OK, so I had Microsoft Office 2007 under the NHS Enterprise scheme, which, if anyone is aware of, recently ended. I originally paid about £7 for the software (basically the carriage cost from the Netherlands) for the software, and now the licence has expired, I am looking to move away from Office as I don't want to pay hundreds for something I use on and off. I know OpenOffice is one alternative, but is this a complete solution? I use Outlook 2007 for my e-mails, and want something similar to carry on with. I've heard Thunderbird is a semi-decent e-mail program also. I was wondering if you guys might have suggestions for Office alternatives and/or e-mail program alternatives.
You can't go far wrong with Open Office and Thunderbird, both work in similar ways to the microsoft equivalents and have the added bonus of being completely free.
As far as I know if you use Outlook for all of its features then you won't find Thunderbird to be a sufficient replacement. Open Office certainly does a competent job of replacing MS Office, but I keep running into little niggles that make it far less enjoyable to use. Things like keyboard shortcuts for simple tasks can be rather awkward.
Whilst I only use it for basic stuff, OpenOffice is pretty solid. I was quite impressed by it actually, being free and all. I used to use Thunderbird a while ago to avoid using Outlook. It was all fine but died on me a few times and I couldn't recover any of my e-mail. After the second time that happened I ditched it. My dad swears by Eudora for his email, but I haven't had much practical knowledge of it and I don't believe its free.
I use MozBackup to avoid those troubles, that and I leave the messages on the server until deletion. Incidentally MozBackup is one of my fave programs, I haven't had to worry about remembering what add-ons I've got on firefox, or settings or bookmarks for ages. So much better.
I find that OpenOffice struggles to complete with Microsoft Office. This is especially so if you try to open up a complex Office 2007 document in OO. If you really want Outlook, then Office 2010 Home and Business Edition is £160 as an OEM license key. Not too bad.
unfortunately thunderbird and OO are nowhere near Office - thunderbird doesnt connect to exchange, and some of the bits of OO are laughably bad. as much as it pains me to say it, you really do get what you pay for (same with Adobe vs OOS equivalents).
OpenOffice is the only option if needing something similar to Office.... it even supports the same file formats, so you can open and edit past documents created using MS Office. There are plenty of other options, but each of them are unlikely to resemble Office at all. If you're looking for a whole package which is something vaguely familiar, reasonably easy to use and pretty usable, OO is the best choice.
or just use Google Docs...... It all depends how complex you need your documents to be. If they are just simple documents then Google Docs is more than sufficient, and can be retrieved from any location. If you need complex DTP, presentations and advanced spreadsheet functionality then OO should be enough. OpenOffice is not supposed to be an MS Office replacement. Yes, it's 'compatible' with MS documents but that's just a bonus. Seriously though, very few people need the all the features of an Excel or a Word - they just think they do. Don't touch IBM Lotus <anything> with a ten-foot barge pole. I am forced to use Lotus Notes at work. It is, without any doubt, the worst piece of software ever written.
