Tech Forum

It would be a magnificent blessing if machines in the next refresh cycle come from Dell with Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition (which comes with Word and Excel). Even the $300 laptops are shipping with it these days.

I have to respectfully disagree. These are stripped down versions of Word and Excel that lack important features, such as password protecting documents. They also contain advertizing and are only available bundled with a new PC. This makes it impossible to implement as "standard" software, as it's not allowed to be installed on the many existing PC's throughout the church.

I'm curious. How would the products from OpenOffice.org not be far better than dumbed down versions of the MS Office Suite?

I'm sure such products come at a price. The church has opted to used Open Office, which is free and can open MS Office files.

I would hope that the recommendation to use OpenOffice.org be amended to use LibreOffice instead. Most of the OpenOffice.org developers forked the project when Oracle bought Sun and new development has continued at http://LibreOffice.org

SLC opted to standardize Open Office before Office 2010 Starter edition was available so at the very least I hope it would be considered.

It is noted that it is available for new systems only, which is why it could be included with the installation of new computers. Since many wards go out and buy licenses of Office anyway it would save them money and it would ensure that all units are on the same version of the same software.

While it is true that the Starter edition does not allow to save a file with a password, the Office password protection in versions through 2007 is entirely useless. I'm not sure if they bothered to make the password protection actually functional in 2010 but my guess is that the password protection in pdf Re-Direct is still more secure by far and TrueCrypt more secure than that.

LibreOffice has some interesting glitches. I can't remember quite what they are but the spreadsheet can lock-up and close the software suddenly. And weird things happen when using some key combos to select groups of cells and/or apply some formating. I also don't like its really old school file saving window. Good stuff, but not enough for prime time yet.

I'm a WordPerfect user from way back, and tried lots of word processing variants. OpenOffice is useable enough for now, but some formatting issues make Word (OpenOffice a little less so) very troublesome.

I've never really incorporated password protected files into my routine because I've got enough trouble remembering web and bank passwords. I've developed other routines for making sure sensitive verbiage is secure. Word document insecurity has me curious. I stopped trying to crack doc passwords long ago. I'll need to dig into current history.

jpjonesxyz wrote:LibreOffice has some interesting glitches. I can't remember quite what they are but the spreadsheet can lock-up and close the software suddenly.

We see this behavior in MLS from time to time...

jpjonesxyz wrote:LibreOffice has some interesting glitches. I can't remember quite what they are but the spreadsheet can lock-up and close the software suddenly. And weird things happen when using some key combos to select groups of cells and/or apply some formating. I also don't like its really old school file saving window. Good stuff, but not enough for prime time yet.

I switched to LibreOffice on my PPC Mac and have not seen any issues over the previous OpenOffice.org (I have not tried any newer version of OpenOffice.org). My most intense use has been a database where I track quorum member participation in various service assignments, though I do make a quick spreadsheet fairly often. The first LibreOffice release was basically a rebranding of OpenOffice.org's then current release. I have been confused by the LibreOffice download page as they seem to have two current release versions 3.3.4 & 3.4.3. While 3.4.3 is considered "safe for most production enviornments" only 3.3.4 is labeled "stable". Release Notes

Mikerowaved wrote:I have to respectfully disagree. These are stripped down versions of Word and Excel that lack important features, such as password protecting documents. They also contain advertizing and are only available bundled with a new PC. This makes it impossible to implement as "standard" software, as it's not allowed to be installed on the many existing PC's throughout the church.

I'm curious. How would the products from OpenOffice.org not be far better than dumbed down versions of the MS Office Suite?

I would say the main reason that Office Starter would be better would be the fact that most Auxilliary Presidencies are working on documents on their home machines that have MS Office. They come to church to print out the documents for class, meetings, etc, then realize that when OpenOffice renders it, the formatting is completely messed up. Yes they could avoid that by saving to a PDF before hand, however most people aren't going to think of it (in the mad rush to get their families ready and to church) until they get to church and pull out their thumb drive and are stuck.