Hurray for odf !!

I have been trying to switch from windows to Linux for some time now. The fact that i paid $ 150 for my Windows XP(last year when vista was free with a new dell and i wisely decided to be smart and invest that money) made it difficult. I had to get my moneys worth before making the switch. (and I was lazy to get a dual boot system).

My attempt over last few months has been trying to use as much open source software as possible. I switched to thunderbird from outlook, also i was using open office suite for all my text presentation needs. However all my submissions were required to be in .doc format. Open office allows saving in .doc format but this almost always messes the document formating. I had to make change to my source file and check for proper formating by opening it in word viewer.

And then for my last report I had to insert lot of equations. I used OOOLatex with open office and then decided to hand in a printed report. My professor liked the whole thing so much he asked me to submit the report as .odf and made up his mind to give open office a try. I consider this a victory for .odf and takes me one step closer to converting completely to Linux. Hurray for .odf!!

Open Office 3 is here

The latest version of Open Office, version 3 is here.. Its free and its odf. I downloaded it today and its much better than 2.4 before. It includes whole gamut of MS Office repalcements

1. Writer word processor
2. Calc spreadsheet
3. Impress presentations program
4. Base database program
5. Math equation editor
6. Draw graphics program

The UI looks great and the documents load much quicker. You can save and edit your documents to MS Office XP/98 formats. It doesnt support the MS Office 07 versions though.. but neighter does older MS Office.. ( how many people use it any way?). Other useful features.. it enables direct export to pdf and also advanced features like mail merge. (Lets see if i can configure it with my thunderbird)

If you want to try it download from the site or the mirror.