I have another question about Open Office that arose when looking through the OO site.
When looking at download versions, none of the versions listed shown as being for Vista. I have Vista Home Premium. So I searched their website for ‘Vista’ and the search results showed me a couple of user discussion threads where the question of Vista compatibility was asked. One answer was ‘yes’ it was compatible. Another was that various versions of Vista, ingluding mine, are ‘crippled’, and because my Vista itself is crippled, I will lose some of the functionality of Open Office. A third response gave links to several patches of one kind or another that would supposedly make OO work, or work better, with Vista – the poster didn’t make clear which.
I have Vista Home Premium and you can use OO with no issues. It’s a decent product though especially since it’s free.
Since it’s free you have nothing to lose by installing it, except if you have a slow download speed. If all your gonna do is cover letters and a resume then you may as well use Google Docs which you can save as a .doc or other format.
Open Office is close enough to Word and WordPerfect to make it very usable, though you have to get use to a few things that are in different positions and menus
My immediate priority is finding a job, but I have been working on a book for several years now. I am hoping to use much of my newly available time to finish it. I don’t intend to self-publlish, though, so I don’t expect I’ll need anything really sophisticated to lay out all the text to make it print ready, but you never know.
To further expand on that: OO.o will natively open .doc and .docx (Word 2007) files. You can also specify that the default save format is .doc, so you don’t even have to do a save as.
The only thing I’ve ever found OpenOffice to be a bit iffy on was opening Powerpoint presentations - it does a reasonable approximation, but things don’t always line up or look the same as they do in Powerpoint.
The word processing (including intercompatibility with Word), I found to be excellent - in many ways, it’s more pleasant to use than Word, because it’s just an ordinary application, rather than one that exploits Microsoft’s inside knowledge of the OS.
Both of my last employers had an agreement with Microsoft which allowed employees to buy a single copy of Microsoft Office for home use, either the Windows or Mac version, for $10. You had to go to a special Microsoft web site and enter some information. They then send you a link to download the software together with a license key.
You may want to check if you previous employer had this available, and, if so, if you can still take advantage of it.
As I remember, the reason that Microsoft didn’t support PDF output in Microsoft Office was due to a threatened lawsuit from Adobe. So it wasn’t Microsoft’s greed, but rather Adobe’s. (Not everything is Microsoft’s fault.)
I think that’s called the Home Use Program, and as I remember, your right to use the software ends if you are no longer employed by that company. (Although I doubt that this is or can be enforced in any way.)
And definitely save your resume and such as a .PDF - you can use one of the free .PDF creators mentioned above if OpenOffice can’t do it natively (which it probably can).
Its also REALLY expensive for the corporation. The corporation needs to have an Enterprise Agreement in place for Home Use to be made available to employees. If you have an EA, its a really cool program, but not all companies choose to fork over the dough for an EA.
Another option for cheaper MS software is to be a student (and have a .edu address). The student discount on software is pretty significant.
Being in the middle of job search I have to comment on this.
I found that companies have very specific requires for submitting resumes with applications. Nearly all the companies I have applied to accept resumes in .doc format and about 30% will only accept this format. About 50% will also take PDF. About 30% accept .docx and about 10% RTF. Many web sites also require you to enter the unformatted text of your resume so it can be searched.
Most recruiters require .doc as they want to edit the file before forwarding to their client.
Well, there may be one or two things that aren’t Microsoft’s fault. Y’know, like The Great Chicago Fire and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. But for anything else – I’d have to ask for a cite.
I didn’t know about that, so thank you. I will note that the linked article (and lawsuit) is from 2006, applies to Office 2007, and the format went open standard in 2008. So, IMHO, MS should’ve simply paid the licensing fees (as, from what I understood, Apple and OpenOffice did). If native pdf support isn’t in the next Office, some serious shenanigans are going on.
Come to think of it – since Windows 7 is out and it’s now years after the pdf open-standard release, doesn’t Win7 support pdf reading/writing natively (e.g., through a print driver that’s always available)?
Put me down as another Open Office vote. Definately save things as a pdf. OO generally works for documents, but my company’s formatting gets messed going to OO. With resume formatting being as important as it is, pdf is the only way to be reasonably sure everybody will see it the way you do.
If you’re determined to spend money on Word and aren’t married to the interface, go with the 2007 version. It’s easier to learn the ribbon than to learn the menus, IMO. If you’re familiar with Word 2003, it’s your call.
I’ve been using the StarOffice version of OO for years, and it has gotten a lot better over time. (I have OO on my Vista laptop also.)
It does write pdfs and .doc formats natively, and does an excellent job. I’ve had minor problems moving between word and SO, but mostly these have been font issues, since I don’t use a PC at work. PowerPoint used to be a problem, but now OO handles it correctly almost all the time. For books and resumes, OO should be just fine.
I had to get Word 2007 (the student edition, so it was cheap) and it now writes pdfs and open document format, though I haven’t tried out the latter. But go with OO. I exchange documents all the time with my editor, with track changes on, and I’ve never had a problem.
Well, you can also download Microsoft’s free Word Viewer, produce your .doc with OO, and then view it in the Word Viewer to check that there isn’t some formatting quirk.
I have a computer running Windows 7, and it doesn’t appear to support PDF natively. But it has Office 2007 installed, and that does support saving to PDF (as does the Office 2010 beta that’s also installled here).
Hmmmm… I have never found that at all. For all my PPT I make them on my MS Powerpoint on my desktop then present them on my laptop using OpenOffice. Never had any trouble or differences that i have seen.
