In article , pete no-
scribeth thus
On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:32:38 -0000, John wrote:
I am needing to get a laptop as I need to go away to do some work.

Has anyone got real experience of "Open Office" as an alternative to
Microsoft? It will make a difference to how I spend my budget if I don't buy
"Office". On my desktop I use Office 2003 with Outlook - I will think of
this as my datum.

Since you're buying your own laptop for work, it sounds as if you're
self-employed and therefore can put a ££££'s cost on your time. I
have found that OO worm processor is OK-ish for basic use (though
it crashes frequently when I try to do something even slightly complex)
The spreadsheet can do the basics of data manipulation and can
produce rudimentary graphs.

However, if you're already used to MS-Office and need to produce
complex presentations, my personal experience is that the amount
of time I *wasted* trying to get OO to do things that MSO can,
cost me more than the retail price of MSO.

For me, trying to use OO was a false economy.


I know someone who tried OO and then dis'ed it off as the spawn of
Satan..

What they had dome was saved their documents in the ODF format and then
mailed them to all 'n sundry who of course couldn't open them..

When told how to save in different formats their opinion dramatically
changed;!..

Not suggesting that your problems were that simple but it goes to show..

Course the OP can download OO and try it all for free as long as he
likes..
--
Tony Sayer