Well, the news is out--Sun has finally released Open Office 2.0. I'm using a torrent to download it now, and will hopefully be able to discuss its comment/track changes and autotext features (with an eye towards migrating from Word) shortly. At any rate, 2.0 is sure to be much better than 1.x, and I'm really hoping they've managed to improve the speed. I'll also be taking a critical look at Impress, OO's "PowerPoint" equivalent. Maybe--just maybe--this product will be of sufficient quality to allow me to finally shrug off Microsoft Office and start developing my classroom materials with free software.
Open Office 2.0 Released
Submitted by platypus matt on October 20, 2005 - 11:39.
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"sufficient quality"
I'll be curious as to what you have to say. I've been using the beta now for a few months, and I'm of the opinion as are many in the discussion thread for this review, that OO is at least as good as if not a better product when it comes to word processing. However, OO and MS Word do not have a 1 to 1 feature set match. OO does some things MS doesn't do and vice versa. This is where people get hung up on looking at OO. They go looking for the features they like to use on MS, and not finding them, assume it is not as good a product, despite the fact that OO does things that MS doesn't do, features that a user would come to apprectiate if they used OO regularly.
MS/OO
I know what you mean, Charlie. It'd be like comparing Firefox and IE based solely on the latter's ability to properly navigate Sharepoint sites. There may be a different way to use Writer to do what I do with Word's comments and autotext features; it'll be interesting to experiment and see what I can come up with. Really, it all boils down to whether I can use OO to offer students the same level of commentary and accuracy without increasing the time it takes to do so with Word. Right now, I'm giving 30-50 comments (autotext identifying problems, recommending solutions, links, etc. in about 10-15 minutes each. Really, I should probably cut back and try to get that figure down to 7 minutes, but that's tough--I actually read the papers and give comments on focus and development. Hm.
Let us know what you think
I tried Open Office 1.0 also and didn't feel that it fit my needs at that time. I, too, heavily use Word's commenting feature for student drafts, but if Open Office 2.0 has features that will do this function just as efficiently, I won't mind a learning curve in order to use it. I feel bad about locking students into that "monoculture" in order to give them the feedback they need. Many of them work in order to pay for school and I know money is tight for them. Also, I'm thinking seriously about switching to all Mac for my own household and replacing my limping PC laptop with a 12" iBook or Powerbook, so the thought of a mostly non-Microsoft tech world (my office computer will remain PC) appeals to me.
commenting
I don't believe that OO has done much with their commenting feature, although I'm not the best judge since I don't use it. If I'm doing the kind of response where I need to do heavy in text commenting (rather than more global feedback), I use Adobe Acrobat since I can even draw on the paper with it.
Draw on the Paper
Well, with my tablet pc, I can draw on the paper in Word. And make ink comments. :-P
defending word
Are you sure you are a FOSS advocate? Or is that just for your scholarly work. You seem to love Word an awful lot. Perhaps this is Moxley's influence ;)
I can draw too
I have this cool nano-technology that's way smaller than a tablet PC and that lets me draw on the paper and make ink comments.
It's called a "pen."
--
Mike
http://www.vitia.org/