PC help - not Stag related

[marshman]

If it is new laptop with Microsoft Windoze 7 then it should come preloaded with Microsoft Office Starter - my Dell laptop did as did an Asus desktop. It is Free to use Word and Excel. They are 90% functional and only a few advanced features are disabled. I use it at home and so far have not needed to get the latest full version to use. Microsoft seem to be slowly waking up to the fact that the average home user is not going to fork out lots of dosh for their products and offers numerous "lite" versions free for home use.

If you do need the full version then search online and you can get the student version - usually licensed for a laptop and a desktop PC for less than £40.

I'm not a real fan of Microsoft but if you are not familiar with computers then downloading and installing an office suite such as openoffice or one of its variants can be daunting and opting for the "free" office starter is an easy way in.

Roger

[Firept]

Garry.
Nice to find out about a forward thinking school. Its jut a shame that Oracle have off loaded open office, we will have to see what happens. Ubuntu I Like and I would be interested in any one who's tried out Google's operating system yet.


Paul.

[Richard Saunders]

Stagster - speaking as an employee of the company everyone loves to hate I think I can help you out. I just sent you a PM.

[Ian Durrant]

Hi Terry,

It's whats called a fork. Basically Oracle have withdrawn from development of open office so the developers have taken the code and reused it (its open source which means anyone can modify it provided they make the source available to the community) as Libre office. I think Novell may be involved in the new development but thats a bit of a rumour at the moment.

Its common knowledge in the open source community that Oracle have ceased to support the project.

Ubuntu, (probably the leading linux distribution these days), have already switched to libre office. There is no transition as such, just uninstall open office and install libre office and apart from the splash screen showing a different name you won't be able to tell the difference because their isn't any yet. However new features and bug fixes will only be applied to the new fork, so if you want the latest features and less bugs, you have to switch.

Hope that

[Tdm]

Hi Terry,
It's whats called a fork. Basically Oracle have withdrawn from development of open office so the developers have taken the code and reused it (its open source which means anyone can modify it provided they make the source available to the community) as Libre office. I think Novell may be involved in the new development but thats a bit of a rumour at the moment.
Its common knowledge in the open source community that Oracle have ceased to support the project.
Ubuntu, (probably the leading linux distribution these days), have already switched to libre office. There is no transition as such, just uninstall open office and install libre office and apart from the splash screen showing a different name you won't be able to tell the difference because their isn't any yet. However new features and bug fixes will only be applied to the new fork, so if you want the latest features and less bugs, you have to switch.
Hope that

Ian, I have just downloaded vers. 3.3.3 of Libre Office and tried opening one of my biggest (366 pages) Open Office documents with it and all seems fine. Libre Office looks exactly like OpenOffice from the bit I have seen so far, so I am going to start using it from now onwards. Thanks once again for letting me know about it Ian - since I retired I no longer get my free copies of "Computer Weekly" and "Computing" that used to keep me up to-date with all that was happening in the I.T. world, they probably don't exist anymore.