Open Office/Windows 7

[annie0000]

A friend is buying a laptop for her son and it comes with windows 7 - the guy is trying to flog her Office 2010. Can she still download Open Office for free instead? I use that with XP, but I don't have any experience with Windows 7. Anyone know?

[deggers316]

yes its a free download DO NOT PAY FOR IT

[deggers316]

it works on win 7 the same as xp

[annie0000]

fab, thanks deggers - didn't say it wasn't compatible on the website. guy was just at it - she is going to buy elsewhere.

[beso]

The salesman offered them a legitimate software product at a price but because they can get a different product for free they are buying elsewhere? The implication is that the salesman cna't be trusted. That is ridiculous.

While Open Office is a good product for its free price it isn't on the same level as the MS Office Suite for some users. If you don't see the difference then you are not one of the users who needs the full capacity of MS Office.

[Murmur]

Almost anything compatible with xp is also so with windows. If you look at the open office website you will see they have downloads for different OS's also. The only issue I've had with 7 compatibility is a slightly different color value: If you play a really old game like the first starcraft you'll notice the colors are a little off.

[bazwillrun]

LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Lotus symphony, and Kingsoft are all excellent and legally free.
In my opinion Kingsoft leaves them all standing.

The things that MS Office does that these dont you probably wouldnt even notice or even use in a million years.

MS Office is good its also bloated with functions and utilities etc that ninety five plus percent of people never ever use or will need to use.

[venator]

Too true, Baz - Office 2010 is overcomplicated - you have to go round the houses to do the simplest things. I'm dumping it and going back to the previous Office version.

[beso]

Office 2007/10 can be frustratingly unfamiliar but once you find your way around the new layout you would not want to go back to the old version. I have been using Office 2007 for three years and I love it.

[annie0000]

thanks for all the info guys :o)

beso, the laptop is for a soon to be 10 year old and the salesman told her she couldn't download open office and also that you couldn't get a power point type of capability on Open Office - the guy was either at it or not knowledgeable enough about the product to be selling it - either way he has lost a sale.

[hc4361]

I am horrified.
A 10 year old does not need Office.
OpenOffice and similar free packages WILL download to any pc.

[ChuckFickens]

Open office has presentation, which is it's equivalent of power point, Although out of all of the OO applications presentation is probably the least compatible with the MS office version.

[beso]

I don't imagine most ten year olds would be scripting VBA macros to control Windows from Word. The occasional ten year old maybe but those ones would have already got everything they want for free by hacking ;-)

[whiskeryron]

Just a point of interest. My old P/C had MS Office 2000 installed & I could use the Outlook facility for mail collection etc. Now that I have updated to W7 although I have had several attempts to install 2000 no way will it work with W7.

W Ron.

[ChuckFickens]

The rest of Office2000 should work fine with windows7, but you are correct, outlook2000 is not supported software on windows7 (apparently there are ways you can make it work, but I've not looked into them because exchange2010 also doesn't support outlook2000 as a client which would be a bigger problem for me)

[whiskeryron]

Thanks again for your input Chuck, could I ask you to show how I can make 2000 work with W7 or is it too involved ?.

W Ron.

[ChuckFickens]

This should explain it...
http://forums.techare...vista-help/694396.htm

But in all honestly, trying to force something to work that isn't meant to will undoubtedly cause you problems at some point, for the sake of £15 just get a version that will work properly with windows7
http://www.ebay.co.uk...ef7373f#ht_500wt_1056

[whiskeryron]

Thanks Chuck. So if I buy this £15 version I will be able to use Outlook 2003 on my W7 P/C without problems ?.

W Ron.

[ChuckFickens]

Yes, outlook 2003 will work fine on windows7

Or if you're happy with the rest of your office applications being the 2000 version you could just download and use thunderbird as your email client.

http://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/thunderbird/

[whiskeryron]

Cheers Chuck, I already have Thunderbird, is it as good as Outlook ?.

W Ron.