Re: Free office ! IBM Lotus Symphony

Chuck Lewis wrote:

4. Re: Free office ! IBM Lotus Symphony (Chuck Lewis)

They honestly think that list would not cause some folks major problems ?

Chuck:

I'm pretty sure they don't care. I sure don't. Though MS Office is what's used in our 'office', I use OpenOffice on all of my personal systems. I fully expect never to use MS Office anywhere it's not required.

While there are plenty of things that MS Office can accommodate that OpenOffice doesn't, there are more things in MS Office that I have no need for nor any interest in. So far, there is nothing I've personally missed in OpenOffice. I'm just not that far into all the bells and whistles. The existing range of options provides more than I need.

Besides, I'm simply not going to pay for MS Office. I send basic donations to the OpenOffice organization, just to contribute. But I don't have that option with MS Office -- it's pay all or nothing and get what you pay for.

Further, for the past couple of years, various little bits of MS Office (and probably worse, Outlook) have started to be intrusive. There are starting to be too many little things that I actively _dislike_ and haven't managed to get turned off. I realize that there are probably options or settings or preferences or tools or whatever they might be called that I can change, but there have become so many of them scattered in different places that I no longer want to search them out.

E.g., I can't stand Outlook when it changes "System i" to "System I" every time I type it. And I'm getting ready to seek out and destroy that freakin' "chatting paper-clip" pop-up thing that's reappeared on a newer PC in MS Office. I somehow shut it off in my previous work PC; now I have to figure it out again.

Anyway, I'll sure give this beta of Symphony a test run. And I'll keep my eye on it as it grows. For its first appearance in this form, it doesn't look too bad.

Tom Liotta

-----Original Message-----

I installed it at home last night and at work today. Have only played a
little bit, but it seems really promising. I opened the most complex
spreadsheet we have (multiple worksheets, cell formatting, auto-update links
among all the sheets, macros, etc). The auto-updating worked great, the
only problem I found was the VB macro did not work.

Symphony would replace Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. Thunderbird would
replace the email capabilities of Outlook. How about an open source PIM to
replace that portion (Calendar, Tasks, Contacts) of Outlook? And the price
is right.

Could get interesting the next couple of years. If the marketplace accepts
and embraces ODF, that could cause a real problem for Office, don't you
think?


< I found the following in the Symphony help. I formatted it a bit to make
it more readable. >

About Converting Microsoft Office Documents
===========================================
IBMR LotusR Productivity Tools can generally open MicrosoftR Office
97/2000/XP documents. However, some layout features and formatting
attributes in more complex Microsoft Office documents are handled
differently in the productivity tools or are unsupported. As a result,
converted files require some degree of manual reformatting. The amount of
reformatting that can be expected is proportional to the complexity of the
structure and formatting of the source document. The productivity tools
cannot run Visual Basic Scripts, but can load them for you to analyze.

The following lists provide a general overview of Microsoft Office features
that may cause conversion challenges. In general, these should not affect
your ability to use or work with the content of the converted document.

Microsoft Word
==============
AutoShapes
Revision marks
OLE objects
Certain controls and Microsoft Office form fields
Indexes
Tables, frames, and multi-column formatting
Hyperlinks and bookmarks
Microsoft WordArt graphics
Animated characters/text

Microsoft Excel
===============
AutoShapes
OLE objects
Certain controls and Microsoft Office form fields
Pivot tables
New chart types
Cell Formatting Conditions
Some functions/formulas

Microsoft PowerPoint
====================
AutoShapes
Tab, line, and paragraph spacing
Master background graphics
Grouped objects
Certain multimedia effects