Windows OpenOffice vs. MS Office PLEASE HELP

I'm just wondering, my dad will have to pass an Excel and Word exam, is OpenOffice enough, or will I have to buy M$ Office for him to pratice?
Are the commands/labels the same in both M$ Office & OpenOffice?
Will there be no problems if someone learns on OpenOffice and will have to pass on MS Office?

Cheers,
Mike

 

as much the open-source zealot that i am, im also a realist.

if your going to be tested on Excell and Word, then use Excell and Word to learn the on. sure, openoffice and the msoffice suite are very comparable, they both have, say, a spell checker. but as to where that spellchecker is located, how its used and what happens when you click a button, as with all software, it changes from package to package. just because F7 spellchecks a document in word, doesnt mean it will spellcheck in openoffice.

if you dont have a copy of excell and word, you have a few options. you could buy one, but considering they are overpriced bloatware, i would try everything else first. hit the MS site and see if they are still giving out the office time-limited trial cd's, give them a call and see if you can get a student discount (you *are*, after all, studying their products, or rather, your father is). see if the test centre has a copy you can borrow, or try visiting a BBC internet zone, or LearnDirect centre (even your local library) to learn it on their machines. and no, im not going to reccomend downloading it, i like free (openoffice.org) software too much to reccomend stealing some MS software, and i know for damn sure that *any* microsoft certification you ever get will be revoked if your caught with blagged MS software.

if all else fails, try ringing microsoft and just asking for some free stuff, and yes, im perfectly serious. my father works at a not-for-profit law-centre, and they were still running win98 cause they couldnt afford to upgrade, they had some shiny new pc's, but no software to put on them. he called up microsoft and basicly asked for some freebies, they sent him a list of selected products (most of their desktop products, no server software though ) and said he could have any four items off the list, with an upgrade if one was made available in the next two years. pretty good reply just for asking (four of the latest MS packages is a serious freebie).

oh, and before anyone see's me reccomending MS products..... open-office rocks, MS office blows goats, bill gates is spawn of the devil, etc etc (insert appropriate linux zealotry here)

[edit]

if your currently using linux (and if not, why not, lol), and need a windows OS, iirc MS are still handing out their time-limited XP cd's. i'll see if i can find one for you. its 3 month time-limited-but-everything-else-works-ok-just-dies-after-90-days version of XP, and im guessing you could then put the time-limited copy of MS office onto it, and give yourself three months of free XP and MXoffice to learn on.

[/edit]

[edit number two]

just checked on the MS site, they are dishing out the MS office time-limited packages on cd's, you can either order one or download the iso here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/trial/default.mspx

and a shed-load of more freebie trials (even some of the games like halo and zoo tycoon) here: http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/render.aspx?view=22&type=std&content=22/EvalCenterHome&ss=22/xslt/campaignhome
[/edit number two ]

if you need a MS OS to try out, give MS a yell and ask nicely for an XP trial CD, they are usually pretty cool at sending out the XP home and XP pro trial cd's (tell them your dissatisfied with linux and want to switch to MS, they will love that, lol). if they have stopped shipping them, gimme a shout, i have some XP home trial cd's kicking around here somewhere.

 

Well, I'm certified in MS office and I also have OpenOffice, and they are two very different programs. If you know MS Office inside and out like I do, the second you start using OpenOffice, you'll start to see the obvious differences. Bttom lin: use MS Office to learn MS Office.

 

i have both MS office and Open office.. on the surface they look the same and openoffice has the option to save as excel/word documents so it means you can use it on both... but its best to learn on the reccomended software...

 

Its best to learn on MS office cause open is still different from MS office
you can download the trail MS office from the microsoft website
as shown above

 

While I am a big open source fan, I have to say that you should aquire a trial version legally of Office and go from there.

 

Thanks all!! And a big thank you to Zidane!