<p>Hey, I'm getting a new laptop for school this fall and was debating over which program to use. Would it be better to pay the $150 bucks for Microsoft Office or is Open office just as good? What do you guys think?</p>
<p>I use open office now mostly out of financial restraints, do have <em>ahem</em> a copy of office. I find that OO is great for everything that you could want to do and it just takes some time getting used to it. Overall its not too bad of an experience, but it did take me a bit to get used to their graph creator. It just felt weird.</p>
<p>I used to use Open Office but it's version of Powerpoint lacked one feature that I really needed (can't remember what but it was small) so I went and uhh acquired a copy of Microsoft Office. For the majority of people, open office will work without a problem. It even saves in microsoft office .doc format if you'd like.</p>
<p>Besides the fact that my school provides Office for free to all students, I use Linux so I'm on Open Office all the time and have no complaints or problems.</p>
<p>Get Staroffice</p>
<p>Open Office is a great open source program. There is really no reason to go out and purchase Microsoft Office.</p>
<p>As long as it prints stuff, youre fine.</p>
<p>sweet thanks, i guess ill try to "acquire" a copy if that doesn't work ill just stick with Open Office.</p>
<p>Personally, I use Open Office on my computer because I don't like the older version of MS Office it has installed. But my schools gives MS Office 2007 away to students (part of the high tuition I guess), so I'll be using that once the school year starts.</p>
<p>I'm with modestmelody...I use Linux and Openoffice. So far there's nothing wrong with it. The biggest problem at first was that I really loved Microsoft's Calibri font (which comes standard in Office 2007), but Bitstream Vera Sans is just as good =)</p>