Squizzy246B
Administrator
I'll try and cut through a long story. I was having issues with one of Microsofts latest updates which I installed automatically and it had no way of uninstalling.
It was the stupid MS Genuine Advantage Validation tool or whatever. Now I have had a fully registered and validated version of Office XP Pro on this machine since I bought the thing nearly 6 years ago but MS reckoned it wasn't validated. I needed to validate to get rid of the nuisance messages/pop-ups the damn validation tool kept putting up. It said I could'nt validate because the product wasn't activated but the activation tool said it was activated...
The discussion with MS online help deteriorated and their remedies didn't work. I even completely un-installed office and re-installed but this didn't help. I lost patience with MS and (Vengeance Shall be Mine) smite that MS office stuff forever.
Awhile back I had tried some of the Open office stuff from Sun Microsystems (The makers of Mozilla FireFox). Open Office is a free office suite very similar to the MS stuff. Version 2 had some issues with my older MS generated documents. I have now downloaded and installed the Release 3 of the Open Office suite and it seems to work pretty well. There are a few little things that take some time to get used to but overall I find it less glichey and easy to use. I think a full blown version of MS Office runs at near $400 here so free is not a bad price...you think If I had a lot of really old important MS documents with special formatting I'd probably stick with MS Office but for new stuff I can't see why you would bother. In the Write program there is an excellent one click export to pdf feature which is very handy.
Anyway...I was just wondering how many others were using it and how it was going.
http://download.openoffice.org/
It was the stupid MS Genuine Advantage Validation tool or whatever. Now I have had a fully registered and validated version of Office XP Pro on this machine since I bought the thing nearly 6 years ago but MS reckoned it wasn't validated. I needed to validate to get rid of the nuisance messages/pop-ups the damn validation tool kept putting up. It said I could'nt validate because the product wasn't activated but the activation tool said it was activated...
The discussion with MS online help deteriorated and their remedies didn't work. I even completely un-installed office and re-installed but this didn't help. I lost patience with MS and (Vengeance Shall be Mine) smite that MS office stuff forever.
Awhile back I had tried some of the Open office stuff from Sun Microsystems (The makers of Mozilla FireFox). Open Office is a free office suite very similar to the MS stuff. Version 2 had some issues with my older MS generated documents. I have now downloaded and installed the Release 3 of the Open Office suite and it seems to work pretty well. There are a few little things that take some time to get used to but overall I find it less glichey and easy to use. I think a full blown version of MS Office runs at near $400 here so free is not a bad price...you think If I had a lot of really old important MS documents with special formatting I'd probably stick with MS Office but for new stuff I can't see why you would bother. In the Write program there is an excellent one click export to pdf feature which is very handy.
Anyway...I was just wondering how many others were using it and how it was going.
http://download.openoffice.org/
Last edited: