.

Other programs you might want to check:

GIMP - basically the open source program which is as good as Photoshop

Firefox - if you haven't heard of this, I'll slap you.

Amaya - basically, a simple web management tool

In fact, next time you need a program just google for "open source [program name]"

Blender - 3d modeling tool

WAMP/MAMP/LAMP - open source development web servers

Carbon Copy Cloner - creates backups (for mac, I don't know about other systems)

For anything else, I usually just program it myself in Python. You should learn how to program in Python, just to make computing easier.