My school has joined forces with Microsoft to offer the MS Office Ultimate 2007 package for $60.
I’m currently using OpenOffice with ease, but I have to drop what I write onto my laptop (which has MSWord on it) load up the essay written in OpenOffice and saved in Word format, save it as a MSWord doc back onto the thumb, then transfer it to my instructor because he, for some unknown reason, can’t open my OpenOffice docs.
I understand that $60 is a decent price, but I don’t know if I’ll use any of the other programs included.
Thoughts/Opinions
I read somewhere that older versions of MSWord won’t open OpenOffice documents. That might be your instructor’s case.
Even when you save them in MS Office format? Also note that my OpenOffice 3 saves in 3 different Word version formats.
That price is very attractive for joining the collective, but note that MS Office 2007 defaults to saving in a new format (docx) that older versions either won’t open or need a converter downloaded from MS. You can change this default behavior so it will save in the older version, until it changes it back for you.
A very alternative way around this is to save your documents in Rich Text Format, which OpenOffice will do. Even Wordpad opens RTF documents.
So, If I read this right, it’s going to cost you about $60 to overcome your instructors technological failings? Sounds like this is going to boil down more to how valuable $60 is to you and if any principle will cause you to resist. That aside, it’s a pretty decent value for Office and you’d always have it if you needed it for anything else 🙂 I don’t know what your tech skill level is, but maybe he’d be willing to let you look at his computer to figure out if he just needs a converter or something installed? Just a thought. Good luck! I enjoy your blog, keep it up.
MS Excel is an excellent tool for generating football pools!
MS Publisher might come in handy, too.
Stay away from creating papers in .docx format. MS Office is so expensive that folks have a tendency to hang on to the older versions longer, and that .doc-version-reject is a big deal. I have run into it several times while publishing the once-a-month newsletter for my yacht club.
I hated to do it, but I started publishing all my club stuff in Portable Document Format. I use a converter to convert from Word, Cute PDF Writer. It installs itself as a printer, and you simply select Print, then chose it as if it were a real printer, and it converts your work to .PDF
When I had to turn in electronic copies of college papers during the last couple of years, I would always submit them in .pdf format, since everyone has a program that can open them. At home I use OpenOffice on my Macs, since Apple stopped supporting AppleWorks.
The Salt Mines got us a discount on Orifice 2007. I mostly use Word and Ouchlook; I like Ouchlook’s calendar and scheduling abilities. Mrs. Drang and I both use Excel. I try to avoid PowerPoint…
I did keep OO.o on the netbook.