OT: free graphics software / Windows 7 rant

Many suggest that version 9, before it was sold on, was the best.

Chris

Reply to
Chris J Dixon
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In article , stuart noble scribeth thus

We've got in many places machines doing differing things using WIN 2000 Pro, XP and WIN 7 an some Linux installs all are fine and crashes are almost unheard of..

We never bothered with Vista and ME which weren't shall we say that well regarded;!.,.,.

Reply to
tony sayer

Will there be any significant differences/advantages do you think? I wonder if OO will keep more or less on the same track and be for businesses that want easy transitions with upgrades and LO will try more radical changes.

Reply to
PeterC

Most .doc files. We've seen endless problems. Guess you've been lucky. tbf, we also saw lots of issues with Word 2008 compatibility (Word 2011 appears to be ok however).

One massive issue (don't know if this is still relevant) is the managing of OO. Deployment via Appv/Softgrid or similar is doable, but managing patching and maintenance of if is more of an issue. Given how cheap MS office is to us (as an edu user - I admit we pay peanuts compared to proper corp rates) the management tools available and the ease of patching far out weigh any licence savings.

Also, students expect to be able to do things like the ECDL in MS products as that's what the big corporate world look for. Sad but true.

For many places (and users) however I agree, OO is more than good enough.

As I say, we wouldn't save much on licence and would then spend a lot more effort in maintaining the setup. No idea what sort of prices other goverment depts pay though.

Darren

Reply to
D.M.Chapman

Blimey, is ECDL still going? I took that a few years back because it was free for geriatrics. As I recall it taught you to tweak the colours in a pie chart but I don't think I learnt anything remotely useful.

Reply to
stuart noble

LO includes all the tweaks that GO-OO had been carrying for a couple of years (VBA macros, extra import/export formats) it's taken AOO 1 year to get their shit together, which is glacial for an internet based project, LO seem to have picked up the majority of the active developers and encouraged plenty of new ones along the way (which Star/sun/Oracle had previously almost discouraged) so picked the pace up.

It wouldn't surprise me if AOO takes another year before getting a new (rather than regurgitated) version out the door then dies in its tracks.

Reply to
Andy Burns

I used to use GO-OO before LO came along, then went with the second issue of LO on the grounds that OO might stagnate/die due to lack of developers.

Reply to
PeterC

Couldn't comment (honestly! I've not done it) ;-)

Darren

Reply to
D.M.Chapman

Hmm, I think I saw that same sort of deal here in the US - is it a download rather than actual installation media (be it CD, DVD or whatever)?

If the former, do you know if it's a one-time-install kind of deal - or can you also get the install media (free?) and/or burn whatever the download is to your own media, and expect it to be possible to reinstall from that if it's ever needed?

My wife has XP on her PC at home and wants to get a more up to date version of MS office; the price was putting her off, but as we have three kids in school I think we might be able to get some kind of educational discount - but I'd really want something that was ultimately on a physical piece of install media separate to the machine, just in case.

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

Either download or DVD for the company I got ours from.

Though aimed at families with kids in school, there was no checking of educational status for this deal. Which is probably why they are stopping it from 31/3/12. (And replacing it with something else)

There is a different deal for students at uni etc. with an ac.uk email address.

Reply to
chris French

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