Oakwar: October 2008

Ah, Open Office, so you would never have to buy Microsoft Office again. Well, I'm a big fan anyway, and there are other people too (http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1895&tag=nl.e589 Granted there are some rather technical observations, but I have found much of what he said to be true.) My favorite part of the suite is an experience I had not too long ago. My friend called me up late one night and said she had a paper due the next day. She was wondering if I would edit it for her. She emailed it to me, I used the edit function in Open Office Writer (the equivalent of Word) and all I had to do was delete what I wanted and type what I wanted and the program crossed out the deleted text and made my additions red so my friend could see what I had changed automatically. I was done in thirty minutes. I don't know if Word has a similar ability, but this was easily suggested to me when I was looking at new ways to use the application. After using it, I was very impressed. So, I highly recommend looking into it! By the way, ZDNet now runs the website that I trust to download all my open source applications from. They have been very knowledgeable and reliable when it comes to technical information. On the other hand, as always, you should try to hear from more than just one source... So, here's a whole bunch more! O.o! (I love Google...)

http://blogs.computerworld.com/openoffice_3_review_who_needs_microsoft_office

http://blogs.computerworld.com/review_of_final_openoffice_3_why_buy_microsoft_office (.docx is the new Vista (Windows' newest operating system) standard, instead of .doc. It caused the business school a bunch of problems when Vista was first installed. The students were quick to change the defaults on all the lab computers back to something more compatible with the rest of the world...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org (I love Wikipedia too...)

http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/openoffice-3-0-released/2008-10-14 (I think it's awesome that users crashed the site to download the software! People must like the software. The site is working again, I just downloaded it for a friend on her computer yesterday.)