Open Office -vs- MS Word 2007 - part deux

So Susan changed a Word 2007 .docx file with Open Office and saved it. Then Monday morning, she needed to print the file to turn in that day. Open Office opened the file but it was empty. I really don't any more details than that.

So Susan and Laura ran out and bought Office 2007 Student/home edition after school.

They then installed it. Ok, they tried to install it. I believe the trial version that came with the pc was in the way. So, they tried to uninstall Office and Works but they wouldn't uninstall. Trying to install the new version of Office again wouldn't work either.

When I got home today I restored the pc to an earlier restore point. I was then able to uninstall Works but not Office. I tried a few things - even backing up, then renaming the registry entries. Still no dice.

All the while I'm chuckling to myself (sort of) - ha ha - your MS crap doesn't work!!! But I know Susan is upset about all the bickering between myself and Laura. All Susan wants is something that will work.

So Laura calls the MS help line people. I am amazed! She got through to someone who could actually help within 5 minutes. They spoke with a Indian (dot not feather) accent but they helped. The trial version was gone and the new software was installed within half an hour. There is some sort of configuration crap going on due to my renaming registry keys that they couldn't fix. I'm pretty dubious about that.

Anyway, I am very impressed how quick MS was able to fix the problem. It's kind of sad too, I should expect this sort of service but with all the horror stories you hear about tech support you get jaded.

They used the 'new' net meeting to take control of the pc. Pretty cool since they were probably in Bangalore or Jakarta.

Open Office -vs- MS Word 2007

This is not a comparison between MS Word & OO Writer. What it is, is the crap I had to go through to get a Word 2007 .docx file into OO Writer.

Susan has a nice new laptop (Vista) which came with a trial version of Home/Student Office 2007. The trial period has run out and she has some homework she needs to do.

No problem. I just had her install Open Office. But wait. It won't read the .docx files that she created with Word 2007 that she wants to use to create a new document. Argh. The pressure to buy MS Office starts. I had proved weeks ago that I can create a Power Point presentation with OO Impress and save the files as .ppt, .pdf, .html, etc. So why pay MS when OO will work fine.

I googled and googled and finally found this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop

This is "OxygenOffice Professional (OOOP, O2OP) is an enhanced version of free OpenOffice.org what is a multi-platform office productivity suite. OxygenOffice Professional contains more extras like templates, cliparts, samples, fonts and VBA support." And the ablility to read .docx files.

I downloaded it to my laptop and installed it. The install was pretty easy but it stopped and told me to close IE. Weird, but at least it told me to close it and gave me a 'retry' button. Once I killed off my 6 instances of IE (yes I'm still on 6.0) and clicked the 'retry' button, off it went again and finished. It then told me I had to reboot.

Meanwhile, I emailed a .docx file to myself from Susan's PC.

Once my PC rebooted, OOO opened the .docx file just fine.

So now I take the install file and dump it on Susan's PC and run the install. It died close to the start. Hmmm. Try again? Ok, I tried again. This time it makes it pretty far before telling me I need to close 2 applications. But all it gives me are PID's. I Start up Task Manager and sort by.. oh wait, add PID to the view, now sort by PID and End Process. Hit 'retry' and off it goes again. No reboot needed for Vista. At this point I don't care why.

I open OOO Writer and wallah, the document opens and looks pretty good.

I really don't wanna buy MS Office, even if it's only $120. Susan really wants to use MS since she recently passed the certification test. I just hope I can get her to use OOO and learn it as well as she learned Word.