OpenOffice.org Testimonials

2004/05

Edited by:
Aaron Benedict
Louis Suárez-Potts
James Wright

About this page

The testimonials below reflect only some of the people who have chosen to write to us about OpenOffice.org since late 2001, when, on the occasion of our first birthday (October 13), we began to keep track of reader mail. These are candid and largely unedited comments. They express both satisfaction and sometimes pointed dissatisfaction, and that's a good thing. For OpenOffice.org is an Open Source project and we need honest, direct responses in order to get better.

The testimonials below are arranged in reverse chronological order, with the most recent first. Those at the end refer to quite early builds. The testimonials come from all over the world but have been submitted in English.

If you know of any more, or if you would like to share your own experience, please send a note to marketing@openoffice.apache.org.

Testimonials

2004

Tue., 2004/04/27
"OOo is great!"

I'm using OOo for some days now. After the first 24 hours of use, I was very ready to delete MS Office. OOo has all the features of MSO. and more! So there is no chance at all of me going back to MS. You really kicked Microsoft's butt, and if you ask me, they deserve it.

OOo is more flexible, intuitive, and it does exactly what you want it to do.

The only thing I really miss, is an E-mail client. Guys, keep up the good work!!

Jo (The Netherlands)

Tue., 2004/04/27

Just to let you know I have included your software on my 'recommend software for small ¯ medium businesses' web page at www.phizzie.com. We are website solutions company.

I thought you might like to know that your software has been an essential part of our business and comes highly recommended. Just goes to show how much you can get for free.

Feel free to add any of this to a testimonials / comments web page on your site (please don’t add my email address though ¯ you know what these spam bots are like!)

All the best,

Kris Leech
Phizzie Design & Productions
www.phizzie.com

Thursday, 2004/04/22
"Superb software!"

Hi

I installed OpenOffice.org yesterday, and now, 24 hours later I'm very ready to delete MS Office 2000. OO.org works perfectly, and I hope you will keep improving the product. I'm glad that you do updates that mainly improve the quality, not only the amount of features.

You really kicked Microsoft's butt, and that's about time! The only thing I miss, is a mail client.

Jo
The Netherlands

Fri., 2004/04/09
"PDF Is Great"

My son is going to play a trumpet piece in church on Easter Sunday morning, so I needed to e-mail the music to him so he could practice it at college. Scanning it into MS Word gave me a poor, blocky image. I couldn't tell sharps from flats! Using OpenOffice, I was able not only to scan in a great image of the music, but also tune the resulting PDF to be rendered beautifully on my son's inkjet printer. I was impressed and appreciative. Keep up the good work.

D. Dahlke

Fri., 2004/04/02
"I love this stuff!"

To whom it may concern,
I am very pleased with your software! It is a great alternative to Microsuck Word! I love the features you guys have built into OpenOffice. Auto saving, auto finishing words, the large dictionaries and thesauri. All in all your product outdoes any other word processor I have ever used.

Sincerely,
Joe

Thu., 2004/03/11
"OpenOffice.org Rules !!!"

Hi

In protest of the rising cost of Microsoft Office, I started a few years ago searching for an alternative. I was first exposed to Star Office form Sun Microsystems through the use of Linux. I later obtained a copy for Windows.

Now many Linux distributions come with OpenOffice.org, and since it is already installed in Linux, I downloaded a copy for Windows.

I have never had any trouble importing/exporting files to/from MS Office and this includes word, excel,and powerpoint.

You have developed a fine product and I will continue to inform the public about your software. Nothing like being able to keep your money in your pocket instead of Bill Gates'! Thank You Very Much.

Al Dunaway

Sat., 2004/03/06
"Very Good"

This is amazing. I've thrown word away. Everyone talks about being the next alternative to Word, you've created something 10 times better. I'm a writer; I'd pay $100 for the word processor alone.

But a question: I've just completed a 500 page manuscript and need to know if there's a way of automatically preventing sentences from breaking at the end of the page.

Thanks,
Eric

Contact our pubic users list (users@openoffice.apache.org) for tips, etc, or our forums.

Thu., 2004/03/06

Bonjour,
Et oui cela fait bientôt un an que j'utilise très régulièrement OpenOffice.org, pour des présentations, des textes, pour l'élaboration de mon site web (qui cependant reste basique). Je tenais à exprimer mes remerciements aux programmeurs et autres personnes qui se sont investies dans ce projet.

Bonne continuation

Corentin Barbu

Translation: Hello, It will soon be a year that I have very regularly utilised OpenOffice.org, for presentations, texts, for elaboration of my Web site (which however remains basic). I made a point of expressing my thanks with the programmers and other people who invested themselves in this project.

Tue., 2004/03/06
"From the trenches"

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Recently, my Word refused to print a file. OOo printed it without blinking an eye.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

There is one thing that Word does and that OOo does not--print envelopes in a particular way. (I know that OOo can print envelopes, but the way my printer is, it does not work.) Also, the way I set up my time keeping system, it uses a table, and it does not translate exactly right. If I were a geek, I could probably figure it out, but, unfortunately, I am not a geek. But for these two things, I would have switched as a matter of principle.

Thank you for doing such a great job!

Dmitry N. Feofanov
ChicagoLemonLaw.com
Dixon, IL

Fri., 2004/02/27
Jeff Peters
"OpenOffice.org Produces Book"

This book was written and set with OpenOffice.org 1.1.0

OpenOffice.org Team -

I thought you might be interested to know that I have just published my second book on web development and ColdFusion.

The interesting factor is that this book was produced (with the exception of its cover art) entirely in OpenOffice.org 1.1. I outlined the book, wrote the chapters, did assembly and layout with a master document, and produced the final PDF for the printer, all in OOo. It's not a mega-book, but a 159-page book isn't your typical office document. My first book was written as separate chapters in MS Word (publisher's requirement), and the publishing house did all the assembly work. I much preferred doing the work myself with OOo.

The book is titled ColdFusion Lists, Arrays, and Structures. It's available at www.protonarts.com.

Now I hope you'll excuse me while I go fire up OpenOffice.org and get started on my next book.

Regards,
Jeff Peters

Wed., 2004/02/25
"I switched from MS Professional 2003"

Approximately half of my output as an engineer is (was) in Microsoft Word.

The company recently upgraded to MS Office Professional 2003 and I've had nothing but problems with it. All of the improvements that I can see (except for a much cooler interface) are attempts to have the product 'think' for you ...e.g. automatically update settings etc.

This has caused me no end of headaches and I came to the crossroads of either wading through the manuals/web sites/tech notices (an experience entirely similar to the open source experience) or switching products.

I tried the Ximian version of OOo Writer 1.1 and I am EXTREMELY impressed. The file compatibility is GREAT! You guys (meaning persons of both genders for the PC addicted) have done incredible work on this product.

Thanks x10^6 for your efforts.

Glenn J

Fri., Feb 20 2004
"Congratulations"

I want to congratulate you on the phenomenal product you have out there. I have been using it at home to work on all kinds of office files. I don't have a copy of MS Office and don't want to buy one either. OpenOffice 1.1 is a real solid and perfect office suite. I think in terms of OpenOffice and not MS products anymore. Thank you for your efforts.

Regards,
Krishna

Fri 2004/02/06
"I kept my promise"

Hi

I am Sumit Chaudhary, employed in R Systems, Noida Branch. I attended LinuxAsia2004 and Mr Louis's seminar on Localisation of OpenOffice. As promised I started using openoffice on my machine and now everyone in my company is doing the same, except some top class executives.

Thanks.

Sumit Chaudhary
Technical Support Executive
R Systems

Mon., 2004/02/09
"Props!"

You guys went places in a hurry. I've been using OpenOffice.org from 1.0.0. It was a very presentable layout back then, and it's only gotten better. The fact that it's about 60 megs to download means that it's feasible for even someone on a 56k connection to get it, though tiresome it may be. Certainly leaving one's computer on all night to download 60 megs is a better option than spending anywhere between $100 and $600 for like software that's buggier and not backwards compatible with older versions of the $100 to $600 software.

A Happy OOo User.

Mike Bellerue

Sun., 2004/02/01
"OpenOffice.org v.good"

Hi,

I've just downloaded OpenOffice.org for Linux and started using the spreadsheet and I'm incredibly impressed. Thank you.

Cheers,
Tony Locke

Tue., 2004/01/27
"A word"

Just to send you congratulations for this office suit. It is really great and it works perfect. I use it in my daily work at the University,

Many thanks,

--
Alejandro Alvarez Melcón
Technical University of Carthagene Spain
Web: http://www.upct.es/

Wed., 2004/01/27
"OO saves the day again"

Hi -

Once again, OO has fixed a flaw in an MS word doc. I edit docs received from many sources, and I never know their history, or what quirks may have been incorporated into them. Last time I wrote, I had a doc that crashed Word after some editing was done, and couldn't be reopened in Word at all. OO opened it, edited it, and saved it as a Word doc that Word could handle.

This time, the Word doc never settled into stability after I got it. The cursor flickered and the page count kept cycling, starting at 2 and rapidly going up to the correct value of 6, matched by the size of the slider bar to the right. OO opened it, edited it, and saved it in good stable form for Word to work with, and the client never had to know.

Unfortunately, I still can't use OO as my default editor because of a couple of issues. It can destroy the formatting on a Word doc that has inserted artwork such as equations and tables. Also, sometimes highlighting that is inserted by OO can't be altered by Word. If I could use it invisibly, I'd use OO all the time, but I can't risk any more problems like this being encountered by clients, so OO will have to remain a backup option for awhile. Still, many thanks for a great tool. If more people used it, we'd all be better off.

Tom Parsons

Wed., 2004/01/14
"Thanks for introducing me!"

Thanks for introducing me to the world of "open source" software. I have to say I am absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the program. I have been a frustrated indentured servant of Microsoft for years. In my work I am tied to the use of Word and Excel and even Access... now I am free and it feels good ha! The format is great and truly familiar. If you guys would come out with an Outlook replacement and an Access replacement I would drive up and kiss ya! Thanks again! I think it is a better suite than Microsoft!

I will be telling everyone I know about your product!

Well done!

Andrew Brown

Sat., 2004/01/10
"OpenOffice.org 1.1.0"

Dear OpenOffice.org Team,
I have been an OpenOffice.org user for about a year now and have been a big fan of the office suit. OOo 1.0 was a great hit with myself and friends.

However, I have to say that I was blown away when I tried the newer 1.1.0 release. The interface was much nicer, the load times were faster and the install was mirror smooth.

I would like to congratulate the OOo team on the great job they have done on 1.1. Please keep up the good work.

Sincerely,
Jesse Smith -- A happy Linux/OOo user.

Thu., 2004/01/08
"thanks for the program"

I've been looking for a way to convert a MS word file to pdf for a week now and I couldn't find anything that I could get easily. Because of our work collaboration I am located at another institute and as a result it takes me weeks if not months to get programs installed that we need licenses for so I always look for other options. I've so far only used OpenOffice.org for converting to pdf but it was quick and easy. Thanks so much for including this feature and making it so easy to use. I must say though I think I'll be using this on my home computer now.

Cheers,
Jennifer

Mon., 2004/01/05
"Using OpenOffice.org v1.1.0"

I don't have any great story to share but I just wanted to send my thanks to OpenOffice.org for a great product. I honestly had decided that I had enough of my bouts with trading illegal softwares with other friends and decided to go 'legit'. Instead of the Microsoft Office Suite, I now run OpenOffice.org (which even opens all my old files from MS-Office!) and I use Mozilla for my eMail!

Thanks for the great product and letting me go legit on my software without compromising quality!

Dustin Hamilton

Hello,

This is an unbelievable story. One of our Accountants has been working for the entire week on a report on Microsoft Excel 2000. It turns out that the specific spreadsheet with the longest report was somehow corrupted to the point in which neither Microsoft's own Excel 97 nor Microsoft Excel 2000 were able to read it.

We looked around for products which could and found:

1. Companies who charge $50.00 dlls for trying to recover the file
2. Software products which cost $59.00 and do just that.

On December I had downloaded a copy of OpenOffice 1.1 and had it on a CD in my desk.

I decided to give it a try as a "last" resource before purchasing recovery software. I asked one of my support staff to install OpenOffice, and then proceeded to open the corrupted spreadsheet.

Guess what? The long spreadsheet was there, in perfect condition, and no data had been lost.

OpenOffice.org was able to recover a Microsoft file which was not recoverable with Microsoft's own software products !!!

Thumbs up for the OpenOffice Development Team.

Thank you very much. We are able to finish a long report which was due this weekend. We saved the damaged spreadsheet to prove the facts.

Best regards,
Enrique Zapata
IS Manager

2003

Tue., 2003/12/30
"Thanks"

Just wanted to thank you guys for creating a free product that is superior to the $200+ competitor. This is likely the only solution for many that purchased MS Office 97 in the olden days and found that once upgraded to WinXP, Office 97 had become inop. We were then left staring down yet another $200+ purchase to regain functionality that we once had.

OpenOffice.org has provided all that functionality and then some for a great price! Free! The GUIs are clean and fresh, the tools are powerful, and I can even create a pdf file without Acrobat. What more can one ask for?

Thank you again,
Chris Myers

Mon., 2003/12/22
"new to openoffice"

After being a staunch user of lotus for around 7 years I have just updated our computers (once again) and am now running on XP, I decided that it was about time I updated my Lotus suite.

Oh dear, no updates without buying the whole programme - something that really did not go down with me.

So these new computers (2) both came with openoffice so I thought I'd give them a try. I liked the idea of it being an open source too.

I can tell that it was a little frustrating getting used to a new program after all these years but I sort of liked what I saw and decided to give it at least a good try out. But I must tell you I almost ditched it a couple of times - the hardest part was trying to recreate my letterhead as it contained vertical text.

Imagine my delight when I have just found out how to do it!!!!!

I am still learning and am still at the start of the learning curve but I'm hooked on what you guys have come up with. I know I've got a long way to go before Lotus is finally ditched and openoffice becomes my computer soulmate.

I'll send you the letterhead when it is finished as you could probable include it as a layout for a template - and more as I go. I'll even try to contribute to any way I can as I go.

Thanks guys, keep up the good work.

Regards
Heiner

Sat., 2003/12/30
"Very Good"

I just received a copy of OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 on a Computer Buyer magazine complimentary DVD here in the UK. I have always wanted to try a free office suite but only having a 56K modem made this out of the question. I found the package little confusing at first but after a few hours it was almost as familiar as Microsoft Word. I am not a fan of the Microsoft monopoly, and was very pleased by how integrated each component of your suite was, and the fact that it could read so many formats. I have already uninstalled Microsoft Office except for Access and Publisher because your suite doesn't seem to be able to read mdb files or do publications (or I haven't found out how yet!)

Overall, very good. I will be recommending OpenOffice to everyone!

Martin Smith

Wed.,2003/12/12
"Thumps up!"

While I was pretty happy with Word 2000, OpenOffice.org has me blown away

The program is so easy to use, professional and has so many features that its scary. Highly recommendable.

I'm particularly thrilled that it can create PDF files

Weasel Fierce

Mon., 2003/12/08
"Thank You"

OpenOffice.org,

I've downloaded OpenOffice 1.1 for windows XP, and I'm blown away. The product is first class in design, simplicity, and intuitive use. I've opened existing complex excel files and can seem to do no wrong. Formulas, logic statements, and formatting all translate perfectly. More than that, I'm amazed at the ease at which I can mail merge from Outlook to my document without having to export my contacts to a text file. Something that always drove me crazy with MSOffice. The install of OpenOffice was smooth. I'm really looking forward to testing it further, but I see no reason to go back to MSOffice again.

Thanks so much for your coordination and development work.

Jeff Campbell
Bray, Co. Wicklow
Ireland

Sat., 2003/11/29
"OpenOffice 1.1"

Hi guys,

I just installed OOo1.1 over OOo1.0.1 and I'm impressed with the improvements. I'm very glad that I can have an empty session now and I'm very pleased with the PDF export facility! You guys are doing an excellent job.

Remco Dijkstra
Eindhoven, Netherlands

Thu., 2003/11/29
"OpenOffice Project"

I've used the OpenOffice suite of software on my Linux PC for sometime, and found it to be a suitable substitution for the Other market offerings. I made the decision to default install OpenOffice on the XP computer used by the rest of my family.

Kudos to your product, they haven't even missed the over priced, over "feature rich" product that we used in the past! If only the school boards could recognize the potential savings.

Next step moving email and browser to something more secure and stable.

Great Work
David Copping

Monday, 2003/11/24
"Windows XP Installation of 1.1"

Hi,

Congratulations and thank you for producing such a fantastic product. I found it easier to install than MS Office and I prefer the applications. I was amazed to find that there was no charge for OpenOffice. It awakened my interest in the whole open source movement and I have since installed Linux on my home PC.

Best wishes,
Mike Wood

Mon., 2003/11/29
"New User"

Hello,

I am a new user of OpenOffice.org 1.1. I recently bought SuSE Linux which included an older version, so I decided to get the latest version on CD. Being a newcomer to OpenOffice.org, I had no real preconceptions of what it might be like. I have to say I really like it and you deserve much praise for the effort put into creating it. It's powerful flexible and astounding value for money.

If I have any criticisms, they are minor - it's a bit slow to load and, although it opens and saves in Microsoft's formats, it seems to render certain things rather differently. I can live with it.

Well done! I will definitely recommend it to other people, you can count on that.

Mark Binner

Dear OpenOffice,

Thank you for making such a wonderful office suite, that is not only free but extremely powerful. I talk about the features of Openoffice constantly on my blogpage. I embarked on a fun journey but making an flash file with your tool "Presentation" features in version 1.1.0. This is my first time I was able to do such a thing, and plan to attempt harder task like creating an interactive photo archive of my family's history. Again, your making life for us easier rather than buying all the expensive tools. Although this is merely a rough draft, I felt it important to share with you what I have been working on since yesterday. Keep up the great work!

Sincerely,
John (Lakeland, FL)

ps. Did I mention my main website is created entirely in OpenOffice http://beam.to/nethome

I just upgraded to Panther 10.3, and installed the X11 and OpenOffice.org. After a couple of system corrections, I have discovered that this suite of products works! I have not tried every part, but the word processor works fine.

I have never dealt with the Unix thing at all. I am a Mac person, but this was not that frightening to install and use. It is far more reliable than using the bloatware via Virtual PC that I used a couple of years ago.

I will do what I can to tell others and get your product into the hands of more people. Send me some addresses and URL's about the volunteer idea.

Jeff DeBolt 60 yrs old.

Dear OpenOffice.org people,

I have just started to use OpenOffice.org's text editor, and I do not feel like going back to MS Word. I will soon switch to Apple and I won't even bother installing their Office. Yours is such a great product - and free to download. Wow.

I must confess I had been really skeptical about the whole open-source thing, but now I must admit that the community has achieved something great. I live in Brazil and I am pretty sure that with good marketing OpenOffice.org can become the favourite office suite in my country, where most of the software people run on their homes is illegal.

Thanks.
Pedro Sette Câmara

Mark

Our office is officially switching from WordPerfect to OpenOffice.org.

1. After a few months of using it I have come to the conclusion that is better than MSOffice. For instance Writer is more robust, for instance when putting many graphics in a single document. I can do with it what I could not do with Word.
2. At first appearance it is not as slick as MSOffice for some simpler tasks. But you find the generally more organised structure means that the harder tasks (which are impossibly obscure with MSOffice) are more straightforward. For instance, you can drag margins and boundaries here, there and everywhere in MSOffice to insert headers and footers. But you are never exactly sure where you have dragged them to. But with OpenOffice.org, the header and footer dialogues are robust and very clear. By forcing you to use these, you do the job right, and it saves time later on.
3. OpenOffice.org includes Draw. This is a marvellous and flexible package.
4. OpenOffice.org is much better supported. If you have a problem, put it into the Users mailing list. It will be answered in less than 24 hours, often much faster. You simply can't get this level of support with MSOffice.
5. It is free and always will be. So you can stick it in any machine, at home or at work, without the hassle of licencing, registration, product certification, etc., etc. You get a better product for less.
6. Because of the above, the whole world will be changing to OpenOffice.org, some faster than others. But in the long term it will become the standard. And since we will all be going that way and will have to change sometime, the earlier the better!

-Mark

MGM
USA

Hello there!
I have been a captive Microsoft user for more than 12 years. Never have I heard of a serious attempt to crack Microsoft's strangled hold on the desktop market. Just about everything on my PC is Microsoft! Thanks, guys! At last, I might be able to break free from the fear of being sued by Microsoft due to their confining licensing laws. I am about to download OpenOffice and see how well the word processing and presentation portions work. I am also a PC Technician, so if your software works well, I will be spreading the word a lot, just like I've done for Juno email and internet service for my friends and church. Again, thanks, and I wish you swift success, as you seek to deliver the computer world from the tyranny of Microsoft! Go for it!! By the way, I have Windows 98 and Windows XP on my PCs. What's the best, safest way to switch to the Linux Operating System, replacing these Microsoft Operating Systems?

MG Matally
Owensboro, Kentucky

USA
Computer student

As I learn computers and need to make documents, I needed a good office suite. I can't afford Microsoft Office and don't want bootleg copies of it either. StarOffice 6 is a fair price but money is hard to get here. When I heard of OpenOffice.org, I decided to try it. It has never let me down.

Some of my friends think I'm crazy not using a bootleg copy of Office but OpenOffice.org lets me use their documents easily and Beta is so cool with .pdf export. No one else I know can do that. OpenOffice.org has more and better features than Office. I hope you guys keep it up. It's the only office suite I use, Windows or Linux.

Thanks and job well done.

Arthur
Australia

Although my employer provides two commercial products for creating PDF files, neither could quickly convert several presentations created in Microsoft Powerpoint totalling a few hundred slides with detailed graphics.

To get around this problem, I downloaded the 644_m1 build of OpenOffice.org for Windows from mirror.aarnet.edu.au and installed it on a fast PC.

There were no glitches in the installation of OpenOffice.org and no problems importing the PowerPoint presentations and exporting them as PDF files. Well done!

Arthur Marsh
Computing/IT Officer
National Centre for Petroleum Geology and Geophysics
The University of Adelaide SA 5005

David Southward

Thank You for all the hard work you do. You have made the world a better place. I tell everybody about your wonderful software. I've been a user since StarOffice 5.1 and will continue to use and promote your software. I am working to see if my college will use OpenOffice.org instead of M$-Office. As a college student with limited income, the great thing about your software is that it allows equal opportunity for all people; whereas, M$ wants to charge for its product.

Thank You OpenOffice.org Much!!!
- David Southward

Fred
Canada

I downloaded 1.02 tonight, because your writeup mentioned "improved speed". That was a major beef for me with my prior 1.01 product. On my admittedly stodgy system (Celeron 400, 64MB RAM, 4MB video card) it took an insanely long time to load...to the point that I'd gone back to using Word.

The new 1.02 is *WAY* faster...loads in about 1/4 the time on my system. Commercial software is always about adding features. I'm thrilled that with OpenOffice, the focus is on usability.

Thanks a bunch!
Fred Decker
Halifax, NS

Kai Oelert

Hi!
I'm running OpenOffice 1.0 now for 3 months on a SuSe 8.1 Linux, and I'm totally happy. I'm mainly writing short but complex documents and use a lot of tables. I do not miss anything, compared to the Microsoft world, and the quality and stability are OK. Yesterday I found by accident how to integrate the PDF converter (yep, I know, read the f.... manuals) - everything worked with a few mouseclicks, just great.

Go on like that!

Regards,
Kai Oelert

Heather Jackson
USA

I just wanted to say thanks to all of the programmers on this project. I am in process of downloading, my modem is real slow so after the 3 hours I will install and see how it works. I also have star office, but it doesn't seem to have the graphic capabilities than I need. I will email you again to let you know what I think and how well it works. I am a fairly poor single mother, W2k Network Administrator, and I am currently working on developing the web site for my family's new e-bus. Having this type of powerful software available free, helps me overcome hurdles that otherwise would stop me from doing what I need to do. As well having the option of saying "I wanted to do this, and it wasn't an option, maybe you can add it" is superb! I just wish I had the ability to program like the rest of you. My programming skills are not what they should be. But regardless, Thank you for this opportunity.

Sincerely,
Heather K. Jackson
Spokane, WA

Eric
Germany

Hey Guys, Don't know if you get enough of these, so:

Great Job!

I just took an MS Excel file, did some massive reconversions for our bookkeeping and it worked great!

Please don't stop now!!

AC

Folks, I have an Excel spreadsheet here that is corrupted in some minor way, that neither Excel XP, 2000 or 97 can open without losing the bulk of the formulas and charts. OpenOffice's spreadsheet program opens it without a hitch. Your product is now BETTER at handling Excel documents than their own software, in my opinion. Congratulations. I used to say that Excel is the only decent software Microsoft produces, and now can't even say that.

Ted Nichols

I thought I would let all the people who work hard on openoffice.org, that the University of Tennessee has now installed openoffice.org on it's computers in the undergraduate library, Microsoft office is notably missing.
Ted Nichols

OpenOffice (StarOffice) is the new killer app. At least, it is the MS Office Killer app.

I am planning a wholesale switch to Mac OS X and Linux from Win2K for my business and my home, because OpenOffice provides the basic tools.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide much help to the organization, except to be an early adopter.

Thank you for your efforts and successful execution.

---
Ben

Oliver
United Kingdom

Dear OpenOffice person,

Late last year, I came across the IT manager for my local secondary school (high school). He was complaining about having to buy a load of licences for MS Office on some new computers that he had not budgeted for. I recommended he investigate OpenOffice as we use and like it.

Just before Christmas we met again and he said that the school has now adopted OpenOffice. I expect it to start spreading to all schools in the county. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if MS soon give Office free to schools. For my part, I plan to impress upon the county's centralised IT support service to officially support OpenOffice.

Happy new year!

Oliver Low
Viridian Sun

2002

Glenn Powers

Thanks for making OpenOffice so great! Today, I was able to quickly and easily make numbered outdoor markers (N10, S21, E15...) for our company with OpenOffice Writer. Keep up the great work!

thanks,
Glenn Powers
Another Room Storage

Carroll Grigsby

I'm glad to read that this has been an extraordinary year for you. But then, it should have been. OpenOffice.org is simply an extraordinary piece of work. Future tech historians will be writing that OpenOffice.org was one of the defining landmarks in the transition to open source software. Like The Carpenters sang, "It's Only Just Begun".

One minor beef: I can't find any mention on your "Contacting OpenOffice.org" page about where messages of praise and attaboys are to be directed, so I dumped this in your lap.

Thanks again,
-- cmg

Kenneth Mansuy

After years of trying to get decent multi-color printouts from Linux, to no avail, I am pleased to find that OpenOffice.org for Linux is the breakthrough. The print manager I use is TurboPrint (www.turboprint.de) which wants a ps document file. OpenOffice.org configures almost instantly to give TurboPrint what it wants, and the results look truly professional, even on my old Canon610 color bubblejet.

Also good to discover is that the 80 or so Type 1 fonts I had tucked away work well with OpenOffice.org. Finally, real DTP in Linux is not only possible but looks great!

Best wishes,
Kenneth Mansuy

Martijn van der Valk.
Netherlands

Dear people,

I just wanted to let you know that I think that with release 1.0.2, OpenOffice.org has become much, much more mature! Stability, speed and overall usefulness have increased incredibly! My favourite improvement is the bug fixes in the font anti-aliasing code: it finally works for me, and the speed increase is fantastic.

Great work!

Martijn van der Valk.
Netherlands

Tony Grant

I have been running RedHat 8.0 for the last week on my Sony Vaio Picturebook C1XD.

While I have been using OpenOffice.org for quite a while and before that StarOffice 5.2 the integrated desktop experience with RedHat 8 is wonderful!

The version of OpenOffice.org is the same as the one I was running previously but the user experience is greatly enhanced.

I can't wait to get OO.org up and running on my Mac OS X machine too. Keep up the fantastic work!

Cheers
Tony Grant

John Werner

Clear Day Hello,

I've been using OpenOffice since Star Office 5.2 :-), and I thought I would let you know of one of my more impressive (IMHO) uses of it -- the creation of The Snow Tire FAQ web page at http://www.snowtire.info. The latest version was created using OpenOffice.org 1.0.1, 643, and 643C. The graphics have been edited with The GIMP. The rest of the page was created and edited with OpenOffice.org as a normal Writer document. Only in a couple of places did I have to modify the generated HTML by hand (and I will be logging an issue on exporting HTML from Writer format). I was especially impressed with how well OpenOffice did with the frames I created. At first, I thought it would generate HTML frames, but I was happily surprised to see that it used spans, which made the HTML a bit friendlier to many text only browsers.

Again, thanks for the great work on OpenOffice.org, and especially the great bug fixes.

Sincerely,
John Werner
Editor, The Snow Tire FAQ
http://www.frontiernet.net

Paul
Australia

Hi Folks,
I just wanted to drop you a note to say thank you... I just used OpenOffice.org to repair a corrupted Excel Spreadsheet that even Excel wouldn't open!!

Ahh A better Office than Office!

Paul

Stephen

I just wanted to say your software saved my life recently. I was preparing an important presentation on my work computer and took it home for completion on my own computer and Powerpoint XP would not open it - just kept crashing. In the end I downloaded a copy of your suite and opened it up in Impress, finished working on it and then saved it back to Powerpoint, which was then able to open and display it. How come your program opens MS Office files better than MS Office does? Good work folks.

Stephen

Bernd
Germany

Thank you very much for delivering this generous service. Although I had some troubles during download, probably because of my hardware, I am gladly looking forward to a great future using the OpenOffice.
You are doing the right thing.

Have a good day.
Bernd Karge
2gether 4 future :-)

Xavier Poirier
France

AM PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE YOU THAT WE HAVE PUT HERE :
A Java Prog. and OpenOffice interfaced with an application who was designed (at the origin) to print with Microsoft Word ! We have about 30 Computers with about 15 Templates including 128 Barcodes Templates witch print every day about 1000 copies of different sort of documents! The application send fields which are merged and instantiated with the template and printed next. The result is excellent !

The only thing is that we have computers that are Celeron with 160 Mb RAM with Win98 , and it is too slow !! It takes on more complicated templates about 30 Sec. for Opening/merging/Printing. BUT on a Good recent computer with 256 Mo RAM it takes 6-7 sec. !! we are going to change these computers.

I hope this will encourage some guys of this list !

oh, I've missed to say that we are a French Hospital near Lyon and you must consider that Printings are a very sensible part of our organization.That demonstrate for us how OpenOffice with API and JAVA is reliable.

Many thanks and encouragement to all developers of OpenOffice !

Xavier Poirier
Hôpital Fleyriat
Bourg en Bresse - France

Rick

Just a note to say "Thank You" to everyone involved in the OpenOffice project. Your talent and hard work is really appreciated. Through your efforts I have been able to help people who could not afford to buy MSOffice by installing OpenOffice so that they can open any Documents they may happen to receive. Your dedication to the common good will always be an inspiration.

Thank You and Best Regards,
Rick Casper

Jose
Mexico

As an Engineering Manager of a small-medium company in Mexico and because of Microsoft's license program, I had to look for another option that could give us almost the same benefits we had when using Microsoft. We were pushed very hard on the compatibility issue, most of our customers and suppliers all over the world use Microsoft as an office suite; therefore, our scope was somehow limited. We read an article about OpenOffice and decided to test it. Today, all our computers use OpenOffice. In my opinion all the people that were involved in the project did an excellent work. We are looking forward to downloading OpenOffice 1.1 when available.

Jose Lopez-Portillo G.
Productos LYT, S.A. de C.V.
www.prolyt.com

Tim

Just a massive thank you to all of the people who are giving their time energy and expertise to the OpenOffice.org project.We've adopted OpenOffice.org for Windows as our office standard.I'm now eagerly awaiting the OSX version which will be the only credible alternative to M$ office for Mac. I'm not tech savvy enough to be able to dabble in XFree86 and help at this stage, but look forward to the Quartz beta at which point I shall jump in with both feet!

Thanks again, and be encouraged - there's lots of us out here who truly appreciate your efforts.

Tim

KH
USA

Hello: I just had to write to say "THANK YOU" to all the worldwide developers who made OpenOffice.org possible.

I can't believe what a wonderful job they did in bringing to life a product that is this good... AND IS FREE !! All I can say is "wow" !!

LS
USA

Hello,
Somehow or other Microsoft Word has gotten corrupted on my machine, and I've tried lots of things to fix it. After I installed your product, I just forgot about Microsoft Word and Office 10. Your product is quite good, and I do appreciate all the hard work you put in to create it.

Thanks.
LS
Oshkosh, WI

CT
USA

I'm no expert, but I'm really impressed with the program. I'm a beginner and it'll take me awhile to learn how to use it all, but it does everything I could possibly want. Thanks for all your hard work.

GS

Dear Mr. Louis Suarez-Potts
If you like to, you can use my kind words for marketing (also the ones written here), as I really think OpenOffice.org to be an excellent program and that it should be made more widely available to people with limited resources. I myself tell people in third world countries who ask me for advise, to have a look at and try OpenOffice.org seriously. It saves them a lot of money and helps to curtail the monopoly of some companies.

G. Saraber
Mill Hill Missionary

VH
Portugal

I own an Computer Shop in Portugal. I've watched your OpenOffice.org 1.0 for windows and honestly i liked what i saw. It's just awesome! So, i would like to ask you if i wanted to give it away freely along the computers we sell, can i? It would be great to have an office suite like this on our customers computers.

MT
Germany

Hi! I downloaded Openoffice for Mac OS X a couple of days ago and already I want to give you standing ovations! I work as a journalist and the Microsoft suite has been the one and only tool for doing any work thats compatible with other coworkers. But with Openoffice there is at last an alternative. But not only an alternative - it seem to me as its even better choice. And you are still not even in alpha. I´m in love with the autotextfunctions, the xml-format and the compatibility with Microsoft formats.

Standing ovations it is! Keep it up!

RD
USA

Hi,

Besides starting a software company, I am also an 8th Grade Science teacher and my building's Technology Coordinator. I have approval to install OpenOffice.org on every computer in my school district (about 1300 students), and I want to distribute CDs from the bookstore. Our goal is for everyone in the district, at every grade level, to use OpenOffice.org.

Thanks!

TB
USA

I know that every member of the OpenOffice.org community must be very busy. How else would they be able to create such a fine product? I downloaded OpenOffice.org today when I discovered that I had lost my MS Office CDs and I must say that I am impressed!! I do not think that I will ever go back to MS Office now when I can get a product like OpenOffice.org! I just wanted to send this short e-mail to applaud your efforts and to ask if the OpenOffice.org community accepts monetary contributions and, if so, how I should go about making one.

GB
South Africa

Hi There!!!

Wow, is all I can say, you kicked MS's sorry overgrown butt. :) It took a while to download, but man it's great!! I am a South African-based software developer and commercial artist, and I would like to do my bit for OpenOffice.

I will be starting a massive clip art project in which I am going to create a bunch of images for a application I am developing. The application is a drawing tool aimed specifically at clip art generation, and I would like to donate any and all clip art I do to the OpenOffice project, is this OK with you???

The application ought to be complete in a while and if you want I will provide you with free copies if you want to create more art. The application is not open sourced and only written for the Windows platform but I am busy learning Java2 and will probably port to it soon.

DB
USA

Good morning!

My name is David Brown and I represent Brown Technical Services. We run a new web site www.theatl.net. Our site can be described as an urban portal. We are diligently working on its construction as we speak.

I have been assigned to find software that is available freely that we can direct our customers toward and I would like to do that with OpenOffice.org.

I believe in your product and actually advise many people I know to use it. I would like to do that from our company web site as well.

JG
USA

Hello. I just wanted to take this time to THANK YOU for OpenOffice.org.

I have suffered through the machinations of M$ word and Corel WP. They don't leave well enough alone, change the user interface, make variations in file format, and it annoys me to have to relearn tasks to do the simplest things.

Years ago, I began Desktop publishing with raw ascii and Ventura Publisher. When it was sold to Corel, it began a slide into oblivion.

I won a free copy of Novell WordPerfect 6.0 and it wasn't too bad. But when Corel bought it, that to, began a slide into bugginess.

M$ Word ? !? Arghhhhh.

It looks like OpenOffice.org will not follow their leadership! I was impressed with the intuitive user interface and clear documentation. Keep it simple, and keep it consistent.

EA
USA

Dear Sirs,

First off let me say that you have designed a suite that not only equals but in may ways is superior to any Microsoft product. Although I have been using it only a short while, I have come to love it. It has been a real blessing to my organization, i.e. a volunteer ambulance service on a shoestring budget.

The only thing I would like to see is a ruler in the side of the page in the text document, but this is only a quibble.

LP-Y
France

What a nice work,

A group of friend & I own a little company in france, and your work perfectly suit our needs. You are The alternative to Micro.

God bless you.

How can we be of any help ? Thks again.

AM
Germany

Hey!

When StarOffice5 was strengthening its position as an alternative to other commercial office packages, I switched to it and was somewhat of amazed, but at the same time disappointed: It was not that reliable, very slow and had various difficulties on opening Microsoft's documents. As soon as the beta to StarOffice6 was available, I switched to it and was amazed how good it had become, but still it could not replace MS Office. Some time later, when it was announced that the final version of staroffice6 had to be purchased, I was looking for another office suite and came across Openoffice.org 638c. That was the first time I actually was fully convinced by an office suite, and my expectations were not to be disappointed. Although there were some problems in stability, import and export of Word document i switched to it, and from that time I wanted no more to work with MSOffice, as I had familiarized with Oo.org. The past month I had to work with MSOffice (as I had no means to get Oo.org), and my wish to get to work again with this suite grew all over the time. Today I finally got to install the new Oo.org 1.0, and it is amazing! Fast, reliable, easy, everything I always wanted!

I thank you so much for developing one of the best software ever!

LB
Technology Resource Teacher
South San Francisco Unified School District
USA

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for providing this wonderful Office suite. I am recommending it to as many people as I can. I look forward to the Macintosh version as soon as it is ready.

RF
USA

Folks,

You are probably aware of it, but there was a very favorable article by David Pogue in today's New York Times regarding OpenOffice (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/20/technology/circuits/20STAT.html) Congratulations!

Along with Linux, you are paving the way for a new, egalitarian way of doing business. You created something of value, then gave it away. In my mind, you rank right up there with Google in terms of making our technological lives more productive with no strings attached. Thanks!

Personally, I have always recoiled at the thought of giving Microsoft any more money than I absolutely have to, and will welcome the addition of your software on my desktop.

Keep up the good work. You're fighting the good fight for all of us.

Regards,

RF

BQ
Germany

I want to sent everyone involved in the OpenOffice programming/developing/maintaining/ etc., a really big THANK YOU !!!

It´s wonderful working with OO (since the release extensively working with it, making one scientific poster, one big presentation and starting to write my PhD thesis, and ... NO BUG FOUND YET. Juggling with 13459 objects of a .wmf works just fine, performs faster than and does not crash like Corel Draw 9 and gives a .sxd of 22 KB and not a 1.203 KB .cdr). Can I do anything (except telling everybody here at the Max-Planck-Institute what nice things can be done with OO) to help (except for programming, sorry)? Writing a review when I finish my thesis ?, or maybe do some translations (english <-> german)?

Jubilant
BQ

AH
Market/IT Designer
USA

Hi,

My only suggestion would be to add a left ruler along with the top one in Writer, for vertical margin adjustment, or at least make it an option.

Also, I would highly recommend adding an e-mail/scheduling program to the suite. Some companies, including mine, rely heavily on the MS Outlook scheduler to conduct day to day business. I find that I have to have MS Office and OpenOffice.org both up at the same time.

Other than that, I love the program. I've found that it handles clip art and graphics 2X better than MS Office, and seems to circumvent all of the annoying traits of MS Office, such when you drag an image onto the document and get an icon instead of the image. OpenOffice seems much more tuned in to the interests of cubicle culture.

I have been recommending OpenOffice as the best option to all of my clients. It's free, it's 100% compatible and I think it's a product of higher quality.

Keep it up guys,

RT
USA

I really like OpenOffice.org 1.0! I can see the improvement over 641C. Thanks very much for the work you've done. The word about the new release is spreading around my workplace, and at least a few people have installed it on their workplace PCs. I use it at home. I refuse to again pay for Microsoft Office, and being a software developer myself, I like taking the ethical high road by not pirating software.
--Roy

Hans van Aardt
South Africa

I own a software company in South Africa and have been following the OpenOffice.org development for the past two years (since the launch). I used Star Office 5.2 and did not like it. I downloaded OpenOffice.org 1 and wow! I must say that you guys did a great job. I believe that this office suite will dominate the world.

My opinion is that this product will turn the tide in the desktop application space and that it opens the door for companies like my own to start migrating to alternatives!

I wish I was there to hug you all ~( :) >

My best wishes for the future...

Mark
UK

I'm a newly signed up user of OpenOffice.org software and I thought I'd tell you why. I use MS Office at work, and I recognise the value of having a good, functional word processor, spreadsheet and other tools. I also need a word processor on my PC at home, but I don't use it so very often. Whilst I recognise Microsoft's right to charge whatever they like for a license, it doesn't make sense for me to pay several hundred pounds to use their software just once or twice a week. I don't want to use a bootleg, and there are no 'per usage' licenses available to me even after all the ASP hype. So I value your product as a simple means of using what I need occasionally and legally. I can even save my documents in Word format for use at work.

This is not a very exciting reason, perhaps. I'm no longer a code hacker so I can't help you develop things, but I am an enthusiastic user of computers in my life where they help. And you are giving me assistance that is much appreciated. Back to top

Terrell Prudé, Jr
USA

You guys rock. I am using OpenOffice.org 641d, and I am currently in the process of downloading the new 1.0 (the d/l is currently at 21%). There are a couple of MS Word .doc issues and a single MS Excel issue that I've noticed with 641d, but it's nothing that stops production. At work we are a Windows/MSOffice shop; it's just the way it is, and it's a pleasure to be able to actually use an open-source office suite that lets me interoperate with my colleagues at work. It's become very rare that I fire up Microsoft Office anymore at work, and I don't do so at all at home. That's when you know you've gotten it right. It's a very effective drop-in replacement.

Note that OO.o starts up on Linux 2.4 nearly as fast as MS Office does on Windows 2000. On Windows, the initial load is slower than the MS equivalent, like with Netscape/Mozilla vs. Internet Exploder, but after that (MS Office and IE both pre-cache parts of themselves at login/boot time), it's very fast to load. In any case, once OO.o is up and running, it feels just like MS Office, so much so that it fooled a long-time MS-Word user that I know.

I look forward to trying out the 1.0 release (now at 43% downloaded). Well done. Back to top

Aaron Brown
UK

I have to share this with the OpenOffice user community.

The project I'm working on uses MS Word for its documentation. The project's administration guide is approximately 500 pages in length, where each section was written by a different person. Each person applied his/her own styles (although we later tried to standardize the document). When the admin guide is opened in MS Word, the application complains that the document "might be corrupt." We determined this is due to the mix of different styles, perhaps too may different styles for Word to handle.

When the admin guide is opened in OpenOffice, the application does not complain about corruption (and the document looks fine). Even better, when the document is saved within OpenOffice as a Word document, the "corruption" is removed; after the document is saved in OpenOffice, MS Word no longer complains about corruption when the document is opened. > So, OpenOffice has a new feature... it repairs MS Word files.

Keep up the good work!

Artur Correia
Senior Partner in Oliveira, Correia & Correia
Law Firm
Portugal

I've been using OpenOffice.org for nearly one year, now. It completely replaced previous use of MicroSoft equivalent. Currently we're using OpenOffice in only one computer (mine, since I'm the IT guy over here), running Windows 98 SE. We're going to purchase new computers in the short term, and, by then, our form will be completely "opensourced", from the application point of view (not OS point of view). This means OpenOffice for everyone over here. Also, next step will be introducing Linux (probably Mandrake) as an OS solution to be implemented partially. At this point OpenOffice.org has successfully replaced MicroSoft equivalent. we're only missing Access. We, as a firm, have been contributing to OpenOffice.org effort by means of my time (where ever I can find it ...) to the point of having put a lot of hours in developing the currently available Portuguese Spell Checker, which is essential for our practice. Also, we have responsibilities in an Law Association which will propose OpenOffice.org to all it's members. In due time we'll let you know of this as (and if, as almost surely will) it happens.
Back to top

(Posted to Slashdot 2002-05-01)

Until recently, I had been running Win2k on my Toshiba laptop due to a need for good presentation software (heck, when you work for the US Air Force, it is either Powerpoint or you don't do your job...). Well, the need to do some web/sql development pushed me to put Source Mage Linux [sourcemage.org] on the ol' workhorse. Needless to say, I needed some presentation software.

Enter OpenOffice. I had looked at Koffice, but I didn't want to run a full blown desktop environment (currently, I am running X 4.2 with E) and the dependencies to get Koffice up were huge. I had read about OpenOffice and was pretty pumped that would be the solution. I had no idea.

As I said above, Powerpoint was my main concern, but to a lesser extent, Excel since I import a lot of spreadsheet activity into my presentation. So, I get OpenOffice installed and I pull out my last ppt file from a recent meeting and go to work. First thing I noticed is that it takes OpenOffice a while to start. I am not quite sure what to contribute this to, as my system is a Celery 650 with 192 meg of ram. Once it has been loaded, though, it appears to be cached since it starts very fast there after. Next, it loaded my Powerpoint file, something from Powerpoint 2000. It takes a little while, something that doesn't really surprise me since I have quite a few Excel tables imbedded in the show. After about 25 seconds, it is up.

The first thing I notice about the presentation is that it looks great! In presentation mode, the slides are clear and the text is even anti-aliased. Doing a side by side comparison with my XP machine, I was actually more impressed by the Impress display. Great job there. Next, I went to one of the many Excel objects and double clicked it. Boom, it loaded the Calc object in the presentation and I was able to edit the spreadsheet like Powerpoint/Excel. Too damn impressive.

What else do I like.... hmmmmm:

I like the fact that what ever OpenOffice app you are in, you can open up any document. Very cool My Word documents look as good in OpenOffice. Very nice. The desktop thing is gone. Thank God... I am sure there is more, but I have just started playing... If you can, go and help out these people. It is good stuff....

Derek Hinchliffe
IT Administrator
Industry: OHS and Environmental Solutions
Site: Approx 50 Windows based PCs across 4 offices
Country: Australia

I've been keeping an eye on OpenOffice.org for a while now and recently taken a more active interest in testing it and following progress.

I just wanted to say thanks to anyone who has put in time to this project, what you guys have achieved is far beyond what i had hoped for when i first heard about Sun's plans for openoffice.

After playing a lot with recent builds, and following the progress of 1.0, I believe I can finally convince my management that migrating to OpenOffice.org across our several offices is in the company's best interest, both financially and technically.

And what a burden it will be off my shoulders not to have to maintain a network running MS Office apps, because with OpenOffice.org at least I know that if something is going wrong, I can help in fixing it, rather than wait 6 months in the hope the next service pack happens to fix my problem.

So thank you everyone, the world is a much nicer place with OpenOffice.org.

Roy Kimbrell
Technology Director
Space and Intelligence Systems
Northrop Grumman Information Technology

Because I use Linux to do my daily work, OpenOffice.org has been instrumental in providing me the tools I need. I use OpenOffice to create documents, briefings, and spreadsheets and to read and modify these sort of things with my MS Office-using coworkers. The only tool I use more than OpenOffice is email. Without OpenOffice, I'd be using much inferior tools and would have to frequently resort to MS Office on MS Windows because of my need to work in an MS Office environment. Not having to use MS Office is a considerable savings in time and effort because of MS Windows' notorious unreliability.

Gary Frederick
OpenOffice.org Groupware Project leader
Head of development at Jefferson Software.

We help kids and their families learn. OpenOffice.org makes it a lot easier to learn more that just what some Tom, Dick or Billy thinks we want to learn. We can work with OpenOffice.org and know that, because of the XML file format, we can use the information in new ways anytime we want to do so.

Sam Hiser
Chief Information Officer
Reel America, Inc.
www.reelamerica.com

OpenOffice.org is a frightfully good suite. Really solid.

As a CIO of a media startup, OpenOffice.org is important to me for two reasons:

1. It will make my transition to Linux desktops MUCH easier because I can load it and support it on the existing Windows (2000) machines for a few weeks and gradually acclimatize the workgroups to new office tools; then it will be easier to transition and support the workgroups onto Linux, GNOME and Ximian Evolution at a pace that's not disruptive to our larger business workflow and goals; and
2. I will never hear, "I cant open that file!" AGAIN!

The fact that OpenOffice.org is free is merely icing on the cake. I'm expecting substantial productivity gains on every desktop and we can finally scale the infrastructure without adding a new hire for every server. Cost is one great benefit, but the real kicker is that I can do things with the business that I never could before when IT was a business-process limiter and the infrastructure was in a constant state of panic just to stay lit.

From a larger perspective, I know that OpenOffice.org (along with GNOME and Ximian Evolution) makes Linux-on-the-Desktop inevitable, quite counter to all the noise in the press."

Gualter Barbas Baptista
Using OpenOffice.org at home and at the working place
OpenOffice.org Marketing contact for Portugal
Chairman of portuguese environmental NGO

OpenOffice.org is an office suite designed by the community, for the community. OpenOffice.org will mark the beginning of the end of corporate monopoly and profits and bring a new era to the desktop of diverse operating systems.

David Grant
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC
Canada

I started using OpenOffice.org quite heavily last Fall, and used OpenOffice.org Writer for Windows for all my school lab reports last fall. The thing I liked the most about OpenOffice.org is that I find it far superior than Word 2000 at handling images. I still have Word 2000 because I could not afford Word 2002. OpenOffice.org on the other hand, is free, and I can contribute to its continuing improvements by filing "Issue" (bug) reports at their website. I'm seeing improvements to OpenOffice.org on a monthly basis as more and more bugs are fixed, and more features are added. OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet is an excellent product as well, and includes almost all the functions that can be found in competing programs. I plan to continue to use OpenOffice.org more and more for all my word processing and spreadsheet needs.

Kris N.
University of Exeter
UK

OpenOffice.org Impress = wicked, cool, great ...."

At the school of Geography at the University of Exeter we use OpenOffice in our computer-room. Today, I had to demonstrate OpenOffice.org Impress to the students because they had to make an A1 size poster of their field trip last week. I did not use impress that much, so I'm certainly not a professional in it. It took me about three quarters of an hour to get everyone on with OpenOffice.org Impress. These students have little experience, most never used a presentation package though immediately discovered how it worked. The interface proved highly intuitive. I got many questions on 'Can OpenOffice.org do this... Can OpenOffice.org do that ...?', and although I did not know the answer always immediately, all questions could be answered after less than a minute searching around. The reactions were always: 'OpenOffice.org, wicked, OpenOffice.org, great, heeeyy .....'. Especially the drawing tools impressed them. At the end of the day, 17.00, all students had their poster ready, most earlier and they look great. Thanks to the OpenOffice.org community!

Gorkem
Gelecek A.S
Turkey

Let me give some introductory information about myself. I've been in Linux business for more than 3 years and before than it was my hobby as a student. I've written 3 Linux books, worked in press and promoted free software/Linux in general and given countless number of speaks in my country. Also I'm maintainer of KDE i18n Turkish and GNOME i18n Turkish projects. Turkish is my native language, spoken by far more than 500 million people in the world - it's in fact the 10th most-spoken language.

Unfortunately, despite the need, a quality, open-source office application has not been there (here), until OpenOffice.org has arrived. For quite a long time I've been using Star Office for my presentations under Linux. OpenOffice.org has given me a change to use this invaluable product in my own language, supporting ISO-8859-9 codepage. There are already some open issues regarding Turkish charset problems, but it's not a fuzz. Note: Already a lot of companies are using OpenOffice.org in Turkish.

What I've found and loved in this project [OpenOffice.org] is well-defined rules in every project, user and developer enthusiasm, a fast and reliable development model and freedom.

Recently, Oruc Reis Ilkogretim Okulu, a K-12 school located in Istanbul installed Openoffice.org for Linux, together with Gelecek Linux (a modified and localized version of Red Hat Linux 7.2). Now the school runs 24 computers in a laboratory and children work with OpenOffice.org 641C. The teachers and school administrators had some education beforehand with Linux, so the integration was seamless. Although the software is in beta, children find it easy to use and suit their needs.

Now the school is ready to add more computers and hardware into their laboratory, instead of paying a lot for the licenses. The compatibility is the key to success for deploying OpenOffice.org.

Chuck Hunnefield
Technology Coordinator
Linden Hall School for Girls
Lititz, PA, USA
www.lindenhall.org

I'm the technology coordinator for an all-girls school in Pennsylvania, USA. We switched to OpenOffice.org in September of last year after having moved from MS Office.

All of our student computers have OpenOffice.org installed as well as our lab and teacher computers. I even managed to get it working on the finicky terminal server we use for dorm connections! At some point we may move to StarOffice 6, but the real story here is that we will continue to use OpenOffice.org as well.

We are a boarding school. Almost every student this year either brought a computer or leased one from us. We are also an international school with students from all over the world. The computers they bring have all sorts of different software installed, different (and often incompatible) versions of MS Office, WordPerfect, Lotus, DOS-based apps, etc. Some don't even have any office software installed at all!

What OpenOffice.org has essentially done for us is allowed us to finally be able to standardize what we use on computer lab computers, student computers, teacher computers, and even the teacher's home computers if they wish. All this at minimal cost to the school or its students.

Every student here has access to OpenOffice.org, whether it is on their own computer, the dorm terminal server, or in the labs. The familiarity pays off handsomely as the file formats are consistent and the user interface is essentially unchanged between machines. If we were still using MS Office, we would be required to purchase a license for each student's computer we installed it on and we would have to do that to achieve this same level of consistency.

Moving to Star/OpenOffice has allowed us to start thinking about other areas in which open source software like Linux can benefit us. Non-profit schools like ours are always looking for ways to save money and sometimes that involves being a bit creative and taking a few risks.

OpenOffice.org early on was quite the risk as the initial versions were a little unstable and had no spellchecker. But with each new release we saw the product improve into the mature software that it is today and there is no looking back now.

I heartily endorse the OpenOffice.org project, especially for education and look forward to its and our continued success. Thanks to all you coders out there, and a big thanks to Sun as well for making this happen.

Bob Collins, FL AR, MCSE
Schaefer - Fagan & Cooper
Riviera Beach, FL 33404

I am the IT guy in my firm, which is concerned with civil engineering. We are a small firm; 6 people. We cannot afford a huge monetary burden for software, so we use the copies of Microsoft Office that came pre-installed on some of our computers, but others like myself, opted to get a workstation without all the extra software. I have installed OpenOffice 6.41 and am extremely pleased with the quality of the product and it's cross-platform as well as cross-application abilities. I run a Sun workstation at home, so spreadsheets and documents are easily edited at home or work, and the software price is so nice!

Keep up the good work, and thanks for having a product that lets me spend more money on hardware and not the bloatware that usually ships on these cookie-cutter boxen.

Chris Cowsley
UK

I'm a fan of Star Office and OpenOffice. I'm head of ICT at a local 11-18 school in the UK, keen to save vast volumes of tax payers' money, and to teach the next generation of users that 'free' software is a valid alternative concept.

I don't have time to study source code, Most years I could muster a small team of very competent (but inexperienced) programmers, but they leave me almost as soon as they become useful. So I'm probably not much use as a development resource. Sorry.

But I do have access to a lot of inexperienced users, who give everything they touch a good shaking and breaking. And sometimes I can extract useful feedback from their experiences.

I've 'joined' because your site suggested I should. I like the look of your tracking system. It inspires great confidence, and I'll use it as an example to help my pupils understand what professional programming and software management is about. But at present I'm keen to find a list of 'known bugs and issues' in a form that will let me see quickly whether things I notice are already known... Could you please sign post it more prominently?

Meanwhile I have just loaded OpenOffice 641C onto a brand new XPhome notebook. There are some issues. I've attached them (because it's more useful than not) but will happily recast, recategorise and repost them if you can help me find the right place and process.

Thanks for any help - and thanks for being there.

IT Department UK

I just thought I would send a brief mail to introduce myself as I will be popping in IssueZilla from time to time.

Hi, I work in the IT Department at a Manufacturers in the UK. Recently we have been having problems opening files with our MS Office 95 setup as our customers have at least got MS Office 97 and some even XP. We looked into upgrading but the cost was ridiculous as not only would we have to pay the MS Office license fees but also upgrade most of our PCs.

This is the point where we decided to look into the possibility of moving to OpenOffice.org ...... we now have 10 users trying out the OpenOffice.org software and up to now we are very impressed with both the applications and the quick response from IssueZilla.

Keep up the good work!

Claudio Ferreira Filho
System Manager
Novanis Animal Ltda
Rondonópolis - MT - Brazil

My name is Claudio Ferreira and i'm a user of oo since liberation code of star office, by Sun. I'm subscribed in dev and user lists, and i'm translating the OpenOffice.org to Brazilian Portuguese. Well, I am writing to inform that in my company, Novanis Animal Ltda, in Rondonópolis, state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, we use OpenOffice.org in all computers . I created a (small) list of OpenOffice.org in pt-Br in http://www.grupos.com.br/grupos/openoffice, and i am working in a site about, also, OpenOffice.org in http://www.narede.hpg.com.br . I am working to further OpenOffice.org in Brazil.

Justin Fitzgibbon
System Manager
Holman Webb Lawyers

As the system manager for a medium sized law firm I am delighted with the work being put into the OpenOffice.org suite.

OpenOffice serves two purposes on our Windows PCs. First I often use it to repair corrupted MS word documents, typically when a Word document is causing General Protection faults or causing Word 2000 to use 100% of the CPU or when a document is totally unopenable I can use OpenOffice.org to "repair" it.

Although some formatting may be lost, OpenOffice.org's superior ability to open Word documents saves the day. Amazing that a third party program is so much better at opening and repairing docs than Microsoft's own software. This is evidence that the OpenOffice.org suite is superior in a variety of ways to the commercial MS product.

Secondly like any medium sized operation we sometime give presentations to our clients and potential clients. Like everyone else we used PowerPoint for such a purpose. Now the Presenter application has replaced PowerPoint throughout the office. This allows every staff member to create presentations rather than just a few with the full (expensive) version of MS Office.

For the larger to medium sized offices I believe that the OpenOffice.org Presentation application and the spreadsheet app will be the killer features to ween users away from using MS exclusively.

The major obstacles to moving away from MS Office for the larger firms will be the time and effort needed to rewrite macros and documentation but once OpenOffice is widely installed the incentive will be there.

It may be a while before big business notices OpenOffice.org but meanwhile it has loads of potential at the small and medium end.

2001

MH writes, on 2001-10-09, "I am switching most of my work from MSOffice to OpenOffice.org --- I like the open concept, but also, I can save files in formats that I can take up in XML, I can footnote far more extensively and easily, and I the layout is just better and easier."

MP writes from Berlin, 2001-10-05, Hello out there, I just wanted to thank all of you working for the OpenOffice.org project... you are doing a great job!

TL writes on 2001-09-15, Great job on the newest build. Installed it, and it's about 100% better than the previous 2 builds. The last build I couldn't even get to work. Previous to that, it was very crash- prone and incredibly slow. So far, openoffice.org looks like it's going to be great.

RM writes on 2001-08-21, "Thank you for your work that enables to be free in an invading Microsoft world. I am using StarOffice 5.2 everyday and love it. I regret not to be able to install it on Yellow Dog PPC (kind of Red Hat for iMac) for my wife and wait for a stable version of your [Build 633] because your printing solution seems to be great. It will be great to have independent printing management, if it is not to difficult to understand how to configure. Finally, thanks for the descriptions of your work projects. It is exciting to read!

"Thanks for all your efforts..."

ML 2001-08-14, "Dear OpenOffice.org team, since it is not a piece of cake to build OpenOffice.org from source, it would be nifty if you could put some more binaries in the download area, like a binary for Linux(PPC), for example.

" By the way you guys are doing an excellent job."

[It's been done. See our Download Central page.-Ed.]

RW 2001-08-11. "Great products! I am an Open Source advocate here in Honolulu and a network consultant. I have many customers who are now ready to take the plunge. A business office, for starters, of 25 workstations (Windows 98), who are looking for a cost effective alternative to MS Office."

Aglio Database Solutions

"As a participant in the OpenOffice.org project, I began using it for spreadsheets and word processing six months ago," said Josh Berkus, owner of Aglio Database Solutions, a San Francisco consulting company. "Since Build 633, I've started exclusively using OpenOffice.org for those functions, including maintaining some of the extremely complex time-tracking spreadsheets required by two of my clients." Josh was also buoyant about the potentials for OpenOffice.org in the nonprofit organization world, "Last week I was able to tell a cash-strapped educational nonprofit I know that they have an alternative to paying $100-$200 a workstation for MS Office licenses. They were thrilled, and you can expect Bay Area non-profits to start downloading OpenOffice.org in large numbers."

Bay Area Scores

"We're really glad to have office software that doesn't cost us $100 to $200 a computer," said Colin Schmidt, director of Bay Area Scores, a non-profit after-school program in San Francisco. "The cost savings will help us set up more Scores programs in other cities."