[Publib] Re: Open Office

[OdonLibrarian at aol.com]

We have a mix of Open Office and MS Office.  (I won't buy MS Office,  but 
some of our older computers came with it installed.)  The latest  version of Open 
Office is excellent in and of itself.  (Don't judge current  software based 
on past performance.)  The primary question would be  compatibility for people 
bringing in MS Office files from other sources.   Our main staff computer is 
running Open Office and it works fine to  open most MS Office documents that 
people send me.
 
Personally, I have been a WordPerfect fan since the early 90s but for  
various reasons I am finally giving up on WordPerfect and making the jump to  Open 
Office for most of my personal files.  As one who has spent all these  years on 
non-Microsoft office software, here are a few tips.  

 
*Open Office has no problem handling MS Office documents as long as they  
don't include too much "fancy stuff".  It's similar to internet browsers  other 
than MSIE in that way.  It would be good to have at least one or two  systems 
with "real" Word and Excel for those exceptions.
 
*For the most part, Microsoft doesn't acknowledge the existence of  
competitors (often not even older versions of itself).  However, all  competitors 
"speak" Microsoft in its various forms.  The way to deal with  compatibility issues 
is to save in Microsoft format for patrons to take  back to the settings 
where they use MS Office.  This is pretty seamless for  files they bring in.  If 
you open a .doc, .xls, or .ppt document with Open  Office, it will save back 
out in the same format.  Most of our patrons who  open a file they have brought 
in, don't seem to notice that they're using Open  Office.  They might think we 
simply have a different version of Word.
 
*As someone else may have noted, the difference in "look" and functionality  
between MS Office 2000 and Open Office isn't nearly so dramatic as the  
difference between MS Office 2000 and MS Office 2007.  I'm not sure there's  any 
point in worrying about having the correct "look" to the software to avoid  
making people uncomfortable.  I'm pretty uncomfortable with the huge  differences 
in Access 2007, but it's just part of the unending change that is  part of the 
computing experience.
 
Just some thoughts.
 
Marsha Lynn
Director
Odon Winkelpleck Public Library
Odon, IN
 
In a message dated 7/31/2008 3:39:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
publib-request at webjunction.org writes:

Date:  Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:36:26 -0400
From: "Bonnie Tollefson"  <btollefson at neflin.org>
Subject: [Publib] Re: Open Office
To:  publib at webjunction.org
Message-ID:  <WorldClient-F200807311236.AA36260966 at neflin.org>
Content-Type:  text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi All,
We have been using Open  Office for almost 2 years on our thin client
Linux based Userful  machines.  We couldn't be happier.  The general
public just  hasn't noticed the difference and the one patron who did
complain was  really tech savy and wanted to do something very 
specific.
Bonnie  Tollefson
Library Director
Levy County Public Library  System







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