German city says OpenOffice shortcomings are forcing it back to Microsoft

OK thanks. At least Apache release OO these days. My personal opinion about LibO is that it seems to be moving or developing perhaps a bit too quickly for its own good. I really do need a stable & reliable word processor that isn't necessarily updated every fortnight or so. I use it for work primarily, & as I don't have MS Office on all three of the computers I actually own, I rely on apps like OO & AbiWord. I very rarely have any formatting problems with these programs, & when I do they are only trivial (I have never had any problems using Impress & running Powerpoint files). It just goes to show that there are decent & usable Open Source & freeware options to Microsoft. I started using OO & AbiWord a few years ago when I was working part-time & the price of MS Office would have substantially increased the price of a laptop computer I purchased. I even had a 'crack' of Word given to me by a friend (just in case). MS updated it for a year before informing me that I was a pirate (shiver me timbers!) but I found that I was using OO & AbiWord far more & actually prefer them. I uninstalled Word & have not had it installed on any other computer that I have owned ever since.

I have a feeling that there has been some lobbying by MS, in relation to the original topic, in Germany. It seems to be politically motivated.

 

You don't have to upgrade. I will admit, that is something hard to do.

I have the same feeling.

Funny thing today at "work" our auditor asked me if I could put Excel back on our computer (It is now running Linuix as we had a bootleg Window, Office install. We can't afford to buy and the computer won't run Windows 7, or . We are using Excel spreadsheets, she just want that awful (IMHO) Ribbon interface.

 

My gut instincts always tell me to upgrade any app. Usually though word processors don't need to upgrade as fast as the Chrome browser does. Which is what I like about OpenOffice. It is stable, bug-free & reliable. You can't ask for much more than that, in freeware especially.