[Nottingham] OpenOffice vs MS Office [Was: "Big Name" Distros Update]

[Alex Walker]

2009/4/20 Simon Sleaford <simon.sleaford at gmail.com>

> My wife insists that Windows stays on the computer at home even though the
> only thing she uses it for is browsing the net. I've decided to let it fall
> into a "state of disrepair" by not updating the AV and Spyware on it. I will
> then annoyingly be unable to find my old XP disc and install Ubuntu on there
> for her to use. I doubt she'll have any real grumbles as long as she can get
> on Ebay and Facebook :)
>

To be fair to her, she's doing a post-grad course at uni and is writing
essays, downloading & printing notes in formats like .ppt / .pptx / .doc /
.docx / .pdf etc, making presentations and so on. Working with OpenOffice in
such a situation can be frustrating & can add to already-raised levels of
stress. I remember when I was applying for jobs a couple of years back and I
created an .doc from OpenOffice and one of the recruitment agencies
contacted me and asked why my CV went into ALL CAPS HALF WAY THROUGH. I
checked on my computer and it was fine. I loaded it in Word and lo and
behold it was in all caps on the second page. I resolved to send them as
PDFs, but people refused to accept them... so I had to resort to using Word
on our Windows laptop. I guess it could technically have been Word's fault,
but what does that matter when Word is the de facto standard and you're
trying to impress when applying for jobs?

I just don't really trust OpenOffice like I do Microsoft Office. Whenever
I've tried to use it seriously for an essay or CV or presentations, the
outcomes are unreliable... whereas I've not really had that problem with MS
Office. Perhaps I should don my fire-retardant suit now... :)

Alex
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