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I can (legally) get this program package for £40. At the moment I'm running open office and often finding it irritating. Is microsoft office ultimate worth getting?

Where are you getting it through legally to get that kind of price? Some type of student discount program?

In the US, at my uni, Office 2007 Student/Teacher edition comes in at $80, which is the same price you're paying for your Ultimate. Although I would love to see Visio and Project included in Office 2007 Ultimate, MS chose not to, which is a pity. But still, for $80, it's not bad.

If you're sick of Open Office, and can afford to spend $80, I'd say get it. It's a good deal.

Office 07 rocks hard, get it. If you're not convinced, try it out at someones place.

Through my Uni, I can get it for even less than that, heh. Only a by a tenner, so I could get it for my dad, if he so desires....

General Zod wrote:Where are you getting it through legally to get that kind of price? Some type of student discount program?

Yeah student discount.

So there aren't any serious issues with it or anything, and it does represent a real improvement over open office?

I don't want to buy it and then find that it's as buggy as vista apparently is or that it's functionally identical but has prettier flashing bits than open office.

Teebs wrote: So there aren't any serious issues with it or anything, and it does represent a real improvement over open office?

I don't want to buy it and then find that it's as buggy as vista apparently is or that it's functionally identical but has prettier flashing bits than open office.

Office 2007 is fairly stable from what I've found. It also cleans up the interface rather nicely with the 'ribbon' instead of your normal menu option. It might seem convoluted at first but it's fairly slick once you're used to it, which doesn't take much time. Plus it retains all backwards compatibility, so yeah. Nice improvement over 2003.

Teebs wrote:I can (legally) get this program package for £40. At the moment I'm running open office and often finding it irritating. Is microsoft office ultimate worth getting?

What's OO.o not doing for you?

Nothing major, but it's a chore remebering to switch all the file types around when sending files to people and I've forgotten to once or twice leading to annoyed tutors. The functions can often be difficult to find. The spellings are locked into American English which is very irritating.

If the ms office package was anything like full price then I wouldn't look twice at it, but I'm considering it because £40 is really quite cheap.

Amazingly, you can CHANGE the dictionary on OO.o and, also, save in file formats other than .txt. How about RTF? Tutors don't like it? Fuck 'em. Maybe they shouldn't expect everyone to use Word's formats just because it's popular. Even then, you can save as MS Office files without much trouble.

The only thing MS Office now has that I'd want is the new interface, which I expect to be emulated soon in OO.o to some extent. The Wall of Buttons look we've had until now is fucking crazy.

Admiral Valdemar wrote: Maybe they shouldn't expect everyone to use Word's formats just because it's popular. Even then, you can save as MS Office files without much trouble.

Except for things like .csv files, which Open Office seems to not want to so much as recognize.

Amazingly, not being a retard, I tried to change the dictionary in open office, several times, and have on each occasion found no change in how it works.

The saving issue is not that it can't save as .doc files, but that it always defaults to whatever format open office files are.

Teebs wrote:Amazingly, not being a retard, I tried to change the dictionary in open office, several times, and have on each occasion found no change in how it works.

The saving issue is not that it can't save as .doc files, but that it always defaults to whatever format open office files are.

What version are you running? The dictionary problem has never been a concern for me or anyone I know who uses British English (what a damn oxymoron). I'm also pretty sure you can change the default save format, because I've never touched that function since I installed and set-up and all my saved files are RTF.

General Zod wrote:

Admiral Valdemar wrote: Maybe they shouldn't expect everyone to use Word's formats just because it's popular. Even then, you can save as MS Office files without much trouble.

Except for things like .csv files, which Open Office seems to not want to so much as recognize.

Also, a bunch of things with how OO work with graphs is counter intuitive and alot less comfortable then Excel.

and I've still not figured out how to get OO calc to display a graphs 'formula'(not sure the english word) and accuracy value

They are selling Office Enterprise 2007 at my uni for 50 bucks.

I've used '07 on-and-off. It's definitely a joy to use compared to OO.o if you don't feel like doing anything but typing. I'm not sure it would've been worth €100 for my own copy, but if you can get it cheap, it'll at least save you file format headaches. There's always someone mailing docs OO.o can't open...

Teebs wrote:Nothing major, but it's a chore remebering to switch all the file types around when sending files to people and I've forgotten to once or twice leading to annoyed tutors. The functions can often be difficult to find. The spellings are locked into American English which is very irritating.

Please be aware that Office 2007 uses a different file format than 97-2003; you will have to ensure that you save in the legacy format if your recipients don't have 2007 or the compatibility pack for 2003 installed. Also, there is a nice add-on that will let you export to PDF or XPF for free

Admiral Valdemar wrote:The only thing MS Office now has that I'd want is the new interface, which I expect to be emulated soon in OO.o to some extent. The Wall of Buttons look we've had until now is fucking crazy.

Meh, I'm not so sure. OOo has not taken the initiative in anything and I don't expect a radical new UI from them, either.

If you can, get it. Even if you don't use it on a regular basis, it is nice to have around.

We can't get vista cheap, but at least stuff like Office is free and always available where I go to school. I can't say I like the new interface though, I don't know where anything is anymore.

OOo can't handle Macros. Half the spreadsheets I try to open in it just seize up and fail.

I think it is to do with the fact that macos written in VBA don't work in OOo since MS, if I recall correctly, did not license the use of the language out.

Actually you're wrong, the Novell version of OpenOffice does indeed contain support for VB macros. Its not complete (and I believe its provided via Mono), but it is there, in the version of OpenOffice included with Suse Linux Enterprise (and presumably, OpenSuSE).

I'd get MS Office 2007 for that price, even though I would almost never use it. The absolute dominance of MS Office pisses me off no end, because everyone assumes that you actually have that program and requires you to use it for everything.

Macros are a separate issue and their compatibility is what it is, but for basic stuff, who cares?

Doesn't mean that Open Office doesn't have its own problems and some things in there are counterintuitive at first if you've gotten used to working with MS Office. Of course, counterintuitive sometimes depends on one's viewpoint.

Just the other day I was doing some document editing and wanted to replicate section headering and other similar stuff that I'd learned to use in Word 2003. It was a bitch and a half to find out how it was done becasue it was done so differently, but after I did figure it out, it turned out to be actually far easier than it is in Word.

RThurmont wrote:Actually you're wrong, the Novell version of OpenOffice does indeed contain support for VB macros. Its not complete (and I believe its provided via Mono), but it is there, in the version of OpenOffice included with Suse Linux Enterprise (and presumably, OpenSuSE).

I guess then the problem lies in the myriad of versions and interwining patents since if I recall Novell has some deal with MS.

Open Office breaks or doesn't display properly any document with anything approaching complexity.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't give a damn because they don't do anything more complex then write a paper for class, but for those of us who actually use Word in their job, you don't want to have broken shit floating in your document.

I agree with Ace, Office 2007 is pure joy. The new interface is a gift from god for serious Office enthusiasts once you get used to it.

EDIT: Oh, and as for Office 2007 Ultimate, you probably don't need some software like Project (project managers only need apply) or Groove, One Note, etc, but Visio is a nice catch and handy for many things.