2007/1/8, Dan Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
On Sunday 07 January 2007 4:32 pm, Tobias Rieper wrote:
> Hallo.I just installed OpenOffice 2.1 on my laptop and
> I must confess you guys have really done a good job.I
> decided not to install Microsoft Office since I got my
> laptop late last year and its been worth the wait(I
> had to download via dial-up & 94MB is quite hefty)
> What I would like to add though is;if you want more
> people to be convinced about your product,you'll have
> to make available to them what you want them to
> migrate from.In otherwords,while OpenOffice
> Writer,Base,Calc,Impress,Math & Draw(I've just started
> on Writer)are all ingenious programs,there are still
> others such as Outlook & Frontpage that you have to
> "replace".
> I would like to replace the Microsoft Office on the
> home desktop & I wouldn't want to inconvenience my
> parents & siblings with a new a program that lacks
> something(s) they are already used to.
> I look foward to your response in your updates.
> Tata for now.
Would you please explain why Outlook needs to be replaced. There
are many people on this mailing list that use either Outlook or
Outlook Express as their email client. Keeping Outlook or OE would
require searching for a spellchecker, however.
Others have gone to Thunderbird by Mozilla as their email client.
It has a calendar extension that they use.
OpenOffice. org (the correct full name) has a Web/Writer
component that will create HTML pages. While like Frontpage, it has
some flaws in it, I use it to create the web pages for my web site.
(I usually do some minor modifications on the HTML after saving the
web page and exiting OOo.)
There are some differences between MS Office and OOo. MS Office
will not open files saved in OOo's format. However, OOo will open MS
Office formats. It will also save files in MS Office formats with the
possibility of some differences in appearance on complex MS Office
formating.
You can email documents directly from OOo. By using File > Send,
you can send them (1) in whatever format they were last saved as, (2)
as an OpenDocument text (OOo's format and now an International
standard for documents), (3) as a PDF (created by OOo), or (4) as a
MS file (.doc or .xls).
Dan
Dan, I think Mr Rieper here makes an important point, viz, that Microsoft
markets these various functions as a package, and thus people seeking
alternatives also tend to couple them together. This does not mean, however,
that OOo should offer its own email alternative, which would be
supererogatory in the extreme, but rather that it should recommend - and
perhaps even provide relevant links to - such alternatives to, e g, Outlook
as Thunderbird and/or Evolutions to new users. Remember that most people
have been brought up on a (carefully constructed) Margaret-Thatcher view of
computer software : TINS. The task is to show them that this is not, indeed,
the case....
Henri
