MS Home & Student 2010 vs. Free Open Office 2011

[Islander]

Would appreciate any input on the Pro's & Cons of this software for use @ WMA & aboard ship.
I found this review of the free Open Office which seemed interesting.

http://mac.appstorm.net/reviews/office-review/openoffice-vs-office-2011-rooting-for-the-underdog/

Thanks

[RNR]

I use Open Office and have never had a problem. If the college runs MS Office (which they usually do) Open Office gives you the option to save in a Mircrosoft format (such as .doc), which can then be opened on MS Word/Powerpoint etc. I would never spend money again on MS Office when Open Office is such a good free alternative.

[ETwhat?]

One issue you may have is being able to save stuff in a format that can be opened on college/ship computeres to gain access to printers. also if you email a document it is generally sexpected that it will open in office and if it doesnt you will generally get a nice reply back saying that they cant open it. At some point you will need to do a presentation at college so theres powerpoint aswell

I use office and on this ship have to save stuff into the 97-03 format to get it to open on the computers when i want to print anything which then mucks the formatting which is a pain.

open office is good, and avoids the stupid thing where ms move stuff around every so often just to keep you on your toes, but the reason why microsoft is the leader is not becasue its a fantastic program but that everyone used it making moving stuff around a hell of a lot easier,

[alistairuk]

Slightly off topic, but for those of us with macs we can save / print as PDF by default which will open anywhere :-)Since I'm guessing your a mac user, I started using iworks when I switched to mac, and its just as good as ms office at a fraction of the price - you can also save keynote presentations in a format PowerPoint understands - although you miss lots of the niceness when you convert it to PowerPoint.

[ETwhat?]

It is one of the things that office have finally caught up on that you can now publish a pdf directly. which always seemed odd that they had avoided trying to consume what is one of the few other widly useable formats

[Faust]

I can concur with alistairuk, as a Mac user I have never had any problems with Windows users and there funny software!

[Islander]

I can concur with alistairuk, as a Mac user I have never had any problems with Windows users and there funny software!

I'm currently looking at a deal offered by Currys/PCWorld for a Samsung and they are offering MS Home Student 2010
for ?60.00 but it is only a licence for one PC so presumably I will only be able to use it on my Laptop.
I'm also checking out this website www.softwareforstudents.co.uk Seems too good to be true, MS Office Pro Plus
RRP ?429.99 for ?37.89 ! Am still checking out reviews, don't know about this one''

[Faust]

MS Office Pro Plus
RRP ?429.99 for ?37.89 !''

Yeah… that does sound a bit too good, I'd not risk it.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if we get the Apple 'Back To School' discount? I'm thinking of buying a MacBook for heading down and the discount for students is quite substantial.

[Chiefy]

Open Office is fine as No1 daughter found out after rebuilding her laptop and loosing the Liscence Card for M$ Office (later found where dad told her it would be!)

can be tricky with formating when moving to M$ for handing in, but said it was more than fine

Yeah the discount for stoodents is legit BUT you need a .ac e-mail address for them to mail the file to and I arent sure if it expires when you stop being a stooodent, but do you need pro?

[ETwhat?]

most of the colleges provide you with an email address once your on their computer network, it would be worth asking the college first just to make sure and then wait on getting it till you start, certainly wont need it for a week or two,

Personally i try to spend about ?300 quid on a laptop and just replace it every two years, if it breaks in the first year then its a warranty issue and if it breaks after that, it was close to being replaced anyway, and i can decide on wether or not i wnat a nice new shiny one

[alistairuk]

Yeah? that does sound a bit too good, I'd not risk it. Out of curiosity, does anyone know if we get the Apple 'Back To School' discount? I'm thinking of buying a MacBook for heading down and the discount for students is quite substantial.

With a student ID card (Warsash issue you with these) you qualify for 10% discount in the apple stores - if you don't want to go to a store, they'll give you the discount but you need to phone their education store number (it's on the side of the apple web site) - they also accept your acceptance letter from the college :-)

[Faust]

Thanks, that's what I was looking for.

[steamer]

Software for students is 100% Kosher. I have purchased lots from them....I agree that it does look a bit deodgy though!!