On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:45:29 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS
>>> Office or...
>>>
>>> ...uh, yeah, exactly. It's not that MS Office is good enough that
>>> nobody will pay to switch. It's that there's nothing to switch *to*.
>> 
>> Corel.  OpenOffice.  There are options for many people.
> 
> Corel?

WordPerfect Office, from Corel.

> Don't forget StarOffice (or whatever the hell the minutely-altered
> edition of OpenOffice is called).

StarOffice predated OpenOffice; the two were co-developed for some time, 
but are essentially different products now.

>>> (Although there is hope. Give it another 5 years or so, maybe
>>> OpenOffice will become good...)
>> 
>> I use OpenOffice every day.  It's good.
> 
> It's OK, and it *is* useful for fixing documents that MS Word is too
> stupid to open. But it's not nearly as effective is MS Office yet.
> Still, 5 years ago it was awful. Maybe it just needs time...

If the last time you used it was 5 years ago, then you haven't looked at 
the current versions.  As I said, I use it *every* *single* *day* and it 
*isn't* awful, it's quite good, and I find it provides all the 
functionality that most end users need.

I wouldn't waste my time using *awful* software.

Oh, and I use it regularly to open MS Office docs (which I am often sent 
by third parties) - both "traditional" files and OOXML files.  No 
compatibility problems that I've encountered.

Jim

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