On Wed, 2004-03-10 at 22:32,
frankburton@cox.net wrote:
> I just got a new job working in a office(non IT position)
Congrats on the new job.
> Email was easy I recommended Thunderbird
I have not used Thunderbird. I will check it out. I recommend Ximian
Evolution.
> but I having not really used openoffice that much so I sent a link to
> the OOo Faq page but I was wondering what you guys can tell me? This
> is my first experience with a MS IT guy who wants to start using FOSS
> and I would love to see as
> much of it as I can in this office.
Sounds promising. Finding a beleaguered wormdows admin is not hard.
Find one who realizes it doesn't have to be that way, is nearly
impossible. The force is strong. ;~)
My experience with OOo 1.1 has been very good. IMHO, version 1.0 had
too many M$ compatibility issues to be wedged into a full-blown M$
shop. I find the fidelity between M$ Office 2000 and OOo 1.1 to be
quite good and the feature set of OOo to be just as rich.
Having said that, it all depends on the level of proficiency within your
office staff when it comes to M$ Office. If your staffers just use the
basic stuff, I think you will find that OOo 1.1 is great solution!
If you have a lot of staffers who really stretch the capabilities and
exercise all the whizbang features, you _will_ run into
incompatibilities. This is especially true in the M$ OLE features such
as embedded and linked objects (sticking a dynamic Excel chart inside a
Word Doc, etc). Also, multi-level bulleted (or numbered) Word docs
still give me fits sometimes. OOo doesn't always understand what Word
is doing. Finally, headers and footers are much better than in the
past, but I still have occasional problems with them in Word and
Powerpoint docs.
Since, I work in an office full of tech-savvy sales people who love to
use all the bells and whistles in their interoffice and customer docs, I
found that moving to CrossOver Office (or Wine) and putting M$ Office
2000 on top of that was a better solution. I still run OOo for my own
use, but work docs are primarily done in M$ Office. :~(
One other factor that I have found impacting the success of OOo in M$
shops, is the amount of document swapping with parties _outside_ the
company. Consider the question 'do you often exchange heavily formatted
docs with partners, vendors, suppliers, customers, etc?' This can make
it much harder to resolve compatibility glitches and often throws a much
harsher light on them when they happen!
...Kevin
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