On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:52:11 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> 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.
> 
> Interesting. So does StarOffice do something that OpenOffice doesn't
> now?

Probably not; openOffice is IME more advanced.

>>>> 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.
> 
> I said (or intended to say) that 5 years ago it was awful, and today it
> isn't. It just isn't great either.

Well, I find it is actually pretty good - having used MS Office for 
several years, I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (given 
that it can import most MS Office documents that I've tried without any 
issues at all, I'd say that's a pretty good way to tell how useful it is).

>> 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 used it to write my CV.
> 
> All of them.

And?

If your problems with it were "it's not Microsoft Office" (ie, the 
interface was different), that's one thing.  That's about learning to use 
a new tool, not about the quality of the product.

>> 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.
> 
> As I say, I sometimes use OO for fixing broken MSO documents. (MSO
> itself is apparently too stupid to do this.)

Indeed, I remember you mentioning that before.

Jim

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