can has shiny new laptop :)

[parallelgirl]

...and am installing programs, so wanted to ask the hive mind:

Poll Which would you choose?I am running Windows Vista Basic, if it makes a difference. I already have MS Office, but was wondering if Open Office, being more up to date might be better? Since I already have MS Office, I'm not bothered about avoiding Microsoft per se, just wondering which is the better suite of

Comments

[calum]

MS Office 97 is so old now, I think you'd be better with OpenOffice. Its pretty good now, I use it on my low-spec machines, and it does fine.

Firefox is more mature than Google Chrome, which I find still a bit flakey. YOu can always install both though. I quite like Opera 10 too.

[parallelgirl]

Yeah, I was wondering if Open Office might be better on that basis.

Have been thinking to you in your travels and homecoming, and meaning to email you to say hello :) Hope you're settling back in ok and recovering from jet lag and things.

[calum]

:)

I'm recovered fine now, thanks. Been enjoying Puzzle's birthday weekend, then back to work on Monday

[poeticalpanther]

The only flaw I've found in Open Office, and for me it's a dealbreaker, is that their "comment" and "review" functions are...poorly implemented. Since those are the functions I use most, Open Office doesn't work for me, but as far as I'm aware, those are the only differences. If you don't use comment/review much, you're golden with OO.

[crocodilewings]

What do you mostly use your Office applications for?

[parallelgirl]

just word processing really

[crocodilewings]

Either will probably meet your needs. A word of warning about OO: it has its own particular ideas about how to format tables. If you make a document with a table in MS Word, and then open it in OO, it won't always render it the way you want it to. This played sweet merry buggery with my CV, so I'm particularly wary of it.

Apart from that, as a word processor and basic spreadsheet package, for something made mostly by volunteers, and bequeathed as a non-proprietary gift to all of humankind, it's not that bad.

[lovingboth]

The extensions make it Firefox for me.

I'd be surprised if Office 97 didn't have all sorts of never to be fixed problems left. Somewhere I have an unused copy of Office XP if you're determined to do Microsoft.

[parallelgirl]

thanks :)
On checking I realist I'm actually running 2003, not 1997, on the other machine! But I can't find the disk and wonder if it may have come pre-installed...
Going with Open Office for now and will see how things go!

[syllopsium]

ive not tried the very latest chrome but firefox has decent extensions.

I found openoffice flaky on vista when printing signage for bicon. It may be that it either doesnt like the combination of features i was using (very large fonts, symbols) or the earlier version is more stable.

Its free - try it! Ive mostly found office to be stable but earlier versions definitely did not like large documents

[parallelgirl]

thanks- I'm giving it a go :)

[adjectivemarcus]

I prefer MS Office, as I use it at work and consequently found the differences jarring. There's few enough I forgot I was using Open Office, and then something just wouldn't work right.

[parallelgirl]

Hmm, that's a good point, thanks. I'm going to give OO a go for now and see how it goes.

Hey, sorry to hear of your Ill, hope you're feeling better!