is open office ready for university?

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On Monday 16 October 2006 21:21, PW Armstrong wrote:
> sooooo, my daughter is off to university
>
> yes, I've bought her a laptop
>
> yes, I've caved, it runs xp
>
> but I balked at buying a copy of ms office
>
> her laptop actually came with a free copy of WP office X3, but she
> says she needs ms office
>
> do I have to spring for this?  if WP office X3, isn't good enough,
> is open office good enough?
>
> any and all comments appreciated.

I don't know about WP Office X3 but OpenOffice works fine in most 
cases. I have both MS Office and OpenOffice and rarely need to boot 
Windows just so I can run MS Office and I exchange Word and Excel 
files with others all the time, including files in which version 
tracking was used. The only time I have seen OpenOffice's import 
filters choke on files created in MS Office is when complicated 
formatting was used or there are VBA macros embedded in the files. 
Since that accounts for less than 1% of the documents I receive from 
clients and others, it is inconsequential. Having said that, you 
should be aware that there are significant discounts for students and 
teachers for Microsoft products.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

+1 416-410-3326
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