On Oct 26, 2010, at 20:31 , Sigrid Carrera wrote: > Hi Willem, > > 2010/10/26 willem kolver <[email protected]>: >> Dear OOOfficer, >> I am an old dog compelled to learn new tricks in an effort to survive. >> From my questions you will see how ignorant I am regarding IT. >> While experiencing many problems with MS products, Adobe upgrades, >> 2007, Firefox - etc. I wish to totally divorce from Windows & MS !! > > Great! As long as you are willing to learn new things, you're not old! > (at least in my opinion). Btw, my parents (both 72 years old) learned > in the last two or three years to use a computer. ;) > >> Do I need Windows XP (which I presently use with Offixe XP) to >> operate OO? > > You don't need Windows XP to operate OOo. But you do need some kind of > operating system for your computer. > > If you're willing to try something new, I would suggest, that you try > Mandriva Linux or Ubuntu Linux, which are both very easy to install > and use. If you are unsure, you can install Linux in parallel to your > Windows installation. So when you start your computer, you can choose > which system to start. > >> Is OO just a alternative to MS Office? > > Yes, OpenOffice.org is a free alternative to MS Office. It contains a > writing component (writer), spreadsheet (calc), presentation > (impress), drawing (draw) and a database (base, can act as a frontend > to different database systems like MySQL or can use the built in > database engine HSQLDB). OOo can handle the file formats that are used > by MS Office, so you won't loose anything. >
One thing Sigrid forgot was that there is no equivalent to Outlook in Open Office. Most people use Thunderbird for their email and contacts, coupled with an add-in which handles the diary function of Outlook. I second Sigrid's suggestion that you try a linux installation. I have for many years used Ubuntu, which is at least as easy to install as Windows. And You can even run it from a cd whilst you test it, but then it won't automatically save everything you do. //James
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