OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC3

OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC3

Posted Aug 16, 2003 2:23 UTC (Sat) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339)
Parent article: OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC3

I'm very impressed with OOo. I just bought a new laptop (retiring my venerable Toshiba 2805-S202 I bought in Feb 2001) and had an option to buy MS Office XP Pro with Acrobat for the unbelievably good price of $399 with system purchase; sorry, I run Windows on my laptops and Linux on my (ever increasing number of) servers. Anyway, I chose WordPerfect Office (cause there wasn't a "none" option...). Today I received my new laptop (from D**l) and was happy to download RC3 (thanks to this story on LWN!) which does what I need for business docs and PDFs.

However, I also bought a laptop for our Sr VP of Business Development from D**l and for her I bought Office XP Pro with Acrobat. Although I can handle the few (and getting fewer) filtering differences between MS Office and OOo, I know she can't. In fact, one difference I noticed had to do with an inefficient and inaccurate method for centering titles and text blocks in PowerPoint: spaces instead of tabs or "center". In PP, it looked centered on multiple machines and in print. In OOo it was noticably skewed. Minor, I know. She should learn the right way, I know. But it's different behavior.

Still, when I show other execs and secs how simply (and cheaply) OOo creates marvellous PDFs, they drool. I do own Acrobat (bought it before OOo 1.1a was available) and it is so incredibly piggish and awkward for creating and manipulating PDFs as to discourage its use. Especially capturing scanned images compared to OOo.

I have a lot of hope. Most people have no idea I'm not using MS Office when I send or receive documents. What I need to get done gets done with ease and comfort. As OOo matures and expands I can see it replacing at least the low-end of installed Office Suites (in the form of Sun's Star Office, perhaps). I know our COO would like to replace expensive MS Office with Open Office.

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