MS Works 8.5 vs. Open Office for New/Novice Computer user

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter Boulton
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P

Peter Boulton

Hi,

I'm having to source a computer for the mother in law. She has virtually no
computer experience. The PC I've bought her comes with MS Works 8.5
already. I'm interested in opinions about whether to ditch Works, which
looks nice and easy for a real rookie user (who will probably stay rookie)
and start her on Open Office from the start, or whether actually Works 8.5
is OK and Open Office is overkill.

I hope this question does not provoke radical anti-MS type comments and am
hoping for genuine experiences and helpful advice! Thanks.

Pete

P.S. Sadly I am in a state of ignorance about OO having been brought up on
MS Office. I've dabbled with OO and it looks very fine, especially for the
price and if I didn't need MS Office for work / already own a licence I
would undoubtedly be a user.
 
Hi,

I'm having to source a computer for the mother in law. She has
virtually no computer experience. The PC I've bought her comes with
MS Works 8.5 already. I'm interested in opinions about whether to
ditch Works, which looks nice and easy for a real rookie user (who
will probably stay rookie) and start her on Open Office from the
start, or whether actually Works 8.5 is OK and Open Office is
overkill.

I hope this question does not provoke radical anti-MS type comments
and am hoping for genuine experiences and helpful advice! Thanks.

Pete

P.S. Sadly I am in a state of ignorance about OO having been brought
up on MS Office. I've dabbled with OO and it looks very fine,
especially for the price and if I didn't need MS Office for work /
already own a licence I would undoubtedly be a user.
Click to expand...

Just my own $.02 is that you should stick with Works. OOo is excellent
and as good as MSOffice, but the documentation is, er, sparse, to say the
least. If she doesn't need more productivity power, Works should be
fine.

It all really depends on what she wants to do with the computer, doesn't
it? For writing letters to print and snail-mail, Works is great.

Chak
 
Chakolate said:
It all really depends on what she wants to do with the computer, doesn't
it? For writing letters to print and snail-mail, Works is great.
Click to expand...

Seconded!
 
It all really depends on what she wants to do with the computer,
doesn't it? For writing letters to print and snail-mail, Works is
great.
Click to expand...
Prezactly - I use OO now, but I'd be very happy if someone gave me Works;
for normal folks prolly much better than MS Office.

(Just in case you think Chak's out on his own)

mike
 
Peter Boulton said:
I'm interested in opinions about whether to ditch Works, which looks nice
and easy for a real rookie user (who will probably stay rookie) and start
her on Open Office from the start, or whether actually Works 8.5 is OK and
Open Office is overkill.
Click to expand...

My opinion : Stick with Works. I've used it in the past and it's targeted
for "light" users of office programs. I loved that office suite -- used
various versions for years.

OO can overwhelm with its myriad of buttons and / or toolbar menus. Note : I
only use OO periodically. Perhaps someone in this ng can point out if OO has
a means to switch to a 'easy' mode where a lot of the more powerful features
can be rendered invisible to beginners.

M
 
Peter said:
Hi,

I'm having to source a computer for the mother in law. She has virtually no
computer experience. The PC I've bought her comes with MS Works 8.5
already. I'm interested in opinions about whether to ditch Works, which
looks nice and easy for a real rookie user (who will probably stay rookie)
and start her on Open Office from the start, or whether actually Works 8.5
is OK and Open Office is overkill.

I hope this question does not provoke radical anti-MS type comments and am
hoping for genuine experiences and helpful advice! Thanks.

Pete
Click to expand...

For my money, if Works is already there, it's sufficiently easy for a
newbie. Some of it is even better -- the database, although not as
powerful, is much easier to use, as is the spreadsheet.
 
snip.....

i agree, but it would be great if there were a freeware database with the
search filter ease of ms works database, and the 2048 characters per cell.

lizard
 
Michael said:
My opinion : Stick with Works. I've used it in the past and it's targeted
for "light" users of office programs. I loved that office suite -- used
various versions for years.

OO can overwhelm with its myriad of buttons and / or toolbar menus. Note : I
only use OO periodically. Perhaps someone in this ng can point out if OO has
a means to switch to a 'easy' mode where a lot of the more powerful features
can be rendered invisible to beginners.

M
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with works suite, I switched recently from MSO Pro to
OO.o. I'd just like to point out that MS has it's way of making wizards
which are very informative and assistive and also very restrictive.

I don't know much about works, but the way I see it: you might as well
start with full featured package as it's freely available, and as your
knowledge and needs expand you don't have to switch to yet another
program. It could be rewarding, of course with proper guidance and
manuals (which are available for OO.o also), to get full control of
your documents right from the start. Here's some resources for starters:
http://documentation.openoffice.org/

Hope you're not interpreting this as an anti-MS rant, putting the cost
aspect aside, I'd recommend MSO/Pro over Works in similar situation. :)

-K
 
I think Works would be the better choice for simplicity but...
If mother-in-law will be emailing documents she may well need an
explanation of how to do it so that the recipient can read them no
matter what they use. That is the hard part for newbies to understand.
 
Please note that, by default, Works uses the supplied version of Microsoft
Word 2000, or whatever is the most current. Yes, Works has its own WP,
which is not compatible with other WP programs, but you have to do some
fancy footwork to get this to start from the Works task menu. So there
should be no compatibility problems at all.
 
Peter Boulton said:
Hi,

I'm having to source a computer for the mother in law. She has virtually no
computer experience. The PC I've bought her comes with MS Works 8.5
already. I'm interested in opinions about whether to ditch Works, which
looks nice and easy for a real rookie user (who will probably stay rookie)
and start her on Open Office from the start, or whether actually Works 8.5
is OK and Open Office is overkill.

I hope this question does not provoke radical anti-MS type comments and am
hoping for genuine experiences and helpful advice! Thanks.

Pete

P.S. Sadly I am in a state of ignorance about OO having been brought up on
MS Office. I've dabbled with OO and it looks very fine, especially for the
price and if I didn't need MS Office for work / already own a licence I
would undoubtedly be a user.
Click to expand...

Honestly Peter, stick with Works. Trust me (at least for now).

For all Microsofts bad publicity and stuff ... they do produce some fine
software which runs very well on most machines.

I have tried OpenOffice, it's very good yes and is getting better with each
release but the help and documentation isn't great and there are some
features (eg Text to columns) which aren't yet implemented in OOo however
there is an add on somewhere which you can install but to be quite honest,
this should be a standard feature for any spreadsheet app (opinions please
guys?).

It also seems to use and awful lot of memory in comparison to Works or
Office and more importantly it's not completely compatible with Office
documents. Stick with popularity!

My opinions guys and I have tried OOo quite extensively!

Ian.
 
Peter said:
Hi,

I'm having to source a computer for the mother in law. She has virtually no
computer experience. The PC I've bought her comes with MS Works 8.5
already. I'm interested in opinions about whether to ditch Works, which
looks nice and easy for a real rookie user (who will probably stay rookie)
and start her on Open Office from the start, or whether actually Works 8.5
is OK and Open Office is overkill.

I hope this question does not provoke radical anti-MS type comments and am
hoping for genuine experiences and helpful advice! Thanks.

Pete

P.S. Sadly I am in a state of ignorance about OO having been brought up on
MS Office. I've dabbled with OO and it looks very fine, especially for the
price and if I didn't need MS Office for work / already own a licence I
would undoubtedly be a user.
Click to expand...


Well, I disagree with the majority here and say go with Open Office and
get the full features.

Regardless of which you decide; however, be sure to set the Word
Processor to default to saving as either .doc or .rtf files (Both can
do it). This is *essential* if they are to be able to use their files
on someone else's PC or to send a file to someone else.

WPS files created by Works' word processor are *NOT* automatically
readable by MOST word processors including MANY versions of Microsoft
Word.

I work at a college library and MS Works has been a real thorn in our
side. You need to have converters installed within Word for it to be
able to read and write the files. The MS Word Viewer for XP reads Works
files up to and including versiom 7.0 so it's not even an option unless
MS updated the viewer to deal with 8.5!
 
Giles said:
Well, I disagree with the majority here and say go with Open Office and
get the full features.

Regardless of which you decide; however, be sure to set the Word
Processor to default to saving as either .doc or .rtf files (Both can
do it). This is *essential* if they are to be able to use their files
on someone else's PC or to send a file to someone else.

WPS files created by Works' word processor are *NOT* automatically
readable by MOST word processors including MANY versions of Microsoft
Word.

I work at a college library and MS Works has been a real thorn in our
side. You need to have converters installed within Word for it to be
able to read and write the files. The MS Word Viewer for XP reads Works
files up to and including versiom 7.0 so it's not even an option unless
MS updated the viewer to deal with 8.5!
Click to expand...

I think this is freeware from MS:

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/...83-F51B-4977-B572-8C042DF802C1&displaylang=en

or better yet,

http://tinyurl.com/syz4h

--
Regards from John Corliss
I don't reply to trolls like Andy Mabbett, Doc (who uses sock puppets)
or Roger Johansson, for instance. No adware, cdware, commercial
software, crippleware, demoware, nagware, PROmotionware, shareware,
spyware, time-limited software, trialware, viruses or warez for me, please.
 
Peter said:
Hi,

I'm having to source a computer for the mother in law. She has virtually no computer experience.
Click to expand...

For the mother in law? Buy the usual parts (case, motherboard, HD ... you know) and a LFS-CD, put it into a big box, place that in front of her door and then leave for a nice 8-week-holiday in the brazilian djungle 1000 miles from the next phone.

scnr
 
John said:
I think this is freeware from MS:

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/...83-F51B-4977-B572-8C042DF802C1&displaylang=en

or better yet,

http://tinyurl.com/syz4h

--
Regards from John Corliss
I don't reply to trolls like Andy Mabbett, Doc (who uses sock puppets)
or Roger Johansson, for instance. No adware, cdware, commercial
software, crippleware, demoware, nagware, PROmotionware, shareware,
spyware, time-limited software, trialware, viruses or warez for me, please.
Click to expand...

That program appears old
 
(e-mail address removed) - 26.03.2006 18:07 :
That program appears old
Click to expand...

Lou, could you please reduce/shorten your quotinlines within your
reposts? You usually do always an often unnecessery fullquoting.

THX in advance for your kind understanding.
 
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