Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our machines, the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!)
The point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of my very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I have
solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far seems
completely compatible in both directions with ms office and only costs £6
!!!

--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cultivars

"Charlie Pridham" wrote in message
...
Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our machines,
the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!)
The point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of my
very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I have
solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far seems
completely compatible in both directions with ms office and only costs £6
!!!

--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cultivars



and I saved £300 + £6 by staying with XP Pro....................and
installing my old Office 2000.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:08:20 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:

Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our machines, the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!)
The point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of my very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I have
solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far seems
completely compatible in both directions with ms office and only costs £6
!!!


The only difficulty I have ever had with working between Open Office
and MS Office was with teh OO equivalent of Powerpoint - which is far
more intuitive than the MS version - but the animations I had set up
on Open Office did not turn out to work on Powerpoint. Plus the
person I emailed it to could not open it - just as well I had saved as
MSPP and brought my memory stick with me. I just had to do without
the animations.

Cat(h)

On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:08:20 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:

Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our machines, the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!)
The point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of my very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I have
solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far seems
completely compatible in both directions with ms office and only costs £6
!!!

Very useful info Charlie. We shall all have to face up to Vista at
some point, no doubt. Good luck!

Pam in Bristol

"Martin" wrote in message
news
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:19:59 GMT, Pam Moore

wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:08:20 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:

Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our machines,
the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!)
The point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of my
very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I have
solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far seems
completely compatible in both directions with ms office and only costs
£6
!!!

Very useful info Charlie. We shall all have to face up to Vista at
some point, no doubt. Good luck!

Although I see websites trying to sell it, you may like to know you can
download
Open Office free.
http://www.openoffice.org/product/

"OpenOffice.org is free software

* you may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any licence fees
* install it on as many PCs as you like
* use it for any purpose - private, educational, government and public
administration, commercial...
* pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students,
employees,
etc."

You can download it from here
http://download.openoffice.org/
--

Martin

Now he tells me :~)
I am not grumbling it was very cheap really at £5.86

--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cultivars

It was on, or about, Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:20:35 +0200, that as I was
halfway through a large jam doughnut, Martin wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:56:53 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:


"Martin" wrote in message
news
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:19:59 GMT, Pam Moore

wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:08:20 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:

Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our
machines,
the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!) The
point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of
my
very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I
have solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far
seems completely compatible in both directions with ms office and
only costs
£6
!!!

Very useful info Charlie. We shall all have to face up to Vista at
some point, no doubt. Good luck!

Although I see websites trying to sell it, you may like to know you
can
download
Open Office free.
http://www.openoffice.org/product/

"OpenOffice.org is free software

* you may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any licence
fees * install it on as many PCs as you like * use it for any
purpose - private, educational, government and public
administration, commercial...
* pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students,
employees,
etc."

You can download it from here
http://download.openoffice.org/

Now he tells me :~)
I am not grumbling it was very cheap really at £5.86

Ask for you money back. Whoever sold it to you had no right to sell it.

It's perfectly legal.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html

Normally you are only charged for the cost of a CD, post & packing etc.

It was on, or about, Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:40:41 +0200, that as I was
halfway through a large jam doughnut, Martin wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:18:51 +0100, William Poaster
wrote:

It was on, or about, Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:20:35 +0200, that as I was
halfway through a large jam doughnut, Martin wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:56:53 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:


"Martin" wrote in message
news On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:19:59 GMT, Pam Moore

wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:08:20 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:

Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our
machines,
the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!) The
point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old
third party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not
true of my
very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I
have solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far
seems completely compatible in both directions with ms office and
only costs
£6
!!!

Very useful info Charlie. We shall all have to face up to Vista at
some point, no doubt. Good luck!

Although I see websites trying to sell it, you may like to know you
can
download
Open Office free.
http://www.openoffice.org/product/

"OpenOffice.org is free software

* you may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any licence
fees * install it on as many PCs as you like * use it for any
purpose - private, educational, government and public
administration, commercial...
* pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students,
employees,
etc."

You can download it from here
http://download.openoffice.org/

Now he tells me :~)
I am not grumbling it was very cheap really at £5.86

Ask for you money back. Whoever sold it to you had no right to sell
it.

It's perfectly legal.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html

Normally you are only charged for the cost of a CD, post & packing etc.

In that case why is the price of a Windows version substantially more
than the price of a Mac version in UK?

Ask M$, they bumped the UK prices for Vista up. Anyone using Windows in
the UK is paying almost *twice* the amount than someone buying it in the
US. http://news.com.com/Petition+demands...+price+cuts+in
+U.K./2100-1016_3-6161710.html

I know of one corporate accountant who's challenged MS on this, & so far
they haven't answered him.

I paid EUR100 for a copy of SuSE Linux, somebody is posting that that is
free too.

If you want to download OpenSusE, a community driven version, it's free.
However the only support would be from newsgroups & forums.
http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version

If you buy a boxed version, you're buying the official Novell/SuSE
release, & probably would get some support when you register the product.
http://www.novell.com/products/opensuse/

I used SuSE Linux for 9 years, but changed to Kubuntu last year when
Novell signed a deal with MS.

It was on, or about, Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:00:31 +0200, that as I was
halfway through a large jam doughnut, Martin wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:28:07 +0100, William Poaster
wrote:

It was on, or about, Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:40:41 +0200, that as I was
halfway through a large jam doughnut, Martin wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:18:51 +0100, William Poaster
wrote:

It was on, or about, Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:20:35 +0200, that as I was
halfway through a large jam doughnut, Martin wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:56:53 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:


"Martin" wrote in message
newsqr8a313jeenq4hs8e9vqubutu8m6b5geb@4ax. com...
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:19:59 GMT, Pam Moore

wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 20:08:20 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:

Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our
machines,
the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!)
The point of this posting is just to say that while much of my
old third party software has gone on without a murmur the same
was not true of my
very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know
I have solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so
far seems completely compatible in both directions with ms
office and only costs
£6
!!!

Very useful info Charlie. We shall all have to face up to Vista
at some point, no doubt. Good luck!

Although I see websites trying to sell it, you may like to know
you can
download
Open Office free.
http://www.openoffice.org/product/

"OpenOffice.org is free software

* you may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any
licence fees * install it on as many PCs as you like * use it
for any purpose - private, educational, government and public
administration, commercial...
* pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students,
employees,
etc."

You can download it from here
http://download.openoffice.org/

Now he tells me :~)
I am not grumbling it was very cheap really at £5.86

Ask for you money back. Whoever sold it to you had no right to sell
it.

It's perfectly legal.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html

Normally you are only charged for the cost of a CD, post & packing
etc.

In that case why is the price of a Windows version substantially more
than the price of a Mac version in UK?

Ask M$, they bumped the UK prices for Vista up. Anyone using Windows in
the UK is paying almost *twice* the amount than someone buying it in the
US. http://news.com.com/Petition+demands...+price+cuts+in
+U.K./2100-1016_3-6161710.html

I know of one corporate accountant who's challenged MS on this, & so far
they haven't answered him.

I paid EUR100 for a copy of SuSE Linux, somebody is posting that that
is free too.

I'm talking about Open Office for WinXP on a CD, nothing to do with MS
pricing policies AFAIK.

Ah, I see. Well you can still download OpenOffice for Windows for free.
But there's nothing to stop someone putting it on a CD & charging for it,
& if someone pays their price.....

If you want to download OpenSusE, a community driven version, it's free.
However the only support would be from newsgroups & forums.
http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version

If you buy a boxed version, you're buying the official Novell/SuSE
release, & probably would get some support when you register the
product. http://www.novell.com/products/opensuse/

No, I bought it before Novell got their hands on it.

So you bought it from SuSE? This was before Novell released it into the
OSS community, & the only way you could get a copy was to buy
it....though some people copied what they'd bought, & sold copies on ebay.

I used SuSE Linux for 9 years, but changed to Kubuntu last year when
Novell signed a deal with MS.

I'm quite happy with Win XP.

Reading all the gripes on the SuSE newsgroup makes it look worse than
anything MS can throw at you.

SuSE Linux used to be *very* good when it was a German company, but went
downhill after Novell acquired it IMO (& some others). The last version I
had was SuSE 10.0, which had a lot of bugs. It's something which wouldn't
have happened under the original SuSE company IMO. Then Novell signed
with MS, & I decided to move on to another distribution.

Martin wrote:

snip

I paid EUR100 for a copy of SuSE Linux, somebody is posting that that is
free too.

No, I bought it before Novell got their hands on it.

Ok, two things.

1] When SuSE made the product (before Novell bought them) it wasn't free (As
in given away). The only way you could get it (initially) was to *buy* it
from them or a distributor. I bought most releases from 5.0 to 9.4. After
that, Novell bought the company SuSE GmbH & allowed you to download a
release from their ftp site, or mirror.

2] Once you'd bought it, the SuSE Linux OS was *yours* (Unlike windows which
is only *licenced* to you, it still belongs to MS).
SuSE was/is *free* for you to do what *you* want with it. You could install
it on as many PCs as you like, with NO licence restrictions.
Heck, you could even make copies & give them away to friends & family if you
wished! :-)

In the context of opensource software, "free" doesn't necessarily mean it's
free as in "no charge" (though a lot of applications are free). What it
means is that once you have it, you are free to do what *you* want with it.

I hope that answers your question more clearly. :-)

Martin" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:56:53 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:

Although I see websites trying to sell it, you may like to know you can
download
Open Office free.
http://www.openoffice.org/product/

"OpenOffice.org is free software

* you may download OpenOffice.org completely free of any licence
fees
* install it on as many PCs as you like
* use it for any purpose - private, educational, government and
public
administration, commercial...
* pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students,
employees,
etc."

You can download it from here
http://download.openoffice.org/

Now he tells me :~)
I am not grumbling it was very cheap really at £5.86

Ask for you money back. Whoever sold it to you had no right to sell it.
--

Martin

I expect If I read carefully I would find I did not pay for it but something
else like a back up cd or some such, I take your point though.
More worrying is at the moment Vista is flexing its muscles and I have spent
the last 2 hours trying to recover from it freezing after a bit of software
it did not like was attempting to install. now working but I can see a lot
of unexplained activity from the hard drive so am expecting more trouble to
come :~(
Its more trouble than its worth, avoid it if you can, but they do not supply
you a system disc so you can change your mind in the future.

--
Charlie. Gardening in Cornwall
Holders of National collections Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cvs

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:52:20 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:


More worrying is at the moment Vista is flexing its muscles and I have spent
the last 2 hours trying to recover from it freezing after a bit of software
it did not like was attempting to install. now working but I can see a lot
of unexplained activity from the hard drive so am expecting more trouble to
come :~(
Its more trouble than its worth, avoid it if you can, but they do not supply
you a system disc so you can change your mind in the future.

Charlie, you could try asking about your problem on uk.comp.misc; I've
always found them a very helpful lot.

I have no experience of Vista, but when it first came out there were
some adverse comments on the above NG, among which was that it needed
1Gb of memory to run well (AIUI MicroSoft suggest a minimum of 500Mb,
which is technically correct but cripplingly low, although many
machines with that bare minimum were advertised at the time),
otherwise it would be forever swapping stuff between memory and the
hard drive, which slows things up significantly.

If your machine only has 500Mb, increasing it to 1Gb is pretty simple.
On a quiet day, PC World in Truro would probably do it for you while
you wait. Whether it would solve your MSOffice problem is another
question....


--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:52:20 +0100, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote:


More worrying is at the moment Vista is flexing its muscles and I have
spent
the last 2 hours trying to recover from it freezing after a bit of
software
it did not like was attempting to install. now working but I can see a
lot
of unexplained activity from the hard drive so am expecting more trouble
to
come :~(
Its more trouble than its worth, avoid it if you can, but they do not
supply
you a system disc so you can change your mind in the future.

Charlie, you could try asking about your problem on uk.comp.misc; I've
always found them a very helpful lot.

I have no experience of Vista, but when it first came out there were
some adverse comments on the above NG, among which was that it needed
1Gb of memory to run well (AIUI MicroSoft suggest a minimum of 500Mb,
which is technically correct but cripplingly low, although many
machines with that bare minimum were advertised at the time),
otherwise it would be forever swapping stuff between memory and the
hard drive, which slows things up significantly.

If your machine only has 500Mb, increasing it to 1Gb is pretty simple.
On a quiet day, PC World in Truro would probably do it for you while
you wait. Whether it would solve your MSOffice problem is another
question....


--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net
I had heard a lot of the adverse comments so bought a machine with 2GM ram.
At the moment its not working and wont even switch on so you could say I am
not a fan!
One of the things they have removed is Control Alt Delete so you have no
choice but to power off then it goes into recovery mode to try and fix the
problem, but this all takes a long time (and so far has not worked) so what
would have been an irritating freeze on my old machine would take only a few
seconds to regain control I find taking hours on this one

--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cultivars

open office was free download last time I downloaded it??
It is compatible with almost all known office suite programmes and indeed is
with office 2000.
Excellent utility.

"Charlie Pridham" wrote in message
...
Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our machines,
the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!)
The point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of my
very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I have
solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far seems
completely compatible in both directions with ms office and only costs £6
!!!

--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cultivars

"Charlie Pridham" wrote in message
...
Thanks to a lightening strike I have had to replace one of our machines,
the
new one has "Vista" (I expect I will get used to it in time!)
The point of this posting is just to say that while much of my old third
party software has gone on without a murmur the same was not true of my
very
expensive MS Office (2000) and I thought people may like to know I have
solved the problem by changing to "Open Office" which so far seems
completely compatible in both directions with ms office and only costs £6
!!!

--
Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall
http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of National collections of Clematis viticella
and Lapageria rosea cultivars


I'm avoiding Vista for as long as possible (I'm a professional software
developer) and the majority of my business colleagues are avoiding it too -
other than to try it out and prod and poke it without using it in any
serious way yet. It is too slow, takes too much memory, has a huge amount of
irrelevant bloat and has compatibility problems with numerous pieces of
software and hardware.

So until it is forced upon us by the demise of XP we are avoiding it like
the plague! It is also proving to be a support headache too, with the
increased security affecting it's ability to run various programs which just
leave end users baffled when their favourite program starts coughing up
error messages or Vista spews out security messages. Pile of poo in my
professional opinion, just another money spinner for Microsoft with
questionable benefits for everyone else - and this from someone who makes
his living writing software to run on Microsoft computers!

David.

"David (Normandy)" wrote in message
...

I'm avoiding Vista for as long as possible (I'm a professional software
developer) and the majority of my business colleagues are avoiding it
too - other than to try it out and prod and poke it without using it in
any serious way yet. It is too slow, takes too much memory, has a huge
amount of irrelevant bloat and has compatibility problems with numerous
pieces of software and hardware.

So until it is forced upon us by the demise of XP we are avoiding it like
the plague! It is also proving to be a support headache too, with the
increased security affecting it's ability to run various programs which
just leave end users baffled when their favourite program starts coughing
up error messages or Vista spews out security messages. Pile of poo in my
professional opinion, just another money spinner for Microsoft with
questionable benefits for everyone else - and this from someone who makes
his living writing software to run on Microsoft computers!

As a developer too, I think you're being far too generous.

It isn't that good.