If it’s really just a basic document with no fancy formatting or embedded objects (e.g., images), you’ll probably be fine. Once you get into complex files, that’s where the trouble starts.
What’s the new method of teaching math?
Of course, when I say I don’t do complex things with word docs, is when complex things will begin to be a necessity 
Other than not only allowing calculators but making them mandatory, they don’t do
simple math like I did growing up.
32
x 5
160
they do some crazy box thing with lines (think tic tac toe with boxes on a page) Maybe not new everywhere but it here.
One thing to keep in mind if/when you try out OpenOffice. If you want to work primarily with the Microsoft Word DOC format (yaknow, like 99% of the rest of the people out there), you will want to go into the options and change the default save-to settings for text files to one of the Office DOC formats. Similar changes will probably be necessary for spreadsheets and presentations. Without changing this setting, you can still open and save Office documents just fine, but new documents will by default save to a format that people can’t read in MS Office.
It’s a minor thing, but it’s something to keep in mind.
On my laptop I use Open Office, which works rather well for me (I do basic word processing stuff, in English and Mandarin), on my desktop I use Office 2007, which I was able to get a single free copy of because I’m in the military (yay perk benefits)
Wait, are they teaching math using Sudoku puzzles?
Are you sure you mean RAM? Sounds like you’re referring to hard drive space. Though you should have a large increase of both, I suppose.
Seriously, I’m sorry for derailing the thread, but I’d love to see examples of that. You know, now, without having children and waiting 7 years for them to start taking math.
No problem here is a video (text link to a page with the video you have to click to start) you will see both methods my son learned. (The box method thingie is about the 5 minute mark but right before that is the other method they do)
http://www.illinoisloop.org/math.html
You will see what they taught my son, I did teach my son the “old” way as well but that was hard since he never saw it prior to that.
Sorry for the hijack!
I’d never heard of this method before this thread, but I googled around and found this page that I think is what RyJae was referring to.
I hate OpenOffice. When I got my new laptop this summer, I didn’t want to deal with MS Office. So I happily DLed OpenOffice and used it for a week. Now, I work with a lot of people on single documents, so I needed something that would allow me to insert comments and track changes with ease, as well as see other people’s comments and changes. Further, I needed something that would keep the format and not get all fucked up as the doc bounced from computer to computer. I did not think any of these needs were out of line, but apparently, they were too much to hope for. I ended up getting MS Office 2007 Standard edition for $80 at my University’s bookstore, and I’m quite pleased with it.
I don’t know if you use Word as much as I do (I’ve got 3-7 documents open at any given time) but I wouldn’t suggest OpenOffice for anybody who does more than make a weekly shopping list.
I would second this comment and add that I think Office 2007 really is an excellent piece of software with features in tracking changes and references that no other word processing software can really touch.
Another option, if you are any type of student, is “The Ultimate Steal.” You can get Office 2007 Ultimate (the entire suite) for $60.00 although you do need a .edu e-mail address.
http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx#
That’s odd. I edit my column using StarOffice (the pay version of OO) and exchange it with my editor who uses Word, and we have no problems. The changes look different, true. I’ve been using it at work (we don’t have PCs or Macs, hurrah) for probably 8 years. The biggest problem I’ve seen is that the fonts are a bit different, so if you’re working on a paper with a 10 page limit, it might be 10 in Word and a bit more in OO. You also can’t edit the inside of complex embedded object. But it is a lot more compatible than it used to be.
The ability to do PowerPoint is what passes for computer literacy these days. :mad:
I use OO to modify Word, Excel and PPT nearly every day. I’ve never had a problem with Excel. If you have something really complicated in PPT and Word, you might have formatting issues. In the old days you used not to be able to modify embedded drawings and the like, but I seem to have more success with embedded spreadsheets lately.
And you can do fancy letterheads just fine. I don’t know about borders - I’ve never tried them. OO isn’t nearly as bloated as Office, but one man’s bloat is another man’s feature.
Images work fine. I do papers in Word at home and modify them in OO at work. You can’t edit embedded objects often, true. I haven’t seen a lot of problems with formatting either, though there was one .dot file which for some reason screwed up formatting even if all you did was print. I turned in a bug report on that, and suspect it is fixed.
No one mentioned macros. OO macros and Office macros are still, I think, incompatible, so that could be a problem in some cases.
The difference between the fonts caused me a minor headache. And there were lots of little conveniences I had with Word that is just not in open office.
The biggest problem is that my editor inserts a lot of comments, and there is no good way to view said comments. I needed the comments to be clearly visible and easy to read. First I had to figure out that comments were called notes, but once I did that, I was at a loss. Until I realized to view her copious notes, I needed to open the navigator window (there’s no logical reason to come to this conclusion), and then after more fumbling around, I realized I needed to doubleclick the note to see the corresponding section on the document. But the REALLY funny part was when I realized that each “note” was a single line, scrolling off to infinity because most of the comments are 3-5 sentences (or longer). So I made the navigator window wider, but then I couldn’t see the text of the document, which is problematic…I only tried to edit one document like that before I realized that the investment in Office was worth it to me. My job is hard enough without fighting my word processor…
Speaking of little conveniences, did you know that Word has a built-in translator you can use? I can’t remember how I set it up, and I probably needed the Office install CD for it, but I can now use Word to translate words in Chinese back to English for me, rather than having to copy paste over to Wenlin (which is what I do on my laptop with OpenOffice)
I highly recommend Open Office. I just finished writing my thesis in it, and I have had very few problems (and none that has matched previous frustrations with MSWord). The only small issue I’ve found is that an OO file made on my linux box will have odd formatting (sometimes) when I open it on my Windows machine. Suddenly losing random lines can be a bit frustrating two days before deadline. I strongly suspect that this is due to transfering the file from one OS to another, so if you stick to Windows you should have no problems.
Ah yes, my computer knowledge shines bright through the looking glass! I meant hard drive thank you.
I’m going to install Open Office, and give it a whirl.