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    Freeware question

    On the other thread when I was talking about getting Microsoft Office, a loquacious minority (all right, Taylor) seemed to think I was mad for not using Open Office. And offboard I've had comments from less eloquent people along the lines of "You're a silly cunt, I don't give money to Gates!"

    I'd happily avoid handing money over to a billionaire if I can help it, so I think I have to know more about freeware.

    First of all, what is available free? And when you create a file with it, how do other people read it? I'm assuming Gates has got something in his programmes whereby they won't open freeware so you have to buy his software.

    And you freeware people, do you not find people just say "can you send me that in Word instead?" all the time. I've got Word now (it's not installing properly as we speak), but do you lot just send stuff to other people who know a lot about computers?

    #2
    Freeware question

    It's the difference between the files and the program that creates/edits them. Microsoft Office and OpenOffice (and others) are suites of programs for creating and editing various types of files. OpenOffice is pretty good at being able to open, edit and save files using the Microsoft formats (like .doc files and .xls spreadsheets). I've used OpenOffice at home for years and never had a problem with being able to open them in Microsoft Office (or vice versa).

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      #3
      Freeware question

      Technically speaking, Open Office is open source, not freeware. But for your purposes, that's not going to matter. Just give it a shot - it's not like it's going to cost you anything. And as Crusoe says, it's compatible with MS Office.

      As for other free software, I'm sure you use tons of it. Firefox, say.

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        #4
        Freeware question

        I work in IT. It's all free!

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          #5
          Freeware question

          Weren't there rumblings about MS making Office free starting next year or something?

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            #6
            Freeware question

            I think that was with regard to a web-based version designed to battle Google Docs and the like, rather than a suite that would reside on your pc.

            Tubby, your problem here is that this basic assumption: I'm assuming Gates has got something in his programmes whereby they won't open freeware so you have to buy his software, is wrong (as a number of people above have pointed out). And as Crusoe notes, if someone asks you for an Open Office Writer document in Word, you can save it as a .doc file with a single click. I don't believe that you can save a Writer document as a .docx (Word 2007) file yet, but that isn't a big deal in the real world (since Word 2007 opens .doc files).

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              #7
              Freeware question

              I use GIMP for my (limited) photo-editing needs. It's a free program that's such a convincing rip-off of Photoshop, that a friend once did a piece of graphic design coursework at uni using his copy, for which he'd been told specifically to use Photoshop and only Photoshop, and that the lecturer would know if they hadn't done - and the lecturer didn't notice.

              Apparently GIMP can fuck up certain dll things in the registry over time, although that was more of a problem with the early beta versions I believe. My computer's fine and I've had it for a few years now.

              Open Office is fantastic though, and it's backed by Sun, so you're not even dealing with a bunch of people you've never heard of. Get it.

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                #8
                Freeware question

                Got Open Office too, good stuff.

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                  #9
                  Freeware question

                  GIMP is excellent, although not quite as good at handling really large images as Photoshop. Other free/open source stuff I use are the excellent ImageMagick suite of command line tools for graphics conversion, if I'm scripting; and the GDAL suite for working with geo-data. Although GIMP is probably the only thing anyone on here would regularly use, of those.

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                    #10
                    Freeware question

                    I'd third the GIMP recommendation as well. Discovered it on Linux. And considering Photoshop is such a rip-off.

                    Terrible name though...

                    There's also a version of Visio in OpenOffice. Anyone used it? Is it any good?

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