What do you use for word processing--does open office have one? Will they work on a Macintosh OSX.
I don't like Appleworks and the office program I have works only on OS9, which is not a good use of my computer.

Open Office includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and simple drawing program (vectors, like corel draw).

Yes, it works on OS/2, but only on version 10.2 and up. It is also a rev behind, it is at 1.1 for Win and Linux, but 1.0 for OSX.

It also has Microsoft Word filters, so you can read and edit .doc files.

Here is a link to the download directory: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html

Free software always saves money, but at the cost of time, which is sometimes more important than money. Some of it's good though, such as Mozilla, but GIMP can't compare in any way to PS or even PSP.

how does it cost time? i found lots of excellent stuff that has saved me a lot of time or has no equivalent.

Pricelessware.org has lots of freeware that

(whoops hit enter on post comment too early...)

how does it cost time? i found lots of excellent stuff that has saved me a lot of time or has no equivalent.

Pricelessware.org lots of freeware that does a good or better job as pay software. some examples used to be commercial but was released to the public domain.

The best open source projects contain code written by and provided by companies with professional programmers.

Never said Gimp is as good as PS or PSP, but how many people need everything PS or PSP does? I build icons, perform simple image manipulation, make pics web friendly and other small things.

Open Office word processor cannot do all the things Word can do, but who needs all that Word can do? What percentage of the users use 75%, or even 50% of the features of Word? Why pay for all the extra bells and whistles, just to play the imbedded flight simulator in word?

Personally, I've been using Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird as replacements to Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. I find them better than the Netscape suite. After all, Netscape IS Mozilla with AOL "enhancements."

There is also a browser called 1X (http://www.scitrav.com/1X/), although not free, it is small and fast. It does not do javascript, which depending on what you do, may or may not be a bad thing.

I have not played with the Mozilla suite, ineria at play there, mostly with too many old messages hanging around in my mailer.

Never dipped into the warez scene, and don't intend to, nor do I condone it. If there is a commercial product I like and need, I do buy it, but today those tend to be mostly games. I also noticed the post has been removed, I would assume that post was a violation of Terms of Use 3. (k) to "promote or provide instructional information about illegal activities"

In the case of GIMP and OpenOffice, it costs time in the fact that things can be done quicker in their commercial counterparts. True, nobody needs all the features of Office 2003, but small things such as being able to see the word count without going to the menu makes it worth the cost. As for GIMP, I personally feel that it's just one of the ugliest programs in the entire world.

Yeah, GIMP is not the prettiest thing in the universe, it has not really been updated from the X11 windowing scheme. Would be nice to have it all integrated in a single window, but hey, it works for what I need it for (I've also done a lot of UNIX based work so the X11 thing really does not bother me).

Word works for you, and you are willing to pay the cost, great. But there are options out there and if one takes the time to look around and do some researce, one can find what works the best for them. For me, today, it is Open Office.

I've seen $20,000 programs whose interface and usability sucked, and I have seen free ones that are simple and elegant. It goes both ways.

Grrrrrr. Open Office. I used to love that suite, and recommend it to people left and right - but I've been having to work with it more and more lately - and it keeps doing it's best job to fight me at every single turn. I'm quickly starting to realize just how limited it is at even the simplest and most basic things I've come to take for granted with Office.

Normally run your program in English - International, but have a few documents you need to open in Cyrillic, or Japanese? Open Office will fight you. It can't seem to understand the fact that a person might open multiple documents in different languages at the same time - or want to insert russian or japanese text in an English document.

Want a freely positionable text-block somewhere? After using OOo for over a year, I /still/ can't figure out how to do this very simple little task. (Watch someone come along in 2 posts and say how to do it some way -really- simple.)

Need multiple headers or footers in different sections of a document? The method OOo's help files say simply don't work.

Why has OOo's zooming at 100% never been correct on any systems I've tried it on? It makes it inconvinient when you're visually selecting typefaces and sizes, or inserting graphics, and you're used to your display giving an /accurate/ representation of the size things will print. (On my system, right now - at 100% zoom, OOo 1" to OOo is really 1 3/4" - yes, I just measured ^.^ making all font sizes out of whack. 12pt type shows up like 18pt.) I can zoom out - but I shouldn't have to.

At least it has nice features for Tables of Contents and Indices. Native PDF export is nice too - though it still can't begin to compare to Acrobat - it throws out 3/4 of my formatting.

It's a great program - it's come a long way - but it's still got a long way to go. Until then, Office 2K stays on my system. The few times I'm trying to be productive, I actually need to -be- productive. ^.^

(And The GIMP! GAH!!! Wonderful program. Truly a great achievement - every version keeps getting more and more features - and I'd say it keeps drawing nearer to Photoshop, if PS didn't pull further away with each version - but, the Gimp is more than most home users could ever need as it is. It just... that hideous interface. The designer obviously didn't give the /least/ bit of thought to usability with it. Another program I love, but won't use. It's simply too counter-intuitive.)

Many opensource or free programs are natively "linux", either written in Gtk or Qt (and others) that look and behave awkwardly under windows.

The new Gimp is simply a joy to use--the dialogues can be seperate OR dockable--finally the UI has actually surpassed photoshop (of course it will always lag in actual features) have a look at a screenie from my desktop: http://home.earthlink.net/~maxotterland/images/linuxscreenies/gimpui.jpg

I almost always need boxes, arrows and all kinds of diagramy things when I write stuff--so Openoffice is just so much better than MSword--for me, I won't make that claim for others. The draw suite is grrrreat! with the editable 3-d shapes and complete node handling! If I can't do it in OOo, I draw it with either Sodipodi, Inkscape, Gimp, Qcad, or Dia--all free and all quite good in their particular field.

Open office is ugly, yes. So go to my webspace and get some new icons for the toolbar. Put them under /usr/config in the Openoffice directory--either in the main one, or your personal OOo configuration directory. Have a browse and download a set (work with MS or Linux)

http://home.earthlink.net/~maxotterland/linuxstuff/oooiconsets/

Do give Linux a go as well, you can run it side by side with Windows on the same disk. Surf the web with it and avoid viruses, spyware and popups--and best of all, enjoy a computing experience that doesn't feel like a big nasty advertisement.

Do give Linux a go as well, you can run it side by side with Windows on the same disk. Surf the web with it and avoid viruses, spyware and popups--and best of all, enjoy a computing experience that doesn't feel like a big nasty advertisement.

I have to disagree about Linux not feeling like one big nasty advertisement. Have you read the GPL? Rather than getting right to the point of the license, as other licenses do, it's full of propaganda about the evil bourgeois commercial licenses and why the GPL is "true freedom." The same holds true for the documentation and the advertisements.

The new linux release of GIMP looks nice, have to wait a little for the Windows version to get refreshed. I'll keep an eye out.

I had been looking for some project management software and found the Gantt Project. Working with it now, will post something on it in a little while.

I have wanted to dual boot linux for a while, used to dual boot Windows and OS/2, but never get around to it. With the way i use my computer right now, I wouldn't be in the linux piece very much. I'm on a laptop and really have 2 primary uses for it: first and formost it is an engineering system, mechanical cad and numerical processing (computational fluid dynamics). Second it is a gaming box, but I don't seem to have all that much time to game these days, however I usually find some time to play a few years of Galactic Civilizations every now and then.