January 23, 2005

Adjustments

Has anyone ever bought Microsoft software from this outfit or any other discounter? I find I need MS-Office, but I really don't want to pay $300-$400 if I can legitimately get it cheaper elsewhere.

I forgot to mention that the new machine I bought on Tuesday came with a keyboard and a mouse. I also got a mousepad in the shape of an electric guitar for Christmas. Let me know if the content improves with the new equipment.

Posted by Linkmeister at January 23, 2005 08:26 PM
Comments

Why do you need MS-Office? Why don't you get the just-as-if-not-more-so-worthy (and FREE!) Open Office? http://www.openoffice.org/

It does everything that MS-Office does, assuming you just need Word and Excel, like most folks. Grump, Cableman and I use it almost exclusively. All the baseball docs are written with it, and it has a built-in function to turn docs into Acrobat PDF's!

Plus, I hear Open Office works way better than MS-Office with guitar-shaped mouse pads. I'm just sayin'...

Did I mention it's free?

Posted by: Solonor at January 24, 2005 02:34 AM

And it reads docs and spreadsheets that are in the MS formats, too.

And it's free.

Posted by: Solonor at January 24, 2005 02:35 AM

Solonor beat me to it. Before you drop your hard-earned bucks on MS-Office, be sure to download and give Open-office a try. It can't hurt to try it because it's free.

That's what I'd use if we didn't have a site-license for MS Office. If you need help with it, give me a holler. I'll wade into the middle of it and check it out.

Posted by: ruminator at January 24, 2005 04:26 AM

*whole-hearted agreement* with Solonor & Ruminator.
Two thumbs up for Open Office!!

Posted by: CNL at January 24, 2005 05:14 AM

Well, I can't comment on the free new fangled software..
All I can say is--I hear Chet Atkins when I read your entries... ;^}

Posted by: Toxiclabrat at January 24, 2005 05:42 AM

I've looked at OpenOffice; the thing that concerns me is the ease of transferability between MS-formats and OO formats. Every one of my clients uses Office. Is it just a matter of remembering to save in Excel/Word format all the time in OO?

Posted by: Linkmeister at January 24, 2005 07:28 AM

Ok, I went ahead and downloaded OO, and so far I understand it and it understands .doc and .xls formats. We'll see if my client gets uptight and wants to spring for the cost of Office, but otherwise I'll try OO out for a while.

Thanks, everybody.

(Chet Atkins?) This pad looks like a maple Rickenbacker!

Posted by: Linkmeister at January 24, 2005 09:51 PM

yet another perk of working at a higher ed institution -- an "educational" version of MS Office for home use for $12 with staff ID. Can't figure out what makes it different from the full-fledged -- does everything I need it to.

Posted by: Skatemom at January 25, 2005 09:47 AM

It's the same stuff, Skate...

Yep, the only place I've seen OO fail is on multiple user collaborations with fancy markups; so far so good on all the day to day stuff...

Posted by: dan at January 25, 2005 05:41 PM

Well, Dan, that's not entirely out of the question, although this crowd and I have been working together for five years and we've never done it yet. ;)

Posted by: Linkmeister at January 25, 2005 07:58 PM

OO doesn't include a relational database management system like MS Access (not that Access is any prize as RDMSs go), but you can pick up an open-source database program if you need one.

I've also used StarOffice, Sun's competing product, which you used to be able to download for free or buy on CD-ROM for $99. Haven't checked lately to see if it's still available.

Posted by: Lex at January 26, 2005 09:13 AM