On 5/18/2010 5:17 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> I'll second OpenOffice. I changed a bit over two years ago when I finally
> began to think that my 1997 version of Microsoft Office was getting a bit
> long in the tooth.
I've been perfectly happy with my Office 1997 Pro and seen no reason to
upgrade. My new notebook came with the latest version as a trial. I
opened something in it by accident. It's so much different looking that
it looked alien to me. Certainly no reason to keep with the MS treadmill.
Looks like I have to change something. When I install the driver for my
new printer, it has the odd effect of causing Word to simply disappear
as soon as the print dialog is opened. I tried several things without
success, although I managed to stop that behavior on the older, XP
laptop - now Word doesn't crash, but it also doesn't print. I expect the
chances of tracking down such an odd thing in a 13 year old piece of
software, running on a three stages later OS and interacting with a new
driver are tiny.
So I downloaded OpenOffice. The little I've used it, it seems more like
ole' O97 than the latest Office version. I still use the toolbar from
'97, though. Occasionally I look around for something better, but
haven't run across such a thing yet.
When are interface designers going to figure out that stacking lots of
horizontal toolbars at the top and bottom of OSs and apps eats up too
much important work space on today's HD aspect ratio screens. I'd sure
like to see more options to pull toolbars off to stand vertically to the
sides.
Moose
> ...
>
> I don't make extensive use of any of this stuff anymore
My needs too are minimal these days. I remember spreadsheets accounting
created that made MYST look like a simple maze. One was in danger of
getting lost and never getting out. :-) (Welll, I created a several
table normalized database system in Excel once, so I'm pretty guilty,
too. Hey, it got me out of a tight spot.) And Access, OY! It always
seemed to me to be caught somewhere between a real data base manager and
reporter and an amateur tool. Pretty powerful, but kludgy. Don gotta
mess wit dat stuff no mo.
Moose
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