[plug] explanation of free software, OOo in particular

[Brad Campbell]

Paul Antoine wrote:

> Unfortunately the presentation app in OOo is shocking... truly shocking. 
> So much so that I use Crossover to run an old and very stable version of 
> the M$ Office suite (Office XP.)

I have to say my experience has been pretty good with Presenter. It's taken me quite a while to get 
used to it having come from years of PPT95, but now I'm fairly fluent I'd never go back.

I write all my documents in OOo writer now, but then I've been using it in preference to Word dating 
back to StarOffice 5.1 many, many moons ago. It can be a bear when you have a lot of large images in 
the document (I have one here that is 50 pages and the .odt file is 75MB - that can take a while to 
scroll and uses loads of ram), but overall I find it pretty decent. Again, I'd not go back.

I had word eat too many documents over the years to even contemplate trusting it when I do large 
documents. My father had a forced "upgrade" to Office 2003 by his corporate SOE, and he told me 
"Office is pretty reliable now, I've not had it eat a document yet", as he was trying to convince me 
back to the dark side. I simply said "Just because the pit bull stopped biting you temporarily, are 
you going to shove your remaining hand back in is mouth?"

I recently had someone send me some very complex excel sheets, with dynamic graphics and all sorts 
of funky macros, and I really expected OOo to fall down badly. Instead all the sheets loaded up 
perfectly and they do precisely what they do in Office XP. Colour me impressed.

Overall I'm more than happy with OOo, but then as always.. YMMV

Brad
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