alternative to MS office

[grab_grab_the_haddock]

ive recently been replacing my microsh!t software.
I replaced IE a while ago, first with opera, and now with phoenix (which is way cool)
I use trillian messenger as an alternative to msn.
and last night i got thebat! to replace my outlook express.
well what i need now is something to replace my MS office. any suggestions? i was looking at suns star office and also openoffice. anyone used these? if so gimme an opinion.
Unfortunately i still need powerpoint to make presentations, but i can replace word and excel. waddaya think?

[PornMaster]

microsoft rules!!.. they make many great programs like msn messenger, windows xp, and many more... i wonder if microsoft will ever make a p2p program, would anyone use it?

[anarcus]

i think adobe has a slide program don't know how good it is

[TFoS_Fan]

Sun StarOffice i found pretty good, havent tried the latest version but its pretty good too I heard...

Lotus I have found in the past very good and very compatible for opening in other office suites...

Corel I would say is probably microsofts nearest Suite rival and the best alternative I have tried...

I have to say I think that Microsoft Office XP is in no doubt the best, compatibility, power, features and GUI are all far suprior to rivals...and dont really see your reason for changing to any other suite at this time.

[tenzing]

I use Open Office, and it works quite nicely.
However, I did encounter some problems with saving as .doc format under Open Office; not all formatting (tables) is compatible with MS Word, other than that, I think Open Office is excellent.

[Ken17625]

Corel, I believe has their own office line which includes Word Perfect.

[cribology crew]

Dude, use Open Office 1. It is a freeware open source project that is very good. It can save to MS word, excel etc... and you can download the 50+ mb suite from the Open Office web site, I think its www.openoffice.org but if not just do a search for it on any decent search engine.

[Skeptikal]

I've replaced Ms Office with OpenOffice, they have all you need (powerpoint "Draw", Word "Writer", Excel "Calc", Publisher "Impress", FrontPage "Global")...
Well, anything you could imagine, they have it (including International lenguage support)... all of that in a small 50Mb freely downloadable file... It is a really good office suite, free and open source.

(What did you used to replaced outlook?)

The harder part will now come: replace Windows :P
Tried Linux ? for sure... but a compatible linux system is hard to find... I'd say Lycoris (lycoris.com) since it is almost 80% compatible with windows applications and it's FREE... Next I'd say XandrOS (xandros.com), another linux distro, they claim to be 100% compatible with windows apps, It has the look and feel of microsoft... and of course... it's 99USD ... although you can find it on the donkey network...

Good luck.

[grab_grab_the_haddock]

im trying "thebat!" as a replacement for outlook, its pretty cool.

and i aint gonna go the whole hog and replace windows just yet...damn id love to but i aint savvy enough to take on linux at the mo.

i will get round to setting up a dual boot with winXP and some linux distro when ive got a bit more time on my hands.

[nukehella]

OpenOffice is the ticket.I moved to it seamlessly.
Also-
When I went to a dual boot sytem(actually triple at first because I hated to give up Win98,I like pain)with W2k and Redhat I had to get an external modem because most software modems don't work with Linux and a lot of internal modems don't either.I'm sure Grab has broadband though-not sure how Linux works with that.I can't get broadband from the phone company or the cable company-and I live 10 miles from the frigging nations capitol.Unf***ing believable.Not enough demand in my ancient neighborhood with large lots and old people.But my brother lives 2 miles from me in a shitty $800 a month apartment and they have it there.Not touching satellite.